The Israeli Mystique

How many death squad leaders do you think could make it to Australia on a tour sponsored by a 'local' women's organization, and be given a platform in a major broadsheet to lecture its readers on security? But it's OK. He's Israeli and that's sooo cool. His name is Juval Aviv. Juval supposedly* "led a deadly team of 5 assassins to avenge the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli athletes [at the Munich olympics.]" He's "on an Australian tour sponsored by the Women's International Zionist Organization." And he's appeared, complete with pic, to proffer his pearls in the Sydney Morning Herald (A bloody & vengeful claim to fame, Daniel Flitton 2/9/08).

What a mensch is Juval!

Herald journalist Flitton was spell-bound: "This much is clear. Mr Aviv is a fascinating storyteller with strong views on the present-day terrorist threat."

If only the former Howard government had listened to Juval back when and followed his sage advice, we would never have joined the Coalition of the Willies! Cop this: "I'm in the loop, I'm seeing a lot of information, and I can tell you that Australia was always far away, the dark side of the moon... You were isolated, you were in a bubble, and you were secure... Australia's troop deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan make it a bigger terrorist target, lifting it to rank alongside the US, Israel and Britain." Oh, John/Peter/Alexander & Co, what have you done?

But now, warns Juval darkly, "That bubble has burst... Australia today is exactly where America was before 9/11 - gullible, believing you are secure because you are an island. You have done a lot [fridge magnets?], but you are light years away in Australia from really being ready for an attack. A lot of people really don't believe it is going to happen."

Shit! Juval, save us! Waddawegonnado, O Great "White House & Congressional Counter-Terrorism Consultant"? - You "should sit down and work out emergency plans, including places to meet if [your family] cannot return home and who will pick the children up from school." Gee, thanks, Juval, I feel so much better prepared now. - You're welcome, just make the cheque out to my "New York private investigation firm."

Enough of the banter - what really interested me in Flitton on Juval was the light shed by the latter on Israeli law enforcement methods: "We found those 11 terrorists, and one by one, we brought them to justice - which we only know how to do in Israel, as I always say." You m-m-m-mean, stammered Flitton, as a chill ran down his spine, "executions"? The "stocky and smiling" Juval nodded. "At the time, " he said, we had "to send a message of strength."

There you have it: Israeli 'justice' has always been more about bloody corpus than habeas corpus.

* 'Supposedly'. As in 'according to Juval'. Have the good ladies of WIZO been conned? Has Juval's "700-strong audience in Melbourne last week" been dudded? Is Juval really who he claims to be? I'm sure it doesn't matter to WIZO, of course. Political Zionists thrive on delusion. What actually happened is neither here nor there for them. Truth, like Australian or American politics, always boils down to 'Is it good for Israel?' Anyway, fact or fiction, Juval has no doubt stiffened the spines of the Zionist faithful wonderfully, so I'm sure WIZO got their money's worth. And the audience most likely found his tales of derring-do as spell-binding as Flitton did. The latter, of course, did note that "[Juval's] story has been challenged by Israeli intelligence officials" - but that, folks, isn't the half of it:-

Ponder this excerpt from Secret Agent Schmuck: The spooky truth behind the media's favorite 'spy' by Chris Thompson, writing in The Village Voice of 16/10/07: "... Aviv has built a remarkable career for himself. In 1989, following the Pan Am 103 bombing that killed 270 people in Lockerbie, Scotland, airline officials hired Aviv to investigate the incident. His report - alleging that the bombing was a CIA gun-and-drug smuggling operation gone terribly wrong - was leaked to the press, reportedly by Aviv himself. News outlets like Time, NBC, ABC, and Barron's picked up the story. But as more skeptical journalists began to examine Aviv's report, Pan Am officials suddenly dropped their plans to use it as a defence, and the media outlets that had run Aviv's allegations squirmed under the scrutiny. A Brooklyn federal magistrate later found Aviv's report to be utterly without merit. Today, American intelligence officials who were charged with investigating the Pan Am 103 bombing are still furious with Aviv - and they fume over the fact that national television outlets treat him as anything but a fraud. 'This crud, this piece of dirt, went around inventing stories about how this plane got destroyed, because he was paid money to do so', says Vincent Cannistraro, the former chief of operations and analysis at the CIA's Counterterrorism Centre. 'The man is not worth being in human company, frankly'. 'This guy's full of shit', says Larry Johnson, who served in the CIA and as a deputy director in the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism. 'What's true is, yes, he has a security and corporate-intelligence firm, and he's big at playing up the Israeli mystique. If you say it with a foreign accent, you're good to go'." (http://www.villagevoice.com/)

And how's this for chutzpah: according to Flitton, secret agent schmuck wears "a round badge with the CIA emblem proudly pinned to his lapel." Nice!