Israel: The Ultimate Identity Fraud

Up to here with Mossad death squads and identity fraud? Sorry, there's more:

1) "ASIO is investigating at least 3 dual Australian-Israeli citizens whom it suspects of using Australian cover to spy for Israel. The investigation was under way at least 6 months before the assassination in January of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh... Authorities in Dubai have revealed that 3 people suspected of involvement in the assassination were travelling on forged Australian passports, using the names of 3 dual Australian-Israeli citizens. The 3 people linked to Mabhouh's death are in no way connected to the 3 being investigated by ASIO... According to 2 Australian intelligence sources who have been in contact with The Age, the 3 dual citizens under ASIO surveillance all emigrated to Israel within the past decade. Each of the men has since travelled back to Australia at different times to legally change their names and obtain new Australian passports... In each case, the men have changed their names from surnames that could be read as European-Jewish sounding names, to names more typically identified as Anglo-Australian... The new Australian passports have since been used to gain entry to a number of countries that are hostile to Israel, including Iran, Syria and Lebanon... The Age understands that the 3 Australian nationals share an involvement with a European communications company that has a subsidiary located in the Middle East." (ASIO in fresh Israel spy probe, Jason Koutsoukis/Jonathan Pearlman, The Age, 27/2/10)

2) Lebanon? Did they say Lebanon? Seems the place is fairly swarming with Israeli spooks: "Lebanon's security service says that since November 2008 it has broken up no fewer than 25 Israeli spy rings. The reported arrest this month of a colonel in Lebanese army intelligence... brings the number of those charged to 70-plus; 40 of them are in Lebanese police custody." (Not such a success, The Economist, 25/2/10)

Communications? Did they say communications? "Aside from the alleged spies, the Lebanese say they netted fancy surveillance and communications gear disguised as, among other things, Thermos flasks, canisters of motor oil and battery chargers." (ibid)

3) But surely all this is just a mere slip of the Israeli halo, and all the "lone beacon of democracy in a hostile region" has to do, as today's editorial in The Australian sagely advises, is "take Australia's concerns seriously, co-operate with investigations, acknowledge wrongdoing and ensure it is never repeated"?

OK, but haven't we been there before? Wasn't it only yesterday that The Australian reported on its front page that "Australian authorities quietly approached [on bended knee, with gaze averted?] the Israeli government in the 1990s to seek assurances that Australian passports would not be abused after it was feared Israeli agents had doctored several New Zealand passports"? (Aussies caught in Israeli spy hit, Stewart/Maley)

And wasn't Israel's reaction to our humble request reported as one of "enraged self-righteousness"? (ibid)

As for acknowledging wrongdoing, is The Australian serious? After all, as the horse's mouth (aka The Jerusalem Post) reminds us, "If there are two traits that are meant to typify the average Israeli it is the fear of being a freier [sucker] and an innate inability to apologize." (My word: Doing what comes naturally, Liat Collins, 20/2/10)

And then there's that slight matter of Mossad's 'passport factory' and its operatives. Would the editorialist want that dismantled and its crew thrown on the dole queue?

Passport factory?! Do tell:

"In the world of international terrorism, both privatized and state-sponsored, passports... are the coin of the realm. Terrorists targeting America are particularly eager to get their hot little hands on Canadian and New Zealand passports, for a number of reasons, most especially because the holders don't need visas across a wide swathe of the globe, including the US. Now... discovering how the terrorists procure travel documents provides important clues as to how they operate - and with whose complicity.

"In April [2004] I wrote about the 'passport farm' Israeli agents set up in New Zealand, in which 4 employees of Mossad... were caught trying to obtain a NZ passport in the name of a housebound paraplegic. Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara were arrested, in a much-publicized case, and jailed, while Prime Minister Helen Clark openly raged against what was undoubtedly an Israeli intelligence operation. Since then there have been a few rather interesting, albeit ominous, developments.

"It turns out that the ringleader, Ze'ev William Barkan, who fled before NZ security could nab him, was and presumably still is a member of the Israeli diplomatic corps, having served at embassies in Vienna and Brussels. He was last seen in North Korea, traveling with a Canadian passport as 'Kevin Hunter', where he turned up in Pyongyang as a 'consultant' brought on to help the North Korean government build a 'security fence' in order to keep their people in. Now that the East Germans have wound up in history's dustbin, the Israelis are the current experts in the field.

"Barkan is a man of many skills, and one of them, according to an aid worker cited by the Sydney Morning Herald, is this: 'He goes to Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand and deals with gangs who rob tourists of their valuables and passports', the aid worker said. 'Barkan is mostly interested in passports and there have been a number of Australian passports'. Intelligence analysts in NZ believe Barkan, a former navy diver in the IDF, was trying to secure a 'clean' passport for use in a sensitive Israeli undercover operation in the region, less risky than a forged passport'.

"The inner workings of Barkan's NZ operation were exposed when the fourth suspect in the case, Tony Resnick, was outed. Mr Resnick, 35, who fled the day after the arrest of Kelman and Cara, was a paramedic with the St John Ambulance in Auckland before taking a job as a healthcare lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology. He had previously worked as a paramedic in Israel, and in his capacity as a paramedic in NZ, had visited the home of the targeted paraplegic. Using Resnick's connections to wheelchair-bound and otherwise incapacitated NZealanders, Barkan's cabal targeted people who would not likely be traveling abroad, and set up a passport farm by stealing their identities. The Israelis were caught by a suspicious official, who checked their references and laid a trap. But the question that is no doubt haunting the government of NZ is how many times did they succeed before they were caught - and to what purpose was Israel culling travel documents?

"The answer to this last question is discernible if we look at Israel's record in this regard. The botched assassination of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Jordan caught the Israelis with their pants down on the passport issue: the assassins were outfitted with Canadian travel documents. This incident no doubt came to mind as NZ government officials contemplated the meaning and purpose of Israel's underground passport factory.

"Speaking of Canada, the story of the Mossad's NZ hijinks took a Canadian twist when that country's foreign ministry announced that it was investigating the matter of Barkan's passport. NZ's foreign minister, Phil Goff, replied: 'I have read with interest the Canadians are following up allegations he may have travelled at some point on a stolen Canadian passport. When he came to NZ my understanding was he was travelling on a US passport. Clearly there would be co-operation between police forces in different countries to try to get to the bottom of these things'.

"So there's an American twist, too. Barkan reportedly had an American accent, and said he came from Washington, DC, where his family supposedly was in the 'windows and doors' business. The Sydney Morning Herald confirms his Washington residence, and says Barkan grew up there as Zev Bruckenstein, where his father was director of religious studies at a synagogue." (Passport to terror, Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com, 6/8/04)

But all of the above, and more, is but the tip of the iceberg. Israel is a country that has practiced identity fraud on a grand scale for decades now. After all, didn't it steal Palestine, tamper with its ethnic identity, and call it Israel? Identity fraud doesn't get much more brazen than that.