When Richard Carleton Interviewed Ghassan Kanafani

Here is my transcription of the late Australian broadcast journalist Richard Carleton's 1970 interview with the Beirut-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) spokesman Ghassan Kanafani, as posted by the Lebanese-American academic Asad Abukhalil (otherwise known as The Angry Arab) on his Twitter feed on 25/6/19.

But first a word from Kanafani's Danish wife Anni to put you in the picture regarding what you are about to read:

"If none of the hundreds of foreign correspondents who filled the by then legendary office at Al-Hadaf [the PFLP's newspaper] were unable to put Ghassan down in a dialogue, it was because the answers he always gave were penetrating, sharp and accurate, the main reason being that the cause which he was defending - the Palestinian revolutionary struggle - is a just one." (Ghassan Kanafani, Palestine Research Center, 1973)

Note also that I have modified some of Kanafani's syntax for greater clarity of meaning:

Richard Carleton: Of the 11 Palestinian movements the most radical of all is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)... It was the Popular Front that hijacked and blew up 3 [sic] jet aircraft at Revolution Airport in the Jordanian desert... The Beirut leader of the Popular Front is Ghassan Kanafani. He was born in Palestine but fled in 1948, as he puts it from Zionist terror. Since then he's been plotting the destruction of both the Zionists and the reactionary Arabs.
Ghassan Kanafani: I know what I know really that the history of the world is always the history of weak people fighting strong people, of weak people, who have a correct case, fighting strong people, who use their strength to exploit the weak.
RC: Turn to the fighting that's been going on in Jordan in recent weeks.* It's your organisation that's been one side of the fight. What has it achieved?
GK:  One thing. That we had a case to fight for. That's a lot. This people, the Palestinian people, prefer to die standing than to lose its case. We proved that King [Hussein] is wrong. We proved that this Palestinian nation is going to continue fighting until victory. We proved that our people can never be defeated. We taught every single person in this world that we are a small, brave nation who are prepared to fight to the last drop of blood for justice for ourselves after the world failed to give it to us. This is what we achieved.
RC: It does seem that the war, the civil war, has been quite fruitless.
GK: It is not a civil war. It's a people defending themselves against a fascist government which you are defending simply because King Hussein has an Arafat problem. It's not a civil war.
RC: Well, the conflict...
GK:  It's not a conflict. It's a liberation movement fighting for justice.
RC: Well, whatever it might be best called...
GK:  Not whatever, because this is where the problem starts. Because this is what makes you ask all your questions. This is exactly where the problem starts. This is a people who are discriminated against fighting for their rights. This is the story. If you say it's a civil war, then your question will be justified. If you say it's a conflict, then, of course, it'll come as a surprise to know what's happening.
RC: Why won't your organisation engage in peace talks with the Israelis?
GK:  You don't mean peace talks exactly. You mean capitulation, surrender.
RC: Why not just talk?
GK: Talk to whom?
RC: Talk to the Israeli leaders.
GK: That kind of conversation is between the sword and the neck.
RC: Well, if there were no swords or guns in the room, you could still talk.
GK: No, I have never seen any talk between a colonialist case and a national liberation movement.
RC: But despite this, why not talk?
GK: Talk about what?
RC: Talk about the possibility of not fighting.
GK: Not fighting for what?
RC: Not fighting at all. No matter what for.
GK:  People usually fight for something, and they stop fighting for something. So tell me what is it we should speak about.
RC: Stop fighting...
GK: Or rather what is it we should stop fighting for to talk about?
RC: Talk to stop fighting, to stop the death, the misery, the destruction, the pain.
GK: Whose death, misery, destruction and pain?
RC: Of Palestinians, of Israelis, of Arabs.
GK:  Of the Palestinian people who are uprooted, forced into refugee camps, starved, murdered for 20 years, and forbidden even to call themselves Palestinians.
RC: Better that way than dead though.
GK: Maybe to you, but to us, no.To us, to liberate our country, to have dignity, to have respect, to have our basic human rights, is as essential as life itself.
RC: You call King Hussein a fascist. Who else among the Arab leaders are you totally opposed to?
GK: We consider the Arab governments to be of two kinds. Ones we call reactionaries who are tied to imperialism: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia. Then there are the other Arab governments, which we call the military placebos [?], such as Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria and so on.
RC: Let me get back to the hijacking of the aircraft.** On reflection, do you think that was now a mistake?
GK: We didn't make a mistake in hijacking them. On the contrary, they were one of the most correct things we ever did.

***

Nothing so much as the manner of their lives and deaths, conferred only by an accident of birth, confirms the vast gulf separating the privileged, white colonial reporter from Australia, Richard Carleton (1943-2006), and the exiled Palestinian driven out of his ancestral homeland by Zionist terror gangs in 1948, Ghassan Kanafani (1936-1972).

While Carleton returned to Australia to do the kind of work he enjoyed doing, eventually ending up working for Channel 9 television's 60 Minutes program, and dying of a heart attack while on the job at the age of 62,  Kanafani, aged just 36 at time of his death, was cruelly incinerated along with his 17-year-old niece, Lamees, on July 8 1972 after Israel's Mossad had planted explosives on his car.

You will be interested to know that Richard Carleton is the father of James Carleton who runs ABC Radio National's God Forbid program. To give you the measure of the son, see my 16/7/13 post Our ABC Owned for a transcription of his interview with George Galloway.

[* Carleton here is referring to the period of fighting in Jordan between the armed Palestinian resistance movement, led by Yasser Arafat's Fatah, and allied Palestinian groups such as the PFLP. The fighting ran from 6/9/70 - 17/7/71; **Briefly, Carleton here is referring to the PFLP's hijacking of 5 planes from 6/9/70 to 9/9/70 to Dawson's Field in Jordan. In August 1969, Leila Khaled was one of a PFLP commando unit which hijacked a TWA flight. She ordered the pilot to fly over her ancestral city, Haifa, and land in Syria where the plane was blown up after its passengers were evacuated. In September 1970, she and Patrick Arguello, a Nicaraguan-American, hijacked Israeli EL AL flight 219 from Amsterdam, forcing it to land at Dawson's Field. Patrick was martyred by an Israeli security guard. Leila was captured and flown to a police lockup in Britain. Note that all planes hijacked to Jordan were blown up by PFLP commandos after they had evacuated the passengers.]

Dave Sharma Watch 2

Poor old Dave Sharma's reportedly under email attack from some nutter claiming "he was facing a year in jail for not disclosing that his father was from Trinidad and Tobago," and "would end a global conspiracy to cover up molestation by the church and establishment." (Better call in Mossad, The Sauce, Sunday Telegraph, 12/5/19)

OMG, what to do? Well, Dave being Dave and all, it's obvious who he's gonna call, innit?

"... Dave Sharma enlisted ex-Mossad cyber-security specialist Adi Ashkenazy." (ibid)

There you go!

And Dave is pointing the finger at - wait for it - "foreign influence." (ibid)

Now that's chutzpah for you!

Still, despite his woes, Dave, who reportedly "persuaded" PM Morrison to relocate Australia's embassy to Jerusalem during last October's Wentworth by-election, should surely derive some comfort from such 'good' news as this:

"Israeli occupation forces have sharply escalated their demolitions of Palestinian properties in East Jerusalem. As a result more Palestinians have been made homeless this year than in all of 2018." (Israeli home demolitions skyrocket in Jerusalem, Tamara Nassar, electronicintifada.net, 11/5/19)

Meanwhile, back in the real world, it's business as usual for the valiant Israeli Defense Forces:

"Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian on Friday during weekly protests along the border with Israel, Gaza health officials say. In addition to the 24-year-old male fatality, 30 other people were wounded by live gunfire during the protest, in which thousands participated they said." (Israeli troops kill Palestinian at Gaza border protest - medics, Nidal Almughrabi, editing Catherine Evans, uk.reuters.com)

Kevin Rudd's 'The PM Years'

It is in the nature of political lobbies to operate behind closed doors, away from the public eye. Australia's Israel (or Zionist) lobby is no exception. In fact, it is probably true to say that most Australians are simply unaware of its existence, let alone its powerful hold over our elected representatives, not to mention its relentless policing of the corporate media. And that lack of awareness, to be sure, is just the way the lobby would have it.

Be that as it may, given the Israel lobby's hugely successful impact on Middle East policy formulation by governments from both sides of the political divide, as well as its equally successful role in shaping and managing mainstream media discourse on the Middle East, any inside account of its modus operandi is more than welcome. Recent memoirs, by former foreign minister Bob Carr, former prime minister Kevin Rudd, and journalists John Lyons and Mike Carlton, have helped expose the lobby's interventions and manipulations in these two key areas. Indeed, judging by their revelations, it could be said that we are approaching critical mass here - to the point where no truly sentient Australian can any longer feign ignorance of either the Israel lobby's existence or its clout.

I've already mined Carr's Diary of a Foreign Minister (2014) and John Lyons' Balcony Over Jerusalem for their insights. As time permits, I'll move on to Carr's Run for Your Life (2018) and Carlton's On Air (2018) in later posts. For now, I'll deal here with Rudd's Kevin Rudd: The PM Years (2018), annotating where necessary:

"Then there was the question of Israel. Back in 2003, under the Howard government, the Israeli intelligence services had taken it into their heads to use forged Australian passports in one of their operations abroad. They had been found out. Dennis Richardson, the director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation at the time, had hauled them over the coals. The Israelis had been forced to sign an agreement with us that if we were to continue intelligence cooperation with them in the future, they would never do this again. Obviously the Israelis had not taken us seriously, because they did it again - this time in a botched intelligence operation which culminated in the assassination of a Hamas leader visiting Dubai. Mossad had left their paw prints all over the operation. The Israeli authorities plainly did not care that by using and abusing Australian passports, they were placing at risk not just the integrity of our passport system but, more importantly, the safety and security of hundreds of thousands of Australians who travelled on these passports through the Middle East each year.

"The matter was brought to the National Security Committee of the cabinet. Dennis Richardson, who had recently been appointed secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs by our government, was an experienced senior diplomat of the old school. His advice to us was unequivocal: unless Australia wished to be seen as a 'soft touch' by the Israelis, we had to act firmly and decisively. We should expel the Mossad representative at the Israeli embassy in Canberra, and make public our reasons for doing so. Only then would it be considered a significant enough issue in Israel to force the political arm of the government to rein Mossad in.

"I looked around the room. Everyone was nodding in agreement - except Julia [Gillard]. I asked her explicitly whether she supported the recommendation. She grunted her assent. I knew for a fact that Julia had been cultivating a close relationship with the Israeli lobby in Australia. There was nothing wrong with that, particularly given her own pro-Palestinian background from her days as a left-wing political activist. I was also conscious that her partner, Tim, had gone to work for a prominent member of the Jewish community in Melbourne. I didn't want any fractures in the government on this one."

Just how close Gillard's relationship with the Israel lobby was is explored in some detail in Carr's Diary of a Foreign Minister. For the details, I refer you in particular to my posts The Carr Diary: Reflections 4, 5 & 6 (18-20/4/14) and my 18/1/13 post The Prime Minister who Put Her Job on the Line for Israel.

With respect to Rudd's assertion that Gillard had a "pro-Palestinian background from her days as a left-wing political activist," he is mistaken. Just the opposite is the case. (See my post 14/8/10 post The Real Julia Gillard.)

"When [foreign minister] Stephen Smith made our position public, the Israeli government was less than impressed. Their ambassador, Yuval Rotem, came in to protest. And that's when the complaints from the Australian Jewish lobby started to come in thick and fast. I had no qualms about saying publicly that the decision by Israeli intelligence services to use and abuse the Australian passport system was not the action of a friendly government. I then said as much to Prime Minister Netanyahu, and I told him I expected him to take action against Mossad.

"Colin Rubenstein, a leading conservative political activist from Sydney, and Mark Leibler from Melbourne went off their heads. How could Australia have the temerity to treat our friend and ally Israel in such cavalier fashion? How could we be certain that Mossad had done this? Surely we were mistaken... And even if Mossad had done it, weren't such things done on a regular basis in the ugly world of intelligence? I was then lobbied by our own Jewish members of parliament, led by Michael Danby and Mark Dreyfus. They came to see me, demanding that I 'do something'. My response was to ask what they would have done if they were either foreign minister or prime minister of a country and another country had forged their passports in order to assassinate someone who at that stage was under the protection of another country (the UAE) with whom Australia also had a close relationship."

Rubenstein is the executive director of Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) and Leibler is its national chairman. AIJAC is based in Melbourne.

"However, out of respect for my parliamentary colleagues, I suggested that we invite leading members of the Jewish community to the Lodge for dinner to discuss the matter further. The dinner was held on 3 June, and I remember the evening well. I sat there politely as Mark Leibler berated me for having committed a hostile act. I found this remarkable as I had been a strong defender of the state of Israel from the earliest days of my diplomatic career and had always been a vigorous campaigner against all forms of anti-Semitism. And for Leibler to attack the democratically elected prime minister of his country as he sought to argue the interests of another country was beyond the pale.

"'You do realise that this is Israel's second offence?' I said. 'What do you mean?' he asked. 'They did exactly the same under Howard, got a gentle rap over the knuckles, and promised never to do it again.' Leibler looked stunned. 'I don't believe you.' 'Then why don't you sit down with the head of Foreign Affairs, who is the former head of ASIO, and I'll authorise him to brief you on exactly what has happened here,' I countered. 'I think you'll find that our response to Israel's actions has been entirely reasonable under the circumstances.'

"Leibler still stared at me in disbelief. And then disbelief turned to anger. Apropos of nothing, he said, 'Julia is looking very good in the public eye these days, Prime Minister. She's performing very strongly. She's a great friend of Israel. But you shouldn't be anxious about her, should you, Prime Minister?' It was Leibler at his menacing worst." (Kevin Rudd: The PM Years, 2018, pp 282-84)

Rudd's dinner at the Lodge is the subject of a most interesting report by Peter Hartcher, the Sydney Morning Herald's international editor, for which see my 22/6/10 post The Best Israel Policy Money Can Buy. See also the account of same in The Australian Jewish News, quoted in my 11/6/10 post Those Irresistable Zionist Pheromones Again 2.

Sadly, "Leibler at his menacing worst" was not the wake-up call that Rudd needed on the matter of Israel, because just over a year later we find him, with Danby, in a Melbourne Max Brenner outlet condemning those advocating its boycott. A more disillusioned Rudd can be seen later in Carr's 2014 Diary of a Foreign Minister, for which see my 20/4/14 post The Carr Diary Reflections 6. Finally, we have the Israel critic of later years, for which see my 23/2/17 post Rudd & Netanyahu Cross Swords, as well as the following  passage from his memoir:

"Elsewhere on the international front there was good news to be had. In October 2012, nearly five years after I had launched the initial campaign, the news finally came through of Australia's extraordinary win for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Gillard was never an enthusiast. Through the influence of her 'Middle East Advisor', Bruce Wolpe, Gillard had already begun unravelling a number of Australian votes on UN General Assembly resolutions on Palestine in order to appease the far-right Jewish lobby in Melbourne. When I was prime minister and foreign minister, Australia's voting profile on Israel had changed from one of unquestioning compliance with US and Israeli interests, to one which was much more aligned with British voting patterns in the UN. Our votes were still more sympathetic to Israel than those of the rest of Europe. But this was not good enough for Gillard. The far-right Jewish lobby in Melbourne wanted to go back to the good old days of the Howard government. And Gillard wanted to deliver. This would be coordinated through her loyal operative Wolpe to ensure that Australia would once again join the likes of the US, Palau and maybe two or three other Pacific micro-states, in voting against UN General Assembly resolutions that were critical of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. It was no surprise that Gillard would later be awarded, together with Abbott, an honorary doctorate at an Israeli university for her services to the cause. The only problem was that these were not services to Australia's cause. They were services to the Israeli Government's cause under prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his total opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state." (pp 508-09)

Of course, Rudd still hasn't broken through his childhood/religious/Labor Party conditioning to arrive at a real understanding of the dark apartheid heart of the Zionist project in Palestine, and probably never will, but at least he's experienced a learning curve of sorts.

One Movie Hollywood Will Never Make

Following on from my last post about a fictional US diplomat in Lebanon, and moving to the real thing - John Gunther Dean, US ambassador to Lebanon from 1978 to 1981...

Hollywood would NEVER in a million make a movie with Dean as its protagonist. Read this excerpt from a 2002 essay on Dean by Andrew I. Killgore, a retired foreign service officer and former US ambassador to Qatar, and you'll see why:

"Just before John Gunther Dean was to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his confirmation hearing as American ambassador to Lebanon in 1978 he received an urgent telephone call from the office of the secretary of state. 'John,' the caller said, 'we have just noticed that your mother's [maiden] name is Ashkenacsi. Does this make a serious problem for you?' 'Absolutely not,' the near legendary Dean replied, 'my father was Jewish, too. I represent a secular America, so that's all there is to it.'

"In a Sept. 6 talk in Washington, DC before an audience made up of mainly retired American diplomats, Ambassador Dean, as related to the Washington Report by one of those in attendance, described his 3 turbulent years in Beirut. There he did his courageous best to implement stated American policy goals in Lebanon, maintaining its territorial integrity, unity and sovereignty. For his pains, Israel tried but failed to assassinate him and his family. In a period of brutal civil war amid more than a dozen political/religious factions Dean, who already had held ambassadorships in Cambodia and Denmark, traveled from one end of the country to the other, calling personally on the leaders of every group. Israel, meanwhile, maintained a rump state in southern Lebanon under Lebanese mercenary Maj. Saad Haddad while encouraging unrealistic dreams of a small Christian 'Maronistan' state. As US ambassador, John Gunther Dean, renowned for his physical and moral courage, opposed Israeli machinations, arguing that close ties with Israel would harm Christian interests in the long run.

"Ambassador Dean, who does not speak Arabic, conducted his relations with Lebanese officials in French, then the second language of educated Lebanese. He believed, moreover, that he could not properly operate in the country without maintaining close relations with France and the French Embassy. In a perhaps uniquely rare role for any US ambassador, while serving in Lebanon Dean had co-signing authority with President Elias Sarkis on Lebanon's hundreds of millions of dollars deposited in Swiss banks. John Gunther Dean sought and obtained authorization to deal with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) if it was deemed to be in America's security interests. When an 'interlocutor' in Washington wondered if the Palestinians could help release American diplomatic hostages being held in Tehran, Dean sought - and received - Palestinian help. PLO leader Yasser Arafat and his aide Abu Jihad themselves went to Tehran in 1978 and secured the release of 13 Americans. Never, Dean noted, did the two receive any thanks from Washington for their efforts. Ambassador Dean's diligence in knowing everybody paid off in an astonishing incident when the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to Lebanon was shot. As the intermediary in transferring the ambassador to the American University of Beirut (AUB) Hospital for treatment, John Dean reached the secretary to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, as well as Yasser Arafat, who was able to stop the firing on the hospital occasioned by the Saudi ambassador's presence there.

"In a prescient reference to his role in Lebanon, Dean reportedly remarked that anyone who gets between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel 'finds himself in trouble.' An amusing anecdote: Riding in his armored limousine in Beirut with ardently pro-Israel Congressman Steve Solarz, a bullet hit the car. 'What's that? Solarz asked. 'Just a bullet,' Dean replied, 'but don't worry. We are armored.' Solarz insisted on returning to the American Embassy, where he cabled home, 'Arafat shot at me!'

"To stress his support for the sovereignty of Lebanon Dean always cabled protests to Tel Aviv and the State Department in Washington whenever Israeli planes intruded - as they frequently did - into Lebanese airspace. These reminders irritated US Ambassador to Israel Sam Lewis, with whom Dean preserved cordial relations but who suffered to a notable degree from what the US Foreign Service calls 'localitis' (not Ambassador Dean's term). Other irritants flowed from Dean's urging Lebanese Christian leader Bashir Gemayel to stop seeing Israel Mossad officers.

"Dean's staunchly courageous defense of Lebanese (and American) interests came to a head in the early evening of Aug. 27, 1980, when, according to all the evidence, Mossad tried but failed to assassinate Dean, his wife (whose French family had old business connections in Lebanon) and their daughter. The long-rumored attempted murder of Dean by Mossad, infamously more noted for its prowess at assassinations than for its abilities as an intelligence agency, was publicly confirmed for the first time in Dean's Washington talk. En route from his residence in Lebanon's hills to the Beirut residence of the AUB president, Dean's limousine and convoy took 21 rifle bullets. The automobile bearing the ambassador and Mrs Dean was also struck by two light anti-tank weapons. The shot-out tires of the Deans' bulletproof car automatically reinflated. The second car, however, carrying their daughter and her fiance, did not have bulletproof tires and was momentarily stranded. The security guards in the convoy's third car pushed the daughter and her fiance into the Deans' vehicle, and they sped away. Incredibly, none of the ambassador's party or security guards were seriously wounded. Some shots struck where Dean was sitting, but bulletproof plastic windows saved his life.

"Picked up by Lebanese security, the anti-tank canisters had made-in-America markings. After unanswered telegrams to the State Department and all but silent responses to his telephone inquiries, Dean eventually learned that the anti-tank weapons were sold and shipped to Israel in 1974. Dean apparently mused to himself on the irony of an American ambassador being subjected to an Israeli assassination attempt with American weapons supplied to Israel for defense. The ambassador did not explicitly accuse Israel of trying to assassinate him, but let the facts as he related them speak for themselves. But Washington's acute unease in responding to his inquiries testifies to the deadening influence of the Israel lobby on American diplomacy... " (Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2002)

Rudd & Netanyahu Cross Swords

The public airing of friction between a foreign head of state, while he is visiting a country, and one of that country's former leaders must surely be unique in the annals of international affairs.

Former Australian PM Kevin Rudd was moved to post the following unprecedented statement on his FB page yesterday:

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today challenged former Prime Minister Hawke and myself on what sort of Palestinian state we would recommend Israel recognise.

"I have a simple reply to Mr Netanyahu: The boundaries, internal security, external security, public finance and governance of a Palestinian state have been elaborated in detail in multiple negotiations with the US under the Clinton, Bush and Obama Administrations, most recently in the Kerry Plan. Mr Netanyahu knows these formulations like the back of his hand. Mr Netanyahu also knows he has torpedoed each of them, often at five minutes to midnight, often by changing the goalposts, to the enduring frustration of both Republican and Democrat Administrations.

"I have been a supporter of Israel all my life. And a public campaigner against any form of anti-Semitism. But to support the state of Israel does not mandate automatic support for each and every policy of Mr Netanyahu. The state of Israel and Mr Netanyahu are not co-definitional. That is why I beg to differ on this and other aspects of Mr Netanyahu's policies.

"For example, I also have a simple question for Mr Netanyahu. Will he use this visit to Australia to apologise to the Australian people for his government using forged Australian passports to facilitate an Israeli assassination of a member of Hamas in Dubai?

"No apology has ever been received for that action which had the consequence of putting the integrity of Australian passports and the security of Australian passport holders travelling to the Middle East at risk."

What Turns Tony Abbott On

If the old adage 'you are what you eat' is true, how much more so is 'you are what you read'? So what's Tony Abbott reading these days? Thrillers, apparently:

"'Something I haven't done for years I've been able to do a bit of over the last 12 months and that is to read thrillers. I've started reading some of the Daniel Silva books,' he said, praising the American novels as fascinating and 'high pressure yarns'. 'The hero is an Israeli secret agent and he gets up to all sorts of adventures all around the world, whether it's dealing with dodgy priests in the Vatican or Islamist terrorists. One way or another, he's busy,' Mr Abbott said." (Fifty Shades, thrillers & war: bookworm Abbott, Fergus Hunter, Sydney Morning Herald, 12/12/16)

Daniel Silva is described by Wikipedia as a US Roman Catholic convert to Judaism who lives in Florida. Adam Kirsch, writing at tabletmag.com, describes him as "thrilling to the romance of Israeli power," and "relish[ing] the idea of Israel as the champion of Jews worldwide - the tough Zionist Jews who come to the rescue of soft Diaspora Jews." (The unsettling exploits of Daniel Silva's Mossad superspy, 3/8/16)

IOW, just the kind of peddler of puerile pulp nonsense for a halfwit like Abbott.

To give you some idea of just where Silva is coming from and just how appalling he is (and how Zionists conflate the Islamic State phenomenon with Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and colonisation), here he is on something called 'The Hugh Hewitt Show':

HH: "The other thing that's genuinely spooky, Daniel Silva, about The Black Widow [Silva's latest concoction], ... this past Sabbath, Jews around the world and people who support the state of Israel are grieving the death of Hallel Ariel, a 13-year-old American stabbed to death in her West Bank home as a result of a young Palestinian acting spontaneously. And throughout The Black Widow there is this background murmuring of the reality of life in Israel today, which informs The Black Widow... And it's in the headlines... today, in a way, because it's an American victim, that maybe they... normally aren't aware of it, and it's explained in The Black Widow. That's also spooky.

DS: Well, I was in Israel working on the book when this... started to percolate. And Gabriel Alon [Silva's Mossad hero] is a great lover of Jerusalem, as I explain in this novel, and I am a great lover [of Jerusalem]. And I go all over the place in Jerusalem, including into neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian area in East Jerusalem. And, you know, every day when I was there last summer, it would be some little incident somewhere around the Damascus Gate in the Muslim quarter of the Old City... one of the things that people don't realize about East Jerusalem is that there are sort of abutting neighborhoods of religious Jews right up against Palestinian areas. And... there's a lot of friction there. And I just had a sense that something was about to really happen there. And then, you know, I would go to the Damascus Gate, and a few hours later someone would be stabbed, and I had just been there with my son... you know, feeling like a complete idiot. And then it's really broken out into the open. And I think it's symptomatic, unfortunately, of the remarkable job that the Israeli Security Services have done in shutting down the Palestinian terrorist networks." (hughhewitt.com)

Of course, there's no mention of Israeli settlers invading Palestinian homes, or of a Palestinian community under a turn-of-the-screw occupation. God forbid that any note of reality should disturb this charmed circle. Spooky!

From the Horses' Mouths

One by one the Zionist shibboleths fall:

First there was Israel's deputy chief of staff, Yair Golan, who admitted that "the nauseating processes that occurred in Europe in general and Germany in particular, 70, 80 and 90 years ago" were "here among us, today, in 2016," and called for "national soul-searching."

Then there was the exiting defence minister, Moshe Ya'alon, who told us that Judeo-fascists were now in control of Israel - "[E]xtremist and dangerous elements... have overrun Israel and the Likud Party."

Then the mayor of Tel Aviv, Ron Huldai, named Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, not so-called Palestinian incitement, as the reason for armed attacks on Jewish Israelis by Palestinians  - "You can't hold people in a situation of occupation and hope they'll reach the conclusion everything is alright."

Now a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, has said the same thing - "[S]ince we are in control of the West Bank... I think one should expect... that there will be people who think that they have to rise up and... fight against it." (Inside Israel's Mossad: Efraim Halevy on Upfront, Al-Jazeera, 28/5/16)

Furthermore, in the same interview, Halevy said of Hamas - "If you go to Israel and speak to the IDF field commanders... Every brigade commander who has been commanding a unit opposite the Gaza Strip believes that the best situation for Israel at this point in time is that the Hamas should be there rather than anyone else."

Finally, he dared to buck the party line on Iran - "I believe there is no existential threat to Israel from anybody in the world, including the Iranians."

In sum, Israeli experts are now telling us that Israel is a hotbed of racist and religious reaction; that armed attacks on Israelis by Palestinians are simply blowback for Israel's brutal occupation of the Palestinian territories; and that banging on about outdated Hamas charters and imaginary Iranian nukes just doesn't cut it any more.

Slip, Slop, Slap Journalism

Read this:

"Otto Skorzeny was a diehard Nazi: an expert in special operations nicknamed 'Hitler's commando' who rescued Mussolini from Italian partisans, ensured the murder of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews and departed to eternal damnation with a posse of elderly Nazis making the fascist salute over his grave. This week, it was revealed that Skorzeny had also been a Mossad hitman, contracted after the war to kill another ex-Nazi who was helping Egypt develop a strategic missile program." (To catch the devil from the shadows, you need to recruit his disciples, Ben Macintyre, The Times/The Australian, 2/4/16)

Now watch as Macintyre goes on to slip, slop, slap a few coats of whitewash on Mossad: 

"Mossad, probably the world's least sentimental secret service, was merely demonstrating a reality of the seamier side of intelligence work: to catch the devil, you sometimes had to recruit his disciples."

"... this uncomfortable accommodation with evil..."

"The balance between utility and morality, between extracting value and maintaining ethical values..."

Bloody hilarious...

OK, Ben, OK, enough already, I get it!

Mossad's the most ethical intelligence agency in the world, and the IDF is the world's most moral army, and Israel's the only democracy in the Middle East, if not the world, and Israel's a bastion of Western civilization in a sea of barbarism, and...

Sow Confusion

The subject of the following report - an email sent to Fairfax Media - has Mossad PSYOP written all over it. Note the highlighted items:

"An international hacking gang who claim to be behind some of the hoax bomb threats at Australian schools claim they are about to attack again. On every school day since Friday, dozens of schools across the country have been evacuated after receiving similar computerised phone messages warning of a device on school grounds.

"A group calling themselves Evacuation Squad have claimed responsibility for some of the attacks, and say they are just about to launch more. However, they also claim some attacks in Australia have been the work of copycats. 'In fact we just hit several Sydney schools today, and we are going to hit various cities in Perth,' a spokesman for the group calling himself Viktor Olyavich told Fairfax Media by email. 'I don't think we're cowards. What would constitute that? Just for making threats? That is silly.' Fairfax Media has not been able to confirm Evacuation Squad's claims. Since his email on Thursday morning, schools in Adelaide and Sydney have been evacuated due to bomb threats.

"Mr Olyavich said the group had previously focused on the US, UK, Norway, Britain, France, Japan and Sweden. He said one member had a 'particular bias' for attacking schools in Massachusetts because he lived there before returning home to Iran. He claimed responsibility for Monday's attacks across NSW, Victoria and Queensland, but said a copycat was behind calls made on Tuesday and Wednesday. 'We are responsible for Monday's threats in Sydney, but we are not exactly sure who is behind the other threats. He said the calls would continue 'for as long as possible' and Australia was being targeted because 'it is an ally of the US and Britain.' The group has publicly offered to shut down schools in exchange for bitcoin payments. Mr Olyavich claimed the Australian attacks were requested by local students." (School bomb hoaxers say they will strike again, Liam Mannix & Rachel Olding, Sydney Morning Herald, 5/2/16)

For those interested in such matters see also Unmasking a troll: Aussie 'jihadist' Australi Witness a 20-year-old American nerd, Elise Potaka & Luke McMahon, Sydney Morning Herald, 12/9/15

At Home With the Sheridans

Much more interesting than Greg Sheridan's predictable, Netanyahu-style denunciation of Obama's just-concluded nuclear deal with Iran in The Weekend Australian (A deal beyond belief) was his more personal piece for The Weekend Australian Review:

"Over three or four days we watched a gobsmacking 24 hours of [the crime series] Ray Donovan." (The Forum)

(For those not in-the-know, and I quote here from Wikipedia, "The show takes place in Los Angeles... where Ray Donovan (Liev Schreiber)... works for the powerful law firm Goldman & Drexler, representing the rich and famous. Donovan is a 'fixer': in criminal slang, a person who arranges for bribes or payoffs of corrupt police or government officials, or other criminals, to enable a criminal to avoid punishment. Ray experiences his own problems when his father, Micky Donovan (Jon Voight), is unexpectedly released from prison, and FBI agents try bringing down Ray and his associates.")

What is it about Ray Donovan, I hear you asking, that can so deflect Australia's "most serious foreign affairs analyst," (or so the Australian's website hypes its foreign editor) from his intellectual labours? After all, is he not our dear leader's 'Suppository of All (foreign policy) Wisdom'?  And hasn't Tony Abbott muttered darkly that Daesh is "coming after us."

Quite frankly, in these dark days, you'd think he'd have better to do than waste his time with such nonsense.

But no, a mere whiff of Israeli pheromones, or in this case their audio-visual equivalent, and Greg Sheridan's out of it:

"One of its many clever tricks is to have almost all the significant roles played by big-time movie stars... Liev Schreiber (now there's an Irish name for you) plays an astonishingly powerfully played central character; Jon Voight as his father, almost equally so; while James Woods is repulsive as a truly ghastly gangster. One of the best characters is Avi, the former Mossad agent who is Ray's right-hand man. With his magnificent mellifluous Israeli accent, Avi is the most likable of all the gangsters, a soft-hearted mother's boy, the most emotionally in touch."

Conspiracy Realists

Conspiracy theorists?

"The lesson was meant to be about Napoleon, but a history teacher in the Parisian suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine decided instead last week to hold a discussion with her teenage pupils about the terrorist attacks in [Paris]... For Marie, 30, the teacher, the shock of 3 days of terror in which 17 people were killed was compounded by the discovery that her 14-year-old pupils, most of North African origin, did not believe the attack had happened. 'They're lively, intelligent children,' she said. 'But most of them are convinced it's some sort of conspiracy involving the government, Israel or the CIA.... The parents think the same way. It's sad, really'." (We're not Charlie here: Muslim teens in banlieues, Matthew Campbell, The Sunday Times/The Australian, 19/1/15)

No, conspiracy realists:

"Five former US intelligence officials have revealed that the CIA and Mossad cooperated on the assassination of Imad Mughniyah*, the military chief of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, in February 2008. The bomb which killed Mughniyah... was triggered remotely from Tel Aviv by agents with Mossad, who were in communication with US operatives on the ground in Damascus. 'The way it was set up, the US could object and call it off, but it could not execute,' said a former US intelligence official." (CIA aided Mossad to assassinate terrorist, Adam Goldman, Washington Post/Sydney Morning Herald, 2/2/15)

[*Chris Wallace: Director [of National Intelligence Mike] McConnell... the assassination of terrorist Imad Mughniyah this week - did the US have anything to do with that? McConnell: No, Chris. I'm aware of the circumstances around it, and we are now - interestingly from the kinds of capabilities we're talking about, we can see how various parties are commenting and so on. And the big question of course - Hezbollah has blamed Israel. But there's some evidence that it may have been internal - Hezbollah. (Transcript: DNI Mike McConnell on 'FNS', foxnews.com, 17/2/08)]

Prisoner X: The Movie?

The ABC's Rafael Epstein, "who knew [Ben] Zygier from their shared time in Melbourne Zionist groups in the 1980s," has just published a book on the latter called Prisoner X, an edited extract of which appeared in Fairfax's GoodWeekend of 22/2/14.

Given that nowhere in the extract is there any kind of acknowledgment that Zygier, who was so damn drunk on Zionist Kool-Aid that he even joined the Mossad, was both the product and victim of a highly toxic ideological brew, I was bound to find it inadequate to say the least.  The following two references, however, really pissed me off:

1) "In mid-2008, he applied for an Australian government-funded loan to to help pay for a post-graduate management degree in Melbourne the following year" while "still receiv[ing] a salary from [Mossad]." ('The heart secret')

Oh great. Just great. A hopelessly deluded Australian Muslim who goes to Syria for a scrap loses his passport. A hopelessly deluded Australian Jew who goes to Israel and joins Mossad or the IDF gets an Australian government loan.

2) "There were a number of overseas students in the management course... Significantly for Ben, there was also a businessman who had links to Iran, and it was this Iranian who played a key role in his downfall. My understanding is that Ben began talking about things he should not have ever discussed, not only telling people that he used to work for the Mossad but divulging details of the operations against Iran in which he'd been personally involved. It seems incomprehensible that someone who'd received Mossad training and was so committed to Israel would do this... Yet two sources tell me that's what Ben did in conversations at the university, including with the Iranian businessman. This man is described as being 'unscrupulous', which makes Ben's willingness to disclose important facts to him even more surprising... [Ben] had been to Tehran, and he knew plenty about what the Mossad was trying to do. His loose talk was a serious problem, especially as the program of assassination of Tehran scientists was then near its peak."

Hello?! Have I got this right? The Iranian student was "unscrupulous" because he patriotically passed on details of Zygier's boasting (about Israel screwing Iran?) to his embassy, but Zygier, a cog in a terror machine involved in knocking off Iranian civilians, wasn't?

Mossad & Associates 2

Meir Dagan's Lawfare Programme

"The National Security Council (NSC) appears to be the central node in the Israeli Government's attempts to use deniable civil actions against alleged terrorist financing. According to veteran Haaretz intelligence correspondent Yossi Melman, this strategy was initiated by Meir Dagan when he headed the NSC in the late 1990s, before becoming chief of the Mossad. In a 2007 article, Melman went on to suggest that Israeli intelligence was connected to a lawsuit brought against the Arab Bank, one of the largest financial institutions in the Middle East. The law firm which brought the Arab Bank case, Mann Mairone, moved into terrorism litigation around 2001, having previously specialised in taxation and commercial law. In the process, it acquired a roster of researchers and advisors drawn largely from Shin Bet and Israeli military intelligence.

"WikiLeaks cables show that the Arab Bank was a frequent subject of discussions between Israeli NSC officials and US diplomats during the case. At one such meeting with US Treasury officials in 2005, ILC contacts Udi Levi and Uzi Shaya were prominent in defending the litigation, although vague as to the justification for it:

Levi said the bank had stopped all transactions to the territories after it was sued in US court. He cautioned, however, that the bank is 'playing with evidence, cleaning the records, and deleting accounts' to cover its tracks. Shaya said that the GOI had unspecified proof that the Arab Bank is still dealing with Hizballah in Lebanon.

"Levi went on to suggest further litigation:

Levi called INTERPAL and other European groups that channel funds to Hamas 'a problem we do not know how to solve,' but added that lawsuits similar to the ones filed against the Arab Bank might help. He suggested that another option to restrict funding would be to prevent INTERPAL from clearing dollar donations through New York.

"Interpal, a British charity focused on Palestine, had been a source of friction between the Israeli and British governments for several years. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported in 2004 that Foreign Minister Jack Straw had refused a request from his Israeli counterpart Silvan Shalom to put an end to Interpal's activities. Significantly, Haaretz noted that even if the Israeli intelligence on Interpal were made public, it would not necessarily meet the threshold for banning a UK charity and that 'it is therefore not at all certain that even if the evidence were to be revealed, it would lead to a curbing of Interpal in Britain.'

"Interpal was also targeted in 2007 by a British think tank, the Centre for Social Cohesion, as chronicled in Spinwatch's pamphlet, The Cold War on British Muslims. In their attack, the CSC cited 'allegations made by Israel and the USA,' as well as a 2006 BBC Panorama documentary, which had also relied extensively on evidence provided by current and former Israeli security officials. In 2009, an inquiry by the UK Charity Commission found that there was insufficient evidence to take actions over claims that Interpal beneficiaries were supporting terrorism, because it could not verify 'the provenance or accuracy' of material provided by the Israeli government.

"Udi Levi's comments suggest that such developments are in line with the wider strategy being pursued by the NSC.

Key Questions

"If a firm that has received covert support from the Israeli government is now targeting BDS activists, does this mean that the Israeli government has widened its use of lawfare in a bid to silence its critics? As we have noted, firms like the ILC are prepared to take on the Israeli government over issues like the Bank of China case. Yet that case itself illustrates the extent to which they are nevertheless dependent on a government which is prepared to use and then abandon terror victims for cynical political reasons. The fact that the Israeli Government is prepared to support organisations whose hardline stances are at odds with its own public positions must also create doubts about how sincerely held those positions are. The targeting of the Palestinian Authority in particular, in cases largely dependent on official Israeli sources, is surely inconsistent with any commitment to a genuine peace process."

Mossad & Associates 1

The following investigation into the Israeli lawfare outfit, Shurat HaDin - Israel Law Centre (ILC) by the UK organisation, Spinwatch (spinwatch.org), is a must-read. You may remember Shurat HaDin's characterisation in the Murdoch press here as a 'civil rights' organisation. As Spinwatch's research shows there's a little more to it than that. Given its length, I'm posting it in two parts:

BDS campaigner targeted by law firm with links to Israeli intelligence

by Tom Griffin & David Miller (5/10/13)

"A law firm targeting the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement has close links to Israeli intelligence, US government cables leaked by Wikileaks show:

"Shurat HaDin - Israel Law Centre (ILC) made a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission last month against Jake Lynch, the director of the Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies at Sydney University, over Lynch's support for BDS. The ILC, set up in 2003, claims to be 'a fully independent non-profit organization, unaffiliated with any political party or government body.' However, the organisation's director, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, has privately admitted to taking direction from the Israeli Government over which causes to pursue and relying on Israeli intelligence contacts for witnesses and evidence.

"Darshan-Leitner made the comments in 2007 to diplomats from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, who reported the conversation in a cable leaked by WikiLeaks four years later. It states:

Leitner said that in many of her cases she receives evidence from GOI [Government of Israel] officials, and added that in its early years ILC took direction from the GOI on which cases to pursue. 'The National Security Council (NSC) legal office saw the use of civil courts as a way to do things that they are not authorized to do,' claimed Leitner. Among her contacts, Leitner listed Udi Levy at the NSC and Uzi Beshaya at the Mossad, both key Embassy contacts on anti-terrorist finance cooperation. Leitner offered a case against Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) as [an] example of ILC's close cooperation with the GOI. After obtaining a judgement against PIJ for NIS 100 million (USD 25 million), ILC requested a lien for that amount against the Abu Akker Trading Company as a third party defendant. At the time, Abu Akker was one of the largest Palestinian importing companies, and Leitner said the Mossad provided her with the intelligence (similar to information provided to USG officials in a classified briefing) to prove that the company was funneling money to PIJ. According to Leitner, the ILC now decides its cases independently, but continues to receive evidence and witnesses from Israeli intelligence.

"The US cable goes on to comment that:

While the ILC's mission dovetails with GOI objectives of putting financial pressure on Israel's adversaries, the often uncompromising approach of ILC's attorney's seems to overreach official GOI policy goals. ILC's relentless litigation has proven to be an obstacle to the GOI's releasing of all customs revenues previously withheld from the PA [Palestinian Authority].

"ILC has engaged in a wide variety of other actions in the US, Australia, Israel itself and in Egypt as well as targeting Iran, Syria, North Korea and the Palestinian Authority. Amongst its targets have been financial situations including UBS, American Express Bank and the Lebanese-Canadian Bank, President Jimmy Carter, World Vision Australia (a Christian aid agency) and, most notably, the largely successful attempt to stop the second Free Gaza Flotilla. This involved a blizzard of legal threats against insurance companies, port authorities and satellite firms. They were informed they would open themselves to criminal liability for 'aiding and abetting' a 'terrorist' organisation or would become 'legally liable' for any future attacks by Hamas.

The Bank of China Affair

"Further details of the ILC's links with Israeli intelligence have emerged amid fallout from a case brought by the firm against the Bank of China. According to accounts in the Israeli press, officials from the NSC approached Darshan-Leitner, after identifying the bank as a conduit for Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Darshan-Leitner found a suitable plaintiff to bring the case in the family of Daniel Wultz, a 16-year-old American citizen killed in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv in 2006. Yediot Ahronot reported: 'In her discussions with the intelligence agents, Darshan-Leitner insisted that she receives massive assistance from the government. She demanded convicting information on the bank's activities, affidavits from authorized people and a commitment to provide for the trial an authorized witness who will say that the Chinese knew about the nature of the accounts and refused to close them. The consent was given - orally. In 2009, a lawsuit was filed to the NY Federal Court.'

"This arrangement began to collapse in the face of Chinese Government pressure ahead of a visit to Beijing by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this year. The Wultz family has accused the Israeli Government of sabotaging the case by failing to provide the documents it promised at the outset. The standoff is particularly embarrassing because Daniel Wultz's mother, Sheryl Cantor Wultz, is a cousin of Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader in the US Congress.

"Among the key documents at the centre of the case is an affidavit by Uzi Shaya, who may be the same person as 'Uzi Beshaya', the Israeli security official named in the 2007 cable as a contact of both Shurat HaDin and the US Embassy. Another US cable describes Shaya as an officer of Israel's Shin Bet [security] service, working in the Counter Terror Finance Bureau of the Israeli NSC alongside Udi Levi, Darshan-Leitner's other intelligence contact."

To be continued...

Phillip Adams Drones On

Phillip Adams was at the Brisbane Writers Festival last week, a fact which would not ordinarily interest me in the least, except for the fact that he was chairing a session on the subject of drones and one of his 3 guests happened to be Israeli Mossad salesman, Michael Bar-Zohar, out here pushing his latest book, Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service. The other two were lawyer Michael (Dan) Mori, associated, you may remember, with the defence of David Hicks, and UK anti-drone activist James Bridle. (You can hear the entire program, broadcast on October 3, on Adams' program, Late Night Live, on Radio National.)

Of course, the incorrigibly Ziophilic Adams, who invariably goes all soft and gooey in the presence of a Zionist, just couldn't help but allude to the 1972 Munich massacre, which he characterised as a terrorist attack which the Israelis "had to respond to."

This was the first of Adams' many services to the Israeli narrative during the course of the program.

Of course, Israel did not have to respond in the way it did, namely by unleashing a Mossad death squad against Palestinian resistance representatives in Rome, Paris, Nicosia and Oslo between October 1972 and July 1973. None of the individuals murdered in this killing spree had any proven connection with the events in Munich. Israel's actions were nothing more than eye-for-an-eye acts of vengeance, as were its murderous bombing runs over Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria in the immediate aftermath of Munich.*

(In the case of Wael Zuaiter, the resistance movement's representative in Rome, gunned down on 16 October 1972, an Italian court set out to try 8 Mossad operatives in absentia for his death but was forced to acquit them for lack of evidence. In its judgment of 17 December 1980, the Court had this to say of the victim: "The fact is that Wael Zuaiter had established strong ties in a number of Italian political, cultural and press circles and had developed an intense propaganda in favour of the Palestinian cause... However, there was nothing to authorize anyone to think that these activities, which were carried out in compliance with the laws of the host country, were a cover-up for any activities which, objectively, were likely to help extremist groups carrying out obviously unacceptable actions." (For a Palestinian: A Memorial to Wael Zuaiter, Ed. by Janet Venn-Brown, 1984, pp 209-210))

Adams' opening question to Bar-Zohar - whether drones were "necessary" - facilitated the first of Bar-Zohar's 'tough neighborhood' whines:

"It's very funny to sit here in Australia. You have no problems. You don't have any border with any enemy state, no danger of something exploding suddenly in a cafe or restaurant... and for you it's very easy to judge the outside world... By the way, Israel doesn't use drones for military purposes [because] terrorists live in densely populated territories."

This would have been an ideal opportunity for a critical and informed chairperson to suggest, in one form or another, that this might have something to do with Australia's having come to terms with its indigenous population, as opposed to Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine's indigenous population, but Adams is neither, instead bending over backwards to accomodate the arrogant sod:

"Michael makes the point that Israeli public opinion does not allow for too many civilian deaths, hence the reluctance to use these damn things."

Notice too, how Bar-Zohar is allowed to get away with the lie that Israel doesn't use drones to kill Palestinians. The reality is that they are an integral part of Israel's policy of 'targeted assassination', a euphemism for wiping out any manifestation of armed resistance to Israeli occupation:

"Each targeted assassination is a large-scale operation that integrates hundreds of specialists from different military branches and security apparatuses. Beyond its reliance on background intelligence (much of it gathered in mass arrests and from Palestinians stopped at checkpoints), targeted assassination depends on sharing real-time information between various agents, commanders, operators, and different military planes and on their ability to act upon it. After a Palestinian is put on the death list, he is followed, sometimes for days, by a 'swarm' of different kinds of unmanned aerial vehicles. Often, different swarms follow different people simultaneously in different areas of the Gaza Strip. In this way, the security services establish the targeted person's daily routines and habits and maintain continued visual contact with him until his killing. As well as being cheaper to operate, unmanned drones have the advantage over manned planes or helicopters because they can remain in the air around the clock... and because their formations circulate in relatively small areas while providing a multiplicity of angles of vision. Moreover, drones are quiet and barely visible to the human eye. This is the reason that, beginning in 2004, the air force started to shoot its missiles from drones, rather than from its more visible battle helicopters. A swarm of various types of drones, each circulating at a different altitude, up to a height of 30,000 feet, is navigated by a GPS system and woven by radio communication into a single synergetic reconnaissance and killing instrument that conducts the entire assassination operation." (The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, ed, by Adi Ophir, Michal Givoni, & Sari Hanafi, 2009,pp 544-545)  [*See also Cut to pieces: the Palestinian family drinking tea in their courtyard, Clancy Chassay, The Guardian, 24/3/09.]

Characteristically, Adams, wasted no time in switching the focus away from Israeli  and onto American war crimes, suggesting to Mori, that unlike Israel, the US is not nearly as averse to a bit of 'collateral damage':

"That doesn't seem to be of great concern in the US, does it?"

Here's what ensued, in particular, Bar-Zohar's second 'tough neighborhood' whine:

Mori: Well, now we're raising the issue of collateral damage and how many civilian deaths are acceptable if we're getting the terrorist planner. Is it OK to kill him if we know there'll be 6 other members of his family, is that OK?

Bar-Zohar: Is it OK? If I listen to all this debate I would find out finally you can't get a war because [Sound of cheering from audience] everything we say - yes, here it's fine, it's fine for you, and I envy you people but when my enemy sits 40 km from my home and attacks me with missiles every day and bombs my restaurants and buses every day, what should I do? Debate what's moral, how to count, how many people are equivalent to death of a terrorist or go after the terrorist. That's the point. And speaking of errors... I can make you a list from here to eternity about the errors which are made in each and every war. War is a very unpleasant business. You've been to war? I've fought in 4 wars in my life. I don't recommend it to anybody, and war is full of mistakes every second and every moment people are killed for no reason and civilians are hurt for no reason so let's not mish-mash everything. There is today a new instrument. Everything changes. Before there were different kinds of war. They were running with spears and arrows. Then the tank came...

James Bridle then intervened to make the following, telling point:

"I totally understand the point Michael is making, that there is a particular situation in Israel that has produced these conditions and these weapons. What these weapons are now doing is carrying the attitudes of that conflict to the rest of the globe."

As did Mori, leading to this little exchange with Bar-Zohar:

Bar-Zohar, No, we didn't produce the killer drones, not at all.

Mori: No, but you produced the concept of executive-directed killings.

Bar-Zohar: No, not for drones.

Mori: No, not for drones, but for the executive determining who's bad and who should be killed.

But Bar-Zohar just couldn't let this one pass:

"You mentioned before about the Munich group which was followed. There was a tribunal in Israel formed by PM Meir, DPM Alon, and Defence Minister Dayan, and they had to approve each file of terrorism submitted to them by the Mossad saying this man should be killed."

At this point, Adams just couldn't help himself, and rushed to Bar-Zohar's aid with this fawning nonsense:

"I think what he might be getting at is that Israel has over quite a long time often done quite remarkable things which the world may have applauded but which weren't really legal. We did a program the other day on Eichman... This is Israeli intelligence - Mossading - at its best, going into another country, taking someone away for a trial back in Israel. You have long history of targeting individuals... but no one does it like the Israelis..."

Bar-Zohar, elated, chimed in with:

"No one does it better, but don't forget we are all the time on the front line..."

Adams blundered on, the imaginary Israel of his salad days, with its legendary Goldas and Moshes, taking possession:

"You have a history as a Labor member of the Knesset. You're the biographer of some very important progressive figures in Israeli politics. There must be times when what Mossad has done or is doing concerns you ethically."

Unfortunately for Adams, his Israeli guest missed the cue to indulge in a bit of good old Israeli 'shoot & cry'. No tortured soul he:

"Not very many times that I remember. You mentioned the case when the Mossad made a mistake killing a poor Moroccan waiter... Israeli government paid a huge amount of money to his family as an indemnity."

Warms your heart, doesn't it?

Adams final Q&A with Bar-Zohar was quality grist to the latter's propaganda mill.  "Michael," he asked, "does Hamas or Hezbollah in Lebanon have access to drones?"

Bar-Zohar: No, they don't need to. They don't need drones. They have 40,000 missiles, 40 THOUSAND MISSILES along the Israeli border ready to be launched.

Adams: Nonetheless, it must be highly possible that we're witnessing an arms race spurred by the widespread use of UAVs by the US.

Bar-Zohar: So far they sent 2 drones which were shot down over the ocean before they came into Israeli territory... but they have 40,000 missiles. That's much more dangerous than the drones.

God knows what the Brisbane audience made of all this.

[*See my 2/7/12 post Massacre Inc.]

Intelligence You Can Trust

"Positions have hardened in the international standoff over Syria, as US officials said privately that a flood of previously undisclosed intelligence... convinced them the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons against its own people... One crucial piece of the emerging case came from Israeli spy services, which provided the CIA with intelligence from inside an elite special Syrian unit that oversees Assad's chemical weapons, Arab diplomats said." ('Flood of intelligence' proof of chemical strike, Adam Entous/Sam Dagher, The Australian/The Wall Street Journal, 29/8/13)

Didn't Einstein once say: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe"?

[PS - 30/8: "The bulk of evidence proving the Assad regime's deployment of chemical weapons... has been provided by Israeli military intelligence, the German magazine Focus reported... Senior Israeli security officials arrived in Washington on Monday to share the latest results of intelligence-gathering, and to review the Syrian crisis with national security adviser Susan Rice." (Israeli intelligence 'intercepted Syrian regime talk about chemical attack', Harriet Sherwood, theguardian.com, 28/8/13)]

The Making of Prisoner X

"Ben Zygier was a zealot. Intelligent, restless, he dreamt of working for Mossad. His dream ultimately killed him." So runs the blurb for Jason Koutsoukis' feature article, How life of spy Ben Zygier unravelled in the Sydney Morning Herald of March 25.

Koutsoukis' portrait of Zygier is remarkably accommodating of the young man's Zionist fantasies, with Zygier described as "a passionate Zionist, a young man who had so aspired to a life of heroism" and as "ready to defend Israel against its enemies, no matter what the cost." 

His sketch of Zygier's life journey - son of a prominent Melbourne Zionist, graduate of Melbourne's Bialik College*, member of the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, kibbutznik (1995), and eventual Israeli citizen (2003) - is nowhere the occasion for the raising of an editorial eyebrow. All, or so Koutsoukis' treatment of his subject suggests, is as it should be for a young Australian Jew. One simply can not imagine a young Arab-Australian, motivated by a burning desire to defend his people in Gaza or Lebanon, being handled with such kid gloves. 

Likewise Koutsoukis' tolerance of Zionist dogma. He blithely refers to Australia's Jewish community as "diaspora Jews," cluelessly giving currency to the Zionist notion that Jews such as the Zygiers, who live outside Israel, are somehow in exile from their real, Jewish homeland.

Equally problematic is Koutsoukis' characterisation of Israel as a "tiny strip of a nation surrounded only by countries either overtly or surreptitiously hostile to its existence." Anyone who's taken the trouble to acquaint himself with the history of this tiny strip of land will have no trouble in tracing this hostility back to imperial Britain's imposition of a European settler-colonial movement on an unwilling indigenous population. Apparently, it's too much to expect a little historical context here.

Then there's Koutsoukis' description of Mossad as "engaged in a furious shadow war against [Israel's] enemies." Now I'd always thought of wars as a matter of tit for tat, but all Koutsoukis can come up with is Israeli 'tat': "Mossad's most recent exploits include the car-bomb assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh in 2008, the January 2010 killing of Hamas operative Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai and at least 5 Iranian nuclear activists." God forbid any suggestion that Mossad is really little more than a glorified death squad.

There is, of course, another way of looking at the story of Ben Zygier, and that is as a case study in Zionist indoctrination. As one who appears to have taken the Mossad mystique more seriously than most, Ben Zygier may be seen as merely an extreme example of what can go wrong when a young Jew, whether in Israel or elsewhere, is raised on the Kool-Aid of Zionist ideology and fairy tales.

As it happens, Israel's preeminent critical journalist, Gideon Levy, has relieved me of the need to spell it out, having done a superb job, under the heading Hating Arabs is Netanyahu's gift to Israelis (Haaretz 7/3/13), of explaining just what it is that goes into the making of a young Israeli today. One need only extrapolate in Zygier's case.  (NB: While Levy focuses on the current Israeli prime minister, the racism at the core of Israeli apartheid is as old as the Zionist movement itself and its distorting effect on all who swallow the Zionist narrative uncritically can be profound.):

"Benjamin Netanyahu's children attacked an Arab cleaning man on the seaside promenade in Tel Aviv and caused him serious injuries. They attacked an Arab waiter in a Tel Aviv restaurant with chairs and their fists. They attacked an Arab from Upper Nazareth at the shore of Lake Kinneret because they heard him speaking Arabic. Netanyahu's children waved hate-filled signs against Muslim players of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team and set fire to its club house. Netanyahu's children attacked an Arab woman on a Jerusalem light rail train just because she was an Arab. All these events took place in Israel within a few days. The attackers were not of course the prime minister's biological children, but they were all the creation of his spirit, students of his views and pupils of his government's policies. These Israeli skinheads are the fruits of the nationalistic and racist atmosphere that has grown greatly in recent years, the Netanyahu years.

"Such a streak of anti-Arab violence is not just a coincidence of course. So many of these kinds of violent acts in such a short time never happened here before. Their source is planted deep within the Israeli experience that Likud-led government's have acted to nurture. A Jewish child in Israel grows up with the feeling he is a member of the chosen people, one who is allowed to do almost anything. He learns that only his people have rights to this land. This child knows his country must be Jewish, and only Jewish. During the Netanyahu years the child grew up with a feeling of continual danger, usually exaggerated and hollow. He hears all day long of the dangers lying in wait for him, all at the hands of Arabs and Muslims. He learns he is a member of the people who are always the greatest victims, there are no other victims. There are those who repeat for him that the Arabs are not people like he is, it is doubtful whether they are human beings at all; just suspicious objects, terrorists. They all want to throw him into the sea, stab him, plant a bomb, shoot a Qassam rocket at him or blow themselves up next to him. The child learns that Israel's Arab citizens are a cancer, a stab in the back of the nation and a fifth column; and it is necessary to strip them of all their remnants of rights. He learns that Israel 'gives' the Arabs too much.

"He sees alongside the road a fancy house in an Arab village and tells himself: Look at that. He hears Arab members of Knesset and tells himself: Look at us, what a democracy! He sees a veiled woman or hears someone speaking Arabic and knows this means danger. He doesn't even think to compare the treatment of Jews in Europe in the 1930s to the treatment of Arabs in Israel. He has never met an Arab Israeli for a real conversation, and there is absolutely no chance of that with a Palestinian from the territories.

"This child knows nothing about the Nakba, except that it is an invention of Israel-haters and the very mention of it is treason. Of the hundreds of villages that were destroyed and the fate of their hundreds of thousands of residents, some of whom still live in Israel, torn away from their families, banished from their lands and villages - he knows nothing at all and wants to know nothing. He has no idea what it means to be an Arab child his age in Israel who hears the prime minister of both of them describe the Arab child as a demographic threat. The Jewish child has never heard a single good word from the prime minister on a 5th of the citizens of his country, only condemnation, threats, exclusion and danger. All this he learned in even more forceful terms in recent years, the latest Likud years."

[*For Bialik College see my 21/6/12 post Mystery Man.]

Prisoner X: The Latest Version

From Double agent disaster led to spy's downfall, Jason Koutsoukis, Sydney Morning Herald, 25/3/13:

"Australian-born former Mossad agent Ben Zygier was responsible for one of the most serious security breaches in Israeli history, a breach that led directly to the arrest and imprisonment of two of Israel's most prized Lebanese informants. After a month's-long investigation initiated by Fairfax Media and completed by a team of reporters assembled by Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, it can be revealed that Zygier was outfoxed in a game of cross and double-cross that ended with tragic consequences. Unable to bear the shame of his downfall, and facing a minimum 10-year jail sentence with no prospect of a return to the Mossad, Zygier took his life on December 15, 2010...

"Recruited to the Mossad at the start of 2004, Zygier, who took up Israeli citizenship in the mid 1990s, was first assigned to work in Europe trying to infiltrate companies that had business links with countries hostile to Israel, in particular Iran and Syria. According to the chief executive of one company that Zygier infiltrated, while Zygier was 'extremely sharp' he also lacked focus... Unable to achieve the kind of results expected, Zygier was pulled back from the field and assigned to a desk job in Tel Aviv, a psychological blow that proved to be the beginning of his undoing.

"In an attempt to improve his reputation within the intensely competitive atmosphere of Mossad, and get back into a coveted operations role, Zygier embarked on a rogue mission without informing his superiors. Acting on information surrounding the identity of an eastern European man known to be close to the militant Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah, Zygier set up a meeting with the man towards the end of 2008 with the intention of turning him into a double agent who could pass information about Hezbollah activities back to Mossad. Instead the reverse happened, with Zygier becoming the conduit for information flowing from Tel Aviv to Hezbollah's headquarters in Beirut. Contact between the two went on for months, with the east European repeatedly demanding that Zygier prove his bona fides as a Mossad agent by giving up real intelligence. Zygier complied, giving up the names of Israel's two top Lebanese informants, Ziad al-Homsi, and Mustafa Ali Awdeh. Both were arrested in the spring of 2009, possibly thwarting a chance to strike at Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Each was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labour..."

Actually, Homsi's story is as intriguing as Zygier's. A member of Lebanese opposition leader Saad Hariri's Future Party, he was released after serving only 3 years in jail. Here's an account of his arrest in 2009:

"Saadnayel Mayor Ziad Homsi was accused of collaborating with Israel by Military Examining Magistrate Rashid Mezher, judicial sources told The Daily Star on Tuesday. Homsi, who could face the death penalty if found guilty, was transferred to the permanent Military Court. Homsi was accused of leaking information to Israel about Lebanese civil and military locations with the aim of conducting terrorist operations, the source added. Homsi was also accused of leaking information concerning certain political figures and the illegal possession of weapons. Homsi initially fought against the Israeli army in Bayader al-Adas, but the Israeli intelligence service Mossad then [?] tricked Homsi into travelling to Beijing by sending him a false letter from the mayor of a Chinese city, the source said. The accused met with an Israeli agent disguised as a member of the Beijing City Council and agreed to import merchandise from China to Lebanon. Homsi received a monthly salary of $1,700 for his collaboration, the source added. The accused again received an invitation to visit Beijing in 2007 where he was informed that he was working with Mossad. However, Homsi did not end his collaboration with Israel but rather accepted the task of searching for the bodies of missing Israeli soldiers in Lebanon. He was promised a reward of $10 million. The examining magistrate's report also said that Homsi was equipped with a camera with which to film cemeteries, a portable computer and a satellite communication device to facilitate his contact with Israel." (Mayor accused of spying for Israel, 30/9/09)

Finally, here's the kind of background that typically never made it into the Australian press:

"Lebanon's security services say that since November 2008 it has broken up no fewer than 25 Israeli spy rings. The reported arrest this week [2/2010] of a colonel in Lebanese army intelligence... brings the number of those charged to 70-plus; 40 of them are in Lebanese police custody... Aside from the alleged spies, the Lebanese say they netted fancy surveillance and communications gear disguised, among other innocuous things, as Thermos flasks, canisters of motor oil and battery chargers. The gadgetry may be what gave the game away. Security sources hint that France or perhaps Russia helped the Lebanese by supplying sophisticated systems to monitor and analyse the telecom data. The Lebanese then homed in on suspicious signals. Another clue may have pointed to the importance of the signals trail. Last summer, as the spies were being rounded up, a senior man in Unit 8200, the section of Israeli military intellegince tasked with eavesdropping on Israel's enemies, shot himself in his office. Colleagues blamed 'unrequited love'." (Not such a success: A round-up of Israeli spies, The Economist, 25/2/10)

The Latest Israeli Innovation in Spycraft

Now you may or may not have been following the trial in Cyprus of 'Yaacoub', the alleged Hezbollah operative supposedly engaged in checking out potential terrorist targets there.

After reading the report below, particularly the following bit, all I can say is that, if Yaacoub is for real (and who am I, a mere pair of ragged claws, to argue with the likes of Matthew Levitt?), Hezbollah has a lot to learn:

"They send this guy to Cyprus after all the training, all the courier stuff, which I think is part of the training as well as missions," said Matthew Levitt from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank. 'People recognise you - very slow, methodical. This is old school'... Mr Yaacoub told investigators that his first handler, a man named Wahid, told him he was to operate in complete secrecy. 'He always pointed out that nobody should know anything, neither my family nor my friends,' he said." (Swedish recruit reveals Hezbollah's dark side, New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 9/3/13)

How dated is that 'no friends' stuff? Mat's right, it's so 'old school'. If only Hezbollah could learn from the vibrant, innovative Mossad:

Hayden Cooper: [Lior Brand] says some of Ben Zygier's friends had warned Israeli intelligence that he wasn't suitable agent material. He says this happened when the authorities were conducting background checks on the Australian before he joined Mossad.
Lior Brand: And we were approached, and this is when we said that 'We don't think he's up to the job' - we didn't know, of course, for what, but as much as he wanted it we didn't think it's for him. Now it's really painful to say... 'We told you so'. (Prisoner X questions remain after Government admits failures, 7.30, abc.net.au, 6/3/13)

Check out the super cool Mossad approach to recruitment:

Mossad Spook: Hi, I'm from Mossad. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your friend, Ben Zygier?
Lior Brand: Mossad, eh? Cool! So what do you want to know?
Mossad Spook: Well, we think Ben'd make a great Mossad man, but we thought we'd better ask his friends what they think first, you know, Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East and all.
Lior Brand: You have got to be joking! Ben?!!! Mossad?!!! He wouldn't even know which end of a fly swat to hold.
Mossad Spook: OK, thanks for that. Now can you give me the names, addresses and phone numbers of all his other friends so we can get their opinions too?
Lior Brand: Sure, anything for Israel. First there's...

So listen up, Hezbollah! I know it sounds a tad counterintuitive but if you really want to be as successful as Mossad, you've got to talk to a recruit's friends, OK? The more the better. Spread it around. I mean, how else do you think Mossad keeps its secrets? As Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan once sagely informed us: "Mossad secrets, including secrets involving Australians, are very hard to crack." (Mystique of Mossad its greatest weapon, The Australian, 14/2/13)

Prisoner X: Well Hello...?

"Fairfax media understands that ASIO and Mossad had an explicit deal not to use each other's nationals as spies but that the Israelis broke the agreement by recruiting Mr Zygier and at least two other dual citizens." (Officials broke rules on Zygier, David Wroe & Tom Allard, Sydney Morning Herald, 7/3/13)

Well hello, what part of dual nationality doesn't ASIO understand? When Mossad recruited Zygier was it recruiting an Israeli or an Australian?

"Foreign Minister Bob Carr... admitted that DFAT had been wrong to rely on ASIO, which was in turn accepting the assurances of the Israeli government that Mr Zygier was being well-treated." (ibid)

Well hello, ASIO continued to accept these assurances after Mossad had misused Australian passports in the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai?

"Former attorney-general Robert McClelland has confirmed he was briefed on the Ben Zygier case in 2010, making him the only politician to date to admit any first-hand knowledge of the affair... He said ASIO briefed him on the case shortly after Zygier's arrest in January 2010. As attorney-general, Mr McClelland had responsibility for ASIO, the agency first told of the 34-year-old's arrest. He recalled a high degree of security accompanying the Zygier briefing. Mr McClelland said an official had brought the material to him and sat with him in his office when he read it. When he was finished, the officer retrieved the documents, meaning he retained no copy. Such practices were standard for sensitive briefings." (Former A-G admits he was briefed on Zygier, Paul Maley, The Australian, 8/3/13)

Well hello, who's running the country here, the elected government or ASIO?

"Mr McClelland would not discuss the content of the briefing. 'But what I can say is that I had recommended to me the course of action that ASIO proposed to take - to brief relevant agencies, departments and officials, a course of action I approved and thought was appropriate,' he said." (ibid)

Well hello, is it a case of whatever ASIO wants, ASIO gets?

"[Kevin Rudd] says he has 'no recollection' of being informed about the matter..." (Rudd still in the dark about facts of Zygier case, Judith Ireland, SMH, 8/3/13)

Well hello, PM Rudd knew nothing?

"Yesterday, a spokesman for [then foreign minister Stephen] Smith said he had no recollection of being briefed on the case. [His chief of staff Frances] Adamson also had no recollection of being briefed." (Former A-G admits he was briefed on Zygier, Paul Maley, The Australian, 8/3/13)

Well hello, foreign minister Smith also knew nothing?

"An internal investigation by the Department of Foreign Affairs revealed yesterday that Dennis Richardson, then head of the department... [was] briefed by ASIO... on February 24, 2010, about 3 weeks after the arrest." (Officials broke rules on Zygier, David Wroe & Tom Allard, SMH, 7/3/13)

Well hello, he didn't think it worth mentioning to the minister?

"The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Vivienne Thom, said she was satisfied that ASIO had not acted unlawfully and inappropriately, and would take no further action. Wednesday's report, despite its broad criticisms of the handling of the case, acknowledges this was an unusual situation and says the DFAT officials' judgment not to follow up on Zygier 'Was reasonable in the circumstances'. Perhaps most tellingly, the report adds that their decision 'took into account concerns that a diplomatic approach might jeopardise the intelligence channel'." (Spies like us, David Wroe & Ruth Pollard, SMH, 9/3/13)

Well hello, Australia can't possibly survive without an intelligence channel to Israel?
Well hello, does this mean that ASIO is telling our polliewaffles that (to tweak the words of St Wilders) 'The struggle against Israel is a struggle against us. We are Israel. The reason Australian parents can sleep soundly without having to worry about their kids is that Israeli parents stay awake at night because their children are in the army'?
Well hello, is ASIO that dumb?
Well hello, are our polliewaffles that dumb?
Well hello, are WE that dumb?