Heh. So let me see if I can wrap my head around this: Israel tracked a Hamas terrorist to Dubai and executed him at close range and by hand so as to avoid any collateral damage to civilian life. Shouldn’t we be celebrating this as the way war should be conducted instead of putting our noses up in the air and acting as though we’re so much better when we lob a missile at a terrorist from an airplane?
I mean, look, I’m all in favor of lobbing missiles at terrorists from airplanes; it’d be nice to capture them alive and get some info out of them via harsh interrogations, but a Tomahawk up the keister works just as well as far as I’m concerned. But then you get all the hemming and hawing about “Oh, we’re just creating more terrorists when we accidentally kill an innocent bystander.” Well, there’s none of that here, is there? The guy was traced to his hotel room, zapped with a stun gun, and smothered to death. Quick and easy. If only all terrorists could meet the same fate.
In much of the world outside North America and Europe, the International Herald Tribune, which is published by the New York Times, is included with one of the local daily newspapers. Here in Israel it comes with the English-language version of Haaretz. In Kuwait, it comes with al-Watan.Al-Watan's lawyer, Rashid al-Radaan, told AFP that he has challenged the verdict at the appeals court, saying that the newspaper did not deliberately allow the printing of the advertisement.
"The printing of this advert was not done on purpose," he said, adding that the IHT goes directly to the press without being checked by Al-Watan.
Three Kuwaiti lawyers sued Al-Watan Daily although the paper had issued an apology to its readers for running the advertisement.
London's Daily Mail reports that the Mossad gave the British intelligence agency MI6 advance notice that it planned to liquidate 'Palestinian' terrorist and arms dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month. MI6 was tipped off that Israeli agents were going to carry out an 'overseas operation' using fake British passports, it was claimed last night.
A member of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, said the Foreign Office was also told hours before a Hamas terrorist chief was assassinated in Dubai.
The tip-off did not say who the target would be or even where the hit squad would be in action.
But the claim from a credible source that the Government had some prior knowledge of the abuse of UK passports will strengthen calls for ministers to come clean about what they knew and when.
...
The Mossad man said Israeli intelligence chiefs understand British authorities will have to 'slap them on the wrist' and added: 'The British government has to be seen to be going through the motions.'
The Israeli's claims contradict Foreign Office assertions that the UK knew nothing of the affair until shortly before the Dubai authorities went public over the assassination earlier this week.
However officials in the Gulf state have claimed that British ministers may have been alerted by Dubai last month about the use of the passports.
If MI6 received a tip-off from Mossad it is not certain it would have been passed to Foreign Secretary David Miliband, particularly if it was vague.
Intelligence officers may have preferred to wait before alerting ministers. But any suggestion that officials turned a blind eye to an extra-judicial killing will strengthen calls for a public inquiry into the UK's involvement in the war on terrorism.
Intelligence sources say al-Mabhouh was lured to a meeting in Dubai by two men who had worked with him in Hamas in Gaza.
He did not realise they had defected to the more moderate Fatah, bitter enemies of Hamas, and were secretly working with the Israelis.
Two Palestinian men are in custody in Dubai. The director of the Dubai Police forensic medicine department revealed yesterday that finding the cause of al-Mabhouh's death had been the most difficult post mortem he had ever done.
British-trained Dr Fawzi Benomran said the killers had put his body in bed and covered it, to make it appear he had died in his sleep.
But he and his team established that death was caused by 'suffocation by smothering, most probably with a pillow'.
One Writer's opinion on the Dubai Termination
...but I have a considerable admiration for the Israeli way of doing things. They want something, they get it. They perceive someone as their deadly enemy, they kill them. They get hit, they hit back. They don’t waste time explaining or justifying or agonising; nor do they allow their detractors to enter their country and then afford them generous welfare payments. They just act. No messing. No scruples. Not even a shrug and a denial, just a rather magnificent refusal to debate anything.
This absolutism, based on their history, carries its own moral weight; one that is rather electrifying in a Western world grown flabby with niceties. Clearly, the Israelis could defend their policies if they wanted to, but they quite simply can’t be bothered. It’s a waste of breath. One admires them for that, too.
I’ve felt this way ever since the Entebbe raid in 1976, an occasion when the Israelis showed Hollywood a thing or two. After two Palestinians and two Germans had hijacked an aircraft on a flight that had originated in Israel, the Israeli army simply swooped in, killed the hijackers and freed all but three of the hostages. It was decisive, bloody and clever. Lieutenant-Colonel “Yoni” Netanyahu, the older brother of the present Prime Minister, Binyamin, was the only commando killed in the fighting.
They also outdid fiction after the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972, when they hunted down 11 Palestinians who were responsible and eliminated them wherever they were in the world. Aided by fake passports and disguises, Mossad agents employed methods including a booby-trapped telephone, a bomb planted in a bed and a raid in Beirut in which the present Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, dressed as a woman. Nobody caught it on CCTV, but on the ground that human nature can never resist this kind of stuff, Steven Spielberg made it into the Oscar-nominated 2005 movie Munich.
Maybe, as the West becomes increasingly gentle and polite, and pays those monthly direct debits to Amnesty International, we need the Israelis to remind us that the world is not made according to our template...
From here
You all remember that President Obumbler was going to give Iran until the end of September to 'engage' over its nuclear plans. Then Iran got an extension until the end of the year, because it agreed to meet with the P - 5 + 1 in Vienna in October. Then a sanctions resolution couldn't be introduced in January, because Libya was chairing the Security Council and would not allow it to be raised. But February would be an auspicious month, because France - which favors sanctions - is chairing the Council.February has arrived, but the Chinese are still opposed to sanctions and the Iranians are enriching their uranium to a higher level. Obama's response is that he has had it and the time has come for sanctions and immediately - which means within a few weeks, perhaps by the end of March. In March, however, Gabon will assume the presidency of the Security Council, and it is not certain that Iran is at the top of its agenda. And there are still the problems with the Chinese.
And if we assume that ultimately there will be sanctions, so what? The involvement with sanctions, who's for and who's against, when, why and to what extent, deflects from the primary problem - the absence of an American strategy for tough negotiations with Iran. Even more serious, however, is that there are worrying signs that the Obama administration is beginning to resign itself not only to the fact that Iran will continue to enrich uranium, but also to recognition that the Islamic republic could ultimately build a nuclear bomb.
When you begin to reconcile with a specific reality, you stop trying to change it. And then we hear more about the need to deter and contain Iran than about stopping it, about a nuclear umbrella for America's allies in the Persian Gulf instead of a firm negotiating strategy against Iran. And sanctions alone won't stop Iran.
The role of sanctions and other pressure, such as credible military threats, is to convince Iran that time is not on its side and it would be better to seriously negotiate with the West. Only then will the diplomatic work of American-Iranian negotiations begin, with a goal of an arrangement that would eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat.
There is no sign that the Obama administration intends to mobilize the necessary political muscle to lead such a process. An additional decision on ineffective sanctions will apparently satisfy the U.S. So, we tried.
The weakness that Obama is showing toward Iran has implications for America's global leadership role. Israel must speak to the Americans about this, and instead of focusing on sanctions, should try to determine if and how the U.S. intends to lead a comprehensive process leading to a solution. Without genuine American determination, there is no prospect of preventing the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons.
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