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Mossad Death Squads
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Robert Fisk in Gaza WHEN THE Israelis came for Abu Jihad exactly 13 years ago, they employed up to 4,000 men for his assassination. There was an Awacs plane over Tunis, a squadron of jets to protect the Awacs, two warships in the Mediterranean, a submarine to guard the warships, a 707 refuelling aircraft, 40 men to go ashore and surround the home of Yasser Arafat's PLO deputy commander, and four men and an officer to murder their victim. Abu Jihad's son Jihad al-Wazzir recalls: "First they killed the bodyguard who was asleep in the car outside. Then they killed the gardener and the second bodyguard ... My dad was writing in his office and went into the hall with a pistol. He got off one shot before he was hit. My mother remembers how each of the four men would step forward and empty an entire clip of bullets from an automatic weapon into my dad - like it was a kind of ritual. Then an officer in a black mask stepped forward and shot him in the head, just to make sure." Today, Israel's murder squads come cheaper: a computer chip that activates a bomb in a mobile telephone, a family collaborator, or even a splash of ultra -violet paint on the roof of a car to alert an Israeli Apache helicopter pilot to fire a Hellfire missile into the Palestinian's vehicle. It's long-range assassination. But some things don't change. Palestinians have long believed - and Jihad al-Wazzir Jnr is convinced - that the Israeli who delivered the coup de grace to his father on 16 April 1988 was an intelligence officer called Moshe Yalon. And today, one of the principal instigators behind the policy of murdering Israel's Palestinian military opponents is the deputy chief of staff, a certain major general called Moshe Yalon. It's a cruel, vicious, internationally illegal war in which the Palestinians have themselves been guilty in the past. Back in the Seventies, Israeli and PLO agents murdered each other in Europe in a policy of retaliation and counter -retaliation that drove European security forces insane with anger. "In the end, these murders led to a ceasefire," Mr al-Wazzir explains. "The whole thing ended." It continued, however, in Beirut where two of the men involved in murdering PLO leaders were called Ehud Barak and Amnon Shahak. Shahak would later become the Israeli military commander in Lebanon in 1982. And it was Mr Barak who as Prime Minister last year relaunched Israel's murder squads. Historians will one day debate the worth of such killings. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, after all, have their own murderers - though their suicide bombs slaughter civilians as well as soldiers, hitherto unknown victims rather than individual Israeli intelligence officers. But Israel's killers take innocent lives too. An Apache helicopter attack on a Palestinian militant tore two middle-aged Palestinian women to pieces; the Israelis did not apologise. The nephew of a man murdered by the Israelis in Nablus later admitted to the Palestinian Authority that he had given his uncle's location to the Israelis. He told his interrogators: "They said they were only going to arrest him. Then they killed him." If it's a dirty war - which it is - it's also a developing one. Mr al- Wazzir, now an economic analyst in Gaza, explains: "It's small-scale now and in known locations. People who did not think of themselves as targets are killed. There's a network of Israeli army intelligence and air force intelligence, and Mossad and Shin Bet that works together, feeding each other information. "They can cross the lines between Area C under Israeli control and Area B shared control in the occupied territories. They can penetrate these borders. Usually, they carry out operations when the IDF Israeli Defence Force morale is low. When they killed my father, the IDF was in very low spirits because of the first intifada. So they go for a spectacular' to show what great warriors they are. Now the IDF morale is low again because of the second intifada." Palestinian security officers in Gaza have been intrigued at the logic behind the Israeli killings. One of the Palestinian officials says: "Our guys meet their guys and we know their officers and operatives. I tell you this frankly - they are as corrupt and indisciplined as we are. And as ruthless. "After they the Israelis targeted Mohamed Dahlan's convoy when he was coming back from security talks, Dahlan the head of Palestinian preventive security' in Gaza talked to the Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Look what you guys are doing to us,' Dahlan told Peres. Don't you realise it was me who took Sharon's son to meet Arafat?'" Was this a threat? Mr al-Wazzir understands some of the death squad logic. "It has some effect because we Palestinians are a paternalistic society," he says. "We believe in the idea of a father figure. But when they assassinated my dad, the intifada didn't stop. It was affected but all the political objectives failed; rather than demoralising the Palestinians, the assassination fuelled the intifada. "They say there's a list now of 100 Palestinians on the murder list. No, I don't think the Palestinians will adopt the same type of killings against Israeli intelligence. An army is an institution, a system. Murdering an officer just results in him being replaced." The Israelis have murdered up to 20 Palestinians they claim to be "terrorists" - with no concrete evidence and no court hearings. It's a practice they honed in Lebanon where guerrilla leaders were blown up by hidden bombs or shot in the back by Shin Bet execution squads, often - as in the case of an Amal leader in the village of Bidias - after interrogation. All this was, and still is, in the name of "security". And that is something the murders have clearly not produced. 1-19-3 Israeli death squads have been authorised to enter "friendly" countries and assassinate opponents in a move that raises the prospect of political killings in Australia. Agents of the Israeli secret service Mossad have been given free rein to kill those deemed to be a threat to the Jewish state - wherever they are hiding. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has until now refused permission for assassinations on the home ground of allies, has reversed the policy as part of a more aggressive approach to terrorism. The move was revealed by former Mossad agents in a series of interviews with US news agency United Press International. It was later confirmed by US intelligence officials. They said the policy raised the potential for killings in countries with close ties to Israel, including the US, Britain and Australia. One Mossad official told UPI the policy shift was prompted by "a huge budget" increase for the agency as part of "a tougher stance in fighting global jihad (or holy war)". "Targeted killings" have, in the main, been restricted to the West Bank and Gaza because "no one wanted such operations on their territory", one Israeli official said. But that is changing with the appointment late last year of new Mossad director Meir Dagan. Another former Mossad agent told UPI: "Diplomatic constraints have prevented Mossad from carrying out preventive operations (assassinations) on the soil of friendly countries until now." Mr Sharon and Mr Dagan were now "reversing that policy, even if it risks complications to Israel's bilateral relations". A third source said Mr Sharon wanted "greater operational maneuverability" for Mossad. Asked if that meant assassinations within allied countries, he said: "It does." The move comes in the wake of the assassination by the CIA of al-Qaeda suspects in Yemen. Qaed Sinan Harithi and five other suspects were killed last year when a unmanned Predator spy plane fired a Hellfire missile at their car. That attack is thought to have limited the ability of the US to protest about Mossad killings abroad. "That (the Predator attack) was done on the soil of a friendly ally," an official at the US Congress said. "I don't know on what basis we would be able to protest Israel's actions." Israel has in the past sent hit squads to kill opponents in hostile countries such as Lebanon, and snatch squads have been used extensively throughout the world. Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina in 1960, taken to Israel and executed. In 1986, scientist Mordechai Vanunu was snatched in Rome and transported to Israel after revealing details of Israel's nuclear weapons program. He was sentenced to 18 years jail, only being released from solitary confinement in 1998. One of the few known cases of Mossad hitmen carrying out an assassination on friendly soil occurred on July 21, 1973, when a Mossad team shot dead Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchikhi as he walked home from the cinema with his pregnant wife in the Norwegian ski resort of Lillehammer. The assassins apparently mistook Bouchikhi for Hassan Salameh, a PLO intelligence chief suspected of masterminding the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Gullow Gjeseth, who led a Norwegian Government inquiry into the shooting, said: "This was much more than a murder. This was a violation of Norwegian sovereignty." In January 1996, Israel paid undisclosed damages to Bouchikhi's family, but refused to admit responsibility for the killing. Mossad is thought to have struck again in October 1995, when the head of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, Fathi al-Shikai, was gunned down on the streets of Malta. The hit, though never formally claimed, had all the trademarks of the agency. A return to such killings is expected to raise concerns among Israel's Western allies. The assassinations are likely to be carried out by a unit of Mossad's secret Metsada department called the Kidon, a Hebrew word meaning "bayonet". The agents will have to answer to Mr Dagan, who has been described by a CIA agent as having a "real killer instinct". Officially, Israel has refused to confirm or deny the policy change. Kim Farber, a diplomat at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, told UPI: "There is so little information available on this, there is nothing I can add." A spokesman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer yesterday refused to comment on the possibility of Mossad agents operating in Australia.
Israeli Hit Squads in US Posted by Dietz Smith at January 19, 2003 04:25 PM On Thursday UPI reported Israel intendeds to send assassination squads around the globe to take out suspected terrorists. The squads will be assembled and controlled by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. These squads are said to be destined, not only to belligerent countries, but also to Israel's allies, including the United States.
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