- Mossad and Shin Bet (Israel's Security Agency) have
long, odious histories of committing them. More on that below.
-
- At issue now is whether the August 18 bus and other attacks
inside Israel were committed by external elements or Israel, and if so,
why?
-
- Also at issue always is cui bono? In fact, Hamas and
various Palestinian resistance groups have nothing to gain. Clearly Israel
benefits greatly at least two ways:
-
- (1) The upcoming September UN General Assembly vote on
Palestinian self-determination Israel very much wants to derail.
-
- (2) Weeks of nationwide internal social justice protests
Netanyahu also wants to diffuse and end.
-
- Both are compelling reasons for employing tried and true
tactics - change the subject by diverting public attention.
-
- In this case, scaring people enough to put safety above
pocket book issues, as well as getting UN member states perhaps to rethink
the wisdom of supporting Palestinian sovereignty at this time, with Israel
allegedly under attack.
-
- Whether it works will be known when the UN General Assembly
meets in September. What's clear is that last March, Israel informed all
Security Council members and prominent EU countries that if Palestinian
self-determination efforts within 1967 borders persisted, unilateral Israeli
steps would follow, implying harsh ones.
-
- In addition, diffusing social justice protests temporarily
worked based on an August 18 Reuters report, saying:
-
- Campaigners "called off planned weekend demonstrations
against the high cost of living after a series of terror attacks in the
south left seven people dead."
-
- Of concern is how to reignite protest energy after it
wanes, even for a short time. Resumption often lacks initial levels of
passion, mass support, and commitment to stay the course, especially when
people have other daily priorities, besides worrying whether their country
is under attack.
-
- Add it up and it suggests classic false flag reasons,
perhaps with planned follow-up attacks for reinforcement. They're likely
if Israel also has another objective in mind - using the attacks as pretext
for Cast Lead II.
-
- Israel blamed the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees
(PRC - a coalition of resistance factions) for launching internal attacks.
-
- PRC spokesman Abu Mujahid told AFP:
-
- "We salute (the operation) and we are proud of it,
but we do not claim it. The occupation wants to pin (it) on us in order
to escape its own internal problems."
-
- Hamas also denied responsibility, spokesman Taher al-Nunu
telling AFP:
-
- "These (unfounded) accusations are an attempt to
distract from the Israeli domestic crisis."
-
- As expected, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak pointed
fingers, despite no corroborating evidence, saying:
-
- "The source of the terror incidents is Gaza and
we will act against them with all our strength and determination."
-
- Also as expected, New York Times coverage was pro-Israeli.
On August 19, Heba Afify and Isabel Kershner headlined, "A Long Peace
Is Threatened in Israel Attack," saying:
-
- "A cross-border terrorist attack and an Israeli
retaliation (threatened) to undermine" peace with Egypt, with no evidence,
except rhetoric, to suggest either.
-
- Afify and Kershner implied Israel was right, saying "attackers
were Palestinians from Gaza who had crossed into Israel from the Egyptian
Sinai, an assertion Egypt rejected."
-
- Based on no evidence whatever, Israel's scripted story
is that Gaza-based "terror" operations "began weeks"
earlier, likely "involv(ing) 10 to 15 terrorists," entering Israel
"with rifles, explosive belts, grenades, (and) heavier weapons."
-
- Yet Times writers didn't question how they managed unspotted,
given tight Israeli security and high-tech surveillance, assassinating
children and farmers on the slightest pretext.
-
- As for a "long peace," there's been none for
decades. Daily, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) and other
human rights organizations document regular Israeli bombings, shellings,
Cast Lead, Mavi Marmara and other massacres, shootings, targeted assassinations,
other attacks, casualties, incursions, Gaza under siege, mass arrests,
illegal settlement expansions, bulldozed homes, theft of Palestinian land,
dispossessions, and overall Israeli lawlessness - enforcing militarized
hell on Palestinians, not peace.
-
- On August 19, PCHR discussed Israel's response to internal
August 18 attacks, saying:
-
- Israeli forces "launched a series of air attacks
against civilian-populated areas in the Gaza Strip," including "extra-judicially
executing Kamal al-Nairab, Secretary General of the Popular Resistance
Committees (PRC), 4 PRC leaders and a two-year old child...."
-
- Other strikes injured 23 Palestinians, including seven
children, six women and three police officers.
-
- On August 20, various news agencies said Israeli air
attacks and shelling raised the death toll to 16 and counting. In response,
Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades armed wing suspended its unilateral ceasefire,
a spokesman saying:
-
- "There can be no truce with the Israeli occupation
while it commits massacres against the Palestinian people without justification."
-
- In fact, blaming victims, lawlessness, violence, crimes
of war and against humanity, collective punishment, intimidation, attacking
unarmed civilians, and overall brutality are Israeli specialties. Combined,
they define a rogue state, defiant of international law principles, pursuing
its own interests extrajudicially, and getting away with it.
-
- Gazans now worry about a possible Cast Lead II, Israel
using perhaps false flag attacks as pretext to launch it. Again, it's the
oldest trick in the book, Israel expert at it like America.
-
- Previous Israeli Targeted Assassinations and False Flags
-
- An Israeli specialty, they began well before 1948 during
the Mandatory Palestine period when Jewish terrorist groups targeted Jews,
Brits and Arabs. Involved were paramilitary Hagana members, Irgun headed
by future prime minister Menachem Begin, and Lehi (also called the Stern
Gang) led by another future prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir. They were rogue
killers before entering politics.
-
- In November 1944, Lehi assassinated Lord Moyne, Britain's
Middle East minister of state, near his home in Cairo.
-
- In September 1948, it also killed UN mediator Folke Bernadotte
in Jerusalem, five months after Israel was established. Yitzhak Shamir
personally approved the assassination.
-
- In July 1946, Irgun bombed the King David Hotel, massacring
92 Brits, Arabs and Jews, wounding 58 others, an operation future prime
minister David Ben-Gurion approved as head of the Jewish Agency at the
time.
-
- Before and after May 1948, many thousands of targeted
killings occurred or were attempted, most little remembered today except
among relatives and their descendants.
-
- Little wonder Israel's history is so bloodstained, involving
individual and mass killings, including on April 9, 1948 (during Israel's
"war of independence") when Irgun, Lehi and complicit terrorists
slaughtered well over 120 Palestinian men, women and children in the bloody
Deir Yassin village massacre. On April 14, The New York Times reported
254 killed.
-
- Post-1948, Palestinian supporters were targeted regionally
and in Europe. Waves of successful and attempted assassinations occurred,
notably against high-profile figures.
-
- In 1954, Israeli agents in Egypt planted bombs in various
buildings, including US and UK facilities, using evidence to implicate
Arabs. The so-called Lavon Affair failed when a device prematurely detonated,
letting Egyptians capture and identify one of the bombers. In turn, it
led to rounding up an Israeli spy ring.
-
- More recently, Hamas member Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed
in Dubai after two earlier failed attempts. Abu-Dhabi's the National reported
he was poisoned, drugged, and suffocated after previously surviving a failed
shooting. Found dead in a Dubai hotel on January 20, 2010, police accused
Mossad of murder.
-
- Earlier incidents included Palestinians Abdel Wael Zwaiter,
shot 11 times by Israeli agents in Rome after returning home from dinner.
It was the first of dozens of retaliatory assassinations against persons
suspected of involvement in the 1972 Munich summer Olympic killings of
Israeli athletes, coaches and officials, allegedly by Black September members,
a resistance, not a terrorist organization.
-
- On June 14, 1980, Yahia El Meshad, then head of Iraq's
nuclear program, was found bludgeoned to death in his Paris hotel room.
No one was arrested, but French authorities named Israeli intelligence.
-
- On August 20, 1983, Mamoun Meraish was shot and killed
while driving in Athens. Israeli agents were blamed.
-
- During the 1970s and 1980s, Mossad was implicated in
numerous Beirut and other car bombings, one of its specialities.
-
- On January 6, 2007, Haaretz reported that newly released
British documents claim Shin Bet collaborated with the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the hijacking of Air France 139 from
Israel, diverted to Entebbe, Uganda.
-
- Arab terrorists were falsely blamed. Elite Israeli commandos
led by Yonatan Netanyahu, Bibi's older brother, became instant heros for
their "miraculous" rescue. An unnamed UK diplomat blamed Israel,
saying:
-
- "The operation was designed to torpedo the PLO's
standing in France and to prevent what (was seen as) growing rapprochement
between the PLO and the Americans."
-
- British diplomat DH Colvin included information in the
document that Israel and the PFLP collaborated. Haaretz said it "was
written on June 30, 1976, three days after the hijacking and prior to the
rescue operation."
-
- On September 25, 1997, two Mossad agents with forged
Canadian passports attacked Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Jordan, spraying
him with an unknown poison. He survived and recovered to explain.
-
- In January 2002, a car bomb killed former Lebanese cabinet
minister Elie Hobeika and three bodyguards. In 1982, he was involved in
the infamous Sabra and Shatilla camp massacres. Days before his assassination,
he expressed willingness to implicate then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon's
direct role. Clearly, Mossad killed him to prevent it.
-
- In May 2002, Mossad murdered Mohammed Jihad Jibril, son
of Ahmed Jibril, founder and head of the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine (PFLP).
-
- In August 2003, Mossad assassinated Ali Hassan Saheh,
Hezbollah's top security officer. Prime Minister Sharon ordered Meir Dagan,
its head until January 1, 2011, to conduct assassinations abroad.
-
- No explanation is needed for why Mossad exists. It functions
as a de facto Murder, Inc. within or outside Israel, making Mafia families
seem benign by comparison.
-
- From 2002 - 2006, it was responsible for numerous car
bombings, killing Hezbollah, Hamas, and other officials regionally.
-
- On February 12, 2008, a car bomb killed Hezbollah member
Imad Hugniyeh in Damascus. Mossad again was responsible.
-
- On August 1, 2008, it killed Muhammad Suleiman, a Syrian
army officer close to President Bashar al-Assad, shot by snipers offshore
near his vacation villa.
-
- Rafik Hariri's Assassination
-
- On February 14, 2005, compelling visual and audio evidence
revealed real time intercepted Israel aerial surveillance footage of routes
former Prime Minister Hariri used on the day his motorcade was attacked.
Clearly, Israel was involved.
-
- Washington blamed Syria. Assad denied responsibility.
Hezbollah was later falsely named. It was a typical Mossad assassination
though no one at the time knew for sure. The blast ripped a 30 foot crater
in the street, injuring over 100 besides those killed.
-
- An International Court of Justice (ICC) Special Tribunal
(STL) investigated Hariri's killing. On January 17, its sealed indictment
was released, Canadian prosecutor Daniel Bellemare saying the next day
that the confidential document was important for the people of Lebanon,
the international community, and "for those who believe in international
justice."
-
- On June 30, arrest warrants for four Hezbollah members
were issued. None were detained. At the time, Hezbollah said no arrests
would be made, calling the tribunal a Washington/Israeli manipulated sham,
covering up a classic Mossad operation.
-
- On August 17, the 47-page indictment was released, holding
Hezbollah members responsible based on falsified evidence. Those named
include Mustafa Amine Badreddine, Salim Jamil Ayyash, Hussein Hassan Oneissi,
and Assad Hassan Sabra. Badreddine was called the mission head.
-
- No evidence proves it or that others named were involved.
Clearly, Hezbollah had nothing to gain from the assassination but plenty
to lose if, in fact, responsible.
-
- A Final Comment
-
- Later evidence may prove one way or the other whether
Israel staged the multiple August 18 attacks. It has much to gain by doing
so. Hamas, PFLP, and other Palestinians, however, have everything to lose,
so why risk involvement? No advantage comes to mind.
-
- In contrast, Israel has compelling reasons as explained
above and may succeed precisely as planned. In fact, if Cast Lead II is
intended, a trifecta of successes may follow. Palestinians and working
Israelis, however, will suffer enormous defeats.
-
- As a result, public awareness of what's at stake is essential
to derail Israel's latest scheme. Failure to do so is an unacceptable option.
-
- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive
Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central
time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy
listening.
-
- http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
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