False Flags, Fast Friends, Bang & Boom

Holy Moly. Foreign Policy magazine's Mark Perry has ruffled feathers with its exclusive investigation into Mossad/ Jundallah links and a spate of killings targeting nuke scientists inside Iran,  based on some Bush-era CIA memos and follow-up reporting. Some excerpts:

the memos show that the United States had barred even the most incidental contact with Jundallah, according to both intelligence officers, the same was not true for Israel's Mossad. The memos also detail CIA field reports saying that Israel's recruiting activities occurred under the nose of U.S. intelligence officers, most notably in London, the capital of one of Israel's ostensible allies, where Mossad officers posing as CIA operatives met with Jundallah officials.The officials did not know whether the Israeli program to recruit and use Jundallah is ongoing. Nevertheless, they were stunned by the brazenness of the Mossad's efforts..."The report sparked White House concerns that Israel's program was putting Americans at risk," the intelligence officer told me. "There's no question that the U.S. has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations against the Iranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we're not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians."Israel's relationship with Jundallah continued to roil the Bush administration until the day it left office, this same intelligence officer noted. Israel's activities jeopardized the administration's fragile relationship with Pakistan, which was coming under intense pressure from Iran to crack down on Jundallah. It also undermined U.S. claims that it would never fight terror with terror, and invited attacks in kind on U.S. personnel."

Spies and Lies, 60 years later

A cold dose of Israelity came a decade after the wedding day for ten Israeli Arab women who were told about their husbands' deceit by government officials.
Mistaarvim and Mrs? Ten odd couples are revealed in a fascinating piece running in Ynet's magazine. Shin Bet orchestrated double lives for their agents, with a plausible cover story for "young vigorous men" to find spouses in Arab communities inside Israel, from Jaffa. Read about the fallout six decades later:

"Your husband is not who you think he is. He is not Arab. Your husband is a Jew who was sent into your village on a mission by the defense establishment." This was the news a few Israeli Arab women received from the head of the Mossad Intelligence Service
mission in France in 1964. This was how they discovered that the fathers of their children were serving in a top secret Israeli unit sent to spy in their villages.

Ten Jewish men assimilated into Arab communities in the early 1950s, marrying local women and starting families with them, all the while serving in the Shin Bet as "mistaarvim," (literally, masqueraders) - undercover agents posing as Palestinians.

The goal of the unit, which was established in 1952, was to have men on the inside in case a war breaks out, and the Israeli Arabs join the enemy. Shumel Moriah, a senior Shin Bet officer who came to Israel from Iraq, and had plenty of experience smuggling Jews into Israel, led the unit. He recruited 10 other Iraqi-born men for the complex mission.

The unit was disbanded over a decade after its establishment, which was when the wives were informed of the deception. Most of them converted and lived in Israel as Jews. Their children were recognized as Jews without undergoing an official conversion procedure.

The training process took one year; the men learned the Palestinian dialect, studied the Koran and espionage techniques in an Intelligence Corps base near Ramla. With a new identity and a detailed cover story, they were sent into Palestinian villages and cities. They pretended to be refugees from the 1948 war returning home. Their real families in Israel were kept in the dark about their whereabouts and activities; they were forbidden from trying to discover where their loved ones served.

Hat tip to Gideon for this link. The full story is here.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4031176,00.html

Targeted Assassination trainers go to India

Rumors are circulating that Israel’s Mossad is training 30 high-ranking Indian police officers in the techniques of targeted assassinations, to render the Maoist organisation “headless”. There’s talk in the press about the new hardware that has been bought from Israel: laser range-finders, thermal imaging equipment and unmanned drones, so popular with the US army. Perfect weapons to use against the poor.
Hat tip to writer Arundhati Roy, in Outlook.

Oops. Mossad needs to drill, baby, drill

Espionage requires skullduggery, at least enough to avoid drawing the attention of casual passers-by. Certainly in Tel Aviv, urban pedestrians tend to be on the alert.
The BBC reports about how a blundering trainee spook managed to close down the entire port of Tel Aviv on a training day gone wrong.(This coincided with a tourist helicopter crashing downin the Med outside Netanya. What's surprising is how quickly the chaos was righted)

A trainee spy for Israel's secret service agency Mossad was arrested by Tel Aviv police while taking part in a training operation, media reports say.

The young trainee was spotted by a female passer-by as he planted a fake bomb under a vehicle in the capital.

He was only able to persuade police he was a spy after being taken in by an officer for questioning on Monday.

The authorities have refused to comment on the story although Israeli media outlets have expressed their surprise.

'Just a drill'

Mossad does not tell local uniformed police about its training exercises.

The country's commercial Channel 10 said it hoped the agent's operatives were "more effective abroad", AFP news agency reported.

Niva Ben-Harush, the woman who reported the novice's suspicious behaviour to police, told Ynet News that 15 minutes after she made the call, Tel Aviv's port was closed and people evacuated.

She said police initially asked her to come with them and identify the suspect.

"But after a few minutes, they told me it was just a drill," she said.

Up to three agency employees were believed to have been suspended following the incident, Ynet reported.

It quoted the prime minister's office as saying it did "not respond to information about such activities undertaken by security agencies or attributed to them".

Iran executes one 'Israeli spy' and arrests another

Iran has hanged a telecom engineer convicted of spying for Israel, according to reports from Teheran quoted on the BBC. This turn of events should worry Hossein Derakhshan, an earnest Iranian-Canadian blogger who was just arrested on arrival in the Teheran. (Pictured above.) The young guy came under suspicion because he spent time last year in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, exploding propaganda myths by cavorting with the 'entity'--mainly females in bars-- and giving Israelis a 'human face' on his blog, Jahan News. Apparently, the man hailed as Hoder, the Blogfather, has already confessed to spying for Israel.

The Ahmadinejad regime obviously gets very annoyed about any links between Israel and its Iranian citizens. Hence the execution of Ashtari, pictured below.

Ali Ashtari, an Iranian, was convicted in June of spying for Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency. A video said to be of his confession was broadcast on TV.

He was convicted of sending "sensitive information on military, defence and research centres" for three years.

Israeli officials were quoted in June as saying that Israel was not familiar with the case.

Announcing the execution, which reportedly took place on Monday, Iran's official news agency said the case against the 45-year-old was clear and his appeal was summarily dismissed.

"He had spied for Mossad for three years," the state news agency quoted the intelligence ministry's director of counter-terrorism as saying.

Officials said Ashtari was recruited by Israeli secret services to intercept the communications of Iranian officials working in the military and its controversial nuclear programme.

Broadcasting his apparent confession, state TV showed Ashtari sitting down wearing an open-necked shirt and jumper.

"It was my mistake and perhaps I feared going to the intelligence ministry, and this fear was the reason why I kept choosing the wrong path," he said, speaking into the camera.

"Do not repeat the mistakes that I made."

The case unfolded throughout the year against a backdrop of concerns in Iran that Israel was planning to launch a pre-emptive strike against its nuclear facilities.

Israel is a leading advocate of strong action against Tehran, which it believes is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran denies that charge, saying its nuclear programme is intended for energy supply only.

Does Mossad spy from the sky ? Two spy pigeons busted after nuke fuel overflight in Iran

Surveillance of Iran's underground uranium enrichment plant has created quite a flap, according to reports in the Iranian press. Much is left between the lines. Could it be Mossad, CIA, or simply avian curiosity? A bird in the hand is said to be worth two in the bush. AFP reports on a bizarre arrest.

Iran busts 'spy pigeons' near nuclear site

Security forces in Natanz have arrested two suspected "spy pigeons" near Iran's controversial uranium enrichment facility, the reformist Etemad Melli newspaper reported on Monday.

One of the pigeons was caught near a rose water production plant in the city of Kashan in Isfahan province, the report cited an unnamed informed source as saying, adding that some metal rings and invisible strings were attached to the bird.

"Early this month, a black pigeon was caught bearing a blue-coated metal ring, with invisible strings," the source was quoted as saying of the second pigeon.

The source gave no further description of the pigeons, neither their current status nor what their fate will be.

Natanz is home to Iran's heavily-bunkered underground uranium enrichment plant, which is not far from Kashan.

The activity is the focus of Iran's five-year standoff with the West, which that fears it aims to develop nuclear weapons.

Tehran vehemently denies the charge.

Last year, Iran issued a formal protest over the use of espionage by the United States to produce a key intelligence report on the country's controversial nuclear programme.

Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium


Addendum:
A nod to blogger Checkpoint Jerusalem for finding this photo of WWI-era mini-camera mounted on a homing pigeon. Watch the birdie. Checkpoint J also dug deeper and uncovered the detention of multiple secret squirrels in Iran. Curiouser and curiouser.
Er, whatever happened to doves?

Mirren to play Mossad agent in new spy flick

Given the secret agent background of Israel's designated prime minister, Ms Tzipi Livni, a new Miramax spy film called "The Debt" couldn't be more topical. But Paris is not the setting for this new cloak and dagger thriller starring Dame Helen Mirren as a classy female secret agent; the action takes place in Berlin, Britain and Israel. Shooting will soon get underway for this big studio remake of last year's HaHov about the hunt for a reviled Nazi.


The Independent reports that

Producers for the The Debt confirmed yesterday that Mirren, 63, will play Rachel Singer, a Mossad agent who lies about killing a Nazi war criminal in the 1960s. She is forced to return to work when her alleged victim reappears three decades later.

The film's director, John Madden, who achieved success with Shakespeare in Love, said Mirren was perfect for the role, which he described as "a national celebrity and retired Mossad agent, a formidable and dignified woman grappling with years of emotional disappointment, suddenly confronted by a powerful and unexpected choice". Madden describes the script as an intense psychological thrill. "It is a tremendously compelling read."

Filming will begin next year in Israel, Germany and Britain. Jonathan Ross's wife, Jane Goldman, has written the English-language script. Kris Thykier, who co-produces the film, said yesterday: "The film is about three Mossad agents who are sent into East Berlin in the 1960s to extract a man known as the 'Surgeon of Birkenau' who is masquerading as a real doctor. The capture goes wrong and, 30 years later, Mirren's character is sent back to do the job again."

For the earlier scenes, Rachel Singer will be played by a younger actress. Mirren will play the Mossad agent in the present day. Further details of the film are being kept under wraps but it is a reworking of HaHov, a little-known but well-received Hebrew-language film from last year, directed by the Israeli director Assaf Bernstein.

In Bernstein's version, Rachel Singer and the two other agents are hailed as heroes after they claim to have killed the Surgeon of Birkenau. The Nazi war criminal in fact survived the assassination attempt and the agents have to live with the knowledge that their hero status is based on a lie.

Three decades later, a decrepit old man suffering from dementia claims to be the Surgeon. The agents fear their deception will be exposed to the public and are torn over whether they should return to their original mission.

Secret power: Mossad

*Mossad – translated as "institution" – is the Hebrew nickname given to Israel's foreign intelligenceservices. Alongside Shin Bet (internal security) and Aman (militaryintelligence), it is charged with defending the state of Israel. Officially known as the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, Mossad traces it roots to the anti-British struggle in Palestine. Mossad's "Kidon" department has executive powers to carry outkidnappings and assassinations.

Israeli Kidnap threat irks Iran

Even though few intelligence analysts are taking it seriously, there's a new kidnap threat out against the Iranian leader, Mahmoud "i'm a dinner jacket" Ahmadinejad-- it's perhaps easier just to call him "Tux."
A former Mossad assassin and current cabinet member, Rafi Eitan, says Iran's head honcho should be snatched by Israeli agents to give the sponsors of Hezbollah a taste of their own medicine and obtain a bargaining chip.
Excerpts from an interview with Der Spiegel, translated by Checkpoint Jerusalem:

EITAN: Criminals have to answer for their crimes before a court of law.

SPIEGEL: Does the Mossad still hunt down old Nazis?

EITAN: That era is over. But that's not to say that such operations are completely a thing of the past.

SPIEGEL: What do you mean by that?

EITAN: It could very well be that a leader such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suddenly finds himself before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

SPIEGEL: Do you mean that seriously?

EITAN: Absolutely. Those who spread poison and want to eradicate another people has to expect such consequences.

Is Eitan serious?

Probably not.

Iran protested at the United Nations yesterday. But there's expected to be scant sympathy for Iran's objections to hostage-taking.

Better stop poking those Syrians online

Someone refuses to confirm you as a friend. Or to even acknowledge your right to exist. So better not "poke" Mr Assad.

Apparently, fears that Mossad and its ilk are infiltrating a popular social networking site have caused Syria to block Facebook access. The possibility of cyber-spies from Israel is raising government hackles. The recent fiasco over privacy and abject apologies from the young boss, Harvard alum Mark Zuckerberg, did nothing to calm these suspicions.

Syrian authorities have blocked Facebook, the popular Internet hangout, over what seems to be fears of Israeli "infiltration" of Syrian social networks on the Net, according to residents and media reports.

Residents of Damascus said that they have not been able to enter Facebook for more than two weeks. An Associated Press reporter got a blank page when he tried to open Facebook's home page Friday from the Syrian capital.

Syrian officials were not available for comment Friday because of the Muslim weekend, but some reports have suggested that the ban was intended to prevent Israeli users from infiltrating Syrian social networks.

Lebanon's daily As-Safir reported that Facebook was blocked on Nov. 18. It said the authorities took the step because Israelis have been entering Syria-based groups.

Human rights groups have regularly criticized Syrian authorities for blocking opposition sites and Internet sites critical of President Bashar Assad's government.

Former President Hafez Assad's death in 2000 after three decades of authoritarian rule raised hopes of a freer society under his British-educated son and successor.

But the younger Assad cracked down on political opponents and human rights activists, putting many of them in jail.

The Associated Press

Facebook is now the 13th most used search engine in the world, with 150,000 new people signing up every day. More than 70 per cent of British businesses have moved to restrict or ban Facebook from the workplace during office hours, including British Gas and Lloyds TSB.

100,000 Arabs hitting on X-rated Israeli website: piece in the Middle East

Apparently, an X-rated parody website that features zaftig Mossad agents stripping off their kit in a classic honey trap is getting hit on by Israel's more sexually repressed neighbors in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and the like. (This startlingly blue news comes to us courtesy of the Hornet, who flits in and out of Jerusalem.)
The Israeli webmaster for Ratuv.com--the name is Hebrew for "wet"--says the next step will be

to make movies with Israelis and Arabs performing together, in order to foster more intimate relations between the two peoples.

Yeah right. Just one more way to get screwed, I can hear both sides muttering already. The site features plenty of skin shots and is not particularly subtle. Six-pointed porn stars are not truly essential for peace in the Middle East. But nothing else seems to be working at the moment. (See one of the comparatively restrained photos from the site, above.)
Well, the renegade author Salman Rushdie takes a rather longer view of all this. He contemplated porn and Middle Eastern society in an essay called "The East is Blue"
"Pornography exists everywhere, of course, but when it comes into societies in which it's difficult for young men and women to get together and do what young men and women often like doing, it satisfies a more general need; and, while doing so, it sometimes becomes a kind of standard-bearer for freedom, even for civilization," Rushdie wrote.

Because the enterprising webmaster, Nir Shahar, has posted an all-Arabic version, he has significantly increased the size ..of his web-traffic. Even though they cannot download porn flicks because of restrictions, some 100,000 Arab-speakers have clicked in on the pictures. He told the Hollywood trade paper Variety

The most popular movie on the site is "Code Name: Deep Investigation," an X-rated parody of the arrest of dissident Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu, who spilled the beans on Israel's secret nuclear weapons program in the 1980s. He was eventually caught by Mossad agents, who sent a beautiful female agent to trap him.

"Arab people usually see female Israeli soldiers in a bad situation, so there's a lot of curiosity to see what Israeli girls look like without any uniforms," says Shahar. "We don’t make regular porn films. Our films parody the situation in Israel, so we look at issues like the elections here and Mossad. There is a lot of relevance to the Arab-Israeli situation."

Given that Israeli law precludes Shahar from accepting credit card payment from some Arab countries, he plans to set up a site registered in either Europe or the U.S.

Unhappy Easter - thousands to stay away

The Holy Sepulcher may be a little less crowded this Easter.

Some 2000 Egyptian Christians will be denied exit visas by authorities in Cairo, thwarting their annual Easter pilgrimage to Jerusalem, according to Israeli press reports today. These would-be travelers, mostly Coptic or Greek Orthodox, are further incensed because Jerusalem hotels refuse to refund their deposits, and insist that foreign Christian visitors have already reserved rooms elsewhere for high season. Egyptian Christians find themselves unwitting pawns in the row between their predominantly Muslim country and its Jewish neighbour state.

Tensions between Egypt and Israel have heightened recently during the spy trial of Mohamed Essam Ghoneim, who allegedly worked undercover for Mossad.
And a diplomatic spat over an Israeli documentary doesn't help matters much.

Shaked Spirit, which aired last week, relates how during the Six Day War, an Israeli elite unit killed 250 enemy captives. Egypt regards the slaughter of hundreds of unarmed POWS as a notorious 60s war crime. Fuming Arab politicians want to re-examine financial ties and trade with Israel after this old controversy was resurrected.

So far, there has been no perceptible change in the number of visitors to the Holy Sepulcher following another controversial documentary: the broadcast of James Cameron's 90-minute special about the "Lost Tomb of Jesus" this week. The Titanic director and the "Naked Archaeologist" Simcha Jacobovici conjectured that the remains of Jesus Christ and his family were discovered in a crypt in suburban Jerusalem, even though most archaeologists who specialize in the Near East were highly skeptical of such claims. And the docu-drama doesn't have a prayer of changing the minds of any true believers. Yet if the claims prove valid, the discovery at Talpiyot would contradict the essential Christian tenets of Resurrection and Ascension. Every spring, thousands of Christian pilgrims flock to the little chapel built atop an empty tomb at the heart of the walled city to celebrate Easter Mass. By all accounts, they are continuing to do so in droves.

Nuclear nasties and collective amnesia

Ozzy Bee says: i was going insane this morning reading the splash to haaretz: "Mossad chief: Iran will not get nuclear bomb before 2009".
i was sure the mossad chief was saying something very different last year.
i admit that i have a bit of a nervous tick when it comes to talk about the bomb. i think this comes from growing up in the shadow of the cold war and the nuclear arms race and being fed a diet of holocaust films. so this morning for my sanity i did a bit of googling. It seems that mossad's boss has done a backflip with pike, yet this spectacular manouvre has not aroused much journalistic interest, it seems. today he says there's no such thing as a "point of no return" but last year he was certain that iran was within striking distance of this in its nuclear program. there's not even one paragraph reminding readers of this background/history... so the question i have is this just more hyperbolic spin from the israelis or are they telling us the truth? .... the first half of this year - in fact till the war erupted - was a steady diet of alarm raising stories about iran and its deadly intent. ... this kind of political jerking around really, really irritates me because it really makes me feel very unsure and very threatened. but hey, maybe this is what it is to be israeli. australian politicians backflip on taxes and health and australians gripe, groan and sulk. israeli politicians and their servants backflip on war and conflict and israelis, well, they feel like they are constantly under existential threat. i don't blame them.

Nuclear Nudniks

Aren't these vintage graphics oddly compelling? This is an early Jerusalem-centric view of the world, mapped in 1581 by Heinrich Bunting at the height of the Reformation. It shows three continents of the Old World split by the seas, but connected by Jerusalem as the hub. The Red Sea looks like a bleeding gash between Africa and Asia. [Click on map to enlarge it.]

A similar shape recurs below, in the Universal Nuclear Radiation sign, a three-bladed radiation danger symbol, developed nearly 400 years later at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley.



The threat of Jewish nukes seldom makes headlines in the west these days. But an Islamic A-bomb, first developed in Pakistan, set off serious jitters, and as the atomic ambitions of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran advance, nuclear jihad looms.

Even though everyone assumes that high-tech Israel can drop the Big One at will, official nuclear policy in the Promised Land is “deliberate ambiguity.” The military won’t indulge in atomic saber-rattling, perhaps because they can depend on the US to do it for them. (Be alert for the bland American code: “all options are on the table.”)

Any Middle Eastern atomic arsenal continues to be ardently protected by euphemism. Israel’s top brass still waffles about the country’s "strategic infrastructure and deterrent capability"-- even though in 1998, Shimon Peres famously admitted that Israel built its "nuclear option: not in order to have a Hiroshima but an Oslo." In other words, the threat of nuclear annhilation by Israel is to enforce treaties, and won’t be wielded as a weapon of mass destruction. That is, if Israel actually has one. It's a bit disingenuous.

In a country the size of New Jersey, surrounded by foes, the potential of radiation blowback is so deadly that restraint should prevail. But few would trust Iran to exercise the same caution. Under Ronald Reagan, the nuclear faceoff with Moscow triggered existential angst but ultimately promoted peace through MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. But it is a risky, no-blink stance. Cold war is not for hotheads.

Israel is said to have acquired nukes with French assistance and perfected the technology around 1965. Since then, the military has stockpiled at least 82 warheads plus several nuclear submarines. Mordechai Vanunu, a scientist who was sacked from a plant at Dimona in the Negev Desert, blabbed to London’s Sunday Times in 1986 that Israeli had capacity to build up to 200 nukes, to be delivered by Jericho missiles. (For this he was kidnapped by Mossad, tried for treason and jailed for 18 years, more than half in solitary confinement.) Arab governments, which pored over Saddam’s purported nuclear recipes when they were posted briefly on the Internet this year by less-than- astute Bush supporters, accuse the West of holding double standards on nuclear proliferation.

Some even argue that if Iran were to obtain nuclear know-how, it would correct the non-conventional weaponry balance in the Middle East. This is quite a different take from Jerusalem’s David and Goliath foreign policy narrative. Maybe it is all a matter of perspective. From every which way, it's scary.