Irish Government and EU must confront Israel over Dubai murder

by Fred Johnston Tue Feb 23, 2010 11:51

The thuggish one-time nightclub bouncer, Avigdor Lieberman, insulted the Irish and British governments together by blatantly being 'economical with the truth' and sticking to the Israeli line of knowing nothing and never commenting. Yet Germany, for one, had the tone of the EU response toned down so as not to annoy the Israelis!

The Irish government certainly should take courage and offer a harder line on this; we now know that no fewer than seven Irish passports were used. Israel has proved herself to be no friend of Europe, nor of Britain and Ireland. Yet one can be sure there are peace-loving Israelis who deplore this latest incident - and let's not concentrate so much on the passports that we lose sight of the illegality of yet another murder committed by the Israelis on foreign territory.

The business of the Dublin house is interesting. It is close to certain embassies, such as the US Embassy (credit cards held by the assassins were issued in the US) and the Israeli embassy. Any investigation in Ireland into the use of passports has to include a serious look at this house, and how the Israelis chose it. Who knew what and when, for instance.

by HB Tue Feb 23, 2010 21:33

the current Irish Gov't don't want to touch this thing - look what just popped up:

Gail Folliard, Evan Dennings and Kevin Daveron, who appear to be Irish passport holders, were named as Dubai assassins.

According to The Irish Times, on 23 February 2010, Kevin Daveron gave as his home address a property in Dublin, owned by the brother of former Irish prime minister Albert Reynolds. (Dubai death suspect used Dublin 4 address: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/0223...ia=mr)

In 1994 the authorities in Northern Ireland (UK) sought the extradition from Ireland of Father Brendan Smyth, a Catholic priest linked to child sexual abuse. (Priest sex abuse case stirs political storm in Ireland.)

Albert Reynolds' government appeared to be protecting Smyth.

Reynolds' government fell, and there was talk of a conspiracy involving politicians, members of Opus Dei, and others.

Reynolds allegedly "raised US$1m in funding for his political party Fianna Fail in 1994, but only £70,000 found its way back to party HQ."

Tom Gilmartin claimed "he had been given to understand that the rest of the money 'fell off the plane and drifted to the Cayman Islands or the Bahamas'".

The Irish Times has obtained a copy of an invoice issued by Dubai's Jumeirah Emirates Towers hotel to a Mr Kevin Daveron.

The invoice gives his address as 6 Elgin Road, in Ballsbridge in Dublin.

This property has been owned by James Reynolds since the 1960s.

The property is close to the diplomatic missions of the US and Israel.

The Irish passports reportedly used in the Dubai operation contain numbers that correspond with those of legitimate Irish passport

Makes me wonder if the murderers sent to Ireland kill the Palestinians from Bethlehem afew years ago might have used No 6 Eglin rd as a base to operate from?

by dagenham Wed Feb 24, 2010 13:47

Dubai police say they have uncovered 15 more suspects in the killing last month of a senior member of the Palestinian Islamist militant group, Hamas.

Six of those believed to be responsible for the death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh had UK passports, while the rest had Irish, Australian and French documents.

14 of the suspects allegedly used credit cards issued by the same bank, Metabank in the US.

On Tuesday, Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni a former Mossad agent who was based in Paris during the 1980s applauded the killing, which Dubai believes Israel was behind.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east...8.ece

by Hugh Wed Feb 24, 2010 17:09

Inside Britain's Israel Lobby : http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/16/18628874.php

Despite wielding great influence among the highest realms of British politics and media, little is known about the individuals and groups which collectively are known as the pro-Israel lobby.

Political commentator Peter Oborne sets out to establish who they are, how they are funded, how they work and what influence they have, from the key groups to the wealthy individuals who help bankroll the lobbying.

He investigates how accountable, transparent and open to scrutiny the lobby is, particularly in regard to its funding and financial support of MPs.

The pro-Israel lobby aims to shape the debate about Britain's relationship with Israel and future foreign policies relating to it.

Oborne examines how the lobby operates from within parliament and the tactics it employs behind the scenes when engaging with print and broadcast media.

Video also available at:

http://pulsemedia.org/2009/11/17/inside-britains-israel...sode/

and

http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_cover-ups.htm

and

http://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/7375/Dispatches--Insi...-Ch-4

The British Israel Lobby - Is there an Irish Israel Lobby we don't know about?

by Sean Og Wed Feb 24, 2010 19:41

This programme said nothing that was not already in the public domain and various of the interviewees were misqouted .
He tried to make a case out of the fact that various politiians go to dinners and meetings with some people who happen to be involved in charities which have a jewish or israeli interest.
As I recall at the end of the programme he said really he could not prove any undue influence -just that various people knew other people in public life .

Now to us here -what can you prove other than perhaps some Irish people feel that Irish and Israeli values are similar and that not all the left wing ,anarchist .tree hugging ,failded socialists of this country can stop that from being so .

by Me Wed Feb 24, 2010 21:41

perhaps some Irish people feel that Irish and Israeli values are similar

perhaps some of the more psychologically-disturbed members of Irish society do feel that way, but thankfully the vast majority appear not to.

The vast majority of Irish people were quite sickened by the slaughter Israel carried out last year, and would probably be highly insulted by your assertion that they share any values worth talking about, with the insanely racially-supremacist Israeli State

by Me Wed Feb 24, 2010 21:53

Many states have a State-funded propaganda wing. In Ireland we have RTE. In Britain there is the BBC and the Iranian State funded English-Language broadcaster is Press TV

They recently broadcast a report by journalist Amina Taylor, concerning the British Pro-Israel Lobby and it's influence on British Politics and Foreign Policy.

Caption: Video Id: o1m1pqyDTrY Type: Youtube Video
Press TV (State Funded like RTE and the BBC) on The Pro-Israel Lobby in Britain

Caption: Video Id: b0SxoIisgWw Type: Youtube Video
Part 2 . . part 3 linked below

by Me Wed Feb 24, 2010 23:39

Sean Og:perhaps some Irish people feel that Irish and Israeli values are similar

here are some Israelis whose values I share:

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PACTI) "believes that torture and ill-treatment of any kind and under all circumstances is incompatible with the moral values of democracy and the rule of law."
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/50335

unfortunately their values don't appear to be shared by the majority of Israeli society, or certainly not by the Israeli Police, General Security Service (GSS), Israeli Prison Service (IPS), and Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and presumably the Israeli Gov't and much of the Judiciary (despite an apparent Israeli Supreme court ruling against the practice:

,Israel's Supreme Court ruling in Public Committee against Torture in Israel et al v. the Government of Israel et al (the HCJ Torture Petition) established the current legal basis, even though international law prohibits it unequivocally, at all times, under all conditions, with no allowed exceptions - a matter universally binding even on non-signatory states. Israel, however, signed and ratified the 1984 Convention against Torture. Yet no Israeli law explicitly bans it, except for several provisions relating to torture, including assault, abuse of defenseless persons, and the explicit prohibition of force or threats by a public employee toward interrogees.

However, Israeli court rulings ban torture, and the Supreme Court interpreted the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty to mean torture is unacceptable and prohibited. Earlier, "psychological pressure (and) a moderate degree of physical pressure" were permissible, based on the Landau Commission's recommendations that GSS interrogators may commit such acts on the basis of necessity.

The Commission condemned the practice but approved using it to obtain evidence for convictions in criminal proceedings, saying coercive interrogation tactics were necessary against "hostile (threats or acts of) terrorist activity and all expressions of Palestinian nationalism."

Despite a landmark decision on September 6, 1999 by the Israeli High Court law outlawing the use of arbitrary torture as an interrogation method, which revealed Israel as the only ‘democratic’ state in the world that permitted torture by law, methods of torture are still applied by Israeli interrogators of Palestinian detainees.

These methods include violent shaking, isolation, beating, kicking, sleep deprivation, agonizing positioning and infliction of pain for prolonged periods of time. The notorious Landau Commission Recommendations of 1987 approved the use of ‘moderate physical pressure and non-violent psychological pressure’ during the interrogation of Palestinian detainees. Landau Commission Recommendations override the Israeli High Court law by labelling Israel’s designation of the Palestinian Territories as ‘exceptional’ circumstances, thus providing justification for their deire to use what they euphemistically label ‘protective defense policies’ and their desire to conduct ‘effective investigations’ in order to ensure 'security.'

In cases that Israel practiced torture against Palestinian prisoners, explanations and justifications have been based on the necessity of torture due to these ‘exceptional circumstances’. Confessions extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli court. B’Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) reports that over 85% of Palestinian detainees are tortured during interrogation. TRC’s statistics reveal that 40% of those who are tortured suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

I'm pretty certain that State and Security Services sanctioned Torture is NOT an Israeli value shared by many Irish citizens.

Israelis beat and torture and kill Palestinian children.

Save The Children concluded that:

‘one-third of beaten children were under ten years old, one-fifth under the age of five. Nearly a third of children beaten suffered broken bones.’

If there are Irish people who share THOSE values, I can only presume that there was some horrific event in their past which caused them to become so psychologically-disturbed.

One form of torture used by the Israeli's has even become known as 'A Palestinian 'Hanging'' so ubiquitous is it's use in Israel

'Strappado' Position now known as 'A Palestinian Hanging' . . .

. . . Also used by a well-known bunch of Racial Supremacists, in the past

Banana Position - widely used in Israel

not enough room to lie-down OR Stand-up Or strech-out

by Me Thu Feb 25, 2010 00:18

what do any of those things have to do with Israeli State sanctioned torture??

Looking at your list it appears that the Irish people have in the past been subject to a similar experience to that suffered by the Palestinian people over the last 60 yrs or so.

It's no wonder the vast majority Irish people are so able to recognise the sheer depravity of the Israeli actions over the last 60 yrs

And equally it explains why there are only a small number of (probably psychologically-disturbed/damaged) Irish people such as yourself who openly support such despicable practices.

by C&I Thu Feb 25, 2010 10:32

It is time that every Israeli passport is scrutinised in the minutest detail, and every passport of dual citizens is put on a hot list to trigger a thorough investigation of their travel patterns.

People carrying these documents are clearly (at least statistically) likely to be a threat to the states they pass through, and to the states issuing dual nationality to Israeli citizens.

by dagenham Thu Feb 25, 2010 11:22

A self-confessed Israeli spy has been given a one-year suspended prison sentence by a Swiss court for his part in a bungled wire-tapping operation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/822143.stm

New Zealand has imposed diplomatic sanctions on Israel over the activities of two alleged members of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3896009.stm

The Lillehammer affair refers to the assasination by Mossad agents of a Moroccan waiter, Ahmed Bouchiki, in Lillehammer, Norway on July 21, 1973. The Israeli agents had mistaken their victim for Ali Hassan Salameh, the chief of operations for Black September. Most of the Mossad team was captured and tried for the murder, in a major blow to the intelligence agency's reputation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair

Benjamin Netanyahu authorised an operation against Khaled Mashal, the Hamas representative in Jordan[42]. On the 25th September, 1997, Mr Mashal was injected in the ear with a toxin (thought to have been the synthetic opiate Fentanyl[43]). Jordanian authorities apprehended two Mossad agents posing as Canadian tourists and detained a further six.
The fall out from the failed assassination eventually led to the release of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of the Hamas movement, and scores of Hamas prisoners. Mr Netanyahu flew into Amman on the 29th September to apologize personally to King Hussein, but was met instead by the Kings brother, Crown Prince Hassan[44].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossad#Jordan

Last November, a sharp-eyed Israeli woman named Niva Ben-Harush was alarmed to notice a young man attaching something that looked suspiciously like a bomb to the underside of a car in a quiet street near Tel Aviv port. When police arrested him, he claimed to be an agent of the Mossad secret service taking part in a training exercise: his story turned out to be true – though the bomb was a fake.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/19/ian-black-m...dubai

by Suspicious Thu Feb 25, 2010 12:23

"It is time that every Israeli passport is scrutinised in the minutest detail, and every passport of dual citizens is put on a hot list to trigger a thorough investigation of their travel patterns.
People carrying these documents are clearly (at least statistically) likely to be a threat to the states they pass through, and to the states issuing dual nationality to Israeli citizens."

There's fuck all chance of that. If it won't go away and hots up more then there's maybe an outside chance that they might give joe schwartz israeli the rubber glove in the airport for a short while if pushed and just for show until it all dies down a bit, but the fact is, the really dangerous terrorists often have tacit government approval and protection. The "war on terror" has plenty of government approved exceptions like for example, Luis Posada Carriles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Posada_Carriles

He is being protected by the US despite a well known record of psychopathic terrorism. Mossad usually benefit from this protection too, but I don't know what is really going on in the background in this case. Usually such operations don't get such attention and sink like a stone. There's more to this case than meets the eye, that's for sure!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_the_War_on_T...orism

by Sean Og Fri Feb 26, 2010 08:21

THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE TO SHOW THE WORLD ABOUT IRISH VALUES

REAL I R A comes "clean " ---------- stop preaching to me - Mr Me

*************************************************************************************

irishtimes.com
- Last Updated: Friday, February 26, 2010, 06:43

Real IRA admits Derry murder

Leaders to 'stand up' to killers of Derry man |

26/02/2010Man found murdered in Derry |

25/02/2010Body of man found shot dead in Derry |

25/02/2010The Real IRA last night claimed responsibility for murdering a man in Derry.

The claim came 24 hours after the body Ciaran Doherty (31) was found dumped on the roadside outside Derry City.

The father of a two-year-old girl, was stripped, tied up and shot in a remote lane.

Detectives investigating the killing said the murdered man, who was shot in the head, was soon to get married to his long-term partner.

Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson and deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness pledged to stand up to groups wedded to violence.

The leaders said they would show a united front against the killers.

Mr Robinson said: “We are going to stand up to the people who carry out these kind of activities.

“Where they offer fear we will offer hope.” Mr McGuinness said: “They represent the past. We represent the future. We represent the new way forward.

“And we are absolutely dedicated and determined to stand united against the activities of these people.”

Mr McGuinness added: “I think those people who were responsible for (this) dirty deed need to come forward and give an explanation to the citizens as to why they are continuing with these stupid and futile acts.”

The victim lived in the Brandywell area overlooking Lough Foyle and was due to be married within three months.

The murdered man was found by a member of the public at around 10.30pm on the Braehead Road close to the border with Co Donegal and 400m off the main Letterkenny Road.

Police said a motive had yet to be established for the killing.

Detectives said Mr Doherty was known to police but said this could never excuse his murder.

In November 2009 Mr Doherty gave an interview to the Derry Journal newspaper in which he claimed he had been approached by the security service, MI5.

According to the paper, he was trying to open a cigarette manufacturing company but had been turned down by Revenue and Customs when he was approached by an agent for MI5.

He had also publicly denied any link to a suspected dissident-related drug find in Co Donegal.

Both Mr Robinson and Mr McGuinness said they would stand against the killers.

Mr Robinson added: “We intend over the coming days to set out very clearly to the people of Northern Ireland the choices that they have.

“We have offered a way forward where we have a shared society...where the people of Northern Ireland can look to stability and prosperity.

“We believe that is the way for our province to go.” He added: “People can compare what we have to offer with the bloodshed and evil that other people are offering.”

by dagenham Fri Feb 26, 2010 09:35

In 1973, a Moroccan waiter working in the Norwegian town of Lillehammer was shot dead by a Mossad, who mistook him for Ali Hassan Salameh PLO operative.

Two members of the hit squad were arrested the next day as they reused a getaway car to travel to the airport, and one of them, provided police with a paper trail that led to the capture and imprisonment of several of his comrades, and sparked a diplomatic incident.

Twenty-seven years later, a paper trail - though this time electronic - has once again exposed the work of a group of assassins, pointed the finger of suspicion at Israel. Using immigration records and receipts from the credit cards used by 14 of the suspects, the authorities were also able to discover the movements of all 26 into and out of Dubai both during an earlier mission last year and around the time of Mr Mabhouh's death.

The names and details on the UK passports used by eight of the 12 suspects have so far turned out to belong to British-Israeli citizens living in Israel.

Blundering and back-pedaling

Israel's media and former Mossad agents initially praised the agency for carrying out another successful assassination abroad, but soon Dubai revealed unprecedented information about the operation and it emerged that Israeli citizens had had their identities stolen.

Some commentators have since gone so far as to question whether it was even a Mossad hit, citing contradictions in the initial reports of Mr Mabhouh's death, the large number of suspects, their inability to evade detection or disable CCTV cameras.

A former Mossad agent, Rami Igra, also dismissed its involvement due to the assassins' failure to disable CCTV cameras at key moments and their use of passports belonging to foreign nationals living in Israel.

"It was so stupid, it couldn't be Israel," he said. "You don't go over the speed limit in a place where there are going to be cameras, because you are going to be photographed."

"The whole thing shows that whoever did it was very unprofessional."

This despite a litany of past bungled Mossad operations in Norway, Switzerland, Jordan and New Zealand.

Furthermore questions raised by former agents about the numbers of operatives involved do not tally with the Norwegian investigation which identified at least 14 Mossad operatives were involved.

All of the hallmarks

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who is now a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, says Wednesday's revelations did not change his opinion that Israel was behind the assassination in Dubai.

"This most likely was a Mossad operation. All the signatures - European passports, the way the team moved quickly to leave the country - cumulatively paint a pretty convincing case," he told the BBC.

Mr Riedel says it would have been highly unusual for the hit squad to have visited Dubai using the stolen identities last year just for reconnaissance, as the police claim, and that this may have been an attempt to eliminate the Hamas leader that had failed.

He also doubted that all of the suspects had been in the Gulf just for one mission.

"What the Dubai authorities are uncovering now is not just the assassination team, but probably the entire Mossad station," he explains. "Dubai would be a perfect place to carry out not just a one-off operation, but a long-term one against Iran."

by iosaf Fri Feb 26, 2010 17:19

Felicia Langer, Gustave Massiah, Vicky Pena, Lluis Llach and Pilar Samprieto will read the opening speech of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine first session being held in Barcelona this weekend. You can watch this online here: http://www.bcnsolidaria.tv/tv/ I don't think we go far saying that group learn to hate that other group until we see how much we learn ourselves or refuse to correct in our conditioning. For example, I do not think a white female in distress or missing white female child deserves thousands more space of my media time and attention and societal concern than any other missing person. No state or regime of the levant or middle east can even pretend regardless of all the usual external or internal pressure and factors & historical regard to be proactively seeking to constitute a healthy plural society. Neither do we but considered on many scales of plurality and human rights most European societies are indeed better places to live and be born in than any state of the middle East.

The Russell Tribunal also known as the International War Crimes Tribunal or Russell-Sartre Tribunal, was a public body organized by British philosopher Bertrand Russell and hosted by French philosopher and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre. Along with Ken Coates, Ralph Schoenman, and several others, the tribunal investigated and evaluated American foreign policy and military intervention in Vietnam, following the 1954 defeat of French forces at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and the establishment of North and South Vietnam.

The first session of the Russell Tribunal for Palestine will be held this weekend in Barcelona, the capital of the Mediterranean Union and the seat of the Barcelona process which is the EU's official strategy instrument for resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian problems.

A few Irish and Indy Irish heads will be there & no doubt coverage will be available to read on this site. some garbled, some massaged, some gibberish but coverage nonetheless.

by Me Sun Feb 28, 2010 22:55

John Pilger (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24860.htm)

Every "Jerusalem Day" – the day Israel celebrates its military conquest of the city – Rami has stood in the street with a photograph of Smadar and crossed Israeli and Palestinian flags, and people spit at him and tell him it was a pity he was not blown up, too. And yet he and Nurit and their comrades have made extraordinary gains. Rami goes to Israeli schools with a Palestinian member of the group, and they show maps of what ought to be Palestine, and they hug each other. "This is like an earthquake to children who have been socialized and manipulated into hating," he said. "They say to us, ‘You have opened my eyes.’"

In October, Rami and Nurit sat in the Israeli High Court while the state counsel, "stammering, unprepared, and unkempt," wrote Nurit, "stood like a platoon commander in charge of new recruits and refuted … the allegations." Salwa and Bassam Aramin, Palestinian parents, were there, too. Tears streaked Salwa’s face. Their ten-year-old daughter Abir Aramin was killed by an Israeli soldier firing a rubber bullet point-blank at her small head while she was standing beside a kiosk buying sweets with her sister. The judges seemed bored and one of them remarked that Israeli soldiers were rarely indicted, so it would be best to forget it. The state counsel laughed. This was norm

Israeli values?

"The judges seemed bored and one of them remarked that Israeli soldiers were rarely indicted, so it would be best to forget it. The state counsel laughed. This was norm

by Fred Johnston Mon Mar 01, 2010 19:31

It is known that Israeli embassy types make forays into the arts' world to offer trips and appearances in Israel to the intellectually gullible and it is interesting that both Eoghan Harris in The Sunday Independent and a journalist in Galway newspaper, The City Tribune, have both visited Auschwitz in the past few weeks ago and provided long features on their visit. Interesting, but is it a coincidence?

There will an attempt by Israel to claw back some moral high ground after the recent international disgrace; mind you, I often have believed that the indiscriminate us of the slaughter of millions to justify or in some way rationalise the destruction of Palestinians or legitimise the land-grab which settlement-building (and more recently, archeology) actually is was an insult to the memory of every Jew who died in the camps.

by LOL Mon Mar 01, 2010 20:10

AN Israeli spy based in Dublin is suspected of supplying information for the forged Irish passports used by the team of assassins who murdered a Hamas commander in Dubai.

And details of more fake Irish passports used in the assassination of a Hamas official are expected to be given to the Irish Ambassador in Dubai today.

Ambassador Ciaran Madden will meet with officials from the United Arab Emirates, who have confirmed that more fake Irish passport numbers had been identified.

Another "three or four fake passports" are expected to be added to the five allegedly used in the assassination of a Hamas commander last month.

Diplomatic sources said that the passport owners whose numbers were used for fake passports had travelled in Europe and the US but not in the Middle East. ==== then how did the Israelis get access to the Passport numbers ??

The spy is suspected of providing a false address at 6 Elgin Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin -- owned by Jim Reynolds, the brother of former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds -- for one of the passport holders. . . . . . .

Speaking in the European Parliament, Labour MEP Proinsias De Rossa said: "The stealing of Irish citizens' identities and the abuse of Irish passports by another state is a gross infringement of Irish sovereignty. It is not the normal practice for friendly states to abuse each other's sovereignty in this way.

"One can only assume that Israel either has no regard for international law or holds Ireland and the other EU states affected in contempt."

It also emerged last night that gardai are to forensically examine the house at 6 Elgin Road. Jim Reynolds said he was "shocked and horrified" that the address of a house he owns was used. . . . . .

Officially, the Department of Foreign Affairs was playing down reports that further Irish passports were used in the murder plot. A spokesman said the reports were being examined, but nothing further had been confirmed.

Meanwhile, the department confirmed last night that it had tracked down the last of the five Irish citizens whose passport numbers were used by the team of assassins.

"We have offered to issue them with new passport," a spokesman said. The department said none of the five had encountered any difficulties while travelling abroad.

by dagenham Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:18

Dubai Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim urged Meir Dagan, the director of Israel's Mossad spy agency, to "be a man" and admit that Israel stands behind last month's killing of Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, according to a report Saturday in Emirati newspaper Al-Khaleej.

Tamim also told the paper that Dubai has DNA evidence from one of the assassins and fingerprints from the crime scene.

Mabhouh was killed last month in his hotel room in what Dubai police have said they are near certain was a hit by Israel's Mossad spy agency. Police said the killers traveled to the Gulf Arab emirate using forged passports from the U.K., Ireland, France, Germany and Australia.

The Dubai police chief also said he believes Mabhouh's assassins are currently in Israel. He said he is seeking the creation of an international team of investigators from the five countries whose passports were used in the killing, and said those governments are all working closely with Dubai.

Tamim reiterated that if Mossad is found to have been behind the assassination, he would seek the arrest of Dagan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

by V for vendetta Sat Mar 06, 2010 18:08

People like frank are just doing their job as paid electronic warfare and communications soldiers of Israel. Israel made no secret of their widespread monitoring and misinformation campaigns on prominent websites to sew confusion and run interference while the military and settler wings get on with their systematic land grabs and punishment attacks with their expensive american supplied weaponry. Don't even bother engaging I say. It's not as if they will ever change their minds on anything. Their job is to confuse YOU about what you were once clear about. They are very successful at what they do.

by Fred Johnston Sat Mar 06, 2010 22:15

It would do some of the correspondents here no harm to go online and read al Ha'aretz now and then. For one thing, Israel intends to continue building settlements. They do this in the knowledge that the West will keep their mouths shut - our own Foreign Minister, Micheál Martin, having been refused entry into Gaza by Israel, just after Irish passports had been used by Mossad to commit murder(thus placing the lives of every Irish passport holder at risk in the Middle East) grovellingly apologised for Israeli Ambassador Evrony's name being - rightly - ripped from a visitor's book in Carrickmacross! If Martin was a patriotic Irishman with concern for his fellow citizens, he'd have torn it out himself. Martin contended that we were not being decent to a representative of a foreign country - while they manhandled Martin himself out of Gaza!

This pitiful reluctance to be strong in defence of one's people against the Israel government and its diktats is - masquerading as it does behind some pretence at decency - a degrading form of moral cowardice. The Israelis long ago dispensed with moral or ethical considerations in their determination to found a state on the homes of an indigenous people. Further, there is nothing more patronisingly anti-Semitic than a knee-scrapping, forehead-to-the-earth deference which amounts to a permission to act in any way, employ any method necessary to advance one's cause.

This attitude virtually treats Israel as a lesser entity incapable properly of governing itself or having a place in the world unless it is given the sort of moral leeway one would give an emotionally disadvantaged child. Israel cannot - for her own sake as well as that of the Palestinians - be excused every time it breaks someone else's valuable china or tramps its muddy boots into someone else's front room.

Martin's ridiculous and quite silly cap-doffing to Ambassador Evrony is as insulting to Evrony and to mature Israelis as it is to Irish citizens. The decision to rip out the guest-book page was, morally and in terms of political conscience, a right one. Israel should be permitted to take it on the chin. The first country in Europe finally to say 'No' to some mischievous - and ultimately anti-Palestinian - Israeli demand will be applauded, I would argue, by every right-thinking and peace-loving Israel.

by A non-racist individual Tue Mar 09, 2010 03:17

Does Israel hope to spark a new wave of suicide bombing?

By Stuart Littlewood - http://www.redress.cc/palestine/slittlewood20100309

B-52s, F-16s, Apaches, drones and tanks – that’s the ticket. Awesome hardware gives any murky mission a moral superiority that gets nods of approval from the governing élite in the drawing rooms of London and Washington.

What is not acceptable is delivering the high explosive in person, all the way to the target, and looking your enemy in the eye as you push the detonator. That simply isn’t cricket.

“There can be no justification, under any circumstances, for taking innocent lives through terrorism." Those were the very words used by Liberal Democrat Party leader Charles Kennedy in 2004, when he sacked British MP Jenny Tonge from her front-bench spokes job for suggesting she might consider becoming a suicide bomber herself if she had to live through the situation the Palestinians were in.

Statistics from Israel's B'Tselem make the Palestinians’ situation clear. Between 2000 and the start of Israel’s "Cast Lead" blitzkrieg on Gaza in December 2008, the Israelis’ vast standing army, equipped with the most advanced weaponry American money can buy, killed 4,790 Palestinian civilians in their homeland. Of these, 952 were children.

Yes, 952 young Palestinian lives horribly snuffed out and their parents desolated...

In response Palestinians, with their garden-shed weapons, killed 490 Israeli civilians, including 84 children. In this vicious game of murder the Israelis were leading the Palestinians by 11 to 1.

Those were the “circumstances” in which Kennedy sacked Jenny Tonge.
Terrorism most foul

During the Cast Lead onslaught – the foulest act of state terrorism for decades – Israel slaughtered at least 350 more children, and Gaza has been under daily attack ever since. So the "most moral army in the world" must have blown to bits, shredded, incinerated or smashed with snipers’ bullets at least 1,400 youngsters in the last nine and a half years. The numbers left maimed and crippled don't bear thinking about.
"Israeli policy is to grind the Palestinians into poverty and helplessness, to take away everything they own and let them rot in a Zionist-prepared hell."

In their study, Palestinian Suicide Bombers: A Statistical Analysis, Sean Yom and Basel Saleh found that many Palestinian suicide attackers had been on the receiving end of violent encounters with the Israeli military, resulting in injury to themselves, or arrest, or a close family member being killed.

From October 2000 to March 2004, over 2,800 Palestinian fatalities and 25,600 non-lethal injuries were inflicted by the Israeli armed forces. Revenge, often fuelled by deteriorating economic prospects and the imposition of harsh policies, provided recruiters with a ready supply of volunteers. Persuading individuals not to support or participate in violence would necessarily involve “improving the structural health of Palestinian society”.

Fat chance of that. Israeli policy is to grind the Palestinians into poverty and helplessness, to take away everything they own and let them rot in a Zionist-prepared hell. Far from allowing the health of Palestinian society to improve, they tighten the screw of oppression further. In the period covered in the study they deliberately destroyed some 4,700 Palestinian homes while continuing their normal programme of slaughter, dispossession, abduction and all the other atrocities they are famed for.

to paraphrase famous Irish writer -

"a 'Terrorist' is just a guy without an Air-force"

look at the numbers . . .

that's all you got to do. ..

they tell the whole story

by joe Wed Mar 10, 2010 15:08

The Israeli embassy seems to view itself as being above the law in this country with its agents actively and even openly operating in Ireland. The embassy security agents who harrassed IPSC member Frida Hughes last week should be identified , interviewed and questioned over links to this murder . Did the gardai who were present when the Israeli security agents harassed Ms Hughes ask them if they were part of the same team that stole Irish passports to facilitate murder in a foreign jurisdiction?

Yesterday the full force of the law came down on seven Muslims living in Waterford and Cork . The seven were arrested as part of an international investigation that involved close co-operation with the FBI, the CIA, British security agencies and the Swedish security police . The four men and three women are being held as part of an investigation into an alleged conspiracy to murder Lars Vilks ,a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the prophet Mohammad with the body of a dog two-and-a-half years ago. Many Muslims viewed the Vilks cartoon as part of an ongoing Islamophobic provocation campaign orchestrated by western state intelligence agencies with media connivance , and backed by the Israeli regime to offset criticism of its murderous policy towards Palestinians.

by Me Wed Mar 10, 2010 21:35

more astounding levels of chutzpah from our Israeli 'friends'.

[Israeli] Envoy declines Dáil committee invite - http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0310/....html

Ruth Zakh, a counsellor for the Isreali Embassy in Dublin, said that Dr Evrony had “respectfully declined” the invitation as he had no information on the matter.

“Dr Evrony has nothing to contribute on the matter therefore it would be of no use for him to attend the meeting therefore we had to respectfully decline the invitation,” she said.

Meanwhile, at a meeting held today, the committee assented to a request made by the Israeli Ambassador to meet with Dr Alan Dershowitz from Harvard Law School. The Israeli embassy suggested Dr Dershowitz as an appropriate witness to give the Israeli perspective regarding the military campaign in Gaza and the subsequent Goldstone Report. The Committee was happy to agree to this and it is keen to give all sides of the conflict on opportunity to offer their viewpoints.

Given that the Israeli envoy claims he has ' as he had no information on the matter. . . . . nothing to contribute on the matter therefore it would be of no use for him to attend the meeting . . . why on earth would he recommend that the Dail committee invite the attendance of a citizen of the United States, the well known pro-Israel racist, Alan Dershowitz, who could not possibly have more to contribute on any matter relating to this [the alleged, cough cough] illegal use of passports by [alleged, cough cough] Israeli murderers, than a representative of the Israeli Gov't?

And even more mysteriously, why on earth would the Dail committee agree to such a request to extend such an invite, made be a person who has such obvious disrespect for the Dail committee?

by me Wed Mar 10, 2010 22:08

Many Muslims viewed the Vilks cartoon as part of an ongoing Islamophobic provocation campaign orchestrated by western state intelligence agencies with media connivance , and backed by the Israeli regime to offset criticism of its murderous policy towards Palestinians.

not only 'many Muslims' feel that why - so to do does almost any half-way intelligent person who has been paying attention to which fine upstanding members of the fourth estate chose to reproduce this cartoon and others like it.

For example, Phillipe Val, the publisher of the French satirical magazine 'Chalie Hebdo' loudly proclaimed his love of 'Freedom of the press' while choosing to reproduce these cartoons, which he knew were certain to cause offense among Muslims.

Then a very short time later the very same Phillipe Val just as loudly sacked the satirist 'Sine' when he was accused of 'Anti-Semitism', following a rather shrill uproar by France's Jewish community, when the satirist commented in a piece concerning the marriage, to a rich heiress of Jewish extraction, of the son of Nichols Sarkosy, that 'He'll go a long way in life, this lad!'. The piece was published without controversy - until several days later, when a radio presenter referred to it as 'anti-Semitic'.

For some reason Phillipe Val did not consider 'freedom of the press' to have any bearing on THAT particular matter. he even commented on the 'offense' it caused to France's Jewish community

For some reason Mr Val has no problem causing offense to people of the Muslim religious persuasion but appears very very reluctant to cause any sort offense to people of Jewish religious persuasion

Personally I believe that the press has the right to cause 'offense' to people of any religious persuasion, but when I see that they are very willing to offend Muslims but very very un-willing to offend Jews then I begin to suspect that 'freedom of the Press' means nothing to these people and in fact they published the Anti-Muslim cartoons because, rather than being noble defenders of the 'Freedom of the Press', they are a bunch of Anti-Muslim racists

by HB Fri Mar 12, 2010 01:43

http://www.ramzybaroud.net/articles.php?id=0387620d89ef...72301

Who has weaved this fascinatingly reductionist account of al-Mabhouh’s life in such a short span of time? His family? Hamas? The Palestinian media? No, none of these. The creator of this biography is Israel, the very country that assassinated him. Now that is truly outrageous: the murderer writes and convinces the world of the story of the murder victim. And the media gladly runs with it.

Expectedly, a Palestinian would tell al-Mabhouh’s story in entirely different terms. He was born in Jabalia, one of Gaza’s poorest and most crowded refugee camps. These key words alone – Gaza, poor, crowded, refugee - helps to unravel the real story of al-Mabhouh. It is the story shared by so many people who still live a life of utter anguish, poverty and resistance in the Gaza Strip – and elsewhere - which is under inhumane siege and successive wars by the world’s fourth strongest army. The story is not about abducted occupation soldiers, but about millions of refugees, not about Iran, but about Gaza and Palestine, not about luxury hotels, but about horrifyingly desolate refugee camps.

But Palestinians – like many oppressed peoples around the world – have no right to their own narrative. Their story is negligible, if not wholly irrelevant. Israel commits the murder, Israel offers the explanation, and eventually Israel gets away with both the crime and the lie. Al-Mabhouh’s murder might eventually inspire several documentaries that highlight the murderous nature of Palestinian militants, and the unequalled brilliance of Israeli retaliation. Another Steven Spielberg’s Munich might already be in the making. The first scene of this would not be al-Mabhouh’s family forced to flee their village in Palestinian after untold butchery by Zionist militants in 1948. Instead it might show a dark-skinned, menacing Palestinian slaughtering two helpless Israeli soldiers pleading for their lives.

We are, more or less, told to forget about al-Mabhouh. After all, his name is used along with Hamas and Iran in the same sentence. That should be enough to tell us that his life is dispensable - just like the lives of over 1,400 Palestinians who were killed by the Israeli army in Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009. Israel may well be preparing for yet another attack on the impoverished Strip. The tunnels that represent the lifeline for the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are being routinely blown up by Israeli warplanes, detonated by dynamites and blocked by an Egyptian steel wall. Gazans cannot be allowed any weapons to defend themselves either. The ‘international community’ has held many meetings to ensure that no weapons find their way to Gaza. The US in particular is utterly firm regarding this issue - although not at all firm about ensuring that food or medicine reach the Strip. Al-Mabhouh may have been killed due to Israel’s belief he was arming the resistance. This partly explains why the ‘international community’ is not at all moved by the murder. Al-Mabhouh might have been involved in breaking the Western consensus on denying Gaza both food and arms. . . . .

We don’t really know much about the man aside from what Israeli wants us to know.

by Fred Johnston Fri Mar 12, 2010 13:10

Excellent piece and absolutely true. The arrogance of Israel in all of this is bolstered by the cowardice of Europe and America to tackle head-on the fact of Israel now being a terrorist state that 'exports' terror - the kind of 'rogue' state the US has isolated before now. But the US, that great exporter of democracy under a sheet of napalm or phosphorous, cannot take on Israel. Israel knows this.

In any case twe have, as the commentator above so aptly points out, lost sight of the fact of the Mossad murder and the use of Irish passports to commit that murder: how much global murder are we in fact complicit in now through exporting arms and military technology and permitting US aggression to have a pint in Shannon on its way to another crime scene? We have lost - because we were intended to lose - the victim in all of this.

Ireland must send out a clear message that we will not be complicit in Israeli terror murders, whether committed in Dubai or Gaza. Nor we will we be complicit in Israeli silence on the matter of the murder in Dubai: the Israeli ambassador continues to play from the same music-sheet as his paymasters in Israel and our Department of Foreign Affairs and our government should demand his expulsion. Anything less and we have become accessories.

by joe Fri Mar 12, 2010 14:19

Since last October, Colleen Renee LaRose was secretly under arrest in the US in connection with an alleged terror plot. LaRose, “Jihad Jane”, was charged at the beginning of this week with: conspiracy to commit murder overseas, conspiracy to provide support to terrorists, making false statements and attempted identity theft. All these charges could be leveled against members of the staff of the Israeli embassy in Ireland .

Within hours of LaRose's public indictment seven Muslims living in Ireland were arrested under a blaze of Islamophobic publicity that attempted to link the seven to the American woman. The seven were brought before the courts this Tuesday and Wednesday but not named in the media while both the courts and the precincts of the courts where they appeared were placed off limits to the press and public.

Chasing a salacious witness photograph two weeks previously the press in Ireland had complained how under Article 34 of the Constitution justice must be administered in public .But the same media has in this case acquiesced to its own gagging, helping to reinforce the message that the seven Muslims are so dangerous that extraordinary measures are needed to protect the public from them. The simpler explanation -that the gardai, after six months of close cooperation with the FBI have no evidence that any of the seven have done anything wrong other than being in email contact with a woman who is by most accounts a fantasist – has not been raised by the media.

Fred Johnson gives the dangerously naïve impression that Europe and America would really like to stand up to Israel but are too are cowardly to do so when he writes above, “ The arrogance of Israel in all of this is bolstered by the cowardice of Europe and America to tackle head-on the fact of Israel now being a terrorist state that 'exports' terror”

Western governments including our own are complicit in what Israel is doing, Fred. The double standards in the treatment dished out to the seven Muslims this week prove that complicity when compared with the tolerant attitude of the Irish government to the use of Irish passports to facilitate Israeli murder. By its inaction against the Israeli embassy, the Irish government has both literally and metaphorically allowed the Israeli government a passport to murder.

by Frank Adam - private citizen Thu Mar 25, 2010 15:07

A lot of your correspondents' outrage sounds ironic against the backdrop of Irish History - smacks a bit of the Phoenix Park murders and then Michael Collins first big op was the infiltration of their lodgings and simultaneous killings of 13 government agents whence the subsequent Bloody Sunday shootings.. oh yes did not the Irish war of independencee start with the shooting of a pair of (RC) country policemen...?

by Fred Johnston Thu Mar 25, 2010 15:41

I wouldn't entirely disagree with 'Joe' above and yes, it is perfectly possible that I am being naive. I know we've been complicit, especially by our silence. But also by our cowardice and feelings of guilt which simply no longer have relevance. The Israelis treated the survivors of the Holocaust with contempt and loathing when they staggered on shore and many old survivors live in poverty in Israel. Yet their experiences have been hijacked to bolster an ideology of expansionism and the destruction of another people. We should be able to say this, talk about it. We should stop being afraid.

by Frank Adam - private citizen Mon Apr 05, 2010 16:47

The Russell tribunal has no standing in law of any sort whatsoever - until both parties sign up to agree to its arbitrations qv the Arbitration Act..

by HB Mon Apr 05, 2010 17:54

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine bases its work on Experts’ and Witnesses’ Committees that attempt to establish the facts and build up the legal arguments that will then be presented to the Tribunal. National Support Committees will contribute to the preparation of experts’ reports, promote popular mobilisation and media coverage and participate in fundraising. there is strong support from the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Portugal, Ireland, Lebanon, Algeria, Australia, Italy, South Africa, Egypt and, of course, from Israel and Palestine. Further contacts are under way for the reation of such Committees in other countries and continents.

This week the Russell Tribunal on Palestine ruled in Barcelona, Spain on six questions concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Tribunal's judgements are not judicially binding but are meant to examine the complicity of the European Union in perpetuating what the Tribunal called Israel's "policy of war, occupation, and colonization for 60 years." The jurists were assembled from around the globe and issued their conclusions on Wednesday, March 3rd. Among the conclusions, the jury stipulated that Israel practices a form of apartheid.

The Real News' Lia Tarachansky attended the Barcelona session and spoke to jurists and participants.

Caption: Video Id: kZM2fsd4giY Type: Youtube Video
Sanction Israel Russell tribunal says

by HB Tue Apr 06, 2010 14:14

"We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we developed two judicial systems: one -- progressive, liberal -- in Israel; and the other - cruel, injurious - in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day".
The war's seventh day by Michael Ben-Yair (Israel's Attorney General, 1993 - 1996)

http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2010/04/05/was-israel-eve...rt%29

More than six decades ago the Joint Chiefs of Staff cautioned Truman about the "fanatical concepts of the Jewish leaders" and their plans for "Jewish military and economic hegemony over the entire Middle East."

In December 1948, Albert Einstein and 27 prominent Jews urged us "not to support this latest manifestation of fascism." They warned that a "Leader State" was the goal of the "terrorist party" that has governed Israel over all but a handful of the past 62 years.

The Joint Chiefs foresaw the "Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the U.S.] in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives."

Soon after Truman recognized Israel, his presidential campaign train was "refueled" by Zionist Jews with $400,000 in contributions ($3.6 million in 2010 dollars). Soon thereafter, Israel betrayed the U.S. by allying with the British and the French to invade Egypt.

Though London and Paris soon abandoned the operation, months more were required to dissuade Tel Aviv from pursuing their expansionist agenda then-as now-for Greater Israel.

Outraged by Israeli duplicity, Eisenhower sought help to rein them in. He soon found that even then (as now) the Israel lobby dominated Congress. Thus the former Supreme Allied Commander appeared on television with an appeal directly to the American people. Then-unlike now-a U.S. Commander in Chief threatened to reduce assistance to Israel.

To revamp Israel's tattered image, New York public relations expert Edward Gottlieb retained novelist Leon Uris to write Exodus. Jewish Zionists have routinely proven themselves skilled storytellers and masterful mythmakers. . .

The Israeli version of 'The Road Map for Peace' - The Hebron-Halhoul road, 19 Sept 2003. The road on the left is for Israeli cars. The blocked road on the right is for Palestinians.

by Frank Adam - private citizen Tue Apr 06, 2010 17:09

...but that does not mean it wishes to exert hegemony over Western Europe. Accusing Israel of ridiculous projects - subliminal Arab hashish dreams - is a way of justifying intra -Arab competition to take bits of Palestine themselves as in 1949 - 67 or Syria imposing on Lebanon; and Egypt and Syria trying to subvert Jordan as in 1970 - 71.

In 1947 the Britsh threw the Mandate hot potato back to the UN and said they would get out by May 1948. The UN drew up a partition plan finalised as UN 181 which the five Arab states then members of the UN, and several other "non -state actors" rejected, ie refused to adhere to international norms from before Israel came to be. The rest of the World also does not abide by international norms by not taking their embassies to Jerusalem - again from well before the 1967 war and Israeli capture of the rest of ex-British Palestine.

There has never been an Israeli plan to impose hegemony over the Levant let alone the entire Arab World. If anybody did reach for regional hegemony it was Colonel Nasser and now the ayatolllahs' Iran. Do consider that if the Arab parties to their - silly - vendetta with Israel had accepted the Israeli June '67 offer to return to the 1949 border in return for a peace treaty, then a lot of what has happened since, would - in a manner of speaking - not have fallen on their toes. Any single twit can start a fight. To finish a fight needs the agreement of all the parties and the Arab states and PA have hardly been rushing to try to broker peace - the proof is the PA rejects direct talks, as under the Mandate as before 1967 and since for most of the time.

Do remember that the warring powers left Switzerland and Sweden alone just because they are, and were well armed enough to safeguard their neutrality. If the Arab states that got their over-ambitious selves into the 1948 Palestine War had then made peace with Israel they would have defused the Arab - Israel side of Middle East conflict entirely in the same way that British - US peace safeguarded Canada - and Latin-American independence after the British and the RN signified that Spain was one thing but, "Spain and the Indies," quite another inclusive the Johnny come lately Monroe Doctrine.

by HB Tue Apr 06, 2010 17:14

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/04/d....html

Dubai Police Chief Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim returned to the spotlight after weeks of relative silence to reveal that "one or two" more European suspects are linked to the assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud Mabhouh, but their names have not been released for "security reasons."

In a lengthy and wide-ranging interview with Jaber Harmi of the Qatari newspaper Al Sharq published Sunday, Tamim praised Britain's cooperation in the investigation but said that other European countries are not working "in the spirit of cooperation."

"Patience has its limits," he warned, without specified consequences.

Suspected Israeli assassins allegedly used the identities of European nationals to forge fake passports to enter Dubai and kill Mabhouh. Experts say that Dubai has tried to verify the frauds with European governments before releasing new names.

So far, Dubai has relied on the cooperation of other countries to confirm or deny the falsification of their passports. If one of Dubai's European partners was dragging its feet in helping to identify the two unnamed suspects, Tamim comments may be interpreted as a warning to hurry up before Dubai takes matters into its own hands.

"In each case before they have checked with and tried to get the country to verify that this person may exist but that it’s not the person in the passport," said Kenneth Wise, a researchers at B’huth, a Dubai-think tank. "The goal is to protect the innocent but also prevent themselves from being caught up in something they can't verify. They don’t want to be accused of fiction.". . .