Assassination in Dubai: Never has so much surveillance video been made of a secret mission.

The video takes almost 30 minutes to watch. The quality is amazing. The Mossad operation was recorded and detailed by Dubai State Security. A time line and identification was made of the events that lead to and followed the killing of the military commander of Hamas, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

The Mossad operation is brilliantly coordinated and flawlessly executed, except that it was recorded and available for analysis. There are clear videos, photos and analysis of the not so secret agents. That is not considered a good thing in most clandestine operations.

Claims that Mossad knew they were being recorded is laughable and absurd. You can look at this remarkable video and decide for yourself.

I am certain Mossad has watched this hundreds of times and realizes that in the future, Dubai may not be the best place to make a hit and still protect your agents.

I have no ethical problem with a controlled state sponsored killing of an enemy, but the wisdom and ethics of using passports from unwary and uninvolved civilians is astonishing to me.

There can be no possible up side to such a foolish decision. However, I wait in eager anticipation for any explanation or theory that has so far eluded me.

_________________

Amateur Hour at Mossad. Britain Not Amused.

Good old know it all, Bibi Netanyahu, has been down this road before:

In his first term as premier, Netanyahu approved Yatom's plan to poison Hamas head Khaled Meshaal in Amman. The Mossad assassins, posing as Canadians, fumbled the attack and were arrested by Jordan after seeking refuge at the Israeli embassy.

Netanyahu would have had to sign off on this Pink Panther Operation.

To understand the profound stupidity of this operation and potential implications for Israel consider Bibi sitting down with other world leaders talking about the existential threat of Iran to Israel and dragging out his evidence and plans drawn up by Mossad.




Israelis Share Suspicions in Hamas Leader’s Killing

By ISABEL KERSHNER New York Times
Published: February 17, 2010

JERUSALEM — The initial nods, winks and pats on the back here over the assassination last month of a senior Hamas official in Dubai are turning to puzzlement and concern as mounting evidence, including extensive surveillance videos, points to a remarkably clumsy operation many Israelis deem unworthy of their intelligence service, Mossad.

Officially, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the case, as is customary in delicate matters of intelligence and national security. But since the news of the assassination broke last month, Israel has unofficially made the story its own, with newspapers blaring congratulatory headlines and government ministers praising Mossad’s director.

However, then the Dubai police released images showing some of the 17 people suspected of being in the hit squad bumbling about in poor disguises, and Britain became infuriated by the use of faked British travel documents. Now Israelis are wondering whether their once-famed spy service could have been behind such a sloppy job or, in a John Le Carré-like twist, if Israel could have been framed.

On Wednesday, a commentator for the newspaper Haaretz, Amir Oren, wrote a front-page column about the case, calling for the Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, to step down.

“What must have seemed to its perpetrators as a huge success,” he wrote, “is now being overshadowed by enormous question marks.”

Israel wanted the Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 50, for the capture and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989 and for smuggling weapons to Hamas in Gaza. On Jan. 19, he was killed in a Dubai hotel room.

On Monday, the Dubai police named 11 of the 17 people they suspect in the case. Among the names were those of three Irish citizens — of whom the Irish authorities have no record — and six British citizens living in Israel who appear to be victims of identity theft. The police also showed images culled from the ubiquitous closed-circuit TV system showing some of them in false beards, wigs and glasses, in almost comical attempts at disguise.

With the agents’ passport pictures now splashed across newspapers and television screens around the world, Israeli commentators said the agents, whoever they may really be, have been burned. Eitan Haber, a columnist in the daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot and a close aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s, wrote Wednesday, “They cannot even go to the grocery store.”

In a first official reaction, the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said Wednesday that Israel’s policy of “ambiguity” in such cases was “correct.”

“I don’t know why we are assuming that Israel, or the Mossad, used those passports,” Mr. Lieberman told Army Radio. “Israel never responds, never confirms and never denies.”

Three former senior Mossad officials contacted by a reporter on Wednesday refused to comment at all.

The British authorities said they believed the British passports the Dubai police had collected were “fraudulent.” Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a full investigation.

The six British citizens living in Israel — who woke up on Tuesday to find their names linked with the assassination — do not resemble the agents’ photographs from the passports bearing their names. Among the Britons was a physiotherapist, a technical writer and a repairman who lives on a kibbutz.

The name of an American-born Israeli was used by another of the suspects, who carried a German passport. That person studies in a religious seminary near Tel Aviv.

Three of the British citizens gave interviews to the news media on Tuesday, expressing their shock and some fear. By Wednesday they appeared to have gone incommunicado and did not answer or return a reporter’s calls.

Mr. Oren, in his front-page column in Haaretz, anticipated a diplomatic crisis over the suspicions that Mossad had counterfeited British passports.

“It is as if Israeli governments had never apologized to London for using British documentation,” he wrote, “as if they had not promised solemnly, when passports of Her Majesty’s subjects were found in a certain phone booth, that this would never happen again.”

________________________________

If the Israeli government was party to behaviour of this kind it would be a serious violation of trust between nations. If legitimate British passport holders were put at risk it would be a disgrace.

“Given the current speculation, the Israeli government has some explaining to do and the ambassador should be summoned to the Foreign Office to do so in double-quick time.”

Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader.

Mossad says Saudi Arabia will ignore Israeli overflights to Iranian nuclear facilities

Sirens sound across Israel in 'doomsday' drill June 03, 2009

On ABC Biden said, "If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice."

Asked by Stephanopoulos whether the US would stand in the way of an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities by denying "over-flight rights in Iraq," Biden said " I'm not going to speculate, George, on those issues, other than to say Israel has a right to determine what's in its interests, and we have a right and we will determine what's in our interests."

CIA Director Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen had reportedly visited Israel in recent months and expressed their strong opposition to a military strike on Iran.

What is going on?

____________________________

July 5, 2009
Saudis give nod to Israeli raid on Iran
Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Sarah Baxter Times on Line

The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.

Earlier this year Meir Dagan, Mossad’s director since 2002, held secret talks with Saudi officials to discuss the possibility.

The Israeli press has already carried unconfirmed reports that high-ranking officials, including Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, held meetings with Saudi colleagues. The reports were denied by Saudi officials.

“The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia,” a diplomatic source said last week.

Although the countries have no formal diplomatic relations, an Israeli defence source confirmed that Mossad maintained “working relations” with the Saudis.

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations who recently visited the Gulf, said it was “entirely logical” for the Israelis to use Saudi airspace.

Bolton, who has talked to several Arab leaders, added: “None of them would say anything about it publicly but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn’t trumpet it as a big success.”

Arab states would condemn a raid when they spoke at the UN but would be privately relieved to see the threat of an Iranian bomb removed, he said.

Referring to the Israeli attack on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility in 2007, Bolton added: “To this day, the Israelis haven’t admitted the specifics but there’s one less nuclear facility in Syria . . .”

Recent developments have underscored concerns among moderate Sunni Arab states about the stability of the repressive Shi’ite regime in Tehran and have increased fears that it may emerge as a belligerent nuclear power.

“The Saudis are very concerned about an Iranian nuclear bomb, even more than the Israelis,” said a former head of research in Israeli intelligence.

The Israeli air force has been training for a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear site at Natanz in the centre of the country and other locations for four years.