Jill Stark
March 7, 2010 – 3:00AM
The Age (Australia) / TheAge.com.au
[The Age is a broadsheet (mainstream) daily newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854]
http://www.theage.com.au/national/can-apricot-kernels-keep-cancer-at-bay-20100306-pptb.html

PAUL Reid should be dead. Diagnosed with a rare, incurable lymphoma, he was given five years, seven tops, by his oncologist. But, having cheated death in the Ash Wednesday bushfires, he was not about to surrender his life without a fight.

His weapon of choice? Apricot kernels. Thirty a day. Reid turned down chemotherapy, vowing to eat himself well. Today, 13 years in remission, the 68-year-old believes that ”cancer-killing” properties in the kernels he still eats daily, coupled with a strict vegan diet and prayer, have cured him. ”We’re not immortal, but I believe I’ll be healthy from taking this direction,” he says.

Reid is among a growing number of cancer patients who see food as the key to their survival – a trend worrying doctors who fear people may be risking their lives by embarking on extreme, unproved diets. Some patients are forgoing conventional medical treatment and putting their faith in ”anti-cancer” diets promoted by alternative health practitioners, or buying untested nutritional supplements on the internet.

Amanda Hordern, director of the Cancer Council Victoria’s information and support helpline, says the line is fielding an increasing number of calls from people who believe they can heal their bodies by undergoing restrictive dietary regimes, such as consuming 10 kilograms of juiced fruit and vegetables a day, eliminating dairy and meat, taking high doses of vitamin supplements or eating shark cartilage and having coffee enemas.

She says of the 600 calls about nutrition last year, many were from cancer patients convinced an extreme diet could cure them. ”I’ve spoken to people who have mortgaged their houses looking for this wonder cure. I’ve heard of $20,000 retreats where people go away and are taught how to have alternative diets that are unproven.

”People have asked us for financial assistance to pay for funerals because they’ve lost absolutely everything in pursuing the elusive hope and it hasn’t worked,” Dr Hordern told The Sunday Age.

The Cancer Council’s message, like that of its international peers, is clear: diet can play a role in preventing cancer – too much red meat or alcohol has been shown to increase the risk of breast and bowel cancer, for example – but there is no scientific evidence to prove any one food or diet can treat, control or cure cancer.

Yet many of the 114,000 Australians diagnosed each year – most commonly with prostate, bowel, breast and lung cancers – reject this advice. It defies logic, they say, that if eschewing a Western diet high in saturated fat, salt and red meat can reduce the risk of some cancers, that food becomes irrelevant after diagnosis?

Paul Reid challenged mainstream medicine’s prognosis with a regime of colonic cleansing, a 75 per cent raw fruit and vegetable diet, and chewing on apricot pits – rich in amygdalin, an extract also known as B17, which doctors say is a ”phoney” vitamin, but which supporters claim kills cancer cells. He is convinced that his diet was the cornerstone of his recovery. The fact that no robust research supports his restrictive diet, or that there is evidence high doses of of amygdalin can cause cyanide poisoning and, in some cases death, is of little consequence to the Berwick father of two.

”So what if there’s no scientific proof? What has a person to lose by going on an organic diet?” he asks. ”I don’t think my journey has been unscientific, it’s just that there’s been no science in a big way applied to it.”

The substances we ingest undoubtedly affect the body’s metabolic processes. Drinking alcohol can lead to slurred speech and loss of balance, while eating too much fat and sugar causes weight gain. But food’s effect on cancer is less clear. Some practitioners in both the medical and alternative communities point to research that certain foods can either promote or inhibit cancer cell growth. Others say the disease is caused by a build-up of toxins that must be flushed from the body with nutrient-rich produce, or that cancer feeds on sugar.

Evidence is flimsy, cautions Jenelle Loeliger, senior dietitian at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. The findings are often from small, observational studies that lack the scientific rigour of large-scale clinical trials, she says, or are based on laboratory results on animals, not humans.

The most reliable nutritional advice for those with cancer is to maintain a balanced diet, she says, warning that those undergoing chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery are particularly at risk if following restrictive diets. ”They [diets] eliminate essential food groups, so you’re eliminating good quality protein sources. It can exacerbate or accelerate malnutrition in a group already at risk of malnutrition. If someone’s losing weight, it can have a big impact on their tolerance and even their ability to get through the treatment.”

Dr Hordern has received many calls from relatives of cancer sufferers who have followed unorthodox diets with tragic results. ”I remember a man whose wife had recently died from very advanced breast cancer. He said to me with absolute agony and desperation in his voice, ‘My wife was so sure that this wonder treatment was going to work.’ It was a really extreme, alternative therapy with coffee enemas and a cleansing detoxifying diet recommended by a naturopath. In the end she was so wasted, had lost so much weight and he was really angry. He felt that he had been robbed of the last month of her life.”

Ruth Gawler, who supports cancer patients through the foundation she runs with husband Ian – author of bestseller You Can Conquer Cancer – insists they never use the word ”cure”, preferring ”heal” in relation to the no-salt, no-sugar, plant-based vegan diet provided in conjunction with meditation and ”mind training” at their $3000, 11-day residential retreats. Dr Gawler says countless patients have had ”spontaneous remissions” after undergoing their programs, which have a two-month waiting list. She believes the rise in demand – 1000 people are treated each year, a 50 per cent increase in two years – is proof of a growing dissatisfaction with the perceived limits of orthodox medicine.

If dietary treatments attracted the same research dollars as pharmaceutical regimens, she argues, stronger evidence would exist. ”No one’s going to be able to make a big buck from selling people carrots and beans and onions. Who’s going to invest the huge money these trials require into proving the point?” she asks.

Doctors acknowledge there is emerging evidence that some foods could have an effect on cancer cells – antioxidant-rich foods such as berries and leafy green vegetables, for example – but say the limited research is not enough to recommend dietary changes to patients.

But with studies showing between 22 per cent and 52 per cent of Australian cancer patients use one or more complementary therapies – those in the booming $2.3 billion alternative health industry say it is as high as 80 per cent – clearly, there is a growing demand for adjuncts to or alternatives to drug treatment. For many, diet is the first and most simple way to regain control of a body that has defied them.

Sally White, 41, was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2007. She enrolled in a Gawler program after being left frustrated by doctors. ”I wasn’t given any direction about whether to change my diet or not and the inference was it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s not going to change the outcome or your survival chances,” she says.

The mother of two boys, aged 13 and 11, was told by Melbourne surgeons who removed a part of the tumour, that it was only a matter of time before it began to grow again. She sought a second opinion from controversial Sydney neurosurgeon Charlie Teo, who said he could remove substantially more of the tumour, giving her a better shot at survival. Despite the 50 per cent risk of a speech deficit and left-side paralysis, she emerged from theatre unscathed.

Since her diagnosis she has largely stuck to the Gawler diet, cutting out red meat, ensuring 90 per cent of her produce is organic and eating foods rich in antioxidants such as broccoli, beetroot, chickpeas, lentils and green tea.

Her tumour has started to grow again but she believes the diet will increase her survival chances. ”Potentially it has stopped the tumour growing back more aggressively and quickly. It has put me in a position to have this treatment [she is set to undergo radiotherapy and chemotherapy] and hopefully have the best outcomes from it, because I’ve already reduced the toxic load on my body over the last three years.”

Dr Ian Haines, medical oncologist at Cabrini Health, is open to his patients making changes to their diet if they are not too extreme, and says it can provide a placebo effect. He says confusion about what to eat is a big problem: ”Once someone gets diagnosed with cancer they get six or 10 different books on curing cancer from all variety of sources, so they’re absolutely flooded with mixed messages. There is no magic solution out there, moderation is probably the best answer we have in 2010.”

Former Australian Medical Association president Kerryn Phelps believes many doctors are dismissive of nutritional regimes, which can leave patients feeling hopeless. ”If they’re not getting the answers from their cancer specialists they’re going somewhere else to get that information,” she says. ”It’s really important that people are given careful guidance. It will protect them from going down the path of something faddish, which is potentially dangerous.”

Dr Phelps, a GP and president of the Australasian Integrative Medicine Association, says most alternative practitioners operate ethically, and many work collaboratively with mainstream doctors.

However, she says there is a pressing need for greater attention to be paid to nutrition in medical schools and for more funding to research potential links between food and cancer.

”Just because we haven’t got the whole picture yet doesn’t mean there isn’t something in it,” she says. ”We are gathering [information] gradually, which is the way you gather evidence. You don’t suddenly have eureka moments where you think, ‘that’s the answer, we can cure cancer’.”

Breast cancer survivor Melanie Meehan, 38, wants stronger evidence before she makes radical changes to her diet. The Preston mother of boys aged two and five is in remission after having a mastectomy and chemotherapy. During treatment she met many women who had a very healthy diet but still got cancer.

She has decided to have her remaining healthy breast removed.

”If someone could demonstrate statistically that cutting out certain things in your diet would eliminate or greatly reduce the risk of recurrence, I would put up my hand and do it. But the way that I feel like I’m going to prevent recurrence is to take off the other breast,” she says.

”You can have a very healthy life by having everything in moderation and just going out and enjoying yourself.”

But for Sally White, who is preparing to undergo more medical treatment on her brain tumour, taking control of her eating habits is the most practical way she can help herself. She rejects the notion that putting faith in food creates false hope.

”From my perspective there’s no such thing. Hope is hope.”

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/national/can-apricot-kernels-keep-cancer-at-bay-20100306-pptb.html

Edited version:

Full version:

“People don’t know what fusion centers are,” says Catherine Bleish, who was the opening speaker at the 2010 New Hampshire Liberty Forum on March 19.

Fusion centers were created after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as a way for local and state law enforcement agencies to share terrorism related information with the federal government, and vice versa. The idea quickly ran into problems, first among them the fact that there simply isn’t enough terrorist activity to justify the concept. Instead of shutting down as pointless, fusion centers gradually began expanding into sharing information about all crimes. Fusion center activity over the years has also raised concerns about government surveillance of legally protected political activity.

Bleish, who was led into becoming an activist by the 2008 Ron Paul presidential campaign, said she was informed of a report published by the Missouri Information Analysis Center, leaked in March 2009, which stated among other things that people with Gadsden flag and Ron Paul bumper stickers could be militia members or potential terrorists. Bleish, who is the executive director of the Liberty Restoration Project, spearheaded further investigation and activism, eventually leading to MIAC retracting the report.

“MIAC is a Department of Homeland Security fusion center,” she said during her speech. “These institutions are doing a lot of damage to the relationship between the general public and the law enforcement community.”

Bleish also runs Operation Defuse, a project to inform the public about the nature and activities of fusion centers and how those activities contribute to the federalization and militarization of law enforcement.

Embedding for this video disabled by request. To view this video, visit:
Catherine Bleish: Understanding the Mechanics of the Police State

The New Hampshire Liberty Forum is an annual conference held by the Free State Project, a movement to bring 20,000 activists to New Hampshire to work toward reducing the size, scope and power of government and increasing individual liberty and responsibility. The project has signed over 10,000 participants, and over 800 have already moved. The Liberty Forum, and the project’s summer camping event, PorcFest, allow people undecided about the project to see the state firsthand and observe and participate in local activism.

http://go-jamaica.com/news/read_article.php?id=16720

Law enforcement officials in the United States say they’re placing a close watch on sections of the Caribbean out of concerns for a possible threat of terrorism.

In an interview with the USA-Today newspaper on January 26, Raymond Kelly, the New York Commissioner of Police said law enforcement officials have taken note of what he claims are feelings of hostility in the Caribbean and in particular Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

Mr Kelly was responding to questions about areas around the world that are of concern to authorities in the US.

Other countries mentioned include South Africa, Algeria, Mali and Mauritania.

However, the National Security Minister Senator Dwight Nelson has brushed aside the concern, citing it as just the opinion of one individual.

When asked about the international perception of Jamaica as it regards terrorism, Senator Nelson said he’s not concerned by the expression of one foreign official.

The US authorities recently raised objections to the transit of Jamaican born Muslim Cleric Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal through their country from Kenya.

The US government had said that it would bar any airline carrying El Faisal aboard from entering American air space.

The cleric was deported to Jamaica more than two weeks ago.

The national security minister says security officials are taking an interest in the activities of the controversial cleric.

El Faisal was placed on an international terror watch list following his release from prison in Britain in 2003.

Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

Jamaica Gleaner

IN ANOTHER three weeks, Jamaica’s prospects for reducing its heavy dependence on imported oil will be known, as geologists complete their studies of offshore explorations.

Dr Raymond Wright, consultant and special projects manager at the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ), estimates that Jamaica may be sitting on as much as 2.5 to three trillion cubic feet of natural gas

This amount of gas could supply the country for hundreds of years.

“That’s quite a bit of gas,” Wright tells The Sunday Gleaner. “That’s what we are hoping for and let us hope that hope is not audacious,” he adds.

The exploratory team made its assumption by judging the size of reservoir rocks out at sea that hold oil or gas. This was done by conducting seismic tests using geo-physical technology anchored by a ship down to the sea floor. The equipment maps the sea’s strata from below.

“Oil is usually found in dome-like structures and you can see these structures and know whether you should drill on them, but you don’t actually know if there is any oil inside them,” says Wright.

The PCJ is awaiting the findings of a study that will tell it just how much gas or oil is likely to be offshore in the blocks being currently explored.

If an economic quantum of natural gas is found, pipelines to bring it ashore could be in place by the earliest 2012.

“It’s part of the long-term future and one has to manage those expectations,” says Wright.

Natural gas is a more efficient form of energy than coal and it produces less toxic greenhouse gases. It is also cheaper.

“That’s why Trinidad enjoys a particular circumstance. Whereas we are paying US 27 cents per kilowatt hour, Trinidadians are paying four cents, and that is why industry has moved from Jamaica to Trinidad,” Wright comments.

However, these possible sources of energy have not yet been included in Jamaica’s energy matrix because the discovery is yet to be made.

real situation

“It might be putting a dream into a real situation. So, you wait until you wake up with the facts,” says a cautious Wright. “But what we have to do, importantly, is to begin to plan.” This is to ensure that the economy benefits from optimal management of the resources.

A total of 20 offshore blocks are currently being explored for oil and gas by three non-Jamaican companies on behalf of the Government. Two new blocks have been identified to the northeast and southeast of Morant Point, respectively, for exploration.

Jamaica has a production-sharing arrangement with all three companies. The contractors put up funds for the exploration and if oil or gas is found, it splits it with Jamaica and recovers the cost for exploration. The profit is then split at a percentage ratio of 70:30 in favour of the contractor. However, in addition to its 30 per cent share, Government would also receive 12.5 per cent royalty, which narrows the ratio to about 58:42.

One of the companies, Finder Exploration from Australia, is expected to start drilling a well by the fourth quarter of 2009.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate very much your generous invitation to be here tonight.

You bear heavy responsibilities these days and an article I read some time ago reminded me of how particularly heavily the burdens of present day events bear upon your profession.

You may remember that in 1851 t. he New York Herald Tribune, under the sponsorship and publishing of Horace Greeley, employed as its London correspondent an obscure journalist by the name of Karl Marx.

We are told that foreign correspondent Marx, stone broke, and with a family ill and undernourished, constantly appealed to Greeley and Managing Editor Charles Dana for an increase in his munificent salary of $5 per installment, a salary which he and Engels ungratefully labeled as the “lousiest petty bourgeois cheating.”

But when all his financial appeals were refused, Marx looked around for other means of livelihood and fame, eventually terminating his relationship with the Tribune and devoting his talents full time to the cause that would bequeath to the world the seeds of Leninism, Stalinism, revolution and the cold war.

If only this capitalistic New York newspaper had treated him more kindly; if only Marx had remained a foreign correspondent, history might have been different. And I hope all publishers will bear this lesson in mind the next time they receive a poverty-stricken appeal for a small increase in the expense account from an obscure newspaper

I have selected as the title of my remarks tonight “The President and the Press.” Some may suggest that this would be more naturally worded “The President Versus the Press.” But those are not my sentiments tonight.

It is true, however, that when a well-known diplomat from another country demanded recently that our State Department repudiate certain newspaper attacks on his colleague it was unnecessary for us to reply that this Administration was not responsible for the press, for the press had already made it clear that it was not responsible for this Administration.

Nevertheless, my purpose here tonight is not to deliver the usual assault on the so-called one-party press. On the contrary, in recent months I have rarely heard any complaints about political bias in the press except from a few Republicans. Nor is it my purpose tonight to discuss or defend the televising of Presidential press conferences. I think it is highly beneficial to have some 20,000,000 Americans regularly sit in on these conferences to observe, if I may say so, the incisive, the intelligent and the courteous qualities displayed by your Washington correspondents.

Nor, finally, are these remarks intended to examine the proper degree of privacy which the press should allow to any President and his family.

If in the last few months your White House reporters and photographers have been attending church services with regularity, that has surely done them no harm.

On the other hand, I realize that your staff and wire service photographers may be complaining that they do not enjoy the same green privileges at the local golf courses which they once did.

It is true that my predecessor did not object as I do to pictures of one’s golfing skill in action. But neither on the other hand did he ever bean a Secret Service man. My topic tonight is a more sober one of concern to publishers as well as editors.

I want to talk about our common responsibilities in the face of a common danger. The events of recent weeks may have helped to illuminate that challenge for some; but the dimensions of its threat have loomed large on the horizon for many years. Whatever our hopes may be for the future–for reducing this threat or living with it–there is no escaping either the gravity or the totality of its challenge to our survival and to our security–a challenge that confronts us in unaccustomed ways in every sphere of human activity.

This deadly challenge imposes upon our society two requirements of direct concern both to the press and to the President–two requirements that may seem almost contradictory in tone, but which must be reconciled and fulfilled if we are to meet this national peril. I refer, first, to the need for far greater public information; and, second, to the need for far greater official secrecy.

I.

The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.

But I do ask every publisher, every editor, and every newsman in the nation to reexamine his own standards, and to recognize the nature of our country’s peril. In time of war, the government and the press have customarily joined in an effort, based largely on self-discipline, to prevent unauthorized disclosures to the enemy. In time of “clear and present danger,” the courts have held that even the privileged rights of the First Amendment must yield to the public’s need for national security.

Today no war has been declared–and however fierce the struggle may be, it may never be declared in the traditional fashion. Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe. The survival of our friends is in danger. And yet no war has been declared, no borders have been crossed by marching troops, no missiles have been fired.

If the press is awaiting a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat conditions, then I can only say that no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of “clear and present danger,” then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent.

It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions–by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.

Nevertheless, every democracy recognizes the necessary restraints of national security-and the question remains whether those restraints need to be more strictly observed if we are to oppose this kind of attack as well as outright invasion.

For the facts of the matter are that this nation’s foes have openly boasted of acquiring through our newspapers information they would otherwise hire agents to acquire through theft, bribery or espionage; that details of this nation’s covert preparations to counter the enemy’s covert operations have been available to every newspaper reader, friend and foe alike; that the size, the strength, the location and the nature of our forces and weapons, and our plans and strategy for their use, have all been pinpointed in the press and other news media to a degree sufficient to satisfy any foreign power; and that, in at least one case, the publication of details concerning a secret mechanism whereby satellites were followed required its alteration at the expense of considerable time and money.

The newspapers which printed these stories were loyal, patriotic, responsible and well-meaning. Had we been engaged in open warfare, they undoubtedly would not have published such items. But in the absence of open warfare, they recognized only the tests of journalism and not the tests of national security. And my question tonight is whether additional tests should not now be adopted.

That question is for you alone to answer. No public official should answer it for you. No governmental plan should impose its restraints against your will. But I would be failing in my duty to the Nation, in considering all of the responsibilities that we now bear and all of the means at hand to meet those responsibilities, if I did not commend this problem to your attention, and urge its thoughtful consideration.

On many earlier occasions, I have said-and your newspapers have constantly said-that these are times that appeal to every citizen’s sense of sacrifice and self-discipline. They call out to every citizen to weigh his rights and comforts against his obligations to the common good. I cannot now believe that those citizens who serve in the newspaper business consider themselves exempt from that appeal.

I have no intention of establishing a new Office of War Information to govern the flow of news. I am not suggesting any new forms of censorship or new types of security classifications. I have no easy answer to the dilemma that I have posed, and would not seek to impose it if I had one. But I am asking the members of the newspaper profession and the industry in this country to reexamine their own responsibilities, to consider the degree and the nature of the present danger, and to heed the duty of self-restraint which that danger imposes upon us all.

Every newspaper now asks itself, with respect to every story: “Is it news?” All I suggest is that you add the question: “Is it in the interest of the national security?” And I hope that every group in America-unions and businessmen and public officials at every level–will ask the same question of their endeavors, and subject their actions to this same exacting test.

And should the press of America consider and recommend the voluntary assumption of specific new steps or machinery, I can assure you that we will cooperate whole-heartedly with those recommendations.

Perhaps there will be no recommendations. Perhaps there is no answer to the dilemma faced by a free and open society in a cold and secret war. In times of peace, any discussion of this subject, and any action that results, are both painful and without precedent. But this is a time of peace and peril which knows no precedent in history.

II.

It is the unprecedented nature of this challenge that also gives rise to your second obligation–an obligation which I share. And that is our obligation to inform and alert the American people–to make certain that they possess all the facts that they need, and understand them as well–the perils, the prospects, the purposes of our program and the choices that we face.

No President should fear public scrutiny of his program. For from that scrutiny comes understanding; and from that understanding comes support or opposition. And both are necessary. I am not asking your newspapers to support the Administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. For I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.

I not only could not stifle controversy among your readers–I welcome it. This Administration intends to be candid about its errors; for, as a wise man once said: “An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.” We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors; and we expect you to point them out when we miss them.

Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed-and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian law-maker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment–the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution–not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply “give the public what it wants”–but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.

This means greater coverage and analysis of international news–for it is no longer far away and foreign but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved transmission. And it means, finally, that government at all levels, must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside the narrowest limits of national security–and we intend to do it.

III.

It was early in the Seventeenth Century that Francis Bacon remarked on three recent inventions already transforming the world: the compass, gunpowder and the printing press. Now the links between the nations first forged by the compass have made us all citizens of the world, the hopes and threats of one becoming the hopes and threats of us all. In that one world’s efforts to live together, the evolution of gunpowder to its ultimate limit has warned mankind of the terrible consequences of failure.

And so it is to the printing press–to the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news–that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh’s death in Dubai had all the hallmarks of a hit by the Jewish state’s spy agency, writes Jason Koutsoukis in Jerusalem.

The Hamas gunrunner Mahmoud al-Mabhouh arrived in Dubai on an Emirates flight from Syria at 3pm on January 19.

The Dubai police chief, Lieutenant-General Dahi Khalfan al-Tamim, said Mabhouh checked into his room at the Al Bustan Rotana Hotel about 4pm. After depositing some documents in the hotel safe, Mabhouh went out for dinner, arriving back at his room by 9pm.

Police believe that shortly after, the usually security-conscious Mabhouh, who routinely blocked the doors to his hotel rooms with heavy furniture, opened his door to a woman.

Hours later Mabhouh, 49, was dead, believed poisoned by a mystery drug that at first led investigators to think he had suffered a heart attack.

Dubai police believe that the suspects, at least seven people carrying European passports, were out of the country before Mabhouh’s body was discovered by hotel housekeeping staff at midday on January 20.

Later that day, Hamas officials in Damascus went so far as to put out a statement saying that Mabhouh had died of natural causes.

Nearly 10 days later, autopsy blood results returned from France suggested otherwise.

In the ever-suspicious world of Middle Eastern intrigue, Mabhouh’s death had all the hallmarks of an assassination by Israel’s national intelligence agency, Mossad.

Israel certainly did not lack motive.

In 1989, Mabhouh was part of a team of Palestinian resistance fighters who kidnapped and killed two Israeli soldiers stationed in the Gaza Strip.

Israel either killed or arrested most of those believed responsible for the deaths, but Mabhouh got away.

Eventually arriving in the Syrian capital, where Hamas had been allowed to establish its political headquarters, Mabhouh rose through the ranks to become the movement’s liaison with its main weapons supplier, Tehran, responsible for co-ordinating the movement of weapons from Iran to Gaza.

In November the chief of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Major-General Amos Yadlin, appeared before the Israeli parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee.

Yadlin said Hamas had just test-fired a rocket with a range of 60 kilometres, within range of Israel’s business and financial capital, Tel Aviv, a rocket that he said had been supplied by Iran.

At Mabhouh’s funeral in Damascus, 10 days after his death, the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshal, vowed revenge against Israel.

”You have assassinated an enormous man who bravely killed some of your soldiers, but this is a passing joy,” Meshal said. ”I tell you, Zionists, do not be joyous. You killed him, but his sons will fight you.”

In September 1997, Meshal was himself the target of a bungled Mossad assassination attempt in the Jordanian capital of Amman that bears some resemblance to the way Mabhouh was killed. Meshal was getting out of his car when a man posing as a Canadian tourist approached him and squirted something in his ear.

At first, Meshal seemed fine. It was not until hours later, as he slipped in and out of consciousness, that doctors realised that he had been injected with a powerful painkiller that was shutting down his respiratory system.

Luckily for Meshal, his bodyguard had seized one of the attackers, whom local police were able to tie to Mossad. King Hussein of Jordan pressured Israel’s then prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads Israel again today, to hand over the antidote.

Since the 1960s, when Mossad captured the leading Nazi Adolf Eichman, Israel has been accused by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Hezbollah of involvement in the assassination of their organisations’ leaders. Israel has never responded to the accusations.

”The one part of this story that suggests Israel had something to do with it is that Mabhouh was injected with something,” says a former Israeli security operative who spoke to the Herald this week.

Asking that only his first name be used, Itamar, who is the managing director of a specialist security consultancy, said he neither would, nor could, confirm Israel’s involvement.

”But the method is indicative. Very clean and quiet, and it enabled the team to exit the country well before the body was discovered,” he said.

The parts of the story that did not add up, Itamar said, were suggestions that Mabhouh had been tortured with an electrical device, and then possibly strangled.

”I don’t think a highly trained Israeli team would bother with this simply because it would take up too much time,” Itamar said.

So if not Israel, who?

A report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz this week said many people across the Arab world wanted Mabhouh dead.

”Unofficially, Hamas has conceded that quite a few parties had an interest in taking out Mabhouh, who had become central to the Iran-Gaza Strip axis,” the report said, without saying who those parties might be.

Whether or not Israel was involved, proving it will be near impossible. ”Dubai police say they have the identities of seven suspects,” Itamar said.

”Why haven’t they been released? They say they have hotel security footage of people entering Mabhouh’s room. Why have we not seen it?

”The answer is because any information or photographs, or security footage they have, it doesn’t tell us anything.”

SUSPECTED MOSSAD ASSASSINATIONS

Zuheir Mohsen: The Palestinian leader of a pro-Syrian faction of the Palestine Liberation Organisation was shot in the head on July 15, 1979, as he returned to his flat in Cannes, France.

Khalil Ibrahim al-Wazir, more commonly known as Abu Jihad: A high ranking member of the PLO faction Fatah, he was shot multiple times in front of his wife and children near his home in Tunisia.

Fathi Shikaki: Founder of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, he was shot multiple times on October 26, 1995 in front of the Diplomat Hotel in Sliema, Malta.

Imad Mughniyeh: Liaison officer between the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah and its main ally, Iran, Mughniyeh was killed in Damascus on February 12, 2008, when the headrest of a car he was in exploded.

Mohammed Suleiman: A Syrian general and adviser to the President, Bashar al-Assad, and an intermediary between the Syrian government, Hezbollah and Iran. He was shot in the head on August 1, 2008, on a beach near the Syrian city of Tartous.

Jason Koutsoukis is the Herald’s Middle East correspondent.

A story surfaced this week regarding Ariel Sharon’s creation of assassination squads that will be sent into allied foreign countries in search of enemies of the State of Israel. That such clandestine units operate internationally comes as no surprise. Many governments are thought to employ them. Indeed, the public accepts this fact as a way of life. But, officially, Israel has not previously acknowledged the existence of such units. The story was reported by UPI.

Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries, former Israeli intelligence officials told United Press International.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has forbidden the practice until now, these sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Israeli statements were confirmed by more than a half dozen former and currently serving U.S. foreign policy and intelligence officials in interviews with United Press International.

But an official at the Israeli Embassy in Washington told UPI: “That is rubbish. It is completely untrue. Israel and the United States have such a close and co-operative intelligence relationship, especially in the field of counter-terrorism, that the assertion is ludicrous.”

So, the question arises, is the story true? It is the kind of politically sensitive story that a wire service would not run if it had not been checked. If anything, the story may be designed to put Muslim terrorists on notice. It gets an official disclaimer, which is enough to let the report sink into oblivion, but then, when the assassinations multiply, the targeted groups conclude that the story was true. I keep thinking of George Wallace’s slogan, “Send them a message.”

Will they send back a message?

WHO GETS BLAMED?

If the story is true, then the West is about to experience an escalation of terrorism. Assassinations of suspected terrorists will be blamed on anti-terror squads. But whose? It will become more difficult for President Bush to evade suspicion for such acts, whether he or a subordinate arranged the assassinations or not. His “dead or alive” statement regarding Osama bin Laden could blow back.

The problem with terrorist warfare and counter-terrorist warfare is the inability of the public to know who is responsible for any event unless someone admits it publicly, and even then no one is sure.

We see this theme on “The West Wing.” At the end of last season’s show, the President of the United States authorized the assassination of a Muslim nation’s chief of security, who supposedly had planned a foiled attack on the Golden Gate Bridge. In what has become a standard shtick for the main character, President Bartlett initially resisted launching the death squad, all in the name of morality, but then he capitulated to his advisors. Bartlett initially talks ethics, but he invariably sells out to expediency before the show is over. The viewers’ challenge is to guess what reason he will use as his excuse.

What is interesting in the light of the recent story about Israeli assassination squads is that on the show, Israel has been blamed for the suspected assassination, when in fact the U.S. did it. A Muslim terrorist then retaliated by using a missile to shoot down an Israeli airliner. The advisor who recommended the assassination briefly suffered guilt from the knowledge that an Israeli friend who was on the airliner was killed because of what he had recommended to the President. But, on “The West Wing,” guilt never lasts for more than a part of any episode. Politics heals everything by the next installment.

BRINGING THE WAR BACK HOME

America surely appears to be preparing for an invasion of Iraq. Any invasion would violate UN’s 1974 protocol: an unprovoked attack for the purpose of replacing a foreign ruler.

Reaffirming the duty of States not to use armed force to deprive peoples of their right to self-determination, freedom and independence, or to disrupt territorial Integrity, . . .

Reaffirming also that the territory of a State shall not be violated by being the object, even temporarily, of military occupation or of other measures of force taken by another State in contravention of the Charter, and that it shall not be the object of acquisition by another State resulting from such measures or the threat thereof,

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/3314.htm

After an invasion, the Muslim world from that point on will regard the United States as an aggressor against Islam. This nation has been regarded by Muslims as the chief accomplice of the State of Israel, but an offensive war in Iraq will change this. We will become the front-runner in the jihad sweepstakes. Now comes the UPI story.

With the appointment of Meir Dagan, the new director of Israel’s Mossad secret intelligence service, Sharon is preparing “a huge budget” increase for the spy agency as part of “a tougher stance in fighting global jihad (or holy war),” one Israeli official said.

Since Sharon became Israeli prime minister, Tel Aviv has mainly limited its practice of targeted killings to the West Bank and Gaza because “no one wanted such operations on their territory,” a former Israeli intelligence official said.

Another former Israeli government official said that under Sharon, “diplomatic constraints have prevented the Mossad from carrying out ‘preventive operations’ (targeted killings) on the soil of friendly countries until now.”

He said Sharon is “reversing that policy, even if it risks complications to Israel’s bilateral relations.”

A former Israeli military intelligence source agreed: “What Sharon wants is a much more extensive and tough approach to global terrorism, and this includes greater operational maneuverability.”

In analyzing this story, we readers must make guesses. The Israeli government has not confirmed it. It is possible that a series of rumors has led UPI reporters to a misperception. But the timing, from America’s standpoint, could not be worse. Just as the United States is escalating military pressure in the Middle East, Sharon has escalated pressure inside the borders of allied nations. The war on terrorism is the justification in both instances.

Meanwhile, Al Qaeda is forgotten by the American public. The U.S. government’s interpretation of events ever since bin Laden got away has been to blame Saddam Hussein for being in some unstated way responsible for backing Al Qaeda, despite the fact that it is public knowledge that Pakistan’s equivalent of the CIA was the source of bin Laden’s funding in Afghanistan. He was their boy, and they were ours. Now the war against terrorism is spreading far beyond Afghanistan.

A congressional staff member with deep knowledge of intelligence matters said, “I don’t know on what basis we would be able to protest Israel’s actions.” He referred to the recent killing of Qaed Salim Sinan al Harethi, a top al Qaida leader, in Yemen by a remotely controlled CIA drone.

“That was done on the soil of a friendly ally,” the staffer said.

Assassination attempts don’t always work as planned. Then the blowback process begins.

Phil Stoddard, former director of the Middle East Institute, cited a botched plot to kill Ali Hassan Salemeh, the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. The 1974 attempt severely embarrassed Mossad when the Israeli hit team mistakenly assassinated a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway.

Salemeh, later a CIA asset, was killed in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1976 by a car bomb placed by an Israeli assassination team, former U.S. intelligence officials said.

The Mossad will supervise the new program, according to the UPI story.

Dagan, the new hard-driving director of Mossad, will implement the new changes, former Israeli government officials said.

Dagan, nicknamed “the gun,” was Sharon’s adviser on counter-terrorism during the government of Netanyahu in 1996, former Israeli government officials say. A former military man, Dagan has also undertaken extremely sensitive diplomatic missions for several of Israel’s prime ministers, former Israeli government sources said.

Former Israel Defense Forces Lt. Col. Gal Luft, who served under Dagan, described him as an “extremely creative individual – creative to the point of recklessness.”

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/01/1561070.php

Presumably, the spirit of secrecy will prevail on all sides. The civilian populations of both the United States and Israel are now the targets of Muslim terrorists. So far, Islamic terrorists have not targeted national leaders. The attempt on Karzai’s life last fall was an exception, but the plot failed. It was not well-thought-out.

Historically, national leaders have left alone other national leaders during wartime. This is because tit-for-tat retaliation is the obvious response. Armies have slaughtered each other, but leaders have not been assassinated. The attempt on Hitler’s life in 1944 was made by Germans, not by a British or American spy.

But we are now facing a new battlefield. The Muslim world has no military means of inflicting meaningful damage on Western military forces. While our government is officially in a sweat about nuclear weapons or sophisticated biological weapons, the technology of biological terrorism is becoming ever less expensive. As prices fall, technology spreads to NGO’s (non-government organizations). When desperate, a cadre of religiously motivated men, who see that their political leaders are powerless to defend traditional Islam against aggression by the West, will accept the challenge to inflict revenge. There is a pool of eligible adult recruits that is well over 100,000,000. They are scattered all over the Middle East and Asia.

I think anyone who has given thought to the technology of retaliation knows that terrorism and counter-terrorism can up the ante at will. The constant suicide bombings inside the boundaries of Israel are a reminder to everyone: “Nobody is safe, no matter what the police do.”

ESCALATION

The escalation bothers me. Terrorism feeds on counter-terrorism, at least up to a point. At some point, which the tyrannical Czar Alexander III crossed after Alexander II was assassinated, the government can crush a domestic terrorist movement. But, sooner or later, a weaker, less ruthless leader ascends to the throne. Louis XVI and Nicholas II are classic examples. Then the repressed anger manifests itself in acts of violence.

The United States is on the edge of a major escalation. Its target is a moral monster, but is he a threat to the U.S.? This threat, the Administration has not proven. If the Administration knows where the radiating gun is, why not tell Blix?

North Korea is proving to everyone in the Muslim world that if you’ve actually got weapons of mass destruction, you can thumb your nose at America. This lesson will not be lost on the terrorists. They don’t have weapons of mass destruction . . . yet. But biological weapons are cheap to produce. Once deployed, they can create terror in whole populations. The chilling words, “If a terrorist is willing to die. . . ,” point to what we civilians know, but what our political leaders dare not articulate. We cannot be protected.

To attack a nation in lieu of attacking the terrorist underground is futile. There are too many recruits. Martyrs increase the supply of recruits. If the UPI story is true, we are facing an escalation of attacks on individuals. But attacks on individuals call forth tit-for-tat responses.

Now that the war on terrorism is escalating on two fronts, military and clandestine, the threat is that the response of the underground will be to escalate. But the weapons of that underground war are more likely to be aimed at leaders if the terrorists perceive that any retaliation by the U.S. will be directed at leaders of compromised Islamic client states.

When it becomes clear to Al Qaeda that the Middle East’s Muslim states have become operational client states of the United States, the traditional restraints on high-level assassination will be removed. This is my fear. If the U.S. removes Saddam Hussein and brings the Saudi princes into line, Al Qaeda will no longer worry about retaliation on Muslim heads of state. In fact, such retaliation will be welcomed.

The West is not used to dealing with underground terrorists. Our leaders are used to dealing with nation-states that can be defeated on geographical battlefields. But the battlefields of the terrorists are selected at their discretion.

CONCLUSION

A swift military victory in Iraq, if coupled with assassination squads from the West, is a formula for long-term warfare. I don’t think the West’s voters perceive this threat. The West’s military tactics rely on our military forces’ ability to hammer foreign troops with high technology and then sending in occupying troops, such as the 37,000 who are still on the Korean border. Our enemies have only rarely been religiously motivated. They are usually identifiable either racially or geographically.

But what if our enemies are dispersed across many borders? What if they are united by the lust of revenge against the West because of the West’s perceived embodiment of two hated religions? That would change the nature of the war.

We are about to roll into uncharted territory. The official rule is correct: “Things are easier to get into than out of.”

A former member of an Israeli assassination squad has broken his silence for the first time.
He spoke to Donald Macintyre
The Independent UK
Sunday, 1 March 2009
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israels-death-squads-a-soldiers-story-1634774.html

The Israeli military’s policy of targeted killings has been described from the inside for the first time. In an interview with The Independent on Sunday, and in his testimony to an ex-soldiers’ organisation, Breaking the Silence, a former member of an assassination squad has told of his role in a botched ambush that killed two Palestinian bystanders, as well as the two militants targeted.
The operation, which took place a little over eight years ago, at the start of the present intifada, or uprising, left the former sharpshooter with psychological scars. To this day he has not told his parents of his participation in what he called “the first face-to-face assassination of the intifada”.

As the uprising unfolded, targeted assassinations became a regularly used weapon in the armoury of the Israel military, especially in Gaza, where arrests would later become less easy than in the West Bank. The highest-profile were those of Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi in 2005, and of Said Siyam in the most recent offensive. But the targeting of lower-level militants, like the one killed in the operation described by the former soldier, became sufficiently common to attract little comment.
The incident described by the ex-soldier appears almost trivial by comparison with so much that has happened since in Gaza, culminating in more than 1,200 Palestinian casualties inflicted by Operation Cast Lead this January. It might have been forgotten by all except those directly affected, if it had not been for the highly unusual account of it he gave to Breaking the Silence, which has collected testimony from hundreds of former troops concerned about what they saw and did – including abuses of Palestinians – during their service in the occupied territories.

That account, expanded on in an interview with the IoS, and broadly corroborated by another soldier’s testimony to Breaking the Silence, directly challenges elements of the military’s official version at the time, while casting new light on the tactic of targeted assassination by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). So do comments by the father of one of the Palestinians killed, and one who survived, also traced by the IoS.

Our source cannot be identified by name, not least because by finally deciding to talk about what happened, he could theoretically be charged abroad for his direct role in an assassination of the sort most Western countries regard as a grave breach of international law. From a good home, and now integrated into civilian life in the Tel Aviv area, the former soldier is about 30. Intelligent and articulate, and with a detailed memory of many aspects, he is scrupulous in admitting his recall of other points may be defective.

The former conscript said his special unit had trained for an assassination, but was then told it would be an arrest operation. They would fire only if the targeted man had weapons in his car. “We were pretty bombed it was going to be an arrest. We wanted to kill,” he said. The unit then went south to Gaza and took up position. It was 22 November 2000.

The squad’s main target was a Palestinian militant called Jamal Abdel Razeq. He was in the passenger seat of a black Hyundai being driven north towards Khan Younis by his comrade, Awni Dhuheir. Both men were wholly unaware of the trap that was waiting for him near the Morag junction. This section of the main Salahadin north-south road in Gaza went straight past a Jewish settlement. Razeq was used to seeing an armoured personnel carrier (APC) beside the road, but he had no idea that its regular crew had been replaced by men from an elite air force special unit, including at least two highly trained sharpshooters.

Since before he even left his home in Rafah that morning, Shin Bet – the Israeli intelligence service – had been monitoring Razeq’s every move with uncanny accuracy, thanks to a running commentary from the mobile phones of two Palestinian collaborators, including one of his own uncles. The man who was to kill him says he was “amazed” at the detail relayed to the unit commander from Shin Bet: “How much coffee he had in his glass, when he was leaving. They knew he had a driver [and] … they said they had weapons in the trunk, not in the car. For 20 minutes we knew it was going to be a simple arrest because they had no weapons in the car.”

But then, he says, the orders suddenly changed. “They said he had one minute to arrive, and then we got an order that it was going to be an assassination after all.” He thinks it came from a war room set up for the operation and his impression was that “all the big chiefs were there”, including a brigadier general.

The two militants would still have suspected nothing as they approached the junction, even when a big Israel Defence Forces (IDF) supply truck lumbered out of a side turning to cut them off. They would have had no way of knowing the truck was full of armed soldiers, waiting for this moment. A 4×4 was deployed by the road, only in case “something really wrong” happened.

But something did go wrong: the truck moved out too soon, and blocked not only the militants in their black Hyundai, but the white Mercedes taxi in front of them. It was carrying Sami Abu Laban, 29, a baker, and Na’el Al Leddawi, 22, a student. They were on their way from Rafah to Khan Younis to try to buy some scarce diesel to fire the bread ovens.

As the critical moment approached, the sharpshooter said he began to shake from the waist down. “What happens now is I’m waiting for the car to come and I am losing control of my legs. I have an M16 with digicom [special sharpshooter sights]. It was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me. I felt completely concentrated. So the seconds are counted down, then we started seeing the cars, and we see that two cars are coming, not one. There was a first car very close to the following one and when the truck came in, it came in a bit early, and both cars were stopped.Everything stopped. They gave us two seconds and they said, ‘Shoot. Fire.’” Who gave the order, and to whom? “The unit commander … to everybody. Everybody heard ‘Fire’.”

The target, Razeq, was in the passenger seat, closest to the APC. “I have no doubt I see him in the scope. I start shooting. Everyone starts shooting, and I lose control. I shoot for one or two seconds. I counted afterwards – shot 11 bullets in his head. I could have shot one shot and that’s it. It was five seconds of firing.

“I look through the scope, see half of his head. I have no reason to shoot 11 bullets. I think maybe from the fear, maybe to cope with all the things that are happening, I just continue shooting.”

As far as he can recall, the order to fire was not specific to the sharpshooters in the APC. He cannot know for certain if the troops in the truck thought wrongly that some of the fire was directed at them from the cars. But he says that after he stopped “the firing gets even worse. I think the people in the truck started to panic. They’re firing and one of the cars starts driving and the commander says, ‘Stop, stop, stop, stop!’ It takes a few seconds to completely stop and what I see afterwards is that both cars are full of holes. The first car, too, which was there by coincidence.”

Razeq and Dhuheir, the militants, were dead. So were Abu Laban and Al Leddawi. Miraculously, the driver of the taxi, Nahed Fuju, was unscathed. The sharpshooter can remember only one of the four bodies lying on the ground. “I was shocked by that body. It was like a sack. It was full of flies. And they asked who shot the first car [the Mercedes] and nobody answered. I think everybody was confused. It was clear that it had been a screw-up and nobody was admitting [it].” But the commander did not hold a formal debriefing until the unit returned to its main base.

“The commander came in and said, ‘Congratulations. We got a phone call from the Prime Minister and from the Minister of Defence and the chief of staff. They all congratulated us. We succeeded perfectly in our mission. Thank you.’ And from that point on, I understood that they were very happy.” He says the only discussion was over the real risk there had been of soldiers’ casualties from friendly fire in the shoot-out, in which at least one of the IDF’s own vehicles was hit by ricocheting bullets, and at the end of which at least one soldier even got out of the 4×4 and fired at an inert body on the ground.

Saying his impression was “they wanted the press or the Palestinians to know they were raising a step in our fight”, he adds: “The feeling was of a big success and I waited for a debriefing that would ask all these questions, that would show some regret for some failure, but it didn’t happen. The only thing that I felt is that the commanders knew that it was a very big political success for them.”

The incident immediately caused something of a stir. Mohammed Dahlan, then head of the Fatah-run Preventative Security in Gaza, called it a “barbaric assassination”. The account given at the time to the press by Brigadier General Yair Naveh, in charge of IDF forces in Gaza, was that it had been intended as an arrest operation, but that sensing something amiss, Razeq had pulled out a Kalashnikov rifle and attempted to open fire at the Israeli forces, at which point the troops shot at his vehicle. While Razeq was the main target, it was claimed, the two victims in the taxi were were also Fatah activists “with ties to Razeq”.

Mr Al Leddawi said last week that his son’s presence was a tragic accident of timing and that the family had never heard of the other two men. “It was all by coincidence that they were there,” he said. “We have nothing do with the resistance in this family.” Beyond saying that he had received “not a shekel” in compensation, the taxi driver, Mr Fuju, did not want to talk to us in Rafah last week. “You want to interview me so the Israelis can bomb my house?”

The Israeli military said in response to detailed queries about the incident and the discrepancies between its account at the time and that of Palestinians, and now the ex-soldier, that it takes “human rights violations very seriously” but “regrets that Breaking the Silence does not provide it with details or testimony of the incidents it alleges in order to allow for a thorough investigation”. It added that “these soldiers and commanders did not approach senior commanders … with their complaints during their service.”

Our revelations in brief: Secret unit on a mission to kill

The Independent on Sunday has obtained an account which, for the first time, details service in one of the Israeli military’s assassination squads.

A former conscript has told the IoS and an ex-soldiers’ organisation of his part in an ambush that went wrong, accidentally killing two men as well as the two militants targeted.

The ex-soldier, a trained sharpshooter, says he fired 11 bullets into the head of the militant whose death had been ordered by his superiors. The squad was initially told it was going on an arrest mission, but was then ordered on a minute’s notice to shoot to kill.

Instead of the flaws in the operation being discussed afterwards, the squad was told it had “succeeded perfectly” and had been congratulated by the Prime Minister and chief of staff.

The former soldier, who was psychologically scarred by the incident, has never told his parents what happened.

Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries, former Israeli intelligence officials told United Press International.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has forbidden the practice until now, these sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Israeli statements were confirmed by more than a half dozen U.S. foreign policy and intelligence officials in interviews with UPI.

With the appointment of Meir Dagan, the new director Israel’s Mossad secret intelligence service, Sharon is also preparing “a huge budget” increase for the spy agency as part of “a tougher stance in fighting global jihad (or holy war),” one Israeli official said.

Since Sharon became Israeli prime minister, Tel Aviv has mainly limited its practice of targeted killings to the West Bank and Gaza because “no one wanted such operations on their territory,” a former Israeli intelligence official said.

Another former Israeli government official said that under Sharon, “diplomatic constraints have prevented the Mossad from carrying out ‘preventive operations’ (targeted killings) on the soil of friendly countries until now.”

He said Sharon is “reversing that policy, even if it risks complications to Israel’s bilateral relations.”

A former Israeli military intelligence source agreed: “What Sharon wants is a much more extensive and tough approach to global terrorism, and this includes greater operational maneuverability.”

Does this mean assassinations on the soil of allies?

“It does,” he said.

“Mossad is definitely being beefed up,” a U.S. government official said of the Israeli agency’s budget increase. He declined to comment on the Tel Aviv’s geographic expansion of targeted killings.

An FBI spokesman also declined to comment, saying: “This is a policy matter. We only enforce federal laws.”

A congressional staff member with deep knowledge of intelligence matters said, “I don’t know on what basis we would be able to protest Israel’s actions.” He referred to the recent killing of Qaed Salim Sinan al Harethi, a top al Qaida leader, in Yemen by a remotely controlled CIA drone.

“That was done on the soil of a friendly ally,” the staffer said.

But the complications posed by Israel’s new policy are real.

“Israel does not have a good record at doing this sort of thing,” said former CIA counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson.

He cited the 1997 fiasco where two Mossad agents were captured after they tried to assassinate Khaled Mashaal, a Hamas political leader, by injecting him with poison.

According to Johnson, the attempt, made in Amman, Jordan, caused a political crisis in Israeli-Jordan relations. In addition, because the Israeli agents carried Canadian passports, Canada withdrew its ambassador in protest, he said. Jordan is one of two Arab nations to recognize Israel. The other is Egypt.

At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, “I have no intention of stopping the activities of this government against terror,” according to a CNN report.

Former CIA officials say Israel was forced to free jailed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and 70 other Jordanian and Palestinian prisoner being held in Israeli jails to secure the release of the two would-be Mossad assassins.

Phil Stoddard, former director of the Middle East Institute, cited a botched plot to kill Ali Hassan Salemeh, the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. The 1974 attempt severely embarrassed Mossad when the Israeli hit team mistakenly assassinated a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway.

Salemeh, later a CIA asset, was killed in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1976 by a car bomb placed by an Israeli assassination team, former U.S. intelligence officials said.

“Israel knew Salemeh was providing us with preventive intelligence on the Palestinians and his being killed pissed off a lot of people,” said a former senior CIA official.

But some Israeli operations have been successful.

Gerald Bull, an Ontario-born U.S. citizen and designer of the Iraqi supergun — a massive artillery system capable of launching satellites into orbit, and of delivering nuclear chemical or biological payloads from Baghdad to Israel — was killed in Belgium in March 1990. The killing is still unsolved, but former CIA officials said a Mossad hit team is the most likely suspect.

Bull worked on the supergun design — codenamed Project Babylon — for 10 years, and helped the Iraqis develop many smaller artillery systems. He was found with five bullets in his head outside his Brussels apartment.

Israeli hit teams, which consist of units or squadrons of the Kidon, a sub-unit for Mossad’s highly secret Metsada department, would stage the operations, former Israeli intelligence sources said. Kidon is a Hebrew word meaning “bayonet,” one former Israeli intelligence source said.

This Israeli government source explained that in the past Israel has not staged targeted killings in friendly countries because “no one wanted such operations on their territory.”

This has become irrelevant, he said.

Dagan, the new hard-driving director of Mossad, will implement the new changes, former Israeli government officials said.

Dagan, nicknamed “the gun,” was Sharon’s adviser on counter-terrorism during the government of Netanyahu in 1996, former Israeli government officials say. A former military man, Dagan has also undertaken extremely sensitive diplomatic missions for several of Israel’s prime ministers, former Israeli government sources said.

Former Israel Defense Forces Lt. Col. Gal Luft, who served under Dagan, described him as an “extremely creative individual — creative to the point of recklessness.”

A former CIA official who knows Dagan said the new Mossad director knows “his foreign affairs inside and out,” and has a “real killer instinct.”

Dagan is also “an intelligence natural” who has “a superb analyst not afraid to act on gut instinct,” the former CIA official said.

Dagan has already removed Mossad officials whom he regards as “being too conservative or too cautious” and is building up “a constituency of senior people of the same mentality,” one former long-time Israeli operative said.

Dagan is also urging that Mossad operatives rely less on secret sources and rely more on open information that is so plentifully provided on the Internet and newspapers.

“It’s a cultural thing,” one former Israeli intelligence operative explained. “Mossad in the past has put its emphasis on Humint (human intelligence) and secret operations and has neglected the whole field of open media, which has become extremely important.”

Regarding Mossad’s new policy and budget increase, Kim Farber an Israeli Embassy official said, “There is so little information available on this, there is nothing I can add.”

Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International