Dubai Assassination Debacle Begins to Sink In

Israelis as a people can be remarkably obtuse and the fallout from the Dubai assassination is no different.  While Yvette and his boy-pal Danny attempt to act as if all is honky dory, even the N.Y. Times Israel correspondent begins to see the real picture.  Isabel Kershner writes in today’s Times:

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.

…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.

Yes, that’s Israel.  Instead of facing up to the mess it’s made, instead it’s: “we wuz framed.”

And here is the remarkably nonchalant MFA sweeping the entire matter under the rug and pretending that the only issue is a misuse of a few foreign passports:

Israel’s government believes that a row over forged French, British, German and Irish passports used by the suspected assassins of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai is not likely to develop into a major diplomatic crisis.

…”At this stage, there is no evidence linking Israel to the incident, and if that continues, the affair will subside quickly,” one senior Israeli official predicted.

This is the response of the 12 year old whistling his way past the graveyard.  You just hope to hell that your bravado will see you through.  When you’re an innocent 12 year old it might.  But not when you’re a country known the world over for killings on a massive scale and now, for buffoonish political assassinations.  I expect any minute the Emirates will offer us a video of the actual murder itself to further embarrass the Israelis.  What a band of fools these Mossadniks were.

It is up to the countries involved to keep Israel’s feet to the fire and for Interpol to launch a massive search for the perpetrators, who an Israeli commentator wryly noted can’t even go to the grocery store without having their images flashed everywhere.  I also hope Dubai hangs tough on this and doesn’t reach a backroom deal with Israel to sweep this under the rug in return for a mess of pottage.

Given the enormous latitude provided by the Israeli judicial system to the intelligence services it’s hard to see how this will go far.  But I’ve got to say, more power to ‘im:

“I’ve heard that [identity fraud victim] Paul [Keely] is planning to sue the state, and rightly so,” said a kibbutz member. “How can it be that a person sits at home, lives only to support his family, and they accuse him of an assassination overseas? We on the kibbutz all laughed over it, but for Paul, it’s a nightmare.