Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv have published an updated edition of their Israeli spookery book, Spies Against Armageddon. I wrote an unflattering post about the original edition. But there are some important and interesting additions to the new version.
Among them, Melman bolsters the theory that Israel may’ve assassinated Yasser Arafat by poisoning his food. The co-author notes that around the same year Arafat died (2004), the Shabak poisoned the food of a Hamas commander, killing him. This murder has never been previously reported. Melman has not published the name of the victim and I haven’t been able to ascertain who it is despite asking people. If readers can research news reports to find Hamas commanders who died under mysterious circumstances in 2004, that could give us a boost.
While Yossi Melman and I have had disagreements in the past about interpretation of events and data (he’s even been right and I wrong once in a while!), his stating that there is a “resonance of truth” in the assassination is something you can pretty much take to the bank. Another factor to consider is the post I wrote offering documentary evidence that a year before Arafat’s death, the Israeli cabinet explicitly granted authority to the prime minister to kill him if it couldn’t send him into exile.
The other material in the book that has particular resonance in light of Jeff Stein’s provocative revelations of massive Israeli espionage in the U.S., is the passage pictured which jocularly acknowledges Israel’s spy campaign and the massive Israel Lobby effort to protect it.
I also thank Melman for crediting in his book my own reporting about the Prisoner X2 case, which still remains unresolved. It revolves around an Israeli ex-Mossad agent who betrayed his country, was tried and convicted in secret, and is jailed in secret as well, much like Ben Zygier was.
I recently came accross the story of the assasination by Belgian chocolates, which Melman also mentions in the part of his book that you quote, in an interview with Leila Khaled at 972mag:
According to Leila, the Mossad also didn’t perform one of the most cinematic assassinations ever attributed to it. The story has it that Wadie Haddad, an ex-PFLP leader, was killed in 1978 in the German Democratic Republic by eating poisoned Belgium chocolate sent to him by the Mossad. “That’s not true,” says Leila. “I knew him very well and he didn’t like chocolate. He had cancer.”
Indeed, Leila’s assertion is substantiated by one of the Stratfor emails leaked by Wikileaks in 2012. It shows a conversation between two private intelligence contractors, David Dafinoiu, president of NorAm Intelligence, and Fred Burton, Stratfor’s VP of counter-intelligence.
From david@dafinoiu.com
To burton@stratfor.com
Hello Fred, […] On Wadi Haddad: contrary to Aharon Klein and other publications on “behalf of” Mossad officers, the killing of Haddad by Mossad with poisoned chocolate is just a nice fiction story. Haddad was indeed on the Mossad assassination list and a “Red Page” order was given on his name along with other names such as Kamal Adwan, Hussein Abad Al-Chir, Mohammed Boudia, Abu Daud and others.
However, he died from leukemia that he suffered for a long time. The version of Mossad’s assassination played good for all the parties, presenting Wadi as a hero and Mossad as an assassins organization that the terrorists should be afraid of.
@ Elisabeth: Thanks for this. I absolutely detest Aaron Klein. He’s an ardent settler ultra nationalist who somehow gets published in Time Magazine. Do you have an online link to this email exchange. I’d love to tweet this at Klein if he’s on Twitter.
All I have is the article at 972mag where I read this.
It is here:
http://972mag.com/interview-with-leila-khaled-bds-is-effective-but-it-doesnt-liberate-land/91000/
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