After the supposed success of a Mossad website devoted to recruiting informers against Hezbollah, the Israeli Mossad is taking to social media to recruit its own Israeli agents and Arab double agents. It’s created a Contact Us page in multiple languages (one of which is Farsi) on its website inviting Arab/Muslim wannabe double agents to get in touch for opportunities of “great personal benefit:”
Working for Mossad is for people who wish to get ahead, who wish to be well rewarded for their efforts. It is for those with a sense of adventure, for those seeking new and exciting challenges, for those who dream of a better life, for those who wish to travel, see the world, experience success and personal fulfillment and to work for a better future for themselves and their families.
I’m a bit confused about how working for the Mossad will make a better future for Israel or the recruit’s family unless assassinating Arabs is part of your altruistic vision of the making the world a better place.
In the splashy campaign launch, a high-concept video projects a bizarre image of a mother playing with her son and a drone, saying that “when I play with my child I feel like a child again.” The drone then takes off and flies through many of the ensuing scenes, becoming a symbol of the Mossad’s omniscience and its ability to secretly surveill and intervene in events. Thus it transforms itself from a child’s toy to an instrument of covert ops. Creepy.
The video features two voices supposedly standing in for actual agents. The first is the mother’s voice which sounds eerily like a robot rather than a human. The male agent then begins speaking. Sometimes they say the same words at different intervals and sometimes they recite them in unison. The effect is equally bizarre. Perhaps it’s meant to convey the fact that though they are two separate individuals, in service to their country they act, think and speak as one. To the uninitiated listener it sounds curiously like two robots speaking in unison.
Other scenes in the video feature a business meeting in a plush high-rise where, I suppose, the attendees aren’t planning the latest product roll-out, but perhaps the next terror attack against Iran, or Lebanon or Gaza. In another scene, the female agent is shown videotaping a computer server array with her smartphone (really, a smartphone? can’t we do better than that all you Israeli James Bonds?).
It’s ironic that the male agent tells us that his cover job is in marketing, which is precisely what the video is designed to do.
The audio features the requisite scary singing of the muzzein calling the Muslim faithful to prayer as the camera zeroes in on a target on a map. Presumably that’s the next Muslim country Mossad plans to attack. There is other ominous film soundtrack-type music meant to convey suspense and dread simultaneously.
Here’s the script:
Female voice: When I play with my child I feel just like a little girl again.
Male voice: My work isn’t exactly 9 to 5.
Female: Our work isn’t child’s play. I never would’ve guessed this would be what I did with my life. Simply, opening doors…
Male: My grandfather used to say that life is what you make of it.
M & F (unison): Everyone brings their own lives, their own experiences [to the job].
F: For me, it’s like a dream.
M: My friends think I’m in marketing.
F: I’m contributing in a vital way to the State of Israel. I always know that there’s someone I can rely on.
M: …That there’s always someone by my side.
F & M: The world is changing and we need new kinds of connections in order to act.
M: Every day brings a new riddle to solve.
F: I learned things about myself I’d never thought possible.
M: Even when I’m far away, I’m fully in the field [of action].
F: Your imagination is my reality.
M & F: I know that I’m in the right place.
F: This is my world. My mission. Maybe yours too…
My fear is that the next Ben Zygier is out there waiting for his chance to become an Israeli James Bond. He’ll watch this and dream of defending the Israeli homeland and making his own contribution. Instead, his or her life could be much more like Zygier’s.
I’ve featured the video not because it offers any new information about Israeli intelligence. But rather because it offers a candid self-image; or at least a projection of it as conceived by a marketing firm hired to brand Mossad as a cool, smart, mysterious endeavor.
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Mossad is using modern technology to expand their ‘gene pool’.
Two risks worth taking, even if it means another Zygier.
Whenever the agents out into the streets on their mission the soundtrack has the Muslim call to prayer. Did you see the juxtaposition of the innocent Jewish kid, playing with a toy drone versus the threatening Muslim world? Richard commented on those things. Did you get his criticism? What do you think of the worldview behind the video?
@ Fred: Mossad genetics are so inbred they can’t possibly avoid extinction in their current evolutionary state. Careful Fred, your hasbara is showing.