AUSTRALIA yesterday warned Israel its standing as a friend would be jeopardised if it were found to have condoned the suspected theft of three Australian citizens’ identities by its Mossad spy agency to carry out a political assassination.
As [Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd demanded answers over Israel’s role in the growing international scandal – and ASIO and the Australian Federal Police launched investigations – it was revealed that Australia had previously warned Israel not to use fake Australian passports for intelligence operations.
A diplomatic row broke out yesterday when three Victorians, all living in Israel, were confirmed among 26 people from four nations whose tampered passports were allegedly used by a team of suspected Israeli Mossad agents who assassinated Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith summoned Israel’s ambassador to Australia, Yuval Rotem, early yesterday to express his “grave concern” about the issue.
The Aussie connection come in the wake of European nations having words to Israel over stolen identities apparently used in the hit. Israel has a history of this crap. In 2004, New Zealand suspended relations with Israel when Mossad agents were caught forging passports.
Why does Israel keep abusing its relationships with the West? I’d have thought they could use all the friends they could get.
I can guess why Israel keeps abusing its relationships…because it can. The second anyone EVER questions Israel of doing any kind of wrongdoing, that person instantly gets branded an Anti Semite. This BS with Israel has gone on for far too long. It needs to stop.
So–the assassination was ok, just abusing “their” passports was wrong?
If the first is ok, the second isn’t worth talking about.
Its not like “passports” are “holy” are they? Maybe so with idiot government/immigration/security forces that can’t understand anything except a name on a list.
#1–Xandris==and when Israel does no such thing in your case, your slur will provide no disinclination to make the same stupid remark the next time Israel is in the news will it?
Are you an Anti-Semite, just jealous, or just stupid?
#2 – you nailed it.
When it comes to espionage and assassinations, it’s not what you do, it’s getting caught doing it. If they’d used fake Jordanian passports this wouldn’t be news.
#2 Bobbo
I assume that if it was your identity they stole to use in a crime, it wouldn’t be a big deal?
#5–Honeyman==exactly. Now why don’t YOU tell us why it might/should/could/maybe/might be of concern?
You see my friend who confuses anonymity with privacy and who makes a shaman of “his name”===there are dozens and dozens of people on this earth with exactly your same name.
You seem to advocate for the same stupidity this issue raises?????
Tell me it ain’t so.
So the ‘intelligence agency’ of some tinpot tribe-with-a-flag, a place rife with antisemitism, makes some accusations about Israel and everyone seems inclined to believe them.
I mean really, what picture comes to mind when I say, “Arab intelligence agency”?
I wish I had a few percent of the world’s oil reserves, then everyone would flatter my fantasies!
Leave Israel alone, OJ did it.
#6 Bobbo
Only one has my passport. Maybe two if this story is to be believed.
Its NOT OK to implicate someone else in your crime by pretending to be them, unless you have their consent.
#9–honeyman==they stole their actual passports? Not just the information contained therein? Wow!
Did they have plastic surgery to look like the passport owner?
Did their coordinate their assassination to coincide with the passport owners annual vacation?
Well, to be serious, as I do take your concerns seriously==passport control is NO CONTROL. It is only a tool. A rather small tool in monitoring what people do.
Monitor this blog and there are several stories of “Mustaffa ben Jamin” who is on the no fly list because the name is so close to “Musthave been jamin.” It matters not that the first Musta is five years old and has never left the country. Doesn’t matter===security is job one.
Maybe I should tell you a secret. I don’t care who steals my passport or my passport information because I have a broomstick up my ass on one end and on the other end is a low powered cam that photographs everything I do. Its my 24/7 alibi documenter. Good for all things National Security/Personal Paranoia.
You should make your own.
Bobbo, you’ve gone off the deep end. I guess this means if someone steals your identity and, say, withdraws all your money from your bank, uses your SS number to… Well, you get the idea. If they do that, you are perfectly fine with that. Stick not withstanding.
Israel should play by the rules like everyone else. They don’t deserve special treatment like you apparently believe.
#11–Now Uncle Dave===a damaging assessment if ever there was one.
Now===how close an analogy is someone stealing my identity and looting my bank account to someone copying my passport information an assassinating a Hamas scumbag?
Are the two situations more alike, or more NOT alike?
Hint: I am personally injured in the first, and completely NOT involved in the second.
I wonder if you two are confusing what I thought I pretty well telegraphed at my first post: concern about passport information stealing is of no imporatance UNLESS you think the authorities are so stupid all they can do is match names to a list.
Now, we have all seen the authorities be so stupid all they can do is match names to a list, so THAT concern is valid. I would not enjoy having to be interviewed by the local FBI to confirm whether or not I was in Israel assassinating a scumbag Hamas leader instead of at work with my nice clean passport free of an Israeli Passport Mark==or with a copy of my “Lost Passport Report” from six months ago.
Imagine “the truth” and therefore the rank order of my concerns including more than what a piece of paper in some Arab country says?
Big Picture? Balance? Proportionality? Enjoying a nice chocolate souffle with a capuccino?
We are what we think, what we focus on, what we obsess over.
Thats why I’m an international pastry chef. Just don’t ask about the bombe.
This assasination is a war crime, and Israel should be punished.
if they wanted to capture and try these people in a world court that included Muslim judges, fine. They have no God given right to kill whom they please.
#13-Father-They have no God given right to kill whom they please.
Israel or Hamas?
#13–father==(bless dear old Dad, he was bad, but not this stupid)
This assasination is a war crime, // Is it? Violation of International law I can see, but I don’t see “a war crime.”
and Israel should be punished. /// You mean you have enough info to judge Israel is responsible already? Ok–fair enough.
if they wanted to capture and try these people in a world court that included Muslim judges, fine. /// Oxymoron–Muslim judges. Good one.
They have no God given right to kill whom they please. /// You don’t see the “poetic justice” being played out at all? Woman and child killing Hamas scumbag taken out by a focused hit squad. Number of Dead–One. Number of Innocent Dead–Zero.
Your legal alternative: Israel declare War on Palestine”area” killing thousands of innocent people.
Yes, proportionality and balance. So lacking in the old folks.
Well Father neither does Hamass, so why didn’t you mention their war crime trial?
Oh and must be Muslim judges eh? Yeah nobody else could understand Muslim justice!
Bobbo
The Australians in question are living in Israel.
Dr. Dodd; yes both.
Bobbo: you are a racist, so I’m not going to try to change your mind.
#16–honeyman==they were? Well, that certainly is much closer to the mark. Yes, bad form to choose an innocent victim who might have to spend more than 2 hours with the local authorities.
Back to the start: so, the original assassination is ok as long as you don’t falsify any government papers?
Balance.
#17–father==are you thinking “ageist?” Thats certainly how I posted referencing your own post.
Is calling an obvious racist a racist a racist response? If so, guilty.
As a white boy, I know I am racist. I try not to be, but it squishes out around the edges. I hate it when that happens.
Because the israelies probably have a copy of my passport, I’m kinda pissed by this event.
Father, thats interesting. They have a copy of mine too. Although they don’t need a copy of anyone’s passport==just the info in it which is generically availble.
Personally, I’d be proud to have such a tangential role in terminating a scumbag like the Hamas Leader was.
I pity the Palestinians caught between bad leadership and the tides of history. So much of the world really sucks.
The simple fact is if Hamas would stop attacking Israel then Israel would stop assassinating Hamas leaders.
Even better it would allow them to concentrate on that nutjob in Iran before he starts a nuclear WWIII.
I’m just as pissed as I would be if the PLO had a copy of my passport, and used said copy to make a fake passport, that allowed them to enter this country to kill someone here.
Maybe I should have my current passport cancelled, and get a new one.
God damn it.
Iran is not going to start WWIII. Amerikuh and Assreal probably will.
“I’d have thought they could use all the friends they could get.”
And Israel does USE all the friends they could get.
With emphasis on “USE”.
Israel is self-interested values relations with other countries only to the extent they can use that relationship to their advantage.
The impression I was left with from Israelis is that they consider nonIsraeli Jews to be Jews In Name Only.
Whatever, I’m pissed at Israel at this time.
I missed this: “Why does Israel keep abusing its relationships with the West? I’d have thought they could use all the friends they could get.” ///
Israel is no different than any other country. Acting on its interests. Israel has its future constantly on the line. Other countries couldn’t care less except those positioning to get their land and the expulsion of a foreign religion.
Simple really. In fact, Israel shows an unbelievable amount of restraint.
Back to the point. If someone commits a crime in Dubai that is the responsibility of the police in Dubai. If someone forges the passport of a country, that is responsibility of the country that the passport was stolen from. Rudd (who I do not support) said it was disturbing that the Australian passport was forged and even worse because it was used for an assassination. Therefore he did not say the assassination was fine, he addressed the part that concerns breaking Australian law, as he should.
It seems the Israeli public thinks they did it and they are (perhaps understandably) supportive. Israel has not denied anything publicly and unless someone has set out to implicate them unfairly it is reasonable to assume they had the motive to do this (so would the PLO if you ask me) but off course evidence is required before making accusations.
By the way, Israeli says they have not been (officially) accused either…
“I haven’t heard any government accuse Israel of being involved in that, not in France, not in Britain, not in Ireland, not in Germany and now not in Australia,” he told ABC Radio today.
“There have been many hints, or direct accusations by media (but) … they don’t represent any official stance. We don’t think we should feel concerned.” – Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.
There are millions of other things I am more concerned about than the extra-judicial killing of a war criminal, however the point is that Australian passport fraud falls under the jurisdiction of Australian law enforcement and it is therefore completely consistent for them to focus on it.
One of the things that is bothering me is there seem to be to many assassins. That may seem odd but it should not have taken over five or six people at the most with some of them checking the place out and one to three others doing the termination. I’m not getting electrocuting then smothering somebody. It seems both awkward and overly convoluted.
The soviets took a guy out in Britain using one man with an umbrella that fired a hollow toxin filled microscopic pellet that the target barely felt in a public location with people all around and the assassin didn’t get caught.
Maybe they couldn’t get their high tech toys through airport security any more but still this seems clumsy. Not even a screwdriver that would serve as a shiv but some how they electrocuted the guy only that didn’t really work so they smothered him?
A skilled martial artist can put a man down in a fraction of a second without a weapon. I can only assume that in some regards these people weren’t skilled.