I think you miss the point of this thread. It is irrelevant that the guy they offed was a dick. The thread is about diplomacy.
Mossad (or a mythical Mossad impersonator) did a diplomatic doody on the living room floor of several allied countries. I’m sure it’ll all be wiped up eventually, but the OP asks for “the correct response” - in diplomatic terms, not in terms of the worthiness or otherwise of the victim.
Israel has hadrows with Canada and New Zealand for using/obtaining Canuck/Kiwi passports for their spy operations. Israel had promised that they would not do that again for these countries.
I’m curious as to what tipped off the Dubai authorities that these people should be investigated further. All the footage I’ve seen is simply people who happened to be standing near the guy. There isn’t any footage of them interacting with him. A few of them aren’t even in the pictures. Did they just run the passport of everyone in the hotel and area?
The correct response is a public “Harrumph” and a private “Nice one, Dude.” And that’s all that’s going to happen. If Israel was a SDMB poster, it would probably draw the equivalent of a “Mod Note, no warning issued”, or a formal warning at most. Then there’d be a 40 page thread in ATMB about it. And in a month or less, all would be forgotten.
I wouldn’'t be surprised if they did just that. they probably checked out anyone who had any passing contact with the guy. Maybe anyone who stayed in that hotel during the time period. Anyone who stayed at neighboring hotels. Anybody who doesn’t seem to have any background (paid with cash, uses only phone cards, no personal/bussiness reason to be in the country, etc). Anybody who wanted to be anonymous is a key suspect, then they probably checked out their entrance pictures, visas, passport, etc. Things were bound to not match.
If everything matched out well it would be easy to track down these people further.
There seems to be a lot of ‘he got what was coming to him’ type of pragmatic attitude here, and really it’s not a very good attitude to have.
The use of dodgy passports is especially egrerious, there have been a number of cases of foreign nationals, such as Irish and Canadians who have fallen into enemy hands, or rather the hands of kidnappers and the like, that only thing that stopped them getting murdered outright was their passports - to a local untrained Moslem with perhaps some sympathies with Al-Qaeda or any other such cause, they probably are not able to recognise the differance between American English, Canadian English, Irish English, and those passports made the differance.
Just holding a non-American or non-Israeli passport may well be enought to keep an abductee alive and may well ensure they are freed - and Israel has basicly compromised that.
Next, we all take a pretty dim view when foreigners come to our countries and continue their wars and disputes on our soil, we saw this with Algerians, we have seen it with the Bulgarian assasination of Markov, and the notorious Polonium murder of Litvenenko, so why is it that folk here seem ok about the idea of Israelis doin it to their enemies, but outside their own borders - how would you like it if they decided to bring some of that war to your town?
Accepting this is to accept that nations can export their disputes into our borders, it’s not just some far away phenomenon.
In the Arab world, you can bet that this will play well, the Americans and the Zionists who control them will be a superb recruiting tool, even if the facts are nothing like this at all.
Let’s remond ourselves what is going on, we haveone insurgency and one war going on right now, the protagonists on the other side would like to gain more recruits, and the Israelis have just supplied them with the best propaganda they could possibly have.
This assassination is simply a murder, nothing else, Israelis murder Arabs, and what do you think is likely to occur as a result?
Fine, he deserved it and it will never affect you, well think about that next time you go to an airport and get involved with TSA and ask yourself why such measures are being taken, airport body scanners and the like.
Lastly, if you accept that Israel has some sort of exemption, or perhaps you think that they were right or any sort of acceptance at all, then you have to also accept that Arab terrorists will also gain sympathy from their supporters to do the same, and the last time Arab sympathisers did this - carry out an assassination, in Israel, what happened was that Israel started a war in Lebanon, which killed hundreds if not thousands of people, impoverished thousands more, was condemned roundly by the UN and has led to criminal actions being taken for some of the worst excessess of Israeli soldiers, and if it were possible, further destroyed the reputation of Israel for its use fo white phosphorous ordnance against unarmed civilians.
So why shouldn’t the average Arab have a proper military incursion into Israel, what is good for one is good for another?
I will also add something else, what this actually means is that Israel itself has become a terrorist state, it cares nothing for the rule of law, it cares nothing for putting the lives of other nationals at risk, it is only interested in its own affairs and screw everybody else.
Well screw everyone else is fine, but we live in a much wider world than that, other countries seem to have the same attitude and this just keeps it going.
Oh it isn’t indiscriminate terrorism you might say, but terrorism it is, there are plenty of nations who would like to see certain individuals dead, and this has legitimised their behaviour, see you take sides saying one lot can do it, what you do is make it practice to allow all countries to do it, wonder what sort or reaction there would be if Cheney or Rumsfeld were murdered by , say, the Syrians or perhaps some faction in Iraq? After all, both are arseholes by many measures and both have been directly responsible for death and suffering in ME nations, and both have been responsible for unjustifiable war, or maybe they haven’t, but the point is, your logc is not relevant, your acceptance of this action by Israel makes it justifiable for others to do the same for what they see as prefectly legitimate reasons.
So the Israelis are free to send killers to countries that do not “respect” them? That seems to be a pretty wide hunting license.
[quote=“Alessan, post:18, topic:529459”]
First of all, nobody thinks the Brits are behind this, and nobody thinks that the Mossad - if they are indeed behind this - will be using British passports again in the near future. So there’s no real risk involved.
[/QUOTE
So it is OK to risk another nation’s civilians if you only do it from time to time? Do you feel that way about robbing banks?
So it is OK to rob banks as long as they are banks that don’t like you? (Will such a policy lead them towards liking you?)
You morality seems to be remarkably fluid. It seems to allow you to do whatever you want whenever you want to whomever you want. In fact, it seems to be very similar to having no moral restrictions at all.
I agree with everything casdave wrote. This was terrorism. It was a murder. I am not okay with murder. I am definitely not okay with murder when it involves a dozen or more people plotting to use subterfuge and deceit to gain access to another country where they will kill people.
I mean, isn’t that what the 9/11 terrorists did?
Wait - we’re talking about morality here? I though we were talking about international relations.
If it were immoral to kill the person in question, it would be immortal to kill him anywhere, including a country that Israel is at war with. How does the location of the killing - which is what we’re discussing - affect its morality?
[Edit - in response to Paul]
double post
Well cry me a river. Let’s help these Muslim’s recognize the Israeli-English. Just what is an Israeli citizen to do if he wants to travel in a Muslim country. Either he is denied access or he’s made himself a target with his Israeli passport .
And you know who else ordered people killed? Hitler!
And President Obama!
Mossad used British passports because they know that after an initial burst of publicity the little bit of which makes it to America will be spun as positively as possible (the only place they’re worried about negative publicity), the Brits will announce a full inquiry which will quietly hush the whole thing up and when it’s all forgotten about release the most anodyne, Israel-friendly inquiry report possible. They may get a sternly worded letter warning them not to do it again. And that’s what’ll happen. When somebody does something like this to Israel it’s terrorism and Israel feel justified in responding up to and including the level of invading another country (Lebanon 1982), or slaughtering endless Palestinian civilians (various occasions). When Israel do it it’s quietly hushed up with the tacit help of various members of the international community.
The BBC is also asking Why did Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Mabhouh go to Dubai? while the 11 murder suspects are put on Interpol’s list (including their retina scans [How “minority report-like”]) and the Dubai police chief says that Interpol should arrest head of Mossad (Not bloody likely).
Mossad have a long history of this kind of thing. Israel have been a terrorist state since 1948, they were founded by a sorry collection of Jewish terrorists, mass murderers and ethnic cleansers.
Gee, I live here on a planet where the vast majority of all Arabs are from countries at peace with Israel. Are things different where you are? In fact lots of Israeli tourists used to go to Egypt all the time.
But in any case, you hold it is OK to put people from a third country at risk just to gain some petty advantage in a war they have nothing to do with? Is there no line you will not cross?
It seems like these people, wherever they currently are, will never be allowed to travel to another country, ever again. This thing is just so freaky juicy; all clock n dagger like. I can’t wait for one of them to be caught…
Next thing you know, spies will stop wearing their “Hi, I’m a spy!” badges.
Something must be done.