Israel Matzav

The Dubai double standard

Earlier this week, I reported on a New York Times story that claimed that two of Hamas terrorist and arms dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh's liquidators had flown to the United States after the liquidation. I raised five questions regarding that report:

First, do you mean to tell me that one of the suspects who supposedly left Dubai within a day actually remained there until February 14 and Inspector Tamim missed him? Pretty shoddy police work in my book.

Second, if the US fingerprints anyone who enters and leaves the country on a foreign passport, couldn't someone also have taken the passports and duplicated them when this person was on a trip to the US, just as the Israelis have been accused of doing?

Third, is there no way to leave the US these days without being tracked? Canada? The Caribbean Islands? Mexico?

Fourth, the US is a big country - someone can find an awful lot of places to hide there.

Fifth, who is Payoneer and how are they connected to this? Someone issues American credit cards in Israel? Bring it on....

Now, ABC News is reporting that the two alleged liquidators never entered the United States on the dates named.

Law enforcement authorities told ABC News that a records search turned up no evidence that two suspects in the murder of a top Hamas military commander entered the United States on the dates now circulating in published reports. While officials stressed that the records search was preliminary, and had only been done in response to claims in the media, one of the officials said it did not appear anyone using the names of the two suspects had been in the U.S. on any date after the murder.

...

One highly placed official also said that Dennings and Cannon were actually run through the database for every day from Jan. 19, the day of al-Mabhouh's death, through the end of February without a hit. "They [checked] all dates," said the official. "It wasn't just based on those [two] specific dates."

A second official said "most" of the more than two dozen names cited by Dubai police as suspects were run through the same database for the specific dates cited in the press reports about Dennings and Cannon, Jan. 21 and Feb. 14. None of the names turned up a hit for those two dates.

The official said the database was only searched in response to the published reports. "Without a U.S. nexus, there is no need or requirement to run every name on every day," said the official. "If a foreign law enforcement partner came to us and said, we need assistance, we think our investigation is pointing towards the fact that someone did enter the United States on x or y date under this name then we would check it, but we have not been asked."

One then has to wonder why the world is taking so seriously claims by Dubai that the Mossad is behind Mabhouh's liquidation. After all, the only hard evidence that has been shown is a bunch of closed circuit videos of people on vacation who may or may not have been Mossad agents, and who may or may not have been involved in the liquidation. Inspector Tamim of the Dubai police department has presented nothing that would stand up in a court of law in any Western country. And as to the passports, if you were an Arab country or assisting one (and we all know that the airport personnel in Europe include plenty of Islamists and their sympathizers), what better way to cast suspicion upon Israel than by using passports carrying names of its dual citizens.

Moreover, the apparent double standard being applied to this investigation makes me suspicious that Tamim's motive is not to get to the bottom of a murder case, but to tar Israel's reputation in the international community. Elder of Ziyon points to Dubai's handling of an assassination in 2009 in which Israel was clearly not involved. Clearly, that killing was handled differently and with nowhere near the fanfare of this one.

Double standards lead to suspicions that what motivates those who adopt them is anti-Semitism. Where there's smoke, there's usually a fire, eh Mr. Tamim?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:05 AM