Labels: arms sales, assassination attempt, Dubai, Hamas, Inspector Tamim, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:32 PM
1 comments
Labels: Dubai, Inspector Tamim, London Heathrow Airport
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:19 PM
0 comments
Security Cabinet member and Finance Minister Yair Lapid has warned that Hamas's political leadership - including those based abroad - are not "immune" from bearing the consequences of continued rocket and mortar fire against Israeli civilians.
Speaking just before a Security Cabinet meeting Sunday morning, Lapid referred to the murder of four-year Daniel Turgeman in a mortar attack on southern Israel, saying Israel "would not tolerate" the targeting of its children by Islamist terrorists.
...
"Those responsible for his death will pay the price," Lapid vowed. "Hamas's leaders need to know that we will pursue them, and we will cause them to pay the price for what is happening in the south of the State of Israel."
"No one is immune - not the political leadership, and not the leadership abroad," he said.
Until now Israel has largely avoided targeting Hamas's "political" leadership, focusing on commanders and personnel from its "military wing", the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades. On Thursday, Israel succeeded in killing three of its "most wanted" Hamas terrorists in a strike targeting senior al-Qassam Brigades commanders.
A previous strike targeted the Brigades' commander, Mohammed Deif, but Hamas claimed this elusive terrorist mastermind had survived - though it gave no word on his precise condition.
Hamas's most senior political leader is Khaled Meshaal, currently based in Doha, Qatar. Other senior Hamas leaders are also based abroad - including one of the suspected masterminds of the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teens in June, Salah al-Aruri.Lapid is a moron. Everyone knows that Israel is capable of striking Hamas terrorists abroad. Keep your mouth shut and just do it.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Dubai, Gaza, Hamas, IDF, Jordan, Khaled Meshaal, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Operation Protective Edge, Qatar, targeted killings
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:50 PM
0 comments
Labels: Azmi Bishara, Dubai, Inspector Tamim, Israeli Arab, Israeli Knesset, Qatar, treason
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:12 AM
0 comments
"The Brotherhood as a ruling party in Egypt has no right to interfere with other countries. They are no longer a political party and should respect the independence of other countries," Khalfan told Reuters in an interview this week.
He reiterated charges that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood was linked to an alleged plot to topple the UAE government, saying the group's ultimate goal was Islamist rule in all Gulf states.
Khalfan, who has often railed against the Brotherhood on his Twitter account, is one of only a few UAE officials to speak publicly about politics.
While he says his tweets are personal views, diplomats say they reflect concerns among the UAE ruling elite about the regional popularity of Islamists and the possibility that the West will engage with them.
Khalfan complained that the West "sympathies, adopts and supports" the Brotherhood, saying he did not understand why.We westerners don't understand why either.
Labels: Dubai, Gulf states, Inspector Tamim, Muslim Brotherhood, United Arab Emirates
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:55 PM
0 comments
Western sources "in the know" told Kuwait's Al-Jarida newspaper on Thursday that Ben Zygier, AKA "Prisoner X," was one of the members of the squad which assassinated senior Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January 2010.
The same sources noted that following the mission, Zygier contacted the government in Dubai and updated it on the details of the assassination in exchange for protection. The sources also said that Israel managed to uncover Zygier's hiding place, kidnapped him and jailed him for treason, and all this while maintaining absolute secrecy. The report has not been confirmed by any other sources.
Israel acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that it held the Australia-born dual Israeli citizen under a false name for security reasons and that he died in prison more than two years ago - details that shed new light on a case that has strained relations with its close ally Australia and raised questions about its secretive Mossad agency.
Zygier's trial took place in 2010 at the Central District Court, while he still resided in Petah Tikva. He was taken to the court under heavy security and great secrecy, and all deliberations regarding his case occurred behind closed doors.
While inside the courthouse, he was hidden and isolated from the other detainees, so that he could not be communicated with and was unable to communicate with others.
Due to the furtiveness of the deliberations, the court employees understood that something irregular was occurring at the scene – but apparently most of them had no idea what was actually going on.
Labels: Australia, Dubai, Hamas, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Mossad
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:19 PM
1 comments
"There's an international plot against Gulf states in particular and Arab countries in general...This is preplanned to take over our fortunes," Khalfan told reporters at a gathering late on Wednesday marking the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.Dubai has arrested 20 Islamists since April.
"The bigger our sovereign wealth funds and the more money we put in the banks of Western countries, the bigger the plot to take over our countries...The brothers and their governments in Damascus and North Africa have to know that the Gulf is a red line, not only for Iran but also for the Brothers as well."
Labels: Dubai, Gulf states, Inspector Tamim, Muslim Brotherhood
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:21 AM
1 comments
Europe was supposed to stop buying Iranian oil on July 1, but we may not be there just yet. Iran is trying to continue oil sales to Europe by selling it as part of a consortium. The Islamic Republic of Iran has reached agreements with European refiners to sell some of its oil through a private consortium, an official said on Saturday, a move designed to circumvent sanctions intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt its disputed nuclear programme. The head of the oil products exporters’ union said the agreement between the exporters’ union, Iran’s central bank, and the oil ministry would get round the European Union (EU) ban on shipping insurance for tankers carrying Iranian oil. The EU put into effect a ban on the importation, purchase, or shipping of Iranian oil on July 1, and the Islamic Republic will see its oil exports fall by more than 50% this month from last year’s regular levels, costing it billions of dollars a month in revenue. EU sanctions targeting insurance have severely disrupted Iran’s oil sales to Asia as well, and Japan, one of Iran’s top buyers, will import no Iranian crude in July.The oil ministry referred to there may be Dubai's (that's where the story came from), which leads me to wonder why Dubai should not be hit with sanctions from the Americans and Europeans if it is their oil ministry... let me guess... Obama exempted them? (No, not as far as I can tell).
Labels: Dubai, Iran sanctions regime
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:45 AM
0 comments
Labels: Dubai, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Mossad
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:31 PM
0 comments
In Dubai, they have their priorities. It is far more important to keep Jews - or at least Israelis - out of the country than it is to save lives. And so, at the last minute, 12 Jewish and Arab Israeli cardiologists have been banned from attending a conference of over 12,000 cardiologists that is taking place in the island paradise this week. What's worse, the tourist industry will not refund more than $500 - if that - from the more than $3,000 apiece that the Israeli cardiologists paid to attend. Only a couple of Israelis – one from the Rabin Medical Center and the other from Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center – who had been invited to lecture at the conference were allowed to attend and did so.Priorities, man, priorities!
The Jerusalem Post learned on Tuesday that the would-be participants – Jews and Arabs – paid $3,000 each for their flights, visas, hotels and attendance at the conference.
Dr. Abed Khaskia of the cardiology department at Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba said he was told that only if someone else occupied his room would he get $500 back but that he would not be reimbursed for the rest of the money. He blamed the Geneva-based World Heart Federation, which he said had promised to send a visa two weeks before the event, for the problem.
There was no discrimination between Jewish and Arab Israelis, said Prof. Chaim Lotan, head of cardiology at Hadassah University Medical Center, who had been involved in negotiations with the federation but did not attend because the Israel Heart Society had its own conference here during the same week.
Lotan told the Post that he was promised the federation would do all it could to ensure that all Israelis – participants as well as lecturers – be given a visa to enter Dubai.
“Those who actually did attend did not have an easy time,” Lotan said. “They weren’t allowed to leave the hotel, and their visas were held during their visit. Apparently, the government of Dubai did not want Israelis there.”
Labels: Arab boycott of Israel, Dubai
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:20 PM
5 comments
I'm sure that many of you remember Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the Hamas murderer who was liquidated in his Dubai hotel room in January 2010, allegedly by the Mossad.Email-ID 1593553Hmmm.
Date 2010-06-14 16:41:36
From burton@stratfor.com
To sean.noonan@stratfor.com, tactical@stratfor.com
I have VERY good information this was a contract job. The mission was contracted by the MOSSAD. In essence, subbed out under contract. The last few hits have been subbed out. I also have VERY good information that the Iranian physicist hit was also a subbed out job. More in person at the T meeting Tuesday, can't put anything in writing.
Sean Noonan wrote:
> Ah, that makes more sense. That daily mail story was pretty sensationalized.
>
> Looks like Melman is doing his job. I enjoyed his article on the matter:
>
> http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/germany-may-have-intentionally-leaked-alleged-mossad-man-s-arrest-1.295977
>
> Fred Burton wrote:
>> No, I made no statement. Forwarded Yossi the link to the story and that
>> was his response.
>>
>> Sean Noonan wrote:
>>
>>> Was your statement that the arrest was over the Dubai murder? Brodsky is
>>> wanted for the passport issue. The Sherrif of Dubai, Lt. Gen. Dhahi
>>> Khalfan Tamim (remember him?), has said they have no interest in the
>>> suspect unless directly linked to the murders themselves.
>>>
>>> Fred Burton wrote:
>>>
>>>> -------- Original Message --------
>>>> Subject: RE: Mossad agent arrested over Dubai murder
>>>> Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 08:44:02 +0300
>>>> From: Yossi Melman
>>>> To: Fred Burton
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Not true he was arrested by a request of germany and not dubai over the
>>>> obtaining a german passport deceptively which Was used in the murder/
>>>>
Labels: Dubai, Hamas, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Mossad
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:38 PM
0 comments
As I noted briefly in an earlier post, the son of a former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard was found dead in a Dubai hotel room on Sunday. Here are more details on that story. In related news, Iranian officials said they were investigating the death of Ahmad Rezaie, son of Mohsen Rezaie, a senior Iranian conservative politician who ran for president in 2009. Rezaie, the son, was found dead in a Dubai hotel on Sunday and while suicide appears to be the cause of death, Iranian officials have raised suspicions of foul play. Israel was accused of killing a senior Hamas terrorist in a Dubai hotel in 2010.I'm sure Inspector Tamim will get right on the case. But you won't read about it on this blog if you're in Dubai. Heh.
The death of Rezaie was interesting due to the identity of his father, who is wanted by Interpol for his alleged involvement in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people. He was head of the IRGC at the time of the bombing.
His death could have been caused also by Iranians. Rezaie left for the US in 1998, where he openly criticized his father and the Islamic regime before returning home five years later.
He left Iran again in 2009.
Labels: AMIA truck bombing, Dubai, Iranian nuclear threat, Iranian Revolutionary Guard
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:36 PM
0 comments
Some of you may recall that I recently posted that this blog is banned in Dubai.A British tourist was beaten to death by officers in a Dubai police station after being arrested for swearing, it was claimed yesterday.Please avoid Arab countries in general and Dubai in particular as much as possible. These people are not civilized. You have no rights there.
Lee Bradley Brown, 39, was on holiday at a £1,000-a-night hotel in the Arab state when he was thrown into a filthy cell.
Police sources say he was ‘badly beaten up’ by a group of police officers, leaving him unconscious on the floor.
Inmates told how they watched officers bundle him into a body-bag and drag him out of the building.
During Mr Brown’s six days in Bur Dubai police station, guards refused to give him enough food and water and did not let him see a lawyer, it is alleged.
His sister learned about the attack when she received a phone call from an inmate on Sunday, claiming her brother had been beaten.
The prisoner found her phone number on a photocopy of her brother’s passport which had been left behind in the cell.
She contacted the British Embassy in Dubai, and on Monday an official was sent to visit Mr Brown at the police station.
But the official was turned away by an officer who claimed Mr Brown did not want to see him and had ‘declined consular assistance’.
His sister, who did not want to be named, received another phone call from the inmate saying he had seen her brother’s body being taken out in a body-bag.
A source told the Daily Mail last night: ‘He suffered a really bad beating which must have caused some terrible internal injuries.
‘The poor bloke stood no chance at all. At one stage he was thrown against the concrete wall of a cell and landed badly.
‘Then the guards tried to hush it up and pretend nothing had happened.’
Labels: Dubai, Inspector Tamim
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:53 AM
2 comments
I trust you all remember Inspector Tamim, the Dubai police chief who is still looking for the real killers of Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.Hey Carl..I went to Dubai on my honeymoon ten years ago, so I decided to go back for my ten year anniversary...naturally, I can't go a day without your blog...and guess what....you are blocked in the united arab emirates! All the other blogs and israeli sites worked. U must have really pisssed somebody off!
Feel free to post it!
Happy purim
That's two this week. Heh.Labels: censorship, Dubai, Inspector Tamim, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:41 PM
2 comments
Labels: Dubai, Egyptian regime change, Hosni Mubarak, United Arab Emirates
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:10 PM
0 comments
One year ago next week, Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was liquidated in a luxury hotel room in Dubai. Although the 'crime' has never been solved, most of the world believes that Mabhouh was killed by the Mossad. Ronen Bergman, one of Israel's best known political and military analysts, has a blow-by-blow description of the entire operation here (Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan). Here are a few highlights. It was at that point, approximately a week after his death, that the Hamas leadership in Damascus contacted Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, chief of the Dubai Police, and informed him that they believed Al-Mabhouh had been killed by the Mossad. According to European intelligence sources, Tamim's initial reaction was to rage at them on the phone, verbally abusing senior Hamas officials for using Dubai as a battleground for espionage and terrorism. "Take yourselves and your bank accounts and your weapons and your forged fucking passports and get out of my country," he reportedly shouted. Once he calmed down, though, a cursory review of the hotel-security footage from the cameras outside room 230 at the time of Al-Mabhouh's death convinced Tamim that he needed to open an investigation immediately.Read the whole thing. It's a great story.
So it may well be that the authorities first arrived at the conclusion that Al-Mabhouh was assassinated and only then revisited and adjusted their pathology findings so as to avoid admitting to the world that, despite their massive investment in the state-of-the-art security systems that blanket the country, they were unable to say with any certainty how Al-Mabhouh had died. In a press conference held on February 15, Tamim announced that Al-Mabhouh had been killed by a hit squad and announced that their forensic tests indicated that he'd been suffocated. Lab tests, he said, were still under way. Nearly two weeks later, on February 28, he announced the discovery of the exact cause of death. That Al-Mabhouh's body was reportedly sent back to Syria on January 28, however, and buried after a big funeral procession on January 29, calls into question these findings.
The rest of the investigation that Tamim conducted, however, was meticulous and efficient in a way that no one, least of all the Mossad, had expected. A source close to the investigation said that the moment Tamim concluded that Al-Mabhouh had not died of natural causes, he ordered his people to search Dubai's extensive databases and identify everyone who had arrived in the emirate shortly before the killing and left soon after. This list was then cross-referenced against the names of visitors who had been in Dubai back in February, March, June, and November of 2009, all the times of Al-Mabhouh's previous visits. The short list that emerged was then checked against hotel registers, and footage from hotel security cameras at the times these individuals checked in made it possible to put a face to each name. Tamim then compared these visual identifications to the footage from the Al Bustan Hotel at the time of Al-Mabhouh's death, which gave him the names of the assassins. And searching databases of financial transactions gave him the identities of the rest of the team, all of which Dubai authorities posted online for the world to see.
Tamim also turned out to be extremely media-savvy. He presided over well-planned press conferences, carefully doling out information in a manner guaranteed to keep viewers—especially in the Arab world—coming back for more. He publicly called for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and of Meir Dagan, whom he challenged to "be a man" and take responsibility for the assassination. More realistically, perhaps, he called for international arrest warrants for all members of the hit squad, which caused considerable diplomatic embarrassment for Israel. When asked by an interviewer what the hit team's biggest mistake was, Tamim answered that the presence of two men waiting for hours in the lobby in tennis gear with uncovered rackets was so bizarre that it instantly raised suspicion.
The laughable attempts of the Mossad operatives to disguise their appearance made for good television coverage, but the more fundamental errors committed by the team had less to do with cloak-and-dagger disguises than with a kind of arrogance that seems to have pervaded the planning and execution of the mission.
Despite the fact that Dubai is a hostile environment—a distant Arab state with ties to Iran—many details of the mission suggest the Mossad treated it as if they were operating inside a base country. The use of Payoneer cards is one obvious example. For the most part, prepaid debit cards are only used domestically within the United States, and while Payoneer does issue debit cards that are valid internationally, these are relatively rare. That several of the team members were using the same type of unusual card issued by the same company—one whose CEO, Yuval Tal, is a veteran of an elite Israeli Defense Force commando unit—gave the Dubai police a common denominator to connect the various members of the team.
It has also become apparent that in order to avoid calling one another's cell phones directly, the operatives used a dedicated private switchboard in Austria. Any operative trying to reach a colleague—whether in the hotel down the street or at the command post in Israel—dialed one of a handful of numbers in Austria, from which the call was then rerouted to its destination. But since dozens of calls were made to and from this short list of Austrian numbers over a period of less than two days, the moment that the cover of a single operative was blown and his cell phone records became available to the authorities, all others who called or received calls from the same numbers were at risk of being identified.
It gets worse. One of the most serious mistakes made by the planners of the operation—certainly the one that caused the greatest embarrassment to the Mossad and to Israel—involved the use of forged foreign identities.
When it comes to false identities and false passports, the Mossad has a unique problem, one that most Western intelligence services do not face. When the CIA or the British SIS (or MI6, as it is commonly known) send an operative into the field, they can usually provide him or her with a valid U.S. or U.K. passport issued in whatever false name and identity the individual will be using. But an Israeli spy cannot use an Israeli passport, since the most important targets for Israeli espionage are in countries that do not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel. For this reason, the need for foreign documentation has always been an acute one in the Mossad, which has historically resolved this problem by forging what it needed. Naturally, this is done without the authorization of the countries involved.
Whenever the Mossad is found out, as has happened from time to time, a major diplomatic scandal erupts.
...
What the blown identities of the operatives illustrate more than anything is the now seemingly insurmountable problem posed by twenty-first-century counterespionage systems. False identities and cover stories are no longer any match for well-placed security cameras, effective passport control, and computer software that can almost instantly track communications and financial transactions.
Why did the Mossad permit things to go so wrong in Dubai? In a word, the answer is leadership. Because Dagan refashioned the Mossad in his own image, and because he drove out anyone who was willing to question his decisions, there was no one in the agency to tell him that the Dubai operation was badly conceived and badly planned. They simply did not believe that a minnow in the world of intelligence services such as Dubai would be any match for Israel's Caesarea fighters. As one very senior German intelligence expert told me: "The Israelis' problem has always been that they underestimate everyone—the Arabs, the Iranians, Hamas. They are always the smartest and think they can hoodwink everyone all the time. A little more respect for the other side—even if you think he is a dumb Arab or a German without imagination—and a little more modesty would have saved us all from this embarrassing entanglement."
Labels: Dubai, Inspector Tamim, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Meir Dagan, Mossad
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:22 PM
8 comments
"The two options discussed were to say nothing at all, or to reveal more or less the full extent of the UAE's investigations," U.S. Ambassador Richard Olson wrote in a diplomatic cable, based on a conversation he had with a UAE government media adviser.They'd have been better off remaining silent. First, if they'd remained silent, everyone would have assumed that the liquidators were geniuses who managed to pull off the liquidation without leaving a trace (of course, we would now know otherwise thanks to Wikileaks, but no one knew that at the time). No one would have seen them as siding with Israel.
The first option "would have been perceived as protecting the Israelis," the ambassador wrote.
The cables show the al-Mabhouh hit was discussed for nine days at the UAE government's highest levels before being released to the public.
"The statement was carefully drafted not to point any fingers, but the reference ... to a gang with Western passports will be read locally as referring to the Mossad," Olson wrote.
Dubai officials were not immediately available for comment on the leaked cables.
Labels: Dubai, Inspector Tamim, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Wikileaks
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:51 PM
1 comments
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
Like what you see? Please hit my tip box below!
Jerusalem |
 |
 |
