[Crescent International, August 16-31, 2000.]
Mossad, Israel’s once proud and popular intelligence agency, has been reduced to advertising openly for recruits in response to a fall in the numbers of zionists willing to serve in it. Once seen as a glamorous route to politics or a contribution to the security of a beleaguered zionist state, Mossad’s tarnished reputation as a result of highly-publicised recent failures, means that young Israelis are choosing to emigrate rather than serve their country.
However, Mossad’s decline is not matched by a reduction in Israel’s intelligence capacity, or its activities against Islamic movements, mainly because Arab dictators are spying on behalf of Israel and the US, as they all have a common interest is opposing the Islamic movement and protecting the Middle East ‘peace process’. Within days of the failure of the recent Camp David summit, and despite heavy criticism by Washington and Tel Aviv of alleged Arab responsibility for the debacle, Mossad found cause to praise ‘the security coordination between the PNA and Israel’.
The Hebrew Ma’ariv newspaper quoted an Israeli security source on August 3 as saying that Hamas activists were planning "terrorist attacks against Israeli targets", adding that detailed information received from the PNA had shown Hamas was "keen and able" to mount such attacks "during this period". But it was not just "a source" that hailed the PNA’s readiness to supply information or foil alleged "terrorist" plans by Hamas. Ma’ariv also quoted the Israeli chief-of-staff as saying that the PNA had arrested a number of activists suspected of being involved in the explosives laboratory discovered in Nablus, West Bank, recently.
Nor was Ma’ariv the only Israeli newspaper reporting that Israeli security officials are full of praise for the PNA’s efforts. The Ha’aritz daily reported the same day that Israeli security officials were highly satisfied with the "commendable work" of their Palestinian counterparts. The report also said the "explosives laboratory" discovered in Nablus two weeks earlier appeared to be only "a store for explosives which Hamas planned to use in the near future".
The Israeli reports were not part of the usual Israeli propaganda against Hamas, as they were based on media reports attributed to ‘Palestinian officials’. The Associated Press reported from Nablus on August 3 that the agents had "uncovered a Hamas bomb laboratory and seized 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of chemicals". And yet the official Israeli line at the time was that Yasser Arafat was against peace with Israel.
The PNA’s obligation to supply information to Tel Aviv is treaty-based. The PNA, Egypt, Jordan and Israel are all parties to a treaty which binds them to sharing information on ‘terrorism’, code for Palestinian and Muslim organizations working for the establishment of a free Palestine and Islamic states in the Muslim world.
The Arab League also has an anti-terrorism pact. And since the PNA, Jordan and Egypt are members, any information received under the Arab League pact should be passed on to Israel if it is about Palestinian resistance or about help for such resistance from non-Palestinian movements. Similarly, members of the Organization for African Unity (OAU), which also has a counter-terrorism treaty, must share information, and since Egypt is a member of the OAU, that information may reach Israel directly, as it may also do through Arab League members in the OAU, such as Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya.
Israel also receives information from the US, which has arrangements with a number of Arab governments. The CIA even has representatives in the PNA ‘counter-terrorism’ apparatus. Clearly Mossadwhich once boasted to have bugs in the offices of every Arab leader, no longer needs to be as efficient as it once boasted, since the Arab dictators it once spied on are now doing its dirty work for it.
But the dirty work is not confined to stealing information; it also includes terrorist attacks on members of Islamic resistance, at which Mossad has shown itself to be so inept. In 1997, for instance, Mossad operators bungled an attempt on the life of the Hamas leader Khalid Masha’al in Jordan. But despite this outrage, Jordan subsequently deported Hamas. Palestinian leaders are also the victims of periodical crackdowns by Arab dictators, including Arafat.
Mossad’s problems are thought to be caused by a change in Israel’s social and technological environment. The rise of hi-tech industry is attracting the bright young graduates who used to flock to Mossad, and the perception that Israel is no longer at risk from its Arab adversaries is affecting the attitudes of young Israelis to work, and those of many Jews to zionism.
It is indeed remarkable that Jewish scholars are now publishing books like The Holocaust Industry, which accuses Jews of exploiting the holocaust, or that Israeli rabbis publicly accuse victims of the holocaust of being sinners responsible for their fate, as did Rabbi Ovadia Yosef — the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox political party — on August 6.
But none of this means that zionists have lost their appetite for Palestine or for more Palestinian land, as their dogged fight for al-Quds and Jewish settlements at the recent Camp David summit demonstrates. And Muslims cannot afford to celebrate even the slightest set-back to the zionists while the leaders of our own countries are willing to go to any lengths to accommodate zionist and US ambitions.