[News] An Assassination or a declaration of war?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

AN ASSASSINATION, OR A DECLARATION OF WAR?

06. Jan, 2011
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2011/01/an-assassination-or-a-declaration-of-war-by-dr-bouthaina-shaaban/

By: Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban

Western newspapers were unanimous last week that 
Israeli intelligence was behind the assassination 
of Iranian nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari and 
wounding his colleague Fereidoun Abbasi in Tehran 
(The Independent, 30/11/2010; The Guardian, 
2/12/2010; Haaretz, 4/12/2010).  An article in 
Time magazine said that Mossad death squads, in 
cooperation with American and Western 
intelligence agencies carried out the 
assassination in order to “slow down the Iranian 
nuclear program as an alternative for a military 
strike”.  It is remarkable that three events 
happened on the same day: November 29, 2010: 
publishing WikiLeaks documents mostly about 
“concern” regarding the Iranian nuclear program, 
assassinating Majid Shahriari and the appointment 
of Tamir Pardo as head of Mossad, the agency most 
renowned worldwide for its involvement in 
assassinations.  Some Western papers even boasted 
that the assassination was the “latest gift 
presented by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan”.

No Israeli source had any qualms acknowledging 
that the Mossad had death squads operating 
against those considered by the Israeli 
government as Palestinian, Arab and even Western 
enemies.  It had actually admitted that it killed 
Iranian nuclear scientist Ardashir Hosseinpour in 
2007.  He was poisoned by gas.  A European 
intelligence official, speaking on condition of 
anonymity, said “Israel has shown no hesitation 
in assassinating weapons scientists of hostile 
regimes in the past.  They did it with Iraq and 
they will do it with Iran when they can”.  (See 
“Israel launches covert war against Iran” (The 
Daily Telegraph, Feb., 16, 2009). Reva Bhalla, a 
senior analyst with Stratfor, the US private 
intelligence company with strong government 
security connections, said “the strategy was to 
take out key people” (Ibid.).  Israeli analyst 
Yossi Melman adds that “Israel is part of a 
detailed and elaborate international effort to 
slow down the Iranian program” (Ibid.).  Sources 
concur that Mossad carries out its operations in 
cooperation and coordination with Western 
intelligence agencies which share Mossad’s 
objectives, as in the case of assassinating the 
Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai.

A report drafted by the human rights division at 
the US State Department (March 3, 2009) revealed 
that Mossad, in coordination with US forces in 
Iraq managed to assassinate 350 Iraqi nuclear 
scientists, 300 university professors, in 
addition to hundreds of army officers, pilots and 
experts in designing and launching missiles.  The 
American report said that the main task of the 
Mossad death squad, operating in Iraq since the 
American invasion of 2003, was to eliminate 
distinguished Iraqi nuclear scientists and former 
civilian and military engineers after Washington 
failed to persuade them to cooperate and work in 
the United States.  Israel, however, saw that the 
mere existence of these scientists constituted a 
threat to Israeli long-term national security.

According to most published reports, Mossad is 
working in cooperation with American and Western 
intelligence; therefore, it is naïve for the 
Arabs to ask, or expect, any Western country to 
condemn Israel’s deliberate acts of killing 
whether against Palestinian leaders like Ahmad 
Yasin and Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, or Iranians, or 
anyone the Israeli government thinks that he 
threatens its national security.  The question 
is: what is the difference between Mossad’s acts: 
murder, poisoning, explosions and assassinations, 
and the acts of the terrorist groups the West 
continues to complain about because they seek to 
eliminate those they think pose a threat to 
them?  Isn’t killing the same in both cases?  And 
where is the international law and legality the 
West keeps talking about as a mark of 
civilization which separates them from terrorism?

After the WikiLeaks scandal, it has become clear 
that Western countries justify what they want 
with disregard to human rights, peoples’ 
interests or the law.  The way they treat other 
peoples is not without Western racism and 
superiority.  Otherwise, why wouldn’t Arab 
countries possess nuclear knowledge, since they 
have signed the non-proliferation treaty, while 
Israel and the United States have not signed it 
and use these weapons whenever they want?

So, we should read the United States’ withdrawal 
on Dec. 7, 2010 of its demand that Israel freeze 
settlement building as an acknowledgement on its 
part that it could not be “an impartial mediator” 
for peace between Arabs and the Israelis.  This 
claim has been belied by American funding of the 
Israeli arsenal of mass destruction weapons, 
Israeli settlement and supporting the brutal 
Israeli blockade on civilians in Gaza and 
preventing them from remaining on their land or 
restoring their rights.  It has become clear that 
the United States has handed over the running of 
its Middle East policy to Israel; it has given in 
to Israel’s desire for killing and settlement 
building.  It has also been proven that the West 
is working in cooperation with Israel against 
Arabs and Muslims whenever Israel wants to kill 
more of them.  What is new in this regard is 
perhaps that the old form of wars is over because 
it proved costly and unviable, particularly after 
the war on Iraq in 2003, on Lebanon in 2006, on 
Gaza in 2008-2009 and the ongoing war in 
Afghanistan which is becoming a quagmire with no end in sight.

So, killing, assassination, sabotage and 
espionage have, from now on, become the official 
policy used by Israel and its Western allies to 
destabilize Arab and Muslim countries.  Does not 
this mean that resistance, in all its forms, of 
this bloody and evil alliance against Arabs – and 
which has proven its effectiveness against 
Israeli military arsenal – is the most valid 
method in today’s wars in order to achieve and 
maintain independence, to gain and defend freedom 
and achieve scientific progress?

Prof. Bouthaina Shaaban is Political and Media 
Advisor at the Syrian Presidency, and former 
Minister of Expatriates. She is also a writer and 
professor at Damascus University since 1985. 
She’s got Ph.D. in English Literature from 
Warwick University , London . She was the 
spokesperson for Syria . She was nominated for 
Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. She can be reached through nizar_kabibo at yahoo.com




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20110106/230587a1/attachment.htm>