As’ad AbuKhalil, the Mossad, and Israel’s KoolAid

As’ad AbuKhalil has an excellent piece on the Al-Jazeera English website, in which he examines all the hasbara-fueled myth-making around the alleged prowess of Israel’s Mossad.
As I noted in this reflection on the recent Dubai affair, Israel’s spymasters and policymakers made the two fatal mistakes therein of underestimating both the capabilities and the intentions/commitment of the leadership of Dubai’s police authorities. It seems to me that this under-estimation could well have resulted from the Israeli leaders having drunk too much of their own KoolAid about the alleged “invincibility” of the Mossad.
After the debacle he presided over in Amman in 1997, current Israeli PM B. Netanyahu should have been well aware that Mossad can and does make some serious mistakes! But no, since he and his key security advisers hang out only with people, including many Americans and other westerners, who worship the ground the Mossad stands on, he had evidently forgotten that inconvenient fact.
It’s a pity that in his piece, As’ad didn’t include the Amman affair in the list of Mossad debacles he presents. To be quite fair in his use of evidence, I think he should have referred, too, to the killing in Damascus two years ago of longtime Hizbullah strategist Imad Mughniyeh, which was almost certainly organized by the Mossad. But even if you put all Mossad’s claimed “successes” in their practice of the arts of violence, subterfuge, and cruelty into the hopper along with their many evident failures, it is still clear that the Mossad is very, very far from being the “all-knowing, always very smart” spying and secret-ops outfit that its many propagandists paint it as.
At the root of everything, though, is the serious misjudgment, made by so many colonial administrations in the past, that their side and their people are so smart, and all members of the indigenous majority so basically dumb and ineducable, that the use of subterfuge, alleged “smarts”, and prestidigitation will always enable to the “smart, colonial minority” to outwit and prevail over the indigenous majority.
That hasn’t worked anywhere since the 19th century. Back then, the ability of colonial administrations to monopolize the flow of information meant they were almost completely unhampered in their implementation of large-scale extermination projects in locations far from the bastions of their home “civilization”. And they were therefore able–and nearly always oh, so willing– to kill and oppress the indigenes on a massive scale in pursuit of their colonialist projects, and also to twist, divide, and manipulate the indigenes without anyone back home being easily able to “report on”, or really understand those dreadful facts.
But guess what, Israel! We are no longer in the 19th century! Within the region of which you’re a part, you may dominate everyone else on all the steps on the ladder of military escalation, right up to, of course, very advanced nuclear weapons… But military might on its own is of no use in the 21st century. And meanwhile, other actors in the region have considerable amounts of strategic, civilizational, and tactical smarts– and they have access to all modern means of communication.
In fact, these days, the myths you continue to propagate about the alleged superiority of everything Israeli, including the capacities of your Mossad, clearly stand in the way of you being able to make realistic judgments about the capabilities and intentions of your neighbors in the region, and therefore about the true balance of forces there. By continuing to try to rely on force, coercion, and manipulation rather than genuine peacemaking and seeking viable, sustainable ways to become integrated into the region as a Jewish state within it, you are in fact just making the failure of the whole “Jewish state” project even more probable. So carry on drinking the KoolAid of your own alleged “superiority”, if that is what you want to do… But don’t be surprised if increasing numbers of people around the world refuse to drink it with you.

18 thoughts on “As’ad AbuKhalil, the Mossad, and Israel’s KoolAid”

  2. So where’s the lack of analysis, Michael W.? The story that Helena is recounting is pretty well known.
    Mossad has indeed made a large number of blunders. In the 2006 war they hardly succeeded in anything.
    The main result of the Dubai affair is that everybody has been forced to be aware of what Mossad is likely to do. So, previously some knew and ignored it. Now nobody can ignore what Mossad does, and it can’t be glossed over.

  3. “How about less rhetoric, more analysis?”
    Are you certain that what you call rhetoric is not just analysis that you don’t agree with?

  4. I’m not sure Helena even said anything.
    She says that Mossad is acting cocky and arrogant. To do that, Mossad has to actually say something. Being an intelligence agency, it never says anything in pubic. I doubt Helena hears what they talk about. Does she have any sources? Hence the rhetoric.
    So what if Mossad isn’t “all knowing-all powerful”. I think that the entire al Jazeera article is childish. The author is just trying to defend the Arab world’s honor, as it has anything to do with this.
    Helena is playing up the Dubai police chief’s abilities and intentions. Sure, he hates Jews (read his original Arabic statements), is Israel expecting otherwise? He’s now demanding DNA testing as if he already caught the perps. How exactly is he supposed to know who really did it (even if it was Mossad) if they used fake passports? I don’t think he understands how DNA is used in an investigation.
    Question, where does Hamas’ claim that Jordan and/or Egypt did it come in?

  5. If you can read carefully (which hasn’t yet been proven) you’ll see I don’t claim that Mossad is arrogant and cocky… but mainly their political masters. Michael, you do love to throw distractions into a discussion don’t you. The claimed “antisemitism” of the Dubai police chief, the alleged “claims” from Hamas, etc. Where do you get these red herrings? Or more to the point, why?

  6. helen, you should know for now that EVERY poster who used “a-s” word is not worth even paying attention 🙂
    But I have another objection to your article.
    You are speaking that Israel should seek “viable, sustainable ways to become integrated into the region as a Jewish state within it”. Sorry, but it is exactly like telling that “White state” of SA should have been become integrated into Africa. It was NOT possible, and Israel is NOT able to be both “Jewish” and integrated.
    To every Zionist ready to call me “a-s” word, stay attuned – I belong to another type of Zionist curse word – i.e. “Self-hating Jew” LOL

  7. One thing I noted on various talk boards when this story hit the headlines was that those people (not neccessarily pro-Israel) who emphaised the flaws of the Mabhou hit, said it coudln’t be Mossad, while those who emphasised its ‘success’ insisted that it could only be them!
    I think there has long been a huge ‘mystique’ over the supposed military, intelligence (in every sense) and political skills of the Israelis, but recent events – the 2006 Lebanon debacle, as well as the Mabhou affair – have really damaged this reputation. Arabs in particular seem to have something of an inferiority complex vis a vis Israel, but hopefully that is changing. We’re talking about an army which has not won a war since 1973 (and we’re being generous to describe 1973 as an Israeli ‘victory’) and whose much vaunted ‘intlligence’ services have at least as many failures as successes. Time to update the image of the ‘invincible Israelis’. In many respects, they are at best mediocre.

  8. Helena,
    Have you read his (Dubai police chief) statements, or at least the translation, in Arabic? He was making references to Moses and Pharoah, therefore refering to Jews and not Israelis, and how they can’t hide their “Jewish features”.
    I think you are very selective with your news exposure. The whole thing is a circus. The only suspects the Dubai chief caught are Palestinians. And now he wants the Israeli suspects to turn in for DNA testing. If the Israelis’ identities were stolen by the Mossad, as some claim (and might as well happened), how would those people’s (those whose identities were stolen) DNA be useful?
    And for “Mossad’s political masters”, since Netanyahu hasn’t claimed Israeli responsibility for the assassination, how could he be propagating the myth? The only Israeli politician that said anything was Livni, the opposition leader, praising the assassination.

  9. I see that our little hasbarah person here is taking his task seriously, even pretending s/he could read Arabic 🙂 Sure thing, Dubai police are all anti-Semites, it is all, NOTHING to do with Zionists’ crimes, and with stupidity of Zionist criminals neither

  11. Michael W.’s pretending that it was not Mossad is worn out hasbara. Why waste our time?
    My point was rather about Lidia’s remarks about ‘a-s’.
    Frankly, I’ve given up being worried about whether I’m accused of being anti-semitic. I’ve asked the Israel lobby how to distinguish between being anti-Israel, and being anti-semitic, and I’ve never had an answer. Difficult distinction, when Israel declares itself ‘the Jewish State’, and gives a passport to any Jew.
    I know well that many Jews are opposed to Israeli policy.
    I call upon the pro-Israel crowd to explain the distinction clearly, so that I can use it.
    I’ll be surprised if there is an answer. There’ll be a reference to the US offical definition, where anti-semitism is not related to Israel.
    I am of course totally opposed to being anti-semitic as such, to suggest that all Jews think one way.
    My interest is Israeli policy, and how to distinguish what might reasonably called ‘anti-semitic’ or not.

  13. Steve, that’s an old history. The Dubai police were able to identify between the CCTV and the passport photos. The doctoring was a Mossad story, to convince us of their cleverness.

  14. Yes, sure but I think it also removes a good deal of the ambiguity, don’t you think?

  16. I never said that it wasn’t Mossad. I think it was a joint opperation between Mossad, Fatah, Egypt, and/or Jordan.

  17. I never said that it wasn’t Mossad. I think it was a joint opperation between Mossad, Fatah, Egypt, and/or Jordan.

  18. Yes, sure, just like Israel colonial war against Lebanon was a joint opperation between IOF and Lebanese Facists (i.e. puppet of Zionism), or like Afghanistan colonial war is a a joint opperation between USA and Latvia 🙁
    By the way Jordan police BEAT Mossad before – just like Helena noted. No wonder that Zionists are NOT happy with her analysis 🙂
    By the way, it is pity that our local hasbarah person could NOT delet his/her previous comments – they are so good to laugh at for me (and, I sure, a lot of others)
    Keystone Meraglim – the proper name for Mossad (meragel – spy in Hebrew)

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