Monday, August 5, 2024, 08:18
The Mossad has twice demonstrated its lethal effectiveness on foreign soil in recent days with the assassination in Beirut of Hezbollah leader Fouad Shukur and the elimination in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Although Israel has only acknowledged its involvement in the first attack, no one doubts that its intelligence services are behind both executions, a dangerous development that once again puts the region on the brink of total war. From Lebanon, the militia has threatened to intensify its operations against the Hebrew country, while Iran has announced another attack in retaliation “for killing a beloved guest” in its home.
The two Islamist leaders were killed in highly precise airstrikes. According to the Lebanese news agency, Shukur was killed in an operation carried out on Tuesday by a drone that launched three shells against the building where the Hezbollah leader was staying, also killing five other civilians and causing more than 70 injuries. This is terrible collateral damage, but it is small compared to the high population density of the Haret Hreik neighbourhood.
In Tehran, the missiles were launched a few hours later, before dawn on Wednesday, when Haniyeh had attended the inauguration of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian. The embrace they shared is the last photograph to be released of the Palestinian, head of the political wing of Hamas. The Israelis blew up the house where he was staying, also killing one of his bodyguards. And it is precisely his security team that is suspected of having leaked the location to the Mossad, one of the most powerful spy services in the world.
The embryo of this strategy
These targeted assassinations outside Israel and Palestine are already a trademark of the company, operations of surgical precision essential to prevent the conflict from escalating excessively and which would not be possible without the Mossad’s great capacity to infiltrate the ranks of its enemies. In fact, Shukur’s is Israel’s second summary execution in Beirut this year, having killed another Hamas leader, Saleh Arouri, in a similar way in January.
But the list of victims is long. Very long. And it goes back a long time. In fact, the first name was written shortly after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. It is that of the Swede Folke Bernadotte, a United Nations negotiator trying to resolve the conflict caused by that proclamation. Many see his murder as the embryo of what has since become a standard procedure, although this count was not killed by the Mossad but by members of the extremist Hebrew group Lehi disguised as soldiers who ended up machine-gunning him. At the time, Israel condemned the attack, but its mastermind, Yitzhak Shamir, ended up becoming Prime Minister three decades later.
Nazis on the payroll
Since that ‘elimination’, all kinds of murders have taken place. Some more bizarre than others, but all strategic. Among the most surprising is that of the German scientist Heinz Krug. He had worked on the Nazi missile programme and in 1962 was in the service of the Egyptians, who had already fought two wars with Israel. To prevent Cairo from having more fearsome weapons – loaded with radioactive material – in a third war, Tel Aviv launched Operation Damocles, for which it hired one of Adolf Hitler’s trusted men, Otto Skorzeny, a controversial figure of Nazism who lived and died in Spain.
Iran has been a favourite setting for such executions, which have often focused on decapitating the country’s military nuclear programme. And one of the most cinematic was that of its chief nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whose life was ended in 2020 by a burst of 15 bullets fired by a Belgian machine gun that was mounted on the robotic arm of a parked car and was activated remotely. It later emerged that it had been shipped in pieces to Iran, assembled in the country, and operated without the need for any operations on the ground and without causing any collateral casualties. What’s more, the entire operation was managed from outside Persian territory and lasted barely a minute.
It is a good reflection of the Mossad’s strategy after the Second Intifada that kicked off the century: eliminate a prominent person from the enemy ranks using high-quality intelligence and cutting-edge technology. There are dozens, hundreds according to different sources. And, lately, most of them fall victim to a missile. An example of this is the attack on a building adjacent to the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, the capital of Syria, inside which two generals and five other high-ranking officers of the Revolutionary Guard died.
Remarkable failures
Of course, the Mossad is not infallible. There have also been times when it has failed: in 1975, for example, a young Moroccan was mistaken for one of the terrorists who caused the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre – most of whom were eliminated in such operations – and was riddled with bullets in Norway by Mossad operatives.
They have also suffered humiliating failures, such as in 1997, when they attempted to assassinate then Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal. The operation took place in Amman, Jordan, and required poisoning the activist. They succeeded, but the two Mossad members were captured and Israel was forced to send the antidote to retrieve them. Curiously, at that time Benjamin Netanyahu was in the position of prime minister, which he now holds again.
All of this leads many to wonder whether this approach, which is often labelled as state terrorism, is legitimate. In his essay ‘Fatal Choice: Israel’s Policy of Selective Assassination’, academic Steven R. David already questioned in 2002 whether the strategy serves to reduce Palestinian attacks, whether they are not a violation of international law and something immoral for a democracy and, above all, “whether they respond to Israel’s national interests”. Judging by the attacks of 7 October and the current situation, its effect is at the very least questionable.
#Targeted #assassinations #hallmark #Israeli #Mossad #Diario #Vasco