The Israeli attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla has rightfully scandalized the world but it has also brought out the flocks of rabid pro-Israeli zealots who viciously attack anyone anywhere who dares to suggest that Israel isn't always right about everything all the time. It might be important to understand where the Israeli propaganda they spread is coming from.
Not surprisingly, much of it originates in Israel. What may be surprising is that its specific origin is the LAP - the disinformation section of Mossad, Israel's secret police/CIA.
Since the Reagan era, Mossad's LAP has effectively acted as the propaganda arm of the Likkud, the very far-right - off the map far-right - political party that has controlled the Israeli govt for three decades despite rarely polling more than 20% of the vote at election time, more often than not being well below that. Israel is a multi-party system with proportional representation, and there is rarely a clear winner. The Likkud's 10+% has been enough to let it play kingmaker, allowing it to force the govt to follow its policies or fall. It even picks the PM more often than not, Bebe being one of its favorite whackos.
The Likkud maintains its base and attracts small percentages from other parties through the simple tactic of keeping people afraid. Whenever peace threatens to break out, the Likkud has Mossad arrange a "terrorist plot" which it blames on some Arab terrorist organization - an organization that often doesn 't exist and will never be heard from again. When Rabin shook Arafat's hand, Mossad agents immediately began to foment anger in the right-wing groups they control. There has been speculation for years that Rabin's assassin was pointed in the direction of his murder by a Mossad case officer. At the very least, his group was in regular contact with a LAP field manager.
Think I've gone too far? Here's an example of a fairly standard Mossad disinformation operation, like many of them not aimed at Israel's avowed enemies but at her allies.
Remember in the 1980's when there was a sudden panic over stories that Libyan assassination squads were in the US and planning to kill Ronnie Rayguns? This "information" was first supplied by Mossad and then supposedly "confirmed" by intercepts of coded transmissions from Khaddafi's HQ. The belief that this bogus intel was real led directly to Ronnie's bombing of Khaddafi's home compound and the killing of his adopted daughter.
Ten years later we found out that the whole thing was a Mossad propaganda op. They had invented non-existant Libyan hit squads, then planted a transmitter called Trojan in the desert near Khaddafi's HQ so it would seem as if the information they were feeding Washington came from there. The purpose of the op? To break down American perception that the danger from Middle Eastern terrorists was a distant threat, to make it feel imminent, something we had to protect ourselves from today, and therefore to draw us into Likkud's right-wing vision of Arab govts as rogue, crazy, whose motives for peace couldn't be trusted because they were fanatics. If we subscribed to that vision - as we apparently do now - our peace negotiations would become more like war negotiations. As indeed they did. When it looked like Jordan's King Hussein might be able to broker a peace deal for the Palestinians that a majority of the Israeli public would accept, Mossad set about a major operation to destabilize his govt.
I'm not making these things up. This is not speculation or conspiracy theory but fact. These things (and far worse, frankly) have been reported continuously over the years by disaffected ex-CA agents like Philip Agee, disillusioned ex-Mossad agents like Victor Ostrovsky, the foreign press, and even some mainstream USA media when it was unavoidable. This is also a published fact:
Mossad has at least one agent (and probably a lot more than that) attached to AIPAC's administration offices, both in NYC and DC. Their job is to organize the response of the pro-Israel lobby to any criticism whatever of Israel. They provide talking points (calling critics "anti-semites" has been a core Mossad TP since the early 80's), phony or doctored videos and recordings, phony or doctored documents, phony "journalists" and the supposed experts they interview.
But in the last few years it has gone farther than that. Taking a leaf from AEI's creation of the online right-wing echo chamber which was so successful for so long in dominating the media and hamstringing anything that threatened to be a sane, coherent discussion of real problems, Mossad's LAP has been identifying and then guiding gullible Xtianist/Zionist fanatics in the US, sending them like waves of plague-carrying flies to attack Israel's "enemies" in the blogosphere.
Now, I'm not saying that every blind-as-a-bat, foaming-at-the-mouth pro-Israeli zealot who calls you an anti-Semite for disagreeing with the Settler Movement or condemning the murder of aid workers like Rachel Corrie is a card-carrying member of Mossad. They probably aren't...most of them. But they are dupes and puppets of a fascist (there is no other accurate word for it) propaganda group that lies for a living (sound familiar?) and that, like Sean Hannity or Billo or Rush or Michelle, these gullible boneheads pass on this Mossad propaganda uncritically and without examination.
They are not to be trusted. The AIPAC party line is designed in Tel Aviv and transmitted from Mossad agents directly to us through the efforts of these mindless, automated stooges who would find an excuse for Israel no matter what she did. She could invade Italy and nuke Rome and these pimple-brains would be insisting that she had no choice because there was a terrorist cell of four men, each of whom had a razor, parked near the Parthenon. Case closed.
Don't fall for it. Anybody who calls you an anti-semite for criticizing Israel is a de facto if not de jure Mossad disinformation agent. Tell em that. And tell em I sent you.
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Hmmm, dunno about the Libya story, while it seems plausible on its face, a Google search for 'transmitter trojan Mossad' brings back only fringe sites like www.freemasonrywatch.org or whatreallyhappened.com
If these fringe sites were ever accurate or could back up some of their claims that would be one thing, but they have a 9 year track record of being either provably wrong or at best, leading one so far down the rabbit hole that nothing makes sense, that everything is one vast conspiracy (unlikely). The worst part to me is that they only link to each other making internet research of their claims difficult if not impossible. This is in part why so many people believe so much crazy sh*t and are incapable of connecting with their fellows to fight the all too real conditions enabling very real disasters to happen. Case in point is leaking millions of gallons of crude in the Gulf right now. If everyone affected by this catastrophe was in the streets right now it would be pretty difficult for BP, Halliburton, MMT & ultimately local, state & federal government to continue pretending this was still 'business as usual'. **sigh**
Posted by: darms | June 07, 2010 at 12:10 PM
You are doing a great service getting more information about the Mossad into the public arena. I have concerns they operate quite freely in the US (in the violation of the US Constitution) and our government does nothing to stop them. I haven't heard a lot about them since learning (via Fox News) they were posing as Israeli art students in 2001 and visiting defense installations. This really freaked me out, as I recall distinctly being visited by Israeli art students at my office in Seattle in the summer of 2001. I have nothing to do with the US government. However I am a long time anti-war/peace and justice activist and I assume this was the reason for the visit. I would be curious to know if other activists around the country were visited by the Mossad art students? I recently published a memoir of my close encounters with US intelligence: THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE. More info at http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TheMostRevolutionaryAct.html
Posted by: Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall | June 07, 2010 at 09:06 PM
You know, darms, y'all really need to quit relying so much on electronic media and try reading, like, a book every once in a while. Trojan took place in the 80's, long before "The Days of The Internetz". There's nothing online that I could find (thus no links) but you'll find the story told in full in The Other Side of Deception by ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky. Try your local library. Remember them? (Ostrovsky is legit, btw - the Mossad had to admit that when they tried to stop the publication of his first book, By Way of Deception.)
Posted by: mick | June 09, 2010 at 05:48 PM
Dr Bramhall, they do indeed operate freely. But then, so do dozens of other foreign intelligence agents from any country you care to name. Just as the Company operates overseas in defiance of other countries' laws. That's the way the game is played.
The difference is the sayanim - tens of thousands of Jewish Americans dedicated to the support of Israel who have agreed to act in one capacity or another in her behalf. The Mossad takes advantage of their patriotism and their faith at the same time by conflating the interests of the US and Israel as if they were the same thing. They're not, of course, which has caused no end of trouble.
Sayanim are asked for the kind of assistance that is small but can make a crucial difference to an op: they loan a Mossad agent their car so the agent can avoid having to steal or rent one; they let the Mossad use a vacation home as a safehouse; they write letters to politicians filled with Mossad propaganda. There is a cadre of sayanim who have been recruited to attack any "enemy of Israel" as identified by the Mossad case officer in charge - online, in the papers, responding to tv shows or blog posts, etc. Most have no idea that the person who is telling them what to say is Mossad, and those few who do are like Jonathan Pollard (who was recruited by Mossad after he joined AIPAC as a "volunteer") - they think they're playing spy and they're thrilled.
Virtually none of them would do it - or at least they'd have a struggle with their consciences - if the difference between our interests and Israel's was made clear, so of course it isn't.
Having said all that, Mossad uses students only for very low-level cover assignments (for instance, living in a safe house until Mossad needs it) and window dressing. They NEVER use students as active agents, so you don't need to worry about them.
But please, stop watching Fox. They lie all the time, are pro-Israel but anti-semitic, and can't be trusted about anything. Ever. They're a propaganda channel. Period. That's their function.
Posted by: mick | June 10, 2010 at 09:22 PM
Mick, thanks for the link, I just submitted an ILL request for the book. Please excuse my skepticism as there's an awful lot of crap out there in these here intertubes... Even wikipedia has little info on Victor John Ostrovsky except for a bio & a short mention of one of his books. But I've gotten pretty adept w/search engines these last 10 so when I cannot find any links to something except to fringe sites I'm going to be skeptical. And when something seems "too good to be true" it often isn't (sealed vs. sealed).
BTW what convinced me of the truth behind the late Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" reports was finding a link to congressional testimony from the Kerry commission documenting that many of the Contra-supply pilots were convicted cocaine smugglers, found via the internet. And I could give you many more examples as well. Would you rather have skeptical readers (that you can convince) or 'true believers'?
Posted by: darms | June 11, 2010 at 11:14 AM
darms: I have no problem with your skepticism. My problem is with the apparent assumption that anything that isn't online can't be real. I run into it all the time, and as an old fart for whom libraries were (are) one of the greatest pleasures and as someone who remembers back before the internetz, I am sometimes, perhaps, more peevish than I ought to be when I run into that attitude. It was my intention to make my reply t-in-c, but if it didn't come off as light, I apologize. But in future, do try to remember that anything that happened pre-1995 may not be available online, and that anything pre-1985 almost certainly isn't (with some notable exceptions).
Meanwhile, Support Your Local Library.
Posted by: mick | June 14, 2010 at 07:08 PM