The Dubai assassination and the “war on terror”

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The Dubai assassination and the “war on terror”
2 March 2010

The reaction of governments around the world to the murder of Hamas
member Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month underscores the extent
to which basic precepts of international law have been torn up under
the “war on terror”. As far as the US government and its allies are
concerned, extra-judicial executions and so-called targeted killings
now constitute a legitimate state activity and do not warrant comment,
let alone condemnation.

While the Israeli government has refused to confirm or deny any
involvement, its intelligence agency, Mossad, is widely understood to
be directly responsible for the Dubai operation. The Obama
administration has maintained a strict silence over the affair, while
the governments of Britain, Australia, France, Germany and Ireland
have merely issued pro forma protests over the doctoring of their
passports. None has condemned Mabhouh’s murder.

The assassination was a cold-blooded operation, planned down to the
last detail. According to Dubai police, 27 men and women were involved
in the preparation which culminated in Mabhouh being injected with a
muscle relaxant drug, succinylcholine, then suffocated with a pillow.
The killers reportedly left behind medicine for high blood pressure in
order to give the initial appearance of a natural death, hung a “do
not disturb” card on their victim’s hotel room door and fled Dubai
before the authorities were notified after Mabhouh’s wife was unable
to telephone her husband.

Israel has a long record of tracking down and murdering its enemies
around the world, and in the last decade has waged a systematic
assassination campaign against the Palestinian leadership in the West
Bank and Gaza.

The more or less open acceptance by Washington and its allies of
Mossad’s latest atrocity is because similar methods now form a central
component of the “war on terror”. As well as being subject to
indefinite detention without trial, rendition and torture, individuals
identified as a threat to the security of the US state are routinely
executed in countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen.
True to his campaign pledge to escalate US military operations in
Pakistan and Central Asia, President Barack Obama has signed off on
drone air bombings in the AfPak theatre which typically kill civilians
in addition to the selected target. US troops, intelligence
operatives, and their proxies on the ground also continue to hunt down
and kill Iraqis and Afghans involved in armed resistance activities
against the foreign occupation of their countries.

It is now taken for granted in ruling circles internationally that the
Central Intelligence Agency and allied intelligence agencies,
including Mossad, have the right to act as judge, jury and executioner
against those alleged to be involved in terrorist activities. The
CIA’s murderous activities during the Cold War—including the 1961
assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba and attempts on the
life of Cuban President Fidel Castro—provoked international outrage.
In 1976, following a wave of public opposition after revelations of
CIA assassination plots internationally, President Gerald Ford issued
an executive order barring the CIA from directly carrying out
assassinations or contracting them out to others. But now there are no
such qualms about “targeted killing” and few restrictions are placed
on the CIA and military. US Director of National Intelligence Dennis
Blair revealed last month that there are defined “policy and legal
procedures” allowing the assassination of American citizens throughout
the world.

Every national government aligned with Washington is culpable. The
diplomatic protests registered by Britain, Australia, France, Germany
and Ireland over the abuse of their passports are nothing but a
grotesque charade. One need only ask the question—how would the
reaction have differed had Iranian intelligence agents carried out an
assassination in another country using forged European and Australian
passports? Instead of diplomatic niceties there would be a drumbeat
for full-scale war.

None of the national governments involved has any interest in pursuing
the incident with the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu. All are complicit in the Zionist state’s war crimes.
Britain, Australia and Germany were among just 16 countries which
voted with the US and Israel last November against a UN General
Assembly resolution which endorsed the Goldstone Report finding that
Israel had committed war crimes during its offensive in Gaza.
Moreover, after a British court last year issued an arrest warrant for
former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on war crimes charges, the
Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged to change the
relevant legislation to ensure Israeli officials were shielded.

According to the British Daily Mail, Israel forewarned the Brown
government as a “courtesy”. While this story remains unconfirmed, it
raises the question as to whether the other countries involved, as
well as the US, were pre-warned.

Whatever the case, there is little doubt that those responsible for
the Dubai murder were conscious that most of the governments whose
passports they were forging were themselves intimately familiar with
assassination campaigns. The Labour government of Prime Minister
Gordon Brown has for several years presided over an extensive targeted
killing operation in Iraq. According to a new book by BBC reporter
Mark Urban, British elite SAS troops have murdered between 350 and 400
“terrorist” leaders in Iraq. Similar operations have been orchestrated
by other US allies—Australia’s SAS is highly valued by Washington for
its role in hunting down senior resistance fighters in Afghanistan,
while German forces have engaged in similar killings of alleged
Taliban figures.

It is no surprise, then, that the official reaction to the murder of
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai takes the form of an international league
of war criminals closing ranks.

It is testament to the debased political and moral character of the
major parties and the media in the US, Europe and Australia that there
has been no discussion on the far reaching implications of the Dubai
assassination with regard to international law and democratic rights.
To the extent that concerns have been raised, they are strictly
tactical—that perhaps the operation had drawn too much adverse
publicity and that the Israeli government ought not to have forged
passports belonging to its allies.

Other commentators, however, openly celebrated the killing. “It is an
unfashionable thing to say, but I have a considerable admiration for
the Israeli way of doing things,” Melanie Reid of the London Times
wrote on February 18. “They want something, they get it. They perceive
someone as their deadly enemy, they kill them. They get hit, they hit
back. They don’t waste time explaining or justifying or agonising; nor
do they allow their detractors to enter their country and then afford
them generous welfare payments. They just act. No messing. No
scruples. Not even a shrug and a denial, just a rather magnificent
refusal to debate anything.”

The assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh and the official international
response must be taken as a grave warning. So-called targeted killings
will be increasingly relied upon by governments internationally in the
coming period, applying not merely to alleged terrorists but
potentially to any individual who comes to be identified as a threat
to the existing social and political order.

Patrick O’Connor

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/pers-m02.shtml

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