International Glance
Israel’s policy of overseas assassination raises profound issues that threaten the basis of the modern state: sovereignty, rule of law and national and personal security.
Israel has a publicly-stated policy of violating the sovereignty of any and all countries in order to kill or abduct its opponents. In both proclamation and actual practice, Israeli law, decrees and actions abroad supersede the laws and law enforcement agencies of any other nation. If Israel’s policy becomes the common practice world-wide, we would enter a savage Hobbesian jungle in which individuals would be subject to the murderous intent of foreign assassination squads unrestrained by any law or accountable national authority. Each and every state could impose its own laws and cross national borders in order to murder other nation’s citizens or residents with impunity. Israel’s extra-territorial assassinations make a mockery of the very notion of national sovereignty. Extra-territorial secret police elimination of opponents was a common practice of the Nazi Gestapo, Stalin’s GPU and Pinochet’s DINA and has now become the sanctioned practice of the US “Special Forces” and the CIA clandestine division. Such policies are the hallmark of totalitarian, dictatorial and imperialist states, which systematically trample on the sovereign rights of peoples.
Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman yesterday flatly rebuffed David Miliband's request for cooperation with an investigation into the use of forged British passports in the assassination of a Hamas leader.
Israel's Mossad secret service, more formally known as the Institute for Espionage and Special Tasks, has a long history of carrying out clandestine operations, including several spectacular assassinations.
Contrary to reports, the squad did not break into Mabhouh's hotel room, nor did they knock on the door. They entered the room using copies of keys they had somehow acquired. The Dubai police chief says it is not unlikely that the assassination teams were made up of Mossad agents.
Rome consistently tripped up the Irish church as it attempted to come to grips with the issue of clerical child sex abuse, and Cardinal Hummes – who is taking part in this week’s discussions with Pope Benedict XVI, his senior curial colleagues and 24 Irish bishops – is uniquely placed to understand just how.
The Tel Aviv District Court rejected a petition this week against a decision to lease land in Jaffa's Ajami neighborhood for the exclusive use of members of the religious Zionist community.
A major diplomatic and political scandal is erupting that could have significant import for French-American relations. It involves new research into the mysterious outbreak of "mass insanity" in a village in southern France that affected some 500 people and resulted in five deaths.
