While discussing the utter failure of Israeli intelligence agencies, one needs to learn a lesson from the recent development in India-Canada Relationship and the role Five Eyes played in sharing information. Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance of the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom and New Zealand.
But this cooperation is not confined to these five English-speaking countries. Several times they have joined hands with their counterparts in other European countries as well as Mossad and Shin Bet, the external and internal spy agencies of the Jewish nation.
Whatever Mossad has achieved internationally, it is not just because of its own efforts. It has done so because of the active support from the friendly agencies. The Western media has over-rated the performance of the Israeli spies working within or outside the Jewish nation.
Impossible for Mossad
It was absolutely impossible for Mossad alone to eliminate former Nazis who fled from Germany after its defeat in World War II and had taken shelter in Latin American countries. Actually, these hunting down of those responsible for the Holocaust were coordinated efforts of all the Western agencies as well as Mossad. In the same way, Mossad killed Palestinians responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics of 1972 and later took refuge in various countries. The Western spy-masters played a significant role in preparing the ground, and Mossad personnel were the final executors of the plan.
Ever since the late 1830s Christianized Western imperialist powers, especially Britain, the United States, and France, have always kept themselves behind the scenes. It is these powers who created Zionist movement in the mid-1890s, funded it, and then shipped millions of Jews who were facing extinction first in Russia (1899-1900) and Germany in the 1930s and 1940s to the Holy Land of Palestine. Believe it or not, many Jewish elders of those years warned Theodor Herzl and other champions of Zionism not to be carried away by emotion whipped up by the Western powers with ulterior motives as the Jewish homeland would prove a ‘mouse trap’.
So, whatever is happening more than a century later is the direct outcome of the same plan. Perhaps the Western powers wanted to take revenge for a series of defeats they suffered in the Crusades between 1099 and 1271. They successfully used the religious emotions of Jews— previously their greatest enemy—as a shield to score points over Muslims. One need not forget that Palestine is the birthplace of Jesus Christ and Christianity. At the same time, the Western nations wanted to get rid of the headache called anti-Semitism.
Past failures
The truth is that it is not just the failure of Mossad and Shin Bet on October 7, 2023 but also of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States and Military Intelligence (MI-6) of Britain. But they would not concede this fact. If Five Eyes can share information about the killing of Indian-origin Sikh extremists in Canada it is simply unbelievable that they do not exchange news about the activities of Hamas and Hezbollah with Israel, the nation they created.
Now the news appearing in Israeli media suggests that Egyptian intelligence service had alerted Israel about the likely plan of Hamas. But it ignored it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied that his country received any such information.
This piece of news raised another question. If Egypt can warn Israel where were CIA and MI-6 or other Western secret services?
Ashraf Marwan
It was not the first time on October 7, 2023, that spies from Israel and its Western friends have let the Jewish nation down. They have partially failed on October 6, 1973, when the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched an attack to cross the Suez Canal and capture Golan Heights respectively. It is another thing that the Israeli Defence Force later in the 17-day-long war regained lost ground.
What needs to be properly understood is that the Israeli intelligence agencies have failed several times while taking on non- state actors Hezbollah since 1982 and Hamas in the last couple of decades.
In contrast, their success rate was better while confronting the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. In the earlier years of the existence of Israel its defence force had succeeded in foiling some guerilla attacks by Palestinian groups, Al-Fatah being the most prominent one.
The stunning victory of Israel in Six Day War between June 5 and 10, 1967 is attributed to the timely action of its secret agencies. Actually, it was the Arab neighbours—Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon– which were planning to attack Israel. The intelligence agency of Israel got the wind of it and the Jewish nation made a pre-emptive strike taking Arabs by complete surprise.
But in October 1973 the opposite happened. Several Israeli authorities then held Ashraf Marwan, said to be an Egyptian double agent posted in London, responsible for the earlier setback in the battlefields. The Israelis reportedly trusted him but after the war was over, alleged that he misinformed their military. Perhaps Marwan was asked by the then Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to mislead and confuse the Israelis.
Marwan, the son-in-law of former President Gamal Abdul Nasser, died in mysterious circumstances in London in 2007. His wife blamed Mossad. But once again, did the Israeli agency work alone in this case?
Soroor Ahmed is a senior journalist and author of the book, The Jewish Obsession published in 2004
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