In addition to the article below, please see here, here, and here . Also, watch this video.
Why would Israel provide covert support for Islamic fundamentalist extremists? What interests do the Israelis and ISIS have in common? The answer to these provocative questions points toward a dirty little secret that the major media in America is keeping under wraps.
As hard as it may be for the average American to digest, there is a solid record of evidence pointing toward a long-time—albeit little known— role by Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad, in providing financial and tactical support for the very “Muslim extremists” presumed to be Israel’s worst enemies. The truth is that Muslim extremists have proven useful (if often unwitting) tools in advancing Israel’s own geopolitical agenda.
Although the media has devoted much coverage to the topic of “Islamic fundamentalism,” the media has failed to pursue the documented behind-the-scenes linkage between Israel and the terrorist networks now the focus of media obsession.
In fact, evidence suggests that the world’s number one Muslim villain—Osama bin Laden—was almost certainly working with the Mossad in years past. Although many Americans are now aware that bin Laden’s early efforts against the Soviets in Afghanistan were sponsored by the CIA, the media was reticent to point out that this arms pipeline— described by Covert Action Information Bulletin (September 1987) as “the second largest covert operation” in the CIA’s history—was also, according to former Mossad operative Victor Ostrovsky (writing in The Other Side of Deception), under the direct supervision of the Mossad.
Ostrovsky noted that: “It was a complex pipeline since a large portion of the Mujahideen’s weapons were American-made and were supplied to the Muslim Brotherhood directly from Israel, using as carriers the Bedouin nomads who roamed the demilitarized zones in
the Sinai.”
Former ABC correspondent John K. Cooley, in Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, provides some confirmation for Ostrovsky’s allegations. He writes: Discussion of the input of outsiders to training and operations in Afghanistan would be incomplete without mention of Iran and the State of Israel. Iran’s major role in training and in supply is a matter of historical record. As for Israel, the evidence is much sketchier.
At least half a dozen knowledgeable individuals insisted, that Israel was indeed involved in both training and supply… Whether or not units of Israel’s elite Special Forces trained the Muslim warriors, who would soon turn their guns against Israel in Muslim organizations like Hamas, is a well-guarded Israeli secret. (Also, see here.)
Several Americans and Britons who took part in the training program have assured offered information that Israelis did indeed take part, though no one will own to having actually seen, or spoken with, Israeli instructors or intelligence operatives in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
What is certain is that of all the members of the anti-Soviet coalition, the Israelis have been the most successful in concealing the details and even the broad traces of a training role; much more than the Americans and British … In addition, it should be noted that Sami Masri, a former insider in the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) told journalists Jonathan Beaty and S. C. Gwynne (both of Time magazine) that BCCI “was financing Israeli arms going into Afghanistan.
There were Israeli arms, Israeli planes, and CIA pilots. Arms were coming into Afghanistan and [BCCI was] facilitating.” In fact, although BCCI was generally said to be an “Arab” or “Muslim” bank, BCCI was very much working in close concert with the Mossad in the very realm where bin Laden first made his mark.
So there is some evidence, indeed, that bin Laden was very much part of a network that was closely tied to Mossad intrigue in the arming and training of the Afghan rebels. However, there’s much more to the story of the Mossad’s ties to the so-called Islamic terror networks that are the stuff of American nightmares today.
In his follow-up book, The Other Side of Deception, ex- Mossad figure Victor Ostrovsky unveils the disturbing fact that the Mossad had a secret history of supporting radical Islamic groups for its own purposes.
Pointing out that Arab- and Muslim-hating hard-liners in Israel and its Mossad believe that Israel’s survival lies in its military strength and that “this strength arises from the need to answer the constant threat of war,” the Israeli hard-liners fear that peace with any Arab state could weaken Israel and bring about its demise. In that vein, Ostrovsky writes: Supporting the radical elements of Muslim fundamentalism sat well with the Mossad’s general plan for the region. An Arab world run by fundamentalists would not be a party to any negotiations with the West, thus leaving Israel again as the only democratic, rational country in the region. (See this video here, also see here, here and here.)
One of Israel’s prime targets was the kingdom of Jordan, then-ruled by King Hussein, who was actually in the process of making peace overtures toward Israel. Ostrovsky reports that the Mossad was determined to “destabilize Jordan to the point of civil anarchy.” The means used were to be:
A high influx of counterfeit currency, causing distrust in the market; arming religious fundamentalist elements similar to the Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood; and assassinating leading figures who are symbols of stability, causing riots in the universities and forcing the government to respond with harsh measures and lose popularity.
Actually, this tactic has also been used by the Mossad in dealing with non-Arab nations. For example, in the March 1982 edition of his newsletter, Middle East Perspective, Dr. Alfred Lilienthal, a pioneer American Jewish critic of Israeli excesses, reported that Italy’s then-top-ranking magistrate, Ferdinando Imposimato, had charged, in Imposimato’s words: At least until 1978, the Israeli secret service infiltrated Italian subversive organizations and on more than one occasion gave arms, money and information to the [terrorist] Red Brigades.
The Israeli plan was to reduce Italy to a country torn by civil war so that the United States would have to depend more on Israel for security in the Mediterranean. Lilienthal pointed out that Imposimato’s sources were two jailed Red Brigade leaders who reported that the Israelis had not only helped the Red Brigades enroll new recruits, but also track down traitors who fled abroad.
Even columnist Jack Anderson, a devoted news conduit for the Israeli lobby, has bragged of Israel’s skill: He wrote as long ago as September 17, 1972 that: The Israelis are also skillful at exploiting Arab rivalries and turning Arab against Arab. The Kurdish tribes, for example, inhabit the mountains of northern Iraq. Every month, a secret Israeli envoy slips into the mountains from the Iranian side to deliver $50,000 to Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa al Barzani.
The subsidy insures Kurdish hostility against Iraq, whose government was militantly anti-Israel.
In an April 25, 1983 column Anderson pointed out that one secret State Department report speculated that if Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yassir Arafat were to be dislodged, “the Palestinian movement will probably disintegrate into radical splinter groups, which, in combination with other revolutionary forces in the region, would pose a grave threat to the moderate Arab governments.”
Then, according to Anderson’s account, the State Department reported that: Israel seems determined to vent this threat … and can be expected to greatly expand its covert cooperation with revolutionary movements.
Anderson added that “two well-placed intelligence sources” had explained that this meant that it was in Israel’s interests to “divide and conquer” by setting various Palestinian factions against one another. This would then help destabilize all of the Arab and Islamic regimes in the Middle East. Anderson then stated flat-out that the sources said that “Israel had secretly provided funds to Abu Nidal’s group.”
Anderson’s reports about Abu Nidal’s apparent ties to the Mossad were only the tip of the iceberg. British journalist Patrick Seale, an acknowledged authority on the Middle East, devoted an entire book, entitled Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire, outlining and documenting
his thesis that Nidal was largely a surrogate for the Mossad all along.
Nidal was replaced by Osama bin Laden in media headlines as “the world’s most wanted terrorist.” And, like Nidal’s efforts to divide the Arab world, particularly the Palestinian cause, bin Laden’s activities seemed to have a congruence of interests with those of Israel; although this is something that the major media has not been ready to acknowledge.
While Bin Laden himself (quite notably) never attacked an Israeli or Jewish target, even the Washington Post pointed out that bin Laden’s primary goal was bolstering “a destabilizing brand
of Islamic fundamentalism in a long list of existing Middle East and Central Asia regimes.
That same Post article revealed that—contrary to the general public view that somehow bin Laden was in league with favorite Israeli targets such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammor Qadaffi, a former bin Laden associate had testified that bin Laden was, in fact, quite hostile to both the Iraqi leader and the Libyan leader. This again is quite in line with Israel’s attitude toward the two Arab icons.
So considering bin Laden’s previous ties to the joint CIA Mossad operations in Afghanistan coupled with his unusual congruence of agenda with the Mossad, the question arises as to whether bin Laden was a successor to presumed Mossad surrogate Abu Nidal in more ways than one.
And in light of recent questions about the real nationalities and identities of the purported “Arab hijackers” who brought down the four planes that created havoc on American soil on September 11, Jack Anderson’s aforementioned September 17, 1972 column pointed out something that should be noted: Israeli agents—immigrants whose families had lived in Arab lands for generations—have a perfect knowledge of Arab dialects and customs. They have been able to infiltrate Arab governments with ease.
Even Israeli sources have provided further data showing the extent to which the Mossad and other elements of Israeli intelligence have gone “under cover” in the Arab world. On September
29, 1998, famed Israeli journalist Yossi Melman, writing in Israel’s newspaper, Ha’aretz, revealed that:
Shin Bet agents, who worked undercover in the Israeli-Arab sector in the 1950s, went as far as
to marry Muslim women and have children with them, in an attempt to continue their mission without
raising suspicion. When the unit was disbanded, some of the families were broken up, while in
others, the women converted to Judaism and stayed with their husbands.
In fact, there are some doubts as to whether those who have been identified as the hijackers on September 11 were indeed the hijackers. Writing in The New Yorker on Oct. 8, 2001, veteran
investigative journalist Seymour Hersh pointed out something that has otherwise gone unmentioned in the mainstream media:
Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues about the terrorists’ identities and
preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, “Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the FBI to chase.”
Hersh has also raised questions about whether or not bin Laden’s network was capable of carrying out the terrorist attack alone. Hersh noted that a senior military officer had suggested to
him that, in Hersh’s words, “a major foreign intelligence service might also have been involved.”
Hersh did not point fingers anywhere, but a reader familiar with Hersh’s past history of pinpointing intrigue by Israel’s Mossad could perhaps read between the lines and guess at which foreign nation Hersh’s source might, however obliquely, be alluding.
In the end, the idea of the CIA and the Mossad financing Islamic terrorist groups is not extraordinary to former readers of the now-defunct Spotlight. As long ago as March 15, 1982, writing in The Spotlight, veteran correspondent Andrew St. George revealed that the big secret about the scandal involving former top CIA official Edwin Wilson’s international arms smuggling was Wilson’s partnership with the Mossad. While Wilson contended that these activities were done with the approval of the CIA—which denied it, of course—the major media kept Wilson’s Mossad link under wraps.
St. George reported that Wilson had teamed with two veteran Mossad agents, Hans Ziegler and David Langham, who set up a firm, Zimex, Ltd., based in Switzerland. The project was known by its CIA cryptonym, KLapex. This venture was a joint undercover CIA-Mossad operation to set up a chain of dummy business firms for the purpose of selling and chartering personal jet aircraft to Arab leaders. The planes, ranging from Gulfstream II corporate jets to giant 707s, came with flight and maintenance crews, each of which had Mossad operatives among its members. The primary mission of the Israeli spies was to operate and service the elaborate electronic eavesdropping systems concealed in the cabin of each plane to record the confidential conversations of Arab statesmen in mid-flight.
However, St. George revealed, the commercial network under KLapex was used for an even more sinister purpose: To provide covert aid to some nationalistic, pan-Arab and Islamic radical movements in Sudan, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf states. In each case, when the Mossad extended such secret assistance—whether in cash or access to smuggled weapons, or in some other form—the purpose was to weaken or pressure some government thought hostile or dangerous to Israel at that particular moment.
What Israeli sponsorship, if any, can be found behind the current media-promoted Islamic bogeymen remains to be seen; but the evidence of past Israeli sponsorship and connections is
there for those who dare to look for it.
Why would Israel provide covert support for Islamic fundamentalist extremists? What interests do the Israelis and ISIS have in common? The answer to these provocative questions points toward a dirty little secret that the major media in America is keeping under wraps.
As hard as it may be for the average American to digest, there is a solid record of evidence pointing toward a long-time—albeit little known— role by Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad, in providing financial and tactical support for the very “Muslim extremists” presumed to be Israel’s worst enemies. The truth is that Muslim extremists have proven useful (if often unwitting) tools in advancing Israel’s own geopolitical agenda.
Although the media has devoted much coverage to the topic of “Islamic fundamentalism,” the media has failed to pursue the documented behind-the-scenes linkage between Israel and the terrorist networks now the focus of media obsession.
In fact, evidence suggests that the world’s number one Muslim villain—Osama bin Laden—was almost certainly working with the Mossad in years past. Although many Americans are now aware that bin Laden’s early efforts against the Soviets in Afghanistan were sponsored by the CIA, the media was reticent to point out that this arms pipeline— described by Covert Action Information Bulletin (September 1987) as “the second largest covert operation” in the CIA’s history—was also, according to former Mossad operative Victor Ostrovsky (writing in The Other Side of Deception), under the direct supervision of the Mossad.
Ostrovsky noted that: “It was a complex pipeline since a large portion of the Mujahideen’s weapons were American-made and were supplied to the Muslim Brotherhood directly from Israel, using as carriers the Bedouin nomads who roamed the demilitarized zones in
the Sinai.”
Former ABC correspondent John K. Cooley, in Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, provides some confirmation for Ostrovsky’s allegations. He writes: Discussion of the input of outsiders to training and operations in Afghanistan would be incomplete without mention of Iran and the State of Israel. Iran’s major role in training and in supply is a matter of historical record. As for Israel, the evidence is much sketchier.
At least half a dozen knowledgeable individuals insisted, that Israel was indeed involved in both training and supply… Whether or not units of Israel’s elite Special Forces trained the Muslim warriors, who would soon turn their guns against Israel in Muslim organizations like Hamas, is a well-guarded Israeli secret. (Also, see here.)
Several Americans and Britons who took part in the training program have assured offered information that Israelis did indeed take part, though no one will own to having actually seen, or spoken with, Israeli instructors or intelligence operatives in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
What is certain is that of all the members of the anti-Soviet coalition, the Israelis have been the most successful in concealing the details and even the broad traces of a training role; much more than the Americans and British … In addition, it should be noted that Sami Masri, a former insider in the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) told journalists Jonathan Beaty and S. C. Gwynne (both of Time magazine) that BCCI “was financing Israeli arms going into Afghanistan.
There were Israeli arms, Israeli planes, and CIA pilots. Arms were coming into Afghanistan and [BCCI was] facilitating.” In fact, although BCCI was generally said to be an “Arab” or “Muslim” bank, BCCI was very much working in close concert with the Mossad in the very realm where bin Laden first made his mark.
So there is some evidence, indeed, that bin Laden was very much part of a network that was closely tied to Mossad intrigue in the arming and training of the Afghan rebels. However, there’s much more to the story of the Mossad’s ties to the so-called Islamic terror networks that are the stuff of American nightmares today.
In his follow-up book, The Other Side of Deception, ex- Mossad figure Victor Ostrovsky unveils the disturbing fact that the Mossad had a secret history of supporting radical Islamic groups for its own purposes.
Pointing out that Arab- and Muslim-hating hard-liners in Israel and its Mossad believe that Israel’s survival lies in its military strength and that “this strength arises from the need to answer the constant threat of war,” the Israeli hard-liners fear that peace with any Arab state could weaken Israel and bring about its demise. In that vein, Ostrovsky writes: Supporting the radical elements of Muslim fundamentalism sat well with the Mossad’s general plan for the region. An Arab world run by fundamentalists would not be a party to any negotiations with the West, thus leaving Israel again as the only democratic, rational country in the region. (See this video here, also see here, here and here.)
One of Israel’s prime targets was the kingdom of Jordan, then-ruled by King Hussein, who was actually in the process of making peace overtures toward Israel. Ostrovsky reports that the Mossad was determined to “destabilize Jordan to the point of civil anarchy.” The means used were to be:
A high influx of counterfeit currency, causing distrust in the market; arming religious fundamentalist elements similar to the Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood; and assassinating leading figures who are symbols of stability, causing riots in the universities and forcing the government to respond with harsh measures and lose popularity.
Actually, this tactic has also been used by the Mossad in dealing with non-Arab nations. For example, in the March 1982 edition of his newsletter, Middle East Perspective, Dr. Alfred Lilienthal, a pioneer American Jewish critic of Israeli excesses, reported that Italy’s then-top-ranking magistrate, Ferdinando Imposimato, had charged, in Imposimato’s words: At least until 1978, the Israeli secret service infiltrated Italian subversive organizations and on more than one occasion gave arms, money and information to the [terrorist] Red Brigades.
The Israeli plan was to reduce Italy to a country torn by civil war so that the United States would have to depend more on Israel for security in the Mediterranean. Lilienthal pointed out that Imposimato’s sources were two jailed Red Brigade leaders who reported that the Israelis had not only helped the Red Brigades enroll new recruits, but also track down traitors who fled abroad.
Even columnist Jack Anderson, a devoted news conduit for the Israeli lobby, has bragged of Israel’s skill: He wrote as long ago as September 17, 1972 that: The Israelis are also skillful at exploiting Arab rivalries and turning Arab against Arab. The Kurdish tribes, for example, inhabit the mountains of northern Iraq. Every month, a secret Israeli envoy slips into the mountains from the Iranian side to deliver $50,000 to Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa al Barzani.
The subsidy insures Kurdish hostility against Iraq, whose government was militantly anti-Israel.
In an April 25, 1983 column Anderson pointed out that one secret State Department report speculated that if Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yassir Arafat were to be dislodged, “the Palestinian movement will probably disintegrate into radical splinter groups, which, in combination with other revolutionary forces in the region, would pose a grave threat to the moderate Arab governments.”
Then, according to Anderson’s account, the State Department reported that: Israel seems determined to vent this threat … and can be expected to greatly expand its covert cooperation with revolutionary movements.
Anderson added that “two well-placed intelligence sources” had explained that this meant that it was in Israel’s interests to “divide and conquer” by setting various Palestinian factions against one another. This would then help destabilize all of the Arab and Islamic regimes in the Middle East. Anderson then stated flat-out that the sources said that “Israel had secretly provided funds to Abu Nidal’s group.”
Anderson’s reports about Abu Nidal’s apparent ties to the Mossad were only the tip of the iceberg. British journalist Patrick Seale, an acknowledged authority on the Middle East, devoted an entire book, entitled Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire, outlining and documenting
his thesis that Nidal was largely a surrogate for the Mossad all along.
Nidal was replaced by Osama bin Laden in media headlines as “the world’s most wanted terrorist.” And, like Nidal’s efforts to divide the Arab world, particularly the Palestinian cause, bin Laden’s activities seemed to have a congruence of interests with those of Israel; although this is something that the major media has not been ready to acknowledge.
While Bin Laden himself (quite notably) never attacked an Israeli or Jewish target, even the Washington Post pointed out that bin Laden’s primary goal was bolstering “a destabilizing brand
of Islamic fundamentalism in a long list of existing Middle East and Central Asia regimes.
That same Post article revealed that—contrary to the general public view that somehow bin Laden was in league with favorite Israeli targets such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammor Qadaffi, a former bin Laden associate had testified that bin Laden was, in fact, quite hostile to both the Iraqi leader and the Libyan leader. This again is quite in line with Israel’s attitude toward the two Arab icons.
So considering bin Laden’s previous ties to the joint CIA Mossad operations in Afghanistan coupled with his unusual congruence of agenda with the Mossad, the question arises as to whether bin Laden was a successor to presumed Mossad surrogate Abu Nidal in more ways than one.
And in light of recent questions about the real nationalities and identities of the purported “Arab hijackers” who brought down the four planes that created havoc on American soil on September 11, Jack Anderson’s aforementioned September 17, 1972 column pointed out something that should be noted: Israeli agents—immigrants whose families had lived in Arab lands for generations—have a perfect knowledge of Arab dialects and customs. They have been able to infiltrate Arab governments with ease.
Even Israeli sources have provided further data showing the extent to which the Mossad and other elements of Israeli intelligence have gone “under cover” in the Arab world. On September
29, 1998, famed Israeli journalist Yossi Melman, writing in Israel’s newspaper, Ha’aretz, revealed that:
Shin Bet agents, who worked undercover in the Israeli-Arab sector in the 1950s, went as far as
to marry Muslim women and have children with them, in an attempt to continue their mission without
raising suspicion. When the unit was disbanded, some of the families were broken up, while in
others, the women converted to Judaism and stayed with their husbands.
In fact, there are some doubts as to whether those who have been identified as the hijackers on September 11 were indeed the hijackers. Writing in The New Yorker on Oct. 8, 2001, veteran
investigative journalist Seymour Hersh pointed out something that has otherwise gone unmentioned in the mainstream media:
Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues about the terrorists’ identities and
preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, “Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the FBI to chase.”
Hersh has also raised questions about whether or not bin Laden’s network was capable of carrying out the terrorist attack alone. Hersh noted that a senior military officer had suggested to
him that, in Hersh’s words, “a major foreign intelligence service might also have been involved.”
Hersh did not point fingers anywhere, but a reader familiar with Hersh’s past history of pinpointing intrigue by Israel’s Mossad could perhaps read between the lines and guess at which foreign nation Hersh’s source might, however obliquely, be alluding.
In the end, the idea of the CIA and the Mossad financing Islamic terrorist groups is not extraordinary to former readers of the now-defunct Spotlight. As long ago as March 15, 1982, writing in The Spotlight, veteran correspondent Andrew St. George revealed that the big secret about the scandal involving former top CIA official Edwin Wilson’s international arms smuggling was Wilson’s partnership with the Mossad. While Wilson contended that these activities were done with the approval of the CIA—which denied it, of course—the major media kept Wilson’s Mossad link under wraps.
St. George reported that Wilson had teamed with two veteran Mossad agents, Hans Ziegler and David Langham, who set up a firm, Zimex, Ltd., based in Switzerland. The project was known by its CIA cryptonym, KLapex. This venture was a joint undercover CIA-Mossad operation to set up a chain of dummy business firms for the purpose of selling and chartering personal jet aircraft to Arab leaders. The planes, ranging from Gulfstream II corporate jets to giant 707s, came with flight and maintenance crews, each of which had Mossad operatives among its members. The primary mission of the Israeli spies was to operate and service the elaborate electronic eavesdropping systems concealed in the cabin of each plane to record the confidential conversations of Arab statesmen in mid-flight.
However, St. George revealed, the commercial network under KLapex was used for an even more sinister purpose: To provide covert aid to some nationalistic, pan-Arab and Islamic radical movements in Sudan, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf states. In each case, when the Mossad extended such secret assistance—whether in cash or access to smuggled weapons, or in some other form—the purpose was to weaken or pressure some government thought hostile or dangerous to Israel at that particular moment.
What Israeli sponsorship, if any, can be found behind the current media-promoted Islamic bogeymen remains to be seen; but the evidence of past Israeli sponsorship and connections is
there for those who dare to look for it.
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