Soccer Dad

A riddle wrapped in an enigma and mocked on facebook

I've been skeptical of the ever growing hit team that knocked off Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, but Robert Baer (h/t Powerline) provides an explanation:

The truth is that Mr. Mabhouh's assassination was conducted according to the book--a military operation in which the environment is completely controlled by the assassins. At least 25 people are needed to carry off something like this. You need "eyes on" the target 24 hours a day to ensure that when the time comes he is alone. You need coverage of the police--assassinations go very wrong when the police stumble into the middle of one. You need coverage of the hotel security staff, the maids, the outside of the hotel. You even need people in back-up accommodations in the event the team needs a place to hide.

I can only speculate about where exactly the hit went wrong. But I would guess the assassins failed to account for the marked advance in technology. Not only were there closed-circuit TV cameras in the hotel where Mr. Mabhouh was assassinated and at the airport, but Dubai has at its fingertips the best security consultants in the world. The consultants merely had to run advanced software through all of Dubai's digital data before, during and after the assassination to connect the assassins in time and place. For instance, a search of all cellular phone calls made in and around the hotel where Mr. Mabhouh was assassinated would show who had called the same number--reportedly a command post in Vienna. It would only be a matter then of tracking when and where calls were made from these phones, tying them to hotels where the team was operating or staying.

Not completely understanding advances in technology may be one explanation for the assassins nonchalantly exposing their faces to the closed-circuit TV cameras, one female assassin even smiling at one. They mistook Dubai 2010 for Paris 1992, and never thought it would all be tied together in a neat bow. But there is no good explanation why Israel, if indeed it was behind the assassination, underestimated the technology. The other explanation--the assassins didn't care whether their faces were identified--doesn't seem plausible at all.

Baer, for his part, thinks that the hit was a bad idea. But did Dubai really prove Israeli involvement. A number of claims from Dubai haven't panned out or make no sense (like fleeing to Iran). Sense of events points to another implausibilty.

Well, they're all European, Ashenazie, in face and name. There are no Mizrachi faces or names. Several of these "usual (Jewish) suspects" are using names of people from the UK who are living in Israel. Gasp! Identity theft! Something only the Israeli (and Chinese computer sales hackers who regularly seize my machine peppering my friends with the latest laptop prices in Shanghai) are capable of doing. Clearly the view of someone who believes that all Israelis are European Crusaders--clueless about what the "average" Jew looks like. [They really don't all have Brooklyn accents.]

Now in a country like Israel, a significant percentage of the population who are refugees from places like Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libyia, Syria, UAE, and Dubai, AND who speak a range of Middle Eastern languages and dialects in their home with their grandparents. WHY would the Mossad send lily white European faces to blend in with the crowd? The mission was, after all, supposed to be clandestine.

This isn't to say that the Mossad didn't kill Mabhouh or that Dubia doesn't have better proofs than what's been offered so far. But the media and a number of governments have been absolutely credulous in accepting the Dubai account at face value, regardless of the implausibilities.

Fortunately, there appears to be some cooler head prevailing.

Caroline Glick observed (h/t Roger L. Simon)

It reportedly took the intervention of the highest echelons of Europe's intelligence agencies to get their hysterical politicians and diplomats to stop blaming and threatening Israel. After being dressed down, on Monday, the chastened EU foreign ministers abstained from mentioning Israel by name in their joint condemnation of the alleged use of European passports by the alleged operatives who allegedly killed the terrorist Mabhouh.

One thing's for sure:

You've got to give Dubai credit. They harbored an international terrorist and have managed to exploit his murder for media attention.

(h/t Omri via Twitter.)

Crossposted on Yourish.