''There are some who spent $500 million in Lebanon to distort the image of Hezbollah*''

Hassan Nasrallah provided today substantial circumstantial evidence about a possible role for Israel in the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. The evidence is made of confessions by Israeli spies captured by Lebanese authorities, video footage sent by Israeli drones to Israeli operations centers, which Hezbollah intercepted, personal info gathered from Syrian authorities, and associations with other sources.

Nasrallah's argument is that if the Special UN Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) ignores this circumstantial evidence then its credibility can be put into question as a fundamentally biased and politicized tribunal.

Since the beginning, Nasrallah said (around when Israel was first defeated by Hezbollah and left Lebanon in 2000), Israel tried to isolate Hezbollah with:
1) A story they planted through their spies that Hezbollah was trying to assassinate Hariri (naming a spy who fled to Israel since);
2) The sudden withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon under accusations Syria was behind Hariri's assassination;
3) The 2006 war when Israel hoped that inflicting huge civilian casualties in a short time on Lebanon will turn the tide against popular support for Hezbollah;
4) And now the special tribunal who is apparently going to accuse members of Hezbollah for assassinating Hariri.

Israel has the motive to create civil unrest and strife in Lebanon and to distort the image of Hezbollah. Will the special tribunal, who conducted his work in a very unprofessional way and who never turned its attention to Israel's role in the Hariri assassination, investigate ?

Nasrallah's early take on the info that members of Hezbollah were going to be indicted by the STL for the assassination of Rafik Hariri.

UPDATE, August 10th:
Rami Khoury on Nasrallah and the doctrine of reasonable doubt.

Israeli newspapers and Hezbollah enemies need nothing less than complete irrefutable proof from Nasrallah's evidence but isn't the tribunal's job to examine circumstantial evidence and find the proof?


An interesting analysis by Elias Muhanna in Foreign Policy.

Related: Israeli spies in Lebanon...

Karam's arrest has come as a shock to Lebanon, already reeling from a number of high-profile detentions of military and telecom employees, and has raised debate over how deeply Israel has managed to infiltrate and compromise Lebanon's security.

Three employees at state-owned telecom firms have been charged with spying, prompting Hezbollah to suggest Israel could have used telecom agents to manipulate phone records to implicate the group in the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri.

*So said Hassan Nasrallah today in presenting his evidence for Israel's role in the assassination of Rafik Hariri, as reported by Al-Manar. $500million is the estimated cost incurred for the tribunal until now.

More to come...

Why I believe that some of the Israeli agents in the recent Dubai assassination had neither fake passports nor fake identities

The important thing in this statement is 'some' and not all. I believe that some of the hit team had actually stolen the passports, and these must be regular Mossad agents, and some (or most) didn't, and these are 'non Mossad' real people recruited for a one time operation...

Mossad has actually used both tactics in the past but the size of the team and importance of the operation in Dubai, as well as the changing technologies of airport and hotel surveillance, suggest that this operation required a special approach in terms of disinformation. Disinformation is actually information that mixes true facts and statements, in little amounts, with false information, in huge amounts.

Blurring the lines between real and fake identities is one of those tactics.

And the people who are screaming that their identities were stolen should be thoroughly investigated because some (most) of them are probably lying...

To support my opinion I invite you to read this.

And this. Dubai hit: another move in the Israel-Iran cold war.

UPDATE 1: Don't you see a contradiction in this ? And of course more disinformation...

Ms. Kite’s sources told her that “the six British citizens whose identities were stolen and used by the killers all had their passports taken away from them briefly during routine checks at the airport,” in Israel. All six of the British nationals whose names and passport numbers were used on fake documents carried by suspects identified by investigators in Dubai currently live in Israel.

UPDATE 2: 15 more suspects holding British passports are identified by Dubai police. They all live in israel of course and they are all screaming that they are innocent and I don't believe all of them. David Miliband, the British foreign secretary is treating the matter lightly...

UPDATE 3: Most reports in the press about the assassination are shrouded in disinformation, and very few carry real information, this one does ...

UPDATE 4: How 'unwitting' were the British Israelis ?

Dubai Police has confirmed a point I mentioned in last week's column; that Israeli citizens must enter and depart Israel on their Israeli passports.

On the recently assassinated Lebanese general

Photo courtesy UrShalim

From the Lebanese blogosphere
Remarkz:

'Does this look like a guy the "Syrian-Iranian axis" would try to kill?' Only if they want to shoot themselves in the foot.

And on François El-Hajj at UrShalim
Syria Comment: 'Anti-March 14th general assassinated'
FPW: 'When In Doubt, Blame Syria'
Amira Al Husseini at Global voices: 'Who killed François Hajj and why ?'
My post on the killing of François El-Hajj.

Oh and one last thing, even if it means for me not being able to return to Lebanon in the future, Samir Gea'gea shouldn't have been pardoned by the Lebanese parliament, including the Hezbollah and Aounist MPs, and let out from prison, for his crimes during the civil war, especially the crimes he committed eliminating any potentiel rival from the Christian camp. He is a very bad apple, among many in Lebanon, but probably the most dangerous and unprincipled one. The man used to claim that the virgin Mary speaks to him.

Political Assassinations In Lebanon: Elementary my dear Watson ?

I was thinking about the latest assassination in Lebanon. What continues to puzzle me, as much as this assassination and the previous ones, is the reaction of March 14th movement, the movement that is the target of the assassinations after the death of Rafiq Hariri.
The reaction has the following scheme:
- Fingers publicly pointed at Syria;
- Appeal for help from the international community.
Generally, the immediate after murder condemnation comes from the US, president or department of state, never lower than that.
This pattern has been going crescendo at each assassination.
I don't consider this as an approach to finding the truth which should be the normal approach in such situations. I call this a gross instrumentalisation of the assassinations.

I am not including in these reactions the actual huge street protests in Beirut that led to the ousting of the Syrian army from Lebanon after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri that took place before the famous March 14th, 2005 protests, and which included protesters who followed a divergent path since, like general Michel Aoun's supporters.

The protests before March 14th, 2005 against the Syrian presence in Lebanon were mostly genuine, joined by people across the multiple sectarian divides which exist in Lebanon. It is only on March 14th that we saw the emergence of hi-tech politically planned street protests in Lebanon meant to influence, not only Lebanese and international public opinions, but also the course of the political process in Lebanon. And I think the name for March 14th is very adequate in this regard because it is on March 14th, 2005 that some people felt that political assassinations and the following protests are something that can pay off beyond their immediate impact.

What became different also from March 14, 2005 and on is the profile of the Politicians targeted. From high profile like Rafiq Hariri, assassinations started to target either low profile politicians or politicians who are not in the core of the March 14th movement. I will call them March 14th periphery politicians. Of course the Gemayels, a prominent Christian family and militia, were hit by the assassinations. But here again, the Gemayels still are periphery because they have a very low impact within the movement itself. The core of March 14th are Saad Hariri, Walid Jumblatt, and Samir Gea'gea.

Moreover, the fact that March 14th's core leaders were never interested in alternative explanations, serious investigations on the assassinations that followed Hariri's (even though they asked that later assassinations should be included in the UN commission mandate on the assassination of Hariri), national dialogue or reconciliation, makes their claims, after each assassination, less credible. We are told that Syria is doing the assassinations and we are not told what actions the Lebanese government and March 14th are making to investigate or stop the assassinations other than their constant appeal to the international community. The Lebanese government is showing how much powerless and incompetent it is in stopping a string of assassinations targeting its own majority and want us at the same time to trust it.

I challenge March 14th to come up with a logical explanation for the assassinations other than Syria attempting to reduce the majority of March 14th. But if that's the case why not assassinate this majority at once and in a short time since nobody seems to be able or willing to identify the perpetrators or to stop them ? If nothing can stop them why not do the job in a short time and more efficient way, instead of following the 'Little Thumb' scenario leaving a trail of evidence ? A trail bizzarrely no one from March 14th seems to be willing to uncover or prove to strenghten their accusations ? Why is it taking Syrians so long, more than two years and going on now, to get rid of this 'anti-Syrian' (Pro-US I would say is more accurate) Lebanese 'majority' ?

Saad Hariri, as smart as he is, came up with this explanation of the latest assassination: Syria killed Ghanem in retaliation to the recent Israeli bombing of Syria ! Recognising hereby that March 14th are Israel's implicit allies while at the same time launching a not so implicit appeal to Israel to retaliate for Ghanem by striking Syrian territory. Lebanese Politicians were always good at one thing, not dialogue, not politics, not serving the people, not even war; they were always good at asking for foreign help. And the help comes now right away in the form of foreign interference from the US calling on opposition MPs who were going to boycott the presidential elections to reverse their decision.

The press release of the US embassy in Beirut reads:
"We hope that the shock of MP Ghanem's murder will persuade those Members of Parliament who were threatening to use a boycott of the presidential elections to honor the memory of their slain colleague by showing up for presidential elections as scheduled."

In all this we are left only with Holmesian logical deductions to untangle the mystery behind these assassinations if we reject the Syria hypothesis, at least for the assassinations that took place after Hariri died. But the Lebanese government and March 14th don't want us to resort to logic, they want us to swallow whatever they say as absolute truth without even attemting to shed a single light on this 'truth'. A Holmesian deduction one can make of the assassination pattern after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri in 2005 is that, even though we still aren't sure who killed Rafiq Hariri, it is clear that subsequent killings are different (I wrote about this when Pierre Gemayel was assassinated) and they have some of these goals or all of them at once:

Maintaining the outrage against Syria alive;
Preventing any internal dialogue in Lebanon and preventing any reasonable alternative to confrontation;
'Cleaning' the peripehry of the March 14th movement from potential challengers to its core or potential shifters. This is on the internal level where we are witnessing something bearing some resemblance to the Ten Little Indians scenario.
On the external level, regional and international, the pattern, as glanced at from Saad Hariri's remark, is nothing else than a build-up to more wars in the region and more divides. To Which March 14th are applauding, as if Lebanon and Lebanese did not already suffer from this dirty game before.

"...it is clear that the Arab region is undergoing yet another round of internationally-sponsored violence and perhaps even partition, redrawing the regional map along the line fantasized by some neocons. The objective of such policy is to establish a string of "pro-US" (and neoliberal) regimes across the region and punish the "bad guys," those state (e.g., Iran, Syria) or non-state (e.g., Hizbullah, Hamas) actors who reject Pax Americana and Israeli regional hegemony."

Elementary, my dear Watson.

Political Assassinations in Lebanon: Truth And Consequences

The UN Inquiry on the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri and other political assassinations in Lebanon is stumbling on the unwillingness of ten countries to collaborate. Collaboration with the inquiry was a number one requirement in all UN resolutions concerning the inquiry. The head commissioner, Serge Brammertz, did not publish the names of the countries who won't collaborate, but speculations are running high since the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Tchourkine, asked for the divulgation of the names.

Rafiq Hariri was killed on a Valentine day, February 14th, in Beyrouth, after 'supposedly' a car exploded near his convoy. There is no final official report about the assassination since Brammertz's predecessor, Detlev Mehlis, was discharged after his line of inquiry collapsed in a serie of false and fabricated testimonies which were the only 'proofs' he had produced accusing Syria of the assassination. Syria's army left Lebanon after a public and international outrage at the assassination designated the Syrians as prime suspects. The follow-up to this event was an election victory of the March 14th movement led by Hariri son and Walid Jumblatt as well as other pro-US political movements in Lebanon. However, the March 14th movement is, since then, unable to overcome the dwindling of its political support inside Lebanon resulting from its inability to build consensus and from the fact that most Lebanese see the movement as accomplice of the latest July Israeli agression which was overtly supported by March 14th's western political mentors, the US and the UK.

While not mentioning the names of the countries not collaborating with the inquiry, Brammertz declared being totally satisfied with the Syrian collaboration. On his blog, Alain Gresh, a 'Le Monde Diplomatique' correspondant and specialist of the Middle East, reveals the names of some of these uncooperative countries as published on January 12th by the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, a daily seen as close to the Lebanese opposition. They are:
The US who have satellite pictures of the assassination;
Israel who has pictures taken before and after the assassination by its spy planes continously flying over Lebanon;
France who detains a suspect, Mohammed Said Saddik, who made a false testimony to the first UN inquiry headed by Mehlis;
Among other countries mentioned by the Lebanese daily are Germany, Saudi Arabia, Koweit, Australia, UAE, and Brazil.

It is known to these countries that:
The site of the assassination had undergone a 'cleanup' before any evidence gathering;
The first UN inquiry was marred by the lack of professionalism and lack of neutrality on Mehlis's part;
Precious time was lost for collecting and analysing the evidence;
Other politicians and prominent figures died since Hariri was killed, they all are related to the March 14th movement, and their assassinations prompted, eache time, accusations against Syria;
These political assassinations were included by the UN in the mandate of the commission at the demand of the Lebanese state;

Given that Brammertz was making progress and briefing the UN along the way to the point some assume that the change of method in the latest assassination in Lebanon (that of Pierre Gemayyel) was propably prompted by informations on Brammertz's progress and a will to derail the inquiry, one may wonder why these countries, who are all supporting the corrupt pro-US Lebanese government of Fouad Sanyura, won't help a honest inquiry into a series of assassinations that destabilised Lebanon and brought it to the edge of a new civil war ?

Ironically, the March 14th movement and its accolytes had the word 'Truth' as a main slogan on their protest banners (Haqiqa, in Arabic).

Ariel Sharon, Bush, and the Assassination of Yasser Arafat

The escalation we are witnessing now in Palestine is partly the legacy of Ariel Sharon. In a recent book of interviews published in France, his confident Uri Dan reveals that Sharon told him that he was behind the assassination of Yasser Arafat and that Sharon consulted with Bush on the matter.

''To those knowledgeable about Israel’s history since it became a state in 1948 and earlier, this revelation, if true, should come as no surprise. All Israeli governments have a long and disturbing record of conducting targeted assassinations in Israel and abroad as it suited them against all persons thought to be a threat to the Jewish state. From his earliest days in 1969 as Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman and President, Arafat went from enemy to ally and back to enemy again under various Israeli governments depending on his willingness to deny his people their rights in service and pledging fealty to Israeli authority as he did in agreeing to the Oslo Accords, or Declaration of Principles (DOP), signed at a White House ceremony in September, 1993.''

There is mention of the book by Paris-Match however without any mention of the assassination confidence. The book seems to be hard to find. It is in an Amazon search but not available. It is listed in a podcast search and it is mentioned on the official site of the Israeli embassy in France, without this revelation. Uri Dan, the book's author, a Sharon supporter and admirer, who was Fox's News Jerusalem bureau chief and New York Post Correspondent in Jerusalem, died recently.

Also, there are many articles on Uri Dan in this December page of Isranet News.
''To the end, Uri remained tireless. Diagnosed with lung cancer, he covered last summer's war in Lebanon from his hospital bed while undergoing intensive chemotherapy. He traveled to Washington last month with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and was thrilled beyond words when White House Press Secretary Tony Snow agreed to place a copy of Uri's new book on President Bush's Oval Office desk. ''

Change of Pattern in Political Assassinations in Lebanon related to Brammertz's Progress on the Initial Ones

Brian Whitaker from The Guardian is to my knowledge the only one who pointed out in his article 'The Smoking Gun' the relevance of the recent change in the method of political assassinations in Lebanon to the 'Who Did It' question:

''Spot the odd one out. Gemayel's killing was the only one that involved a gun. All the other attacks used explosives. In a report to the UN on June 10, Brammertz explained why, in his view, the first 15 cases were connected: there was linkage by motive and linkage by modus operandi.''
...''The modus operandi is much more problematic. Gemayel was followed, his car was rammed, then he and his bodyguard were shot at close range, apparently with silenced guns. The killer, or killers, then vanished. In most countries we would assume it was a professional hit job."

Then Whitaker examines under this perspective the links between the change of method and the progress UN commissioner Serge Brammertz has been making in the Hariri investigation recently" See Brammertz June and September reports.

The reports were not much publicised, contrary to the previous commissioner Mehlis reports, because they are based mostly on technical progress in the investigation rather than on empty accusations as Mehlis used to do when releasing his reports. Brammertz has been conducting his investigation like a maestro, in an real independant manner, unhampered by paid for lies, pressures, passions, attempts of blockades and acquaintances with high profile people from the March 14th movement. Is it because Brammertz comes from the country of Hercule Poirot ? Reading the reports one senses immediately that the man is into something.

''On reading the report, anyone involved in the earlier attacks might easily have concluded they were too complex for safety, giving far too many clues away in the planning stages. A straightforward shooting (almost impossible in the case of a highly protected figure like Hariri but practicable in the case of Gemayel) might therefore be a wiser option.''

And Whitaker concludes...nothing, merely that even if we should not exclude Syria we should also look at other possibilities.

I conclude that self protection might not have been the sole motive for a change of strategy. The other motive for a change of strategy might have been to confuse in two main ways, one internal, and the other external. Indeed by including in the mandate of the UN commission an additional assassination different in its planning and execution from the others , and the March 14th movement was quick in asking to inlcude the latest one, one can produce two or more intended or non intended effects on the Lebanese and international political scenes:

1- The change in the pattern of the killings, from planned bombings involving a group to what appears to be a hit job, signals a desire to continue to kill without giving further evidence to the continuing UN investigation by ending the initial trail followed by Brammertz , at least for this new assassination. Also, as Brammertz was pursuing two hypothseses, the group hypothesis and the isolated individuals hypothesis, the killers this time appear as if trying to avoid consolidating the group hypothesis. The group hypothesis means ramifications not only horizontal but also vertical in the planning of the assassinations.

2-Another effect of the new method used to assassinate Pierre Gemmayel is to point the accusation this time to parties inside Lebanon within the Christian camp. Indeed, this time the assassination took place in the heart of the Christian area. The fact that all the pressure was this time on Aoun confirms some shift of focus inside the March 14th movement from the outside, us against them, to the inside, 'Are you with them or with us ?'. People from March 14th are angry about Aoun because they feel that without him Hezbollah would be weaker.

3- By adding other paths of investigation to the initial one in which all assassinations were connected and the connections producing valuable informations like in a serial killer case, the other effect is not only to stop the trail of the initial investigation but also to weaken it by distributing its internal resources on a wider and less coherent network. Brammertz's team was not sufficient for the job he was asked to do even after the UN consented to add personnel to the team recently. There was and still acute shortage of personnel to conduct the UN investigation. Another close objective would be to slow the investigation on the initial assassinations in order to gain time.

From the above and within this context of analysis, it is easy to draw conclusions on who the perpetrators of Pierre Gemmayel might be:

-They are probably the same as those who started the recent (since Rafiq Hariri) political assassinations in lebanon;
-They have extensive knowledge of the inner workings of the UN investigation and are close to the evidence Brammertz has been gathering and know probably where it will be leading.

I will let you draw the conclusions but I really fear where this ugly political game might lead.