‘Christian Friends of Israel’ supports criminal actions that place Americans at risk

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, murdered Iranian scientist, and his son

RichB is a regular commenter on this site. This morning, moderating comments, I saw this one and asked him if I could post it. The Christian Friends of Israel email that he was angered by appears toward the end of RichB’s post.

As many here know I went on a Christian Zionist trip last Spring. What I saw there made me an activist for Palestinian rights. One thing that happened on the trip was a sales pitch for Christian Friends of Israel in Jerusalem. I just got an e-mail blast from them showing what the Israeli Hasbarists are pushing through Christian Zionist channels. Here is the e-mail I sent to others on the trip.

When I went on my trip to Israel one thing really bothered me. I’ve kept it to myself since all of you were so obviously blessed by it.  But recent events have caused me to share with you my concern. I did not appreciate  that we were assumed to support a “ministry” called Christian Friends of Israel which struck me as purely political. When I was asked to allow my image to be used I agreed because I thought it was to promote the trip where we could go and see the locations where our Savior lived amongst us. I did not and do not want to support CFI. I was added without my permission to an e-mail list that spouts pure Hasbara straight from the Netanyahu government. (Google Hasbara for a more detailed definition but it’s basically propaganda literally sponsored by the Israeli government.)

As Americans we are entitled to support what ministry or political organizations we choose but it’s illegal and unchristian to support organizations that sponsor terrorism. CFI just did that. First some background to a news story that came to a head over the weekend. There have been five different assassination attempts/car bombings against alleged Iranian scientists. (One assassination turned out to be a grad student that had nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear program.) The latest was a little over a week ago where a magnetic bomb was attached to a car by passing motorcyclists in crowded Teheran traffic, killing a man. 

Last Friday a story showed on Foreign Policy’s web site that was truly shocking. It alleges from former and current intelligence officials that Mossad recruited the Pakistani terrorist group Jundallah to do assassinations and bombings, doing so while impersonating CIA and MI6, thus encouraging the Iranian government to strike back at Americans. When you read what CFI sent out below, note that almost all of what was in the story happened during the Bush Administration and in fact President Bush was livid over this.

link to foreignpolicy.com

link to youtube.com

Buried deep in the archives of America’s intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush’s administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives — what is commonly referred to as a “false flag” operation.

The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah — a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization. Jundallah, according to the U.S. government andpublished reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children.

But while the memos show that the United States had barred even the most incidental contact with Jundallah, according to both intelligence officers, the same was not true for Israel’s Mossad. The memos also detail CIA field reports saying that Israel’s recruiting activities occurred under the nose of U.S. intelligence officers, most notably in London, the capital of one of Israel’s ostensible allies, where Mossad officers posing as CIA operatives met with Jundallah officials.

The officials did not know whether the Israeli program to recruit and use Jundallah is ongoing. Nevertheless, they were stunned by the brazenness of the Mossad’s efforts.

“It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with,” the intelligence officer said. “Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn’t give a damn what we thought.”

Interviews with six currently serving or recently retired intelligence officers over the last 18 months have helped to fill in the blanks of the Israeli false-flag operation. In addition to the two currently serving U.S. intelligence officers, the existence of the Israeli false-flag operation was confirmed to me by four retired intelligence officers who have served in the CIA or have monitored Israeli intelligence operations from senior positions inside the U.S. government.

The report then made its way to the White House, according to the currently serving U.S. intelligence officer. The officer said that Bush “went absolutely ballistic” when briefed on its contents.

“The report sparked White House concerns that Israel’s program was putting Americans at risk,” the intelligence officer told me. “There’s no question that the U.S. has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations against the Iranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we’re not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians.”

Israel’s relationship with Jundallah continued to roil the Bush administration until the day it left office, this same intelligence officer noted. Israel’s activities jeopardized the administration’s fragile relationship with Pakistan, which was coming under intense pressure from Iran to crack down on Jundallah. It also undermined U.S. claims that it would never fight terror with terror, and invited attacks in kind on U.S. personnel.

Now what CFI sent me tonight. Note how they don’t mention Israeli state-sponsorship of  terrorist groups or that it was the Bush Administration that had issue with the behavior of Mossad. (Israel also sponsored Hamas in the 80s to counter the secular PLO and we are both suffering the blowback of that decision.) I’m extremely concerned that Israel is trying to goad us into war over the objections of people in the U.S. military and intelligence services, and yet again they will have to pay the price. For a Christian ministry to be a party to this is unconscionable.

The bombing attack in Teheran that killed Iranian nuclear scientist Mustafa Ahmadi-Roshan on January 11, has generated another angry response from U.S. President Obama, according toDebkafile. Washington is increasingly concerned, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, that Israel is preparing to strike Iran’s nuclear sites over US objections, and has bolstered the defenses of US facilities in the region in case of a conflict. But does that mean that this president should risk total rupture with America’s only real ally in the Middle East?

Israel’s President Peres said after the bombing that “to his knowledge” Israel was not involved. On the other hand, the U.S. has declared vehemently that America had “absolutely nothing” to do with the assassination. It appears that Iran’s nuclear scientists have new friends in the U.S. Government—President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, both of whom issued strong and unusual condemnation over the death of the Iranian scientist. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta adds his voice to Obama and Clinton in voicing concern—no, almost panic—over the possibility that Israel might launch a unilateral strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
What do they fear? Gone are the days when the world rejoiced that Israel’s Air Force had taken out the bad guy’s nuclear reactor. Saddam’s military forces proved to be a paper tiger when they were engaged. So what does the U.S. fear from Iran’s largely untested forces?

Apparently Obama suspected that Israel staged the killing to torpedo a US secret effort to avoid a military confrontation with Iran through back channel contacts with Teheran, while Obama’s strong condemnation is seen as tying in with his all-out campaign to hold Israel back from a unilateral strike. As part of this campaign, the Foreign Policy publication ran an “investigative report” Friday, January 13, the point of which was to show that U.S. and Israeli undercover agencies have been at odds for years following what was called a Mossad “false flag” operation. (A “false flag” operation refers to intelligence officers of one country acting with passports and credentials of another country—in this case, the Mossad using U.S. credentials.)

This report had two overall objectives: to show that the US is not responsible for all the covert operations of recent months against Iran’s nuclear targets and, secondly, to demonstrate that Washington means to continue harassing and pressuring Israel by every means to hold it back from a military operation against Iran. [My note: having read the story can you come to this twisted conclusion? Really?]

Unfortunately this U.S. Administration gives the same impression that U.S. officials have often given in the past: (1) that they can tell their allies what to do, and (2) that the rest of the world will “be nice” and embrace Western style democracy if someone just shows them how it works. Both of these false premises have gotten the U.S. into trouble more than once. 

Clearly the U.S. does not believe what Ahmadinejad said about wiping Israel off the map. So once again Israel is alone, with her military, and her God. And most of us believe that is sufficient.

THIS JUST IN: A Saudi computer hacker identifying himself only as “0xOmar” has been leading a large-scale hacker campaign of harassment against Israeli websites. This person contacted the Jerusalem Post on Sunday declaring that he’d been joined by a previously unknown group called “Nightmare” who planned further attacks, including the El Al website. Please pray about this situation.

“O GOD the Lord, the strength of my salvation, you have covered my head in the day of battle.