During the recent flap over the use of the term “Israel firster,” I insisted that the words have a worthy meaning– how else does one characterize American political player Sheldon Adelson’s statement that he only cares about being a good citizen of Israel?
Well when I was in Palestine last week, friends pointed me to reporting of a related nature by the Times of London that is behind a paywall, but was picked up by Haaretz:
The Times report revealed several testimonies of Israeli émigrés which ended up giving their passports to the Mossad. “Matthew” first emigrated to Israel after leaving his parents’ London home in 2009, and volunteered to join the Israeli military shortly afterwards. It was just before his first week of army duty that he was approached by a young woman from Mossad and asked if he was “committed to the State of Israel.”
According to the article, Matthew received his passport back after 18 months of military service, and was surprised to find stamps in it from Turkey and Azerbaijan, countries that he had never visited.
In another testimony to The Times, “Peter,” a Frenchman who emigrated to Israel last year, had a similar story. Months after arriving in Israel and volunteering for military service, he began meeting “a sexy woman,” who asked him if he wanted to help her. He said his passport was taken and returned a year later with stamps from Russia and several other countries.
These cases are not aberrations. Duality of loyalty, or actually singularity, was built into Jewish nationalism, which is one reason that anti-Zionists repudiated Zionism; they said it would raise questions about their patriotism. If there is controversy over the question today, it is because these reports– and the push for war on Iran by American neoconservatives–make the question of whose national interest an important one.
Hmm, I’m divided over this one. I agree that you can’t really not use any other phrase than the Israel Firster on, say, Sheldon Adelson, Matthew Adler(the newspaper editor promoting mossad to assassinate Obama as ‘option C’, and many, many others).
About these people… yes, they’re undermining their own national sovereignty, but it is, as far as I can tell, their own identity that suffers. It’d be another thing if they stole the identity of unknowning Gentiles from their homecountries and gave them to Mossad instead.
These people are in Israel and yes, their ‘home'(or previous) countries may not take them in anymore but they have a new national home. And it also sends a message to new Jews who think about becomming an olim – the Mossad might screw up your life!(during IDF service no less).
I don’t think the Mossad would have the nerve to steal the ID of a genuine Gentile, living abroad or perhaps briefly studying in Israel, then you’d see apocalyptic responses.
This is all motivated by a campaign that justifies any means to attack Israel’s enemies, and mainly Iran. Israel has always played dirty – because it didn’t have any second chances like a Western country like the U.S. does(which is why we keep getting screwed in our foreign adventures because we know we can always come back and won’t be wiped out).
Think I’m repeating hasbara? Well, think about it, what if Israel lost in 1967 or in 1973? Israel as a state wouldn’t even exist and we would probably have seen fairly obscene bloodshed(although most likely not some kind of ‘second Holocaust’ as some right-wingers sometimes say in a hysterical tone).
So yes, I think there is nuance to this question even if I do think that the Mossad’s methods are questionable to say the least, Israel doesn’t have the cushions a normal, peaceful Western state can afford.
Joining the IDF/IOF looks like loyalty (and indeed like FIRST loyalty) to Israel. Giving a passport, well, who knows what was intended by the GIVER.
The misuse of the passport by Israel was not compelled by the GIVER, even if the GIVER knew in advance of the proposed misuse, and IS NEWS, since Israeli assassination schemes have depended on use of false (flag) passports and no legitimate purpose could possibly have been served by the misuse. Foreign (i.e., non-Israeli) governments were quite possibly misled (unless they were part of the deception).
Krauss: “I don’t think the Mossad would have the nerve to steal the ID of a genuine Gentile, living abroad”
Israeli immigration officials copied British passports used by hit squad, ministers told
Timing is everything.
The assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai took place on Jan. 19, 2010. The phony passports used: 12 British, six Irish, four French, one German, and four Australian.
Since the individuals willingly gave their passports – questions unasked – they can be held morally liable for any heinous act Israel commits in the meantime. THese are young people who claim “innocence”. But here’s one fall-out – we will now doubt whether any of the passport holders used in the Dubai murder were acquired surreptitiously, as was claimed. In fact, upon seeing this story I went back to the files and noticed that are several individuals whose passports were caught in the murderous act. At the time, we believed their stories that didn’t know. Now, we can’t be sure. Yet, their names were known and spread around (there were 7 names I found).
Perhaps we can be safely assume that the passport owners were complicit in the murder, their disclaimers notewithstanding. The claims of innocence apear laughable now. The individuals who descended to Israel from UK and France made their home with fellow culprits, and for all we know approve of murder of anyone not Jewish on the say-so of the mossad.
Maybe everyone who short-changes their own home country for that of the ethnic cleansers, torturers and killers of sheep, should be made to surrender their original passport. Or at least their name should be put on the no-fly list.