The use of Islamist militants by American and Israeli militarists — The war in Afghanistan to September 11 and beyond
July 1954: Israel Commits Bombing Attacks in Egypt, Tries to Blame Muslim Brotherhood
Bombs explode in British and American cultural centers and libraries, and in post offices in Alexandria and Cairo. The campaign ends when a bomb explodes prematurely in the pocket of an Israeli agent who is about to plant it in a British-owned cinema. The plan is to damage the relations between Egypt and the US and Britain by placing the blame for the bombings on the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian Islamic militant group. An initial inquiry places blame on the Minister of Defense, Pinhas Lavon, but a subsequent inquiry authorized by Sharett finds that Lavon was set up using forged documents, and that the true author of the false-flag attack was none other than David Ben Gurion, the “father of the Israeli State. (see March 2005)” [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/11/1954; NEW YORK TIMES, 3/30/1975; HIRST, 2003, PP. 290-296] These events, which later become known as the Lavon Affair, will be documented in the diaries of Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, who did not learn of the plot until after it was completed. [ROKACH, 1986]
1967-2001: Israel Provides Support to Militant Islamic Groups in the West Bank and Gaza
Following the Six Day War, Israel takes over the administration of the West Bank and Gaza. Whereas Egyptian President Gamal Abddul Nasser had been tough on Islamist militants (see 1954 – 1970), Israel is much more permissive. One of their first actions is to release Sheikh Ahmed Yassin from prison. Yassin, a charismatic radical Islamist and the future founder of Hamas had been jailed in 1965 during one of Nasser’s crackdowns. [DREYFUSS, 2005, PP. 195] David Shipler, a former New York Times reporter, later recounts that he was told by the military governor of the Gaza Strip, Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, that the Israeli government had financed the Islamic movement to couteract the PLO and the communists. According to Martha Kessler, a senior analyst for the CIA, “we saw Israel cultivate Islam as a counterweight to Palestinian nationalism.” Yassin will later form Hamas as the military arm of his organizations (see 1987). [DREYFUSS, 2005, PP. 195, 197, 198]
October 1970: FBI Wiretap Records Perle Disclosing Classified Information to Israeli Officials
An FBI wiretap at the Israeli Embassy in Washington picks up Richard Perle discussing classified information with an Israeli official. The information was given to Perle by National Security Council staff member Hal Sonnenfeldt, who is currently under investigation for providing classified documents to the Israelis. [ATLANTIC MONTHLY, 5/1982]
1973-1978: With Israel’s support, Ahmed Yassin Forms Islamist Organizations in the West Bank and Gaza
In 1973 Israeli military authorities in charge of the West Bank and Gaza allow Sheikh Ahmed Yassin to establish the Islamic Center, an Islamic fundamentalist organization. With Israel’s support, Yassin’s organization soon gains control of hundreds of mosques, charities, and schools which serve as recruiting centers for militant Islamic fundamentalism. In 1976 Yassin creates another organization called the Islamic Association that forms hundreds of branches in Gaza. In 1978 the Islamic Association is licensed by the government of Menachem Begin over the objections of moderate Palesinians including the Commissioner of the Muslim Waqf in the Gaza Strip, Rafat Abu Shaban. Yassin also recieves funding from business leaders in Saudi Arabia who are also hostile to the secular PLO for religious reasons. The Saudi government, however, steps in and attempts to halt the private funds going to Yassin, because they view him as a tool of Israel. [UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, 2/24/2001; COUNTERPUNCH, 1/18/2003; DREYFUSS, 2005, PP. 195 – 197]
1973-1982: Israel and Jordan Support Muslim Brotherhood Terrorism Against Syria
In 1973 Hafez Assad approves a new, secular constitution for Syria, and declares that the country is a “democratic, popular, socialist state,” creating a backlash of violent Islamist demonstrations. Beginning in 1976, the Muslim Brotherhood carries out hundreds of attacks in Syria in an attempt to bring down the secular government. Israel and Jordan provide generous support for these operations, for example establishing training camps for the Muslim Brotherhood in Lebanon and Jordan near the Syrian border. In one incident in 1979, a gang of Brotherhood militants murders 83 military cadets by locking them inside a buliding and attacking it with automatic weapons and firebombs. Newsweek reports in 1981 that “over the past five years the Brotherhood has assassinated hundreds of Alawite members of Assad’s ruling Baath Parthy along with their relatives, Assad’s personal doctor, and a number of Soviet advisers.” In 1982, the Syrian army brutally suppresses the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters, massacring thousands in the city of Hama, a strong center of support for the Brotherhood. This puts an end to the wave of violence. [DREYFUSS, 2005, PP. 199-205]
October 1973: Close Relationship Evolves between Rep. Charlie Wilson and Israeli
Congressman Charlie Wilson contacts Israeli congressional liaison officer Zvi Rafiah regarding the Yom Kippur War. A very close working relationship develops between the two legislators that lasts many years. According to journalist and author George Crile, “Rafiah is a short, very smart Israeli who Wilson always believed was a highly placed Mossad agent.” Crile will also say: “Rafiah had always acted as if he owned Wilson’s office. One of the staffers kept a list of people he needed to lobby. He would use the phones, give projects to the staff, and call on Charlie to intervene whenever he needed him.” [CRILE, 2003, PP. 31-33, 144]
1977-1981: The Nationalities Working Group Advocates Using Militant Islam Against Soviet Union
In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter’s National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will “explode into genocidal fury” against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski favored a “de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran.” [DREYFUSS, 2005, PP. 241, 251 – 256]
September 1980: Pro-American Military Coup Takes Place in Turkey
General Kenal Evren leads a military coup in Turkey. Richard Perle, in a 1999 article, will justify the pro-American coup as “a response by the Turkish armed forces to the breakdown of order and security and the rise of terrorism and widespread random violence in Turkey.” According to Perle, the wave of terrorism in Turkey “threatened to undermine American support, both popular and official, for Turkey and for close cooperation in security affairs between the United States and Turkey.” [FOREIGN POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, 9/1999] Perle says Turkey’s civilian government failed to maintain law and order. Conveniently, the clampdown that follows the coup enables the new government to begin implementing the pro-US strategic agenda that was laid out during the 1979 meeting arranged by Perle’s mentor, Albert Wohlstetter (see 1979). It is now known that the terrorism that destabilized Turkey in the late 1970s was predominately the work of secret groups run by the Turkish military in conjunction with the CIA and NATO. [PROGRESSIVE, 4/1997; COVERT ACTION QUARTERLY, 6/1997; GANSER, 12/17/2004]
February 1982: Article in Israeli Journal Says Israel Should Exploit Internal Tensions of Arab States
The winter issue of Kivunim, a “A Journal for Judaism and Zionism,” publishes “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties” by Oded Yinon. The paper, published in Hebrew, rejects the idea that Israel should carry through with the Camp David accords and seek peace. Instead, Yinon suggests that the Arab States should be destroyed from within by exploiting their internal religious and ethnic tensions: “Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon.” [KIVUNIM, 2/1982]
1983: Rep. Charlie Wilson Brokers Weapons Sale Between Pakistan and Israel
Representative Charlie Wilson (D) travels to Israel where he meets with Zvi Rafiah and other Israeli officials. From Israel he travels on first to Egypt and then Pakistan, where he secretly negotiates a major weapons deal with Pakistan on behalf of the Israelis in support of the mujaheddin fighting Soviets in Afghanistan. Among other things the deal includes the delivery of T-55 tanks. “The Israelis were hoping this deal would serve as the beginning of a range of under-the-table understandings with Pakistan that the congressman would continue to quietly negotiate for them.” [CRILE, 2003, PP. 141]
1984-1989: Israeli Intelligence Officer Supplies Arms to Iran
By his own account, Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben Menashe runs a covert Israeli arms network, primarily supplying weapons to the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran for use in the Iran-Iraq War. Huge profits are made. “At various times the fund reached peaks of more than $1 billion,” he later explains in his book, Profits of War. “At its height it stood at $1.8 billion… Between 1984 and 1989 no less than $160 million was funneled to [Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak] Shamir’s [Likud] faction.” He also says that the money helped finance the intelligence community’s “black” operations including “Israeli-controlled ‘Palestinian terrorists’ who would commit crimes in the name of the Palestinian revolution but were actually pulling them off, usually unwittingly, as part of the Israeli propaganda machine.” The Israeli government will later deny that Menashe had any association with their intelligence services. But faced with evidence, the government will change its story, alleging that he was only a low-level translator who had taken to freelancing arms deals. However, ben Menashe is able to produce strong evidence to support his version of events and his 1991 trial in New York will culminate in his acquittal on the grounds that the jury disbelieves the Israeli government’s denials. [BEN-MENASHE, 1992, PP. 120; CONSORTIUM NEWS, 1997; COLL, 2004, PP. 120]
1987: Hamas Forms with the Support of Israeli Intelligence
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin forms Hamas as the military arm of his Islamic Association, which had been licensed by Israel ten years earlier (see 1973-1978). According to Charles Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, “Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet, which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO.” [COUNTERPUNCH, 1/18/2003; DREYFUSS, 2005, PP. 191, 208] Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies, states that Israel “aided Hamas directly—the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO.” A former senior CIA official speaking to UPI describes Israel’s support for Hamas as “a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative.” Further, according to an unnamed US government official, “the thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the other groups, if they gained control, would refuse to have anything to do with the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place.” Larry Johnson, a counterterrorism official at the State Department, states: “The Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism. They are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it out by hitting it with a hammer. They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it.” [UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, 2/24/2001 SOURCES: LARRY C. JOHNSON, UNNAMED FORMER CIA OFFICIAL]
October 10, 2001: Two Israelis Are Detained in Mexican Legislature Building after Behaving Suspiciously and Found To Be Carrying Arms
Two Israelis, Salvador Gersson Smike, 34, and Sar Ben Zui, 27, are arrested in the Mexican Congress Building in Mexico City. Smike is carrying a plastic 9 mm sophisticated Glock 9 mm pistol tucked into his underwear in his lower back. Glock pistols are made with a special plastic material and are very easy to smuggle. [CORREO, 10/11/2001; EL HERALDO DE MEXICO (MEXICO CITY), 10/11/2001; CRONICA DE HOY (MEXICO CITY), 10/12/2001] He also has with him a briefcase reported to contain 58 bullets, bomb-making materials, three detonators, and nine grenades. [EL HERALDO DE MEXICO (MEXICO CITY), 10/11/2001] The two were apprehended after ex-sugarcane workers, who were waiting for a congressional hearing, saw the two Israelis behaving strangely at around 4:00 p.m. They were reportedly photographing the workers below the belt. When the workers demanded that the two men identify themselves, the Israelis said they were press photographers. The workers dismissed their claims, overcame them, and then discovered they were armed with pistols and other high caliber arms. The two men had apparently also been seen the day before taking pictures. [CRONICA DE HOY (MEXICO CITY), 10/12/2001] Security guards soon arrived, disarmed the men, and took them to the security office. At around 6:00 p.m., it is learned that the two men are Israelis and that one of them, Salvador Gersson, is a former colonel of the Israeli Special Forces.[CORREO, 10/11/2001; DIARIO DE MEXICO (MEXICO CITY), 10/11/2001] Soon after, a man claiming to be a supervisor from the company, Desarrollo de Sistemas de Seguridad Privada (Private Security Systems Development), says the two men are employees at the firm and that they were taking pictures because they are “vacationing.” The journalists who are present scoff at the claim. [CORREO, 10/11/2001; EL HERALDO DE MEXICO (MEXICO CITY), 10/11/2001] After October 13, no additional information is reported about the incident.
January, 2005: Former CIA officer Argues for Alliance with Militant Islam to Overthrow the Arab States
in January 2005 former CIA officer Reuel Marc Gerecht, now a member of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, announces the release of his new book The Islamic Paradox, which argues that the United States should ally itself with the militant Islamic right and seek the overthrow of the secular Arab governments of the Middle East. For example, he compares Ayatollah Khomeini favorably with Egyptian President Honsni Mubarak, and suggests that we should support the overthrow of the Mubarak government by the Muslim Brotherhood. [DREYFUSS, 2005, PP. 340 – 342]
March 2005: Israel Honors People Involved in Lavon Affair
Israel officially honors the nine Egyptian Jews who were involved in the “Lavon Affair” bombings in Egypt (see July 1954) Israeli President Moshe Katzav, presiding over the 2005 ceremony honoring the bombers in Jerusalem, says that the Israeli government has “decided now to express our respect for these heroes.” In 1954, in an effort to damage Egypt’s relationship with the West, Israeli agents bombed sites frequented by foreigners in Cairo and Alexandria with hopes that the attacks would be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood. But the operation unraveled when one of the bombs being planted went off prematurely. [REUTERS, 3/30/2005]
Early June 2005: US Intelligence Find Evidence of Mossad or CIA Support For Insurgents in Iraq
US Intelligence officers report that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 02 pistols that have no serial numbers. The numbers have not been removed; the guns came off a production line with no number. “Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as US authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.” [UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, 6/6/2005]