The media may revel in a Mossad hit, yet Britain's response to a plot that could threaten its own citizens has been craven
Seumas Milne
The Guardian, Thursday 18 February 2010
"Imagine for a moment what the reaction would be if Iranian intelligence was almost unversally believed to have assassinated a leader of one of the organisations fighting the Tehran government in a western-friendly state. Then consider how Britain, let alone the US, might respond if the killers had carried out the operation using forged or stolen passports of citizens of four European states, including Britain, with dual Iranian nationality.
You can be sure it would have triggered a major international storm, stentorian declarations about the threat of state-sponsored terrorism, and perhaps a debate at the UN security council, with demands for harsher sanctions against an increasingly dangerous Islamic republic.....
But coldblooded killing isn't only a morally repugnant crime. The lesson of colonial history is that decapitation campaigns against national resistance movements don't work. In the short term they can disrupt and demoralise, but if the movement is socially rooted, other leaders or even organisations will take their place. That was Israel's experience when it killed the Hezbollah leader Abbas al-Musawi and his family in the early 1990s, only for him to be succeeded by the more effective and charismatic Hassan Nasrallah.........
But in the aftermath of the Dubai assassination, Hamas leaders have started to hint strongly that policy could now change, and that they could respond to Israel's attacks in "the international arena".
If so, it would give an added dimension to the assessment by Ben Caspit in the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv yesterday that the Dubai killing had been a "tactical operational success, but a strategic failure". So far the response of British ministers to Mossad's provocation has been craven. Unless that changes fast, they can only increase the risk of being drawn further into a conflict ready to erupt again at any time."
Seumas Milne
The Guardian, Thursday 18 February 2010
"Imagine for a moment what the reaction would be if Iranian intelligence was almost unversally believed to have assassinated a leader of one of the organisations fighting the Tehran government in a western-friendly state. Then consider how Britain, let alone the US, might respond if the killers had carried out the operation using forged or stolen passports of citizens of four European states, including Britain, with dual Iranian nationality.
You can be sure it would have triggered a major international storm, stentorian declarations about the threat of state-sponsored terrorism, and perhaps a debate at the UN security council, with demands for harsher sanctions against an increasingly dangerous Islamic republic.....
But coldblooded killing isn't only a morally repugnant crime. The lesson of colonial history is that decapitation campaigns against national resistance movements don't work. In the short term they can disrupt and demoralise, but if the movement is socially rooted, other leaders or even organisations will take their place. That was Israel's experience when it killed the Hezbollah leader Abbas al-Musawi and his family in the early 1990s, only for him to be succeeded by the more effective and charismatic Hassan Nasrallah.........
But in the aftermath of the Dubai assassination, Hamas leaders have started to hint strongly that policy could now change, and that they could respond to Israel's attacks in "the international arena".
If so, it would give an added dimension to the assessment by Ben Caspit in the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv yesterday that the Dubai killing had been a "tactical operational success, but a strategic failure". So far the response of British ministers to Mossad's provocation has been craven. Unless that changes fast, they can only increase the risk of being drawn further into a conflict ready to erupt again at any time."
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