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Mossad plans to assassinate Hamas leaders abroad after war: Report

The Cradle | December 1, 2023

The Mossad is preparing to assassinate Hamas leaders around the world once the war between Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza and Israel winds down, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on 1 December. 

With orders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s top spy agencies are working on plans to hunt down Hamas leaders living in Lebanon, Turkiye, and Qatar,” the report reads. 

“I have instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a nationwide address on 22 November. 

In the same address, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that the Hamas leaders are living on “borrowed time.”

“They are marked for death,” Gallant continued. “The struggle is worldwide, both the terrorists in Gaza and those who fly in expensive planes.”

Usually, Tel Aviv keeps talks of these assassination attempts secret. However, since 7 October, Tel Aviv has thrown caution to the wind in most cases and voiced its view of taking out resistance leaders openly. 

“Israel is already working to kill or capture Hamas leaders inside Gaza,” officials told the WSJ. “The question now for Israeli leaders isn’t about whether to try to kill Hamas leaders elsewhere in the world, but where—and how.”

Some Israeli officials wanted to launch an immediate hunt on Khaled Mashaal and other Hamas leaders who live abroad, citing anger over footage of Mashaal and other Hamas officials, including political chief Ismail Haniyeh, celebrating the start of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation.

Former Mossad director Efraim Halevy said that the plan to pursue Hamas officials internationally is “a desire to exact revenge, not a desire to achieve a strategic aim,” adding that such a plan is “far-fetched.”

Amos Yadlin, a retired Israeli general, said, “All the Hamas leaders, all those who participated in the attack, who planned the attack, who ordered the attack, should be brought to justice or eliminated […] It’s the right policy.”

The Mossad has a legacy of international assassinations, dating back to the 1950s with the assassination of the head of Egypt’s Military Intelligence on Israel, Mustafa Hafez, who urged then-President Gamal Abdel Nasser to form a commando brigade that would conduct cross-border attacks on Israel. 

On 12 July 1956, Israel assassinated Hafez with an explosive device hidden in an envelope.

The intelligence agency also murdered Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh on 28 November 2020, who had been on Mossad’s hit list since 2009. 

According to Ronen Bergman’s Rise and Kill First, Israel has conducted more than 2,700 targeted assassinations since the second World War. 

December 2, 2023 - Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , ,

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