Posted on 06/15/2010 6:21:30 AM PDT by markomalley
Ireland announced Tuesday it's expelling an Israeli diplomat in punishment for the alleged Mossad use of forged Irish passports to assassinate a top Hamas official in Dubai.
Israel has refused to confirm or deny its agents' involvement in the January slaying of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who Dubai officials have said was killed in his hotel room by people posing as holidaymakers in the oil-rich Arab emirate.
They said assassins using 32 fake passports — including eight depicting fictional Irish citizens — participated in the hit squad. The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Ireland's national police force, the Garda Siochana, launched parallel investigations, but said their appeals for information from Israel fell on deaf ears.
"The misuse of Irish passports by a state with which Ireland enjoys friendly, if sometimes frank, bilateral relations is clearly unacceptable and requires a firm response," Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said as he announced the expulsion.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I respectfully disagree. Countries *must* protect their passports - it’s a matter of sovereignty.
I'm not talking about this, specifically. But this, in conjunction with their official state support for the quarantine busting in Gaza (also in support of Hamas), starts to make one think.
(Yes, they should officially protest the forgery of passports...but, as it stands, everybody does it in the cloak-and-dagger world...and a very public statement like an expulsion puts it in a completely different realm than an official protest registered to the ambassador)
That idea is insane. Countries must protect their sovereignty. Ireland is right to respond to Israeli forging of its passports. Sovereign nations just can't tolerate it.
What are you gonna say when other countries forge US passports to commit assassinations? Hey, why not forge passports and frame other countries for the assassinations. Hey, how about this idea. What if another country forges US passports so that they can enter the US to commit acts of terrorism or assassinate US citizens?
Yep, so much for the cloak.
If it's a civilized country killing a member of an organization that's an enemy of Western Civilization I'm prepared to look the other way.
You don't see any connection between this (Israel has refused to confirm or deny its agents' involvement in the January slaying of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who Dubai officials have said was killed in his hotel room by people posing as holidaymakers in the oil-rich Arab emirate. )
and the Irish ship, the MV Rachel Corrie, being used to break the quarantine on Hamas-controlled Gaza?
“friendly, if sometimes frank, bilateral relations”
In the vernacular: hostile relations, but not yet formally at war.
I'm glad somebody else noticed.
That statement is tantamount to supporting dictatorship. The world is more complicated than that black and white view implies. Who gets to decide who is Western? Who gets to decide who is civilized, and who gets to decide who is an enemy? Another thought to consider, how do we know that all people that get assassinated are bad? What if you're not an enemy of Western Civilization, but you get set up as one by your political enemies? To give an example of the danger of your statement...what if somebody decides that your statement about looking the other way when assassinations are carried out is "un-western" or even "uncivilized." After all, your statement runs counter to the beliefs enshrined in the US Constitution. Since your beliefs run counter to the US Constitution...wouldn't that make you an enemy of Western Civilization from a certain point of view?
Do you see what I mean? Its a quick slippery slope to follow. Do you want to follow the rule of law, or do you want to follow the Law of the Jungle? Does might make right? From a Realpolitik/Darwinistic point of view, perhaps yes, but to answer "yes" to that question would necessarily imply that law is a quaint illusion and a false principle and that belief would undermine the "Western" concept of the rule of law.
From your logic Israel should have booted the Irish ambassador for Ireland allowing the SS pancake to sail from Ireland
Israel is a sovereign nation, it certainly may expel the Irish ambassador if it feels that is in its best interests. The Irish haven't broken the law, it is not illegal to run a blockade under the San Remo Manual... stupid maybe, but not illegal. Your point about the SS Saint Pancake is irrelevant, however, since the Irish government has already authorized the IDF to board the ship. IT would be pretty stupid to expel the Irish ambassador for that.
However, that issue of the SS Saint Pancake really has nothing to do with Israel illegally forging Irish passports and assassinating people while using them. Ireland hasn't done anything like that to Israel to infringe on Israel's sovereignty, and Ireland, so far as I am aware, hasn't yet assassinated anyone on a forged Israeli passport.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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LOL, this "Israeli diplomat" will just get a new identity and a new passport and be back in his Ireland office by Friday.
If so, are you claiming that Gaza is “starving”? Is that within 1 block or 10 from the gourmet restaurants and the olympic pool?
I have made no claims about starvation one way or the other. I simply stated that it is not illegal to attempt to run a blockade under the San Remo Manual, but you might get shot for trying.
Which it won’t despite your sarcasm, especially since they have both his arab lovers and his connections to Hamas and the PLO under observation.
There was no sarcasm in that statement. It is simply a fact that the Israelis may expel whomever they will for whatever they judge to be just cause. Other parties may also freely criticize the foolishness of the call.
it certainly may expel HAMAS from the PLANET because it feels that is in its best interests (and you’re welcome, since you benefit every time Israel flushes some jihadi even if you are ungrateful).
You act like everything the Israelis are doing it out of kindness for the US. They're not doing it for America, they're doing it for themselves, its business. The Israelis of course, they do things that from time to time benefit the US, but they also do things that are harmful to US interests as well. I would like nothing more than to have the Israelis as friends, but can we trust them? Though they are probably doing the world some services by going after bad guys, not everyone they assassinate is a justified target, but I guess that is just collateral damage to some? Though I hope that the Israelis are sincerely US friends, they do many things that are not friendly to the US and are possibly even malicious. There is so much cloak and dagger stuff that the Israelis are involved in its hard to tell when they're being good or bad and who they really support. You could probably write a good novel on it.
“do you want to stoop to their level” goes on the tombstones of those too kittenized (sic) to kill their enemies before they and their families are blown up, beheaded, burned to death and chopped up and fed to the worms by those who don’t have your sensitive “scruples”.
You are asserting that the ends justify the means though you won't come out and say it in those words. Just remember that you are perfectly free to see the world from that perspective, and perhaps it is even the most realistic political world view, but if you embrace that view, then you have no right to complain about it as if what your enemy is doing is unfair. It was the same view that Hitler embraced as well. (You may also feel free to ask yourself if he had the scruples you disdain so much.) Israel had better be careful....when you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares back into you. All of us must be wary lest we become the evil that we are trying to destroy. The policy you have endorsed is "anything goes." And though that may be reality, I am sure you realize that that policy is almost always reciprocated when possible.
The IRA is still okay though.
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