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Real0ne -> By Way of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War (8/13/2007 10:32:42 AM)
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(Victor Ostrovsky is a former Mossad agent) {Victor Ostrovsky's Foreword} {p. vii} REVEALING THE FACTS as I know them from my vantage point of four years spent inside the Mossad was by no means an easy task. Coming from an ardent Zionist background, I had been taught that the state of Israel was incapable of misconduct. That we were the David in the unending struggle against the ever-growing Goliath. That there was no one out there to protect us but ourselves - a feeling reinforced by the Holocaust survivors who lived among us. We, the new generation of Israelites, the resurrected nation on its own land after more than two thousand years of exile, were entrusted with the fate of the nation as a whole. The commanders of our army were called champions, not generals. Our leaders were captains at the helm of a great ship. I was elated when I was chosen and granted the privilege to join what I considered to be the elite team of the Mossad. But it was the twisted ideals and self-centered pragmatism that I encountered inside the Mossad, coupled with this so-called team's greed, lust, and total lack of respect for human life, that motivated me to tell this story. It is out of love for Israel as a free and just country that I am laying my life on the line by so doing, facing up to those who took it upon themselves to turn the Zionist dream into the present-day nightmare. {p. viii} The Mossad, being the intelligence body entrusted with the responsibility of plotting the course for the leaders at the helm of the nation, has betrayed that trust. Plotting on its own behalf, and for petty, self-serving reasons, it has set the nation on a collision course with all-out war. {Claire Hoy's Foreword} {p. ix} One of the main themes of this book is Victor's belief that Mossad is out of control, that even the prime minister, although ostensibly in charge, has no real authority over its actions ... {p. xi} The Mossad - believe it or not - has just 30 to 35 case officers, or katsas, operating in the world at any one time. The main reason for this extraordinary low total, as you will read in this book, is that unlike other countries, Israel can tap the significant and loyal cadre of the worldwide Jewish community outside Israel. This is done through a unique system of sayanim, volunteer Jewish helpers. {Jointly written text - remainder of book} {p. 52} My first six weeks were uneventful. I worked at the downtown office, essentially as a gofer and filing clerk. But one chilly day in February 1984, I found myself joining 14 others on a small bus. ... This course was to be known as Cadet 16, as it was the sixteenth course of Mossad cadets. {p. 53} He walked briskly to the head of the table while the other two sat at the back of the room. "My name is Aharon Sherf," he said. "I am the head of the Academy. Welcome to the Mossad. Its full name is Ha Mossad, le Modiyn ve le Tafkidim Mayuhadim [the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations]. Our motto is: 'By way of deception, thou shalt do war.' {p. 86} The next day Ran S. delivered a lecture on the sayanim, a unique and important part of the Mossad's operation. Sayanim - assistants - must be 100 percent Jewish. They live abroad, and though they are not Israeli citizens, many are reached through their relatives in Israel. An Israeli with a relative in England, for example, might be asked to write a letter saying the person bearing the letter represents an organization whose main goal is to help save Jewish people in the diaspora. Could the British relative help in any way? There are thousands of sayanim around the world. In London alone, there are about 2,000 who are active, and another 5,000 on the list. They fulfill many different roles. A car sayan, for example, running a rental agency, could help the Mossad rent a car without having to complete the usual doc- {p. 87} umentation. An apartment sayan would find accommodation without raising suspicions, a bank sayan could get you money if you needed it in the middle of the night, a doctor sayan would treat a bullet wound without reporting it to the police, and so on. The idea is to have a pool of people available when needed who can provide services but will keep quiet about them out of loyalty to the cause. They are paid only costs. Often the loyalty of sayanim is abused by katsas who take advantage of the available help for their own personal use. There is no way for the sayan to check this. One thing you know for sure is that even if a Jewish person knows it is the Mossad, he might not agree to work with you - but he won't turn you in. You have at your disposal a nonrisk recruitment system that actually gives you a pool of millions of Jewish people to tap from outside your own borders. It's much easier to operate with what is available on the spot, and sayanim offer incredible practical support everywhere. But they are never put at risk - nor are they privy to classified information. Suppose during an operation a katsa suddenly had to come up with an electronics store as a cover. A call to a sayan in that business could bring 50 television sets, 200 VCRs - whatever was needed - from his warehouse to your building, and in next to no time, you'd have a store with $3 or $4 million worth of stock in it. Since most Mossad activity is in Europe, it may be preferable to have a business address in North America. So, there are address sayanim and telephone sayanim. If a katsa has to give out an address or a phone number, he can use the sayan's. And if the sayan gets a letter or a phone call, he will know immediately how to proceed. Some business sayanim have a bank of 20 operators answering phones, typing letters, faxing messages, all a front for the Mossad. The joke is that 60 percent of the business of those telephone answering companies in Europe comes from the Mossad. They'd fold otherwise. The one problem with the system is that the Mossad does not seem to care how devastating it could be to the status of the Jewish people Snip <very long article> A Shocking Stranglehold It was only in the days following that revealing interview that incredulity replaced my satisfaction. I realized that what I had thought to be an Israeli influence on American and Canadian media through the Jewish community in the United States and Canada was in fact a stranglehold. Many thousands of people must have heard for themselves Lapid's call to "any decent Jew in Canada" to assassinate me on behalf of the state of Israel. But the subsequent refusal of the North American media to report the appeal, much less condemn or even discuss it, was more shocking and far more frightening to me than the call itself. I then realized that the occupation of the North American media is complete. In subjects dealing with the Middle East in general and Israel in particular, there no longer is a free press. Had this call for assassination been made by a Muslim, that same media would have been all over it, first reporting the story and then keeping it alive by themselves, or provoking responses from Muslim leaders the world over. And should such respondents not be unequivocal in their opposition to such a call, they would instantly have been branded terrorists and, needless to say, "anti-Semitic." I had always known there was a double standard when it came to dealing with subjects that were dear to the Jewish community. I had not known, however, how hypocritical that community and the media that lie at its feet can be. I had known for some time that this community has all but taken over the film industry and has a strong grip on Washington, having the strongest lobby there. Now, through intimidation and double dealing, it obviously has taken over large portions of the media. To all those who knew this all along, and were silent, and to those who remain silent now - shame on you. Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad case officer, is the author of two exposes of Israeli covert action, By Way of Deception, published in 1990, and The Other Side of Deception, published in 1994. The former is available from the AET Book Club for $5 and the latter is available from AET for $18. The Rest Of The Article Here
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