So much for the enviable reputation of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency

Alas, ubiquitous CCTV cameras are making a mockery of the cloak and dagger work of government spies that was once left to the creative medium of John le Carré novels and James Bond movies.

Perhaps you recall how CCTV caught Russian spies in tea shops all over London in November 2006 executing the ham-handed assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, a rogue FSB (or KGB) spy whose revelations about the agency’s political assassinations were undermining the public image of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Now Israeli spies have been caught red-handed in similar fashion at a five-star hotel in Dubai last month executing a farcical hit on Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas leader who was suspected of procuring arms from Iran for missile attacks against Israel.

For it’s bad enough that these spies can be seen in technicolor going into public bathrooms and coming out in their laughable disguises (some looking like clones of 1970s tennis player Bobby Riggs as they stalked al-Mabhou into the hotel elevator).

But I doubt Mossad, known for its stealth and highly sophisticated operations, will ever live down the fact that its agents acted more like keystone cops than James Bond as they carried out this mission.  After gaining entry to his room by posing as housekeeping staff, they allegedly shot al-Mabhouh with a dart tranquilizer and then suffocated him.

Mind you, I harbor no moral aversion whatsoever about such targeted assassinations (as long as they are carried out for national security, not political, purposes).  In fact, I applaud the Israelis for doing it the old-fashioned way: clean, up close, and in person; as opposed to the cowardly way the Americans now do it: with remote-controlled, aerial drones firing missiles that invariably kill many innocent bystanders for every target they hit.

Instead, what I find so incomprehensible about this Mossad caper is that these spies used the real identities of six Israeli citizens to forge British passports. After all, even if using real identities were necessary to avoid being detected at border control, why not use the I.D.s of Jews from faraway New York City instead of those of more vulnerable Jews back home in Israel?

Now, not only has CCTV blown the cover of all agents involved, but Mossad has made these six Israelis unwitting suspects in a murder investigation as well as potential targets of reprisal hits by Hamas assassins.

Not to mention the justified political indignation this once-revered spy agency has incited among British officials; especially given the Israeli government’s assurance in the mid-1980s that its spies would never use forged British passports again after they were caught using them for a mission back then….

Oy vey!

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