Israel and state-sponsored terrorism
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The State of Israel has been accused of engaging in state-sponsored terrorism, primarily through the provision of arms, funding, and operational support to foreign non-state militias and proxy groups.[1]
Such allegations have focused on covert operations during the Lebanese Civil War backing the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners, and alleged support for militant opposition groups such as the People's Mojahedin Organization (MEK) and Jundallah within the context of the Iran–Israel proxy conflict.
Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners
After the 1979 massacre of an Israeli family at Nahariya by Palestinian Liberation Front militants, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan instructed Israeli General Avigdor Ben-Gal to "Kill them all," meaning the Palestine Liberation Organization and those connected to it.[2] With Eitan's approval, Ben-Gal charged Meir Dagan with running the operations.[2] The operations, approved by the Chief of Staff, were kept secret from the IDF's General Staff and many other members of the Israeli government.[2] David Agmon, at the time head of Israel's northern command, was one of the few people who was briefed on its operations.[2] Lebanese operatives on the ground from the Maronite, Shiite and Druze communities were recruited. The aim of the series of operations was to "cause chaos among the Palestinians and Syrians in Lebanon, without leaving an Israeli fingerprint, to give them the feeling that they were constantly under attack and to instill them with a sense of insecurity."[2]
Beginning in July 1981, with a bomb attack on the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) offices at Fakhani Road in West Beirut,[3] these attacks were claimed by a group called the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners. The FLLF was itself a front for Israeli agents,[2] and it killed hundreds of people between 1979 and 1983.[4][5]
By September 1981, the Front's operations consisted of car bombs exploding regularly in the Palestinian neighborhoods of Beirut and other Lebanese cities.[2] Particularly deadly attacks include an October 1, 1981 attack in Beirut that killed 83 and a November 29, 1981 attack in Aleppo that killed 90.[5] FLLF operations came to a sudden halt just prior to the June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon,[5] only to be resumed the following year: first a 28 January 1983 strike on a PLO headquarters at Chtaura in the Syrian-controlled Beqaa Valley, killing 35,[5] coupled by a second on 3 February at West Beirut that devastated the Palestine Research Center offices and left 20 people dead, including the wife of Sabri Jiryis.[6][7][8] A third bombing occurred on Syrian-controlled Baalbek on 7 August 1983, which killed about 30 people and injured nearly 40,[5][9] followed by another on 5 December 1983 at the Chyah quarter of the Southern suburbs of Beirut that claimed the lives of 12 people and maimed over 80.[10]
The FLLF disbanded after 1983.[4]
Proxies against Iran
Israel and Iran are belligerent enemies. Though they have never been at war, both nations make efforts to undermine the other's influence in the region through various means: diplomatic, economic, and military. This includes the use of (often armed) proxies, which facilitate indirect conflict between the powers, and in the case of Iranian proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, outright war. The Israeli government supports various armed groups in its conflict with Iranian government.[which?]
Four Iranian nuclear scientists—Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan—were assassinated between 2010 and 2012. Another scientist, Fereydoon Abbasi, was wounded in an attempted murder.[12][13] Two of the killings were carried out with magnetic bombs attached to the targets' cars; Darioush Rezaeinejad was shot dead, and Masoud Alimohammadi was killed in a motorcycle-bomb explosion.[14] According to an NBC article, two anonymous U.S. officials stated that the Obama administration knew about the assassination campaign but had "no direct involvement, while Mohammad Javad Larijani blamed the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK).[15][16]
According to a New York Times article, the Israeli government, with knowledge and support from the US government, assassinated Fakhrizadeh on 27 November 2020 in a road ambush in Absard using an innovative autonomous satellite-operated gun.[17]
According to a 2012 report in Foreign Policy, Mossad agents disguised as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers also recruited members of Jundallah—"a Pakistan-based Sunni terrorist organization ... responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children"—to carry out "false flag" operations against Iran, straining Israel's relations with the United States.[18][19]
See also
References
- ↑ Crenshaw, Martha; Pimlott, John (2015). "Western Sponsors of Terrorism". International Encyclopedia of Terrorism. Routledge. p. 680. ISBN 9781135919665.
Israel has been involved in sponsoring terrorist groups in Lebanon. In its struggle against Palestinian and Shiite terrorists, Israel generally relied on assassinations carried out by its special forces or on military reprisals, but also provided arms, training and military assistance to local militias such as the right-wing Phalange. Like other militias involved in Lebanon's civil war, Phalange carried out numerous terrorist attacks. The most notorious was the massacre of Palestinian civilians at Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps near Beirut in 1982.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Bergman, Ronen (2018). Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations. Random House. pp. 234–247. ISBN 978-1400069712.
- ↑ "Sudden Death: Bombings rock P.L.O. offices". TIME Magazine. 28 September 1981. Archived from the original on October 15, 2010.
- 1 2 Bergman, Ronen (23 January 2018). "How Arafat Eluded Israel's Assassination Machine". New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on 7 May 2018. Retrieved 2 October 2019.
- 1 2 3 4 5 National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). (2018). Global Terrorism Database [Data file]. Retrieved from https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd Archived 2016-07-06 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Masalha, Nur (2012). The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory. London: Zed Books Ltd. p. 144. ISBN 9781848139732. Archived from the original on 2023-10-11. Retrieved 2019-10-02..
- ↑ Lee O'Brien, Campaign of Terror: Car Bombing in Lebanon, MERIP Reports 118 (October 1983), p. 26.
- ↑ Middle East Record (MER), 2 October 1982, pp. 6-8.
- ↑ O'Ballance, Edgar (1998). Civil War in Lebanon, 1975-92. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 126. ISBN 0-333-72975-7.
- ↑ O'Ballance, Edgar (1998). Civil War in Lebanon, 1975-92. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 134. ISBN 0-333-72975-7.
- ↑ Cherian, John (2010-03-13). "Iran: Arrest of a terrorist". Frontline. Retrieved 2019-06-28.[dead link]
- ↑ Hasan, Mehdi (12 January 2012). "Iran's nuclear scientists are not being assassinated. They are being murdered". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 17 January 2016. Retrieved 7 February 2016.
- ↑ Meikle, James (12 January 2012). "Iran: timeline of attacks". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 12 March 2016. Retrieved 7 February 2016.
- ↑ Vick, Karl; Klein, Aaron J. (13 January 2012). "Who Assassinated an Iranian Nuclear Scientist? Israel Isn't Telling". Time. Archived from the original on 24 February 2016. Retrieved 14 February 2016.
- ↑ "Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran's nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News". NBC News. 9 February 2012. Archived from the original on 29 November 2014. Retrieved 5 January 2023.
- ↑ Wright, Robert (February 13, 2012). "Israel and Proxy Terrorism". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on May 8, 2019. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
- ↑ New York Times, 18 Sep. 2021 "The Scientist and the A.I.-Assisted, Remote-Control Killing Machine: Israeli Agents Had Wanted to Kill Iran’s Top Nuclear Scientist for Years. Then They Came up with a Way to Do It with No Operatives Present." Archived 2022-02-12 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Perry, Mark (2012-01-13). "False Flag". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on 2014-10-23. Retrieved 2016-10-30.
- ↑ Ravid, Barak (2017-06-25). "'Israeli Mossad agents posed as CIA spies to recruit terrorists to fight against Iran' - Haaretz.com". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 2017-06-25. Retrieved 2017-07-10.
