How 'Canadians' almost ignited a war

[Scurrilous]

Book sheds new light on Israeli spy service's attempt to assassinate Hamas leader in 1997

http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/594552

<snip>

"He drilled down to the very heart of Hamas, spending 50 hours in a Syrian bunker with its leader. He went just as deep into the inner workings of Israel's famed spy service, the Mossad, with the most embarrassing of questions.

But could author Paul McGeough penetrate the layers of secrecy in Ottawa to get the rest of his riveting inside story of global espionage involving fake Canadian passports?

Yes, but it was difficult – more difficult even than unearthing all that he found in the Middle East itself.

"Canada, I discovered, is a place where information held by the government appears to be deemed the property of the government, rather than the property of the people," McGeough, one of Australia's most respected journalists, told the Toronto Star.

"Even 10 years after the fact, trying to glean answers to the most basic questions from the Canadian foreign ministry, it was like throwing a bomb. There was a lot of anxiety. But ultimately I managed to get the inside Canadian account from, well, some very good sources."

The result – excerpted exclusively in today's Star – is the newly published Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas, an unsurpassed telling of how Israeli spies masquerading as Canadian tourists all but ignited a Mideast war in 1997.

The audacious Israeli plan was to spray deadly nerve gas into the ear of the then-middling Hamas operative. This, they managed – but as the stricken Mishal took ill in the Jordanian capital of Amman, the "Canadians" were captured. And that is when all hell broke loose.

McGeough's gripping account spares no detail, providing a fly-on-the-wall vantage of the rising diplomatic panic that sent shudders through world capitals."

[iconicgnom]

1. 'Canadians" with nerve gas.

nuthin to say

[Scurrilous]

2. The Martyr Who Did Not Die

KILL KHALID

The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas

<snip>

"Actuarial tables are not kind to the leaders of Hamas. The Israeli security forces reserve a special fury for the radical Islamic group, and it's tough to be taken seriously as a Hamas leader unless you can prove that the Israelis tried to kill you at least once.

The group's most notorious bomb maker was killed by an exploding cellphone in 1996. Its quadriplegic founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, was in his wheelchair on his way home from a mosque when an Israeli missile struck him down in 2004. This past New Year's Day, a one-ton Israeli bomb flattened the apartment building that housed Hamas firebrand Nizar Rayyan, killing him, all four of his wives and 11 of their children.

Given this history, Khalid Mishal, a key figure in Hamas since the group was founded two decades ago, can consider himself very lucky indeed. His brush with death came on the streets of Amman, Jordan, in 1997, when an Israeli Mossad agent squirted an exotic poison in his ear. But the would-be assassin and an accomplice were quickly chased down by Mishal's driver, his bodyguard and some passersby. Outraged that the attack took place on Jordanian soil, King Hussein demanded the antidote from Israel as part of the price for releasing the Mossad agents. Under U.S. pressure, the Israelis reluctantly complied.

This episode made Mishal an instant legend within Hamas. He became a martyr in a group that reveres them and did so without the inconvenience of dying. In "Kill Khalid," Australian journalist Paul McGeough uses the botched assassination as the jumping-off point for a timely and thorough examination of Hamas, highlighting the ways in which Israel has intentionally and unintentionally aided its rise.

Mishal's near-death experience has been well reported in previous books and articles, and this book runs the risk of being as stale as month-old hummus. But in the circular nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the same characters keep coming back around, and this 12-year-old drama couldn't be more relevant today."

more