[News] The Al-Mabhouh Murder

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/baroud03122010.html

March 12-14, 2010


A Different Concept of Justice


The Al-Mabhouh Murder

By RAMZY BAROUD

The killing of Palestinian activist Mahmoud 
al-Mabhouh on January 19, 2010 was clearly a 
well-planned, violent and sadistic act, committed 
by Israeli assassins in the supposed safety of a sovereign country.

Yes, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was a Palestinian 
activist. We have no reason to believe otherwise. 
He spent years of his life in Israeli prison – 
and one year in an Egyptian jail – for his 
political activism. This, however, gives no 
credibility to Israel’s accusation that 
al-Mabhouh was a killer of Israelis. This 
assertion becomes even more problematic when 
considering that al-Mabhouh’s assassination was, 
according to British media, ordered by accused 
Israeli war criminals and rightwing politicians.

According to the Sunday Times, Meir Dagan, the 
current director of Mossad briefed Israeli Prime 
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the assassination 
plan during a meeting in early January. "The 
people of Israel trust you. Good luck," Netanyahu 
reportedly said at the end of this meeting.

It is disgraceful enough that the assassins used 
‘fraudulent’ European passports, as well as 
credit cards linked to an American bank to carry 
out their plans. But more upsetting is the fact 
that this cruel and calculated action has 
inspired little more than expressions of 
‘outrage’. Have we become this resigned to Israeli impunity?

What about the sanctity of life, the sovereignty 
of nations and the respect for international law? 
Are these immediately disposable when the victim 
is Palestinian and the location of the crime an Arab country?

Al-Mabhouh has also been callously deprived of 
his own relevance to the story. We don’t really 
know much about the man aside from what Israeli 
wants us to know – a senior Hamas operative who 
was responsible for the abduction and killings of 
two Israeli soldiers; one of the founders of the 
militant arm of Hamas, Izz al-Din al-Qassam; the 
middleman between Hamas in Gaza and al-Quds Force 
of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran.

Who has weaved this fascinatingly reductionist 
account of al-Mabhouh’s life in such a short span 
of time? His family? Hamas? The Palestinian 
media? No, none of these. The creator of this 
biography is Israel, the very country that 
assassinated him. Now that is truly outrageous: 
the murderer writes and convinces the world of 
the story of the murder victim. And the media gladly runs with it.

Expectedly, a Palestinian would tell al-Mabhouh’s 
story in entirely different terms. He was born in 
Jabalia, one of Gaza’s poorest and most crowded 
refugee camps. These key words alone – Gaza, 
poor, crowded, refugee - helps to unravel the 
real story of al-Mabhouh. It is the story shared 
by so many people who still live a life of utter 
anguish, poverty and resistance in the Gaza Strip 
– and elsewhere - which is under inhumane siege 
and successive wars by the world’s fourth 
strongest army. The story is not about abducted 
occupation soldiers, but about millions of 
refugees, not about Iran, but about Gaza and 
Palestine, not about luxury hotels, but about 
horrifyingly desolate refugee camps.

But Palestinians – like many oppressed peoples 
around the world – have no right to their own 
narrative. Their story is negligible, if not 
wholly irrelevant. Israel commits the murder, 
Israel offers the explanation, and eventually 
Israel gets away with both the crime and the lie. 
Al-Mabhouh’s murder might eventually inspire 
several documentaries that highlight the 
murderous nature of Palestinian militants, and 
the unequalled brilliance of Israeli retaliation. 
Another Steven Spielberg’s Munich might already 
be in the making. The first scene of this would 
not be al-Mabhouh’s family forced to flee their 
village in Palestinian after untold butchery by 
Zionist militants in 1948. Instead it might show 
a dark-skinned, menacing Palestinian slaughtering 
two helpless Israeli soldiers pleading for their lives.

We are, more or less, told to forget about 
al-Mabhouh. After all, his name is used along 
with Hamas and Iran in the same sentence. That 
should be enough to tell us that his life is 
dispensable - just like the lives of over 1,400 
Palestinians who were killed by the Israeli army 
in Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009. 
Israel may well be preparing for yet another 
attack on the impoverished Strip. The tunnels 
that represent the lifeline for the vast majority 
of Palestinians in Gaza are being routinely blown 
up by Israeli warplanes, detonated by dynamites 
and blocked by an Egyptian steel wall. Gazans 
cannot be allowed any weapons to defend 
themselves either. The ‘international community’ 
has held many meetings to ensure that no weapons 
find their way to Gaza. The US in particular is 
utterly firm regarding this issue - although not 
at all firm about ensuring that food or medicine 
reach the Strip. Al-Mabhouh may have been killed 
due to Israel’s belief he was arming the 
resistance. This partly explains why the 
‘international community’ is not at all moved by 
the murder. Al-Mabhouh might have been involved 
in breaking the Western consensus on denying Gaza both food and arms.

The EU is only worried about its link to the 
story, and not the murder itself. An EU statement 
issued in Brussels on February 22 condemned the 
“fact that those involved in this action used 
fraudulent EU member-states passports.” They 
didn’t name Israel though. As the Financial Times 
resolved, “criticism of Israel was as strongly 
worded as the EU could manage, given that 
Germany, Italy and several other countries place 
great emphasis on close relations with Israel.”

One can only imagine what would happen if Hamas 
decides to strike back, expanding the 
battleground from Gaza to the rest of the world. 
Would the EU express disapproval of Hamas’ use of 
fraudulent passports, but then refrain from 
actually naming the group - due to a fear, say, of upsetting Muslim countries?

No. But when the victim is a Palestinian and the 
murderers are Israelis – 27 of them so far – it’s 
an entirely different story, and an entirely different concept of justice.

Ramzy Baroud is editor of 
<http://www.PalestineChronicle.com>PalestineChronicle.com. 
His work has been published in many newspapers 
and journals worldwide. His latest book is 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745325475/counterpunchmaga>The 
Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a 
People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London). His 
newbook is, 
“<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745328814/counterpunchmaga>My 
Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).




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