A TRAVEL ADVISORY: THE WAR AGAINST U.S. CIVILIANS IS LIKELY TO SPREAD OUTSIDE THE MIDDLE EAST

A TRAVEL ADVISORY: THE WAR AGAINST U.S. CIVILIANS IS LIKELY TO SPREAD OUTSIDE THE MIDDLE EAST

Note From the Editor: SPC cannot be posted as often as necessary, as it is a low-budget project, produced by an overworked attorney. But since the travel season is approaching, I'm hurrying the posting of this alert and travel advisory, ahead of the summer issue.


A. BACKGROUND:

SPC ISSUED ALERTS IN NOVEMBER 2003 ABOUT ISRAELI ASSASSINATIONS, IRANIAN RETALIATIONS, AND A TET-LIKE OFFENSIVE TO BE LAUNCHED AGAINST U.S. TROOPS IN IRAQ.

Written in November 2003, the Winter 2004 issue of this newsletter (SPC) warned of the following:

1. An ongoing secret war of assassinations and retaliation pitting the alliance of the United States and Israel against that of Iran and Syria.

2. A Tet-like offensive being readied against U.S. troops in Iraq.

The Winter issue warned that the killing of three U.S. security contractors in Gaza, in mid-October 2003, was a message to the United States that the policy of its intelligence services, to eliminate (via Israel) the pro-Iranian Arab Islamist leaders, will result in retaliation against U.S. citizens and not necessarily against Israelis. In other words, Iran's intelligence services have made it clear that Iran will not tolerate the use by the American intelligence services of Israel to clip Iran's tentacles in the Arab world. Iranian proxies would retaliate against U.S. citizens.

B. CHRONOLOGY

ISRAELI ASSASSINATIONS AND ISLAMIST RETALIATIONS

Early August, 2003: Israel assassinates Ali Saleh, a Lebanese Hezbollah official. Mr. Saleh probably was a link to pro-Iranian Islamist resistance groups in occupied Palestine: The West Bank and Gaza. Hezbollah promised retaliation, at its chosen time and place.

Mid-October, 2003: Pro-Iranian Palestinians retaliate to Saleh's assassination by killing three security personnel, working for the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv. This was a first: Until that killing, there existed a Palestinian consensus to spare Americans in the war of resistance against Israeli occupation and annexation of Palestinian land.

March 22, 2004: Israel assassinates Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas. Hamas is a pro-Iranian Palestinian Islamist group resisting Israeli occupation and colonization, and has sponsored many a suicide attack inside Israel.

March 31, 2004: Four American security contractors are killed in Fallujah, Iraq. The incident had similarities with that of the mid-October 2003 Gaza killing, and there was quite a lot of mention of Sheikh Yassin's assassination as justification. In short, it is quite possible that it was meant as retaliation to Yassin's killing.

April 17, 2004: Though unclear as to which event occurred first, the following were possibly related assassination and retaliation:

a. On April 17, Israel assassinates Dr. Abdel-Aziz Rantissi, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin's replacement.

b. On April 17, a United Nations Jordanian police officer in Kosovo assassinates three American correction officers in Kosovo. NATO officials reveal that the Jordanian U.N. officer may have had a rapport with Hamas. Daylight comes to the Middle East a few hours before it comes to Europe--two to five hours. Could it be that the Kosovo killing of the three Americans took place soon after Israel's assassination of Rantissi? Even if one discounts this association, the Kosovo killing of Americans by a Hamas sympathizer could very well be retaliation to Yassin's and not Rantissi's killing.

In short, U.S. security personnel seem to be the preferred target for retaliation to Israel's campaign of assassination. The message to the United States: "Give up trying to use your Israeli proxy to eliminate pro-Iranian Arab leaders. Iran has strategic interests to be respected."

(SPC notes that it matters little whether moderates or conservatives rule Iran. Both are likely to have a similar definition of their country's strategic interests. The Pentagon civilians (The New American Century people who relied in their sophomoric strategy on con-artists, native informants, and otherwise self-hating Arabs) should hopefully know that much, give up their wishful and confused thinking, and stop gambling with the lives of the children of American mothers. These mothers will awake to the fact that some wars are unnecessary, as they are inspired by sophomoric ideas--truly idiotic ones--, delusions, and fantasies, and should breed more wars, misery, and tragedy to the mothers of the children of that region.)

C. THE KILLING OF U.S. CIVILIANS CAN HAPPEN IN ANY FOREIGN COUNTRY WHERE A MUSLIM COMMUNITY RESIDES, AS IT ONLY TAKES A FEW INDIVIDUALS TO INFLICT DAMAGE.

ISRAEL'S LIKUD GOVERNMENT KEEPS TENSION HIGH

Israel's Likud government has waged a campaign similar to the propaganda campaign waged to justify the invasion of Iraq by the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon. (SPC had called that office the Office of Propaganda and Psychological Warfare--OPPW) Likud's campaign convinced many, including staunch American liberals, that the Israelis have no one they can negotiate with among the Palestinians. That of course is a lie spread by Israel's OPPW. As difficult as it is for the new breed of Republicans and the fickle liberals to believe: Former President Clinton had dealt with a Palestinian counterpart--albeit an imperfect one--skillfully and came close to mediating a permanent settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Mr. Sharon, convinced that a Palestinian state will be formed sooner or later, has been taking advantage of the war on terror to assure that that state will be a weak entity, always at the mercy of Israel, where the latter can continue to extract the West Bank's aquifer water without paying for it, and where that state's area is smaller than pre-1967, divided into cantons, separated by Israeli settlements.

In short, by feigning the absence of a Palestinian counterpart--by putting the Palestine Authority under house arrest--and by assassinating Islamist resistance figures, Mr. Sharon has kept tension high.

To make matters worse, this policy has recently received the public approval of both the sitting American president and his Democratic challenger. Both are after Florida, of course; and so their Middle East policies are not serious--even dangerous to the welfare of American civilians worldwide.

Only that, unwittingly, the two politicians are endangering our lives in most continents; worse yet: They're not telling us!

LINKAGE ACHIEVED: THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL ARE REPRESSING ARABS AND STEALING THEIR RESOURCES

This state of high tension has offered fertile ground to the OPPWs of regional governments (all now, I strongly suspect, have their version of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans) and to the elite in those countries, to wage a relentless campaign in the Arab and Islamic worlds which has gained ground fast. The campaign links intimately Israel's treatment of the Palestinians with America's treatment of the Iraqis; Israel's occupation of Arab lands with America's occupation of Iraq; Israel's theft of land and water to America's planned theft of oil. And the Arab press is rife with stories about Israeli advisors to U.S. troops and Israeli businessmen running lucrative deals in Iraq, while Iraqis are unemployed or hardly able to eke out a living. Americans and Israelis, meanwhile, are said to exact huge profits and salaries. For the salary of one American truck driver, noted one media source, at least thirty equally-competent Iraqi drivers can be hired. And so on.

One Yemeni newspaper went all the way: It reported that Swiss sources had informed it that the United States flew Saddam Hussein to Washington in a cage, and that the President and his men were allowed to see the caged former President. A newspaper from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on its first online page featured a story about the planned settlement of 150,000 Kurdish Jews in Iraqi Kurdistan. (Some humor: There probably are three Kurdish Jews left, and the Sharon government could only convince one to settle in Iraqi Kurdistan.) This linkage between America's policies and those of Likud's can endanger the life of American civilians in any foreign country where an Arab or Muslim community resides.

How does this linkage affect the safety of American citizens? This linkage stirs deep emotions among Arab and Islamic masses, and could result in uncoordinated acts of revenge against any and all that is American--including civilians. Many of our travel and vacation destinations have Arab and Muslim communities, and a massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israel or Iraqi civilians by the United States, in the midst of the powerful linkage campaign, could result in acts of revenge against American civilians. No orders need be given.

But if orders were, the devastation to us in places like Europe and Africa could be terrifically serious. The bombing of the trains in Spain shows that there exists a centralized decision-making center to terror operations overseas. For those bombings were meant to achieve clear aims in Iraq. There seems to have developed an alliance--maybe even a symbiosis--between the al-Qaeda Islamists, with a network overseas, with the Iraqi nationalists, well-entrenched in Iraq. Thank the invasion of Iraq for that symbiosis.

Our proxy in the Middle East hasn't been helping. Prime Minister Sharon has been sending the message loud clear that Israel will assassinate any and all Islamist leaders anywhere. But the killing in Kosovo of the American corrections officers should be a sobering event to American policy makers who are (possibly) coordinating the attempt to clip Iran's tentacles: Kosovo has shown that the Islamists have welcomed the export abroad of the secret war. It's only that our policy-makers have concealed from us the fact that they have drawn concentric circles on our bodies. Or maybe they're not that smart to know this.

Words to the wise--the approximately 24000 who read this newsletter in less than eight months: In the middle of this secret war, avoid foreign countries (and I don't mean only Gaza) where you can bear the brunt of retaliation in this undeclared but real war.