An early example of Israeli state-sponsored was the 1954 Lavon Affair, a botched bomb plot in Egypt that led to the resignation of the Israeli defense minister at the time. In the 1970s and 1980s, Israel was also a major supplier of arms to dictatorial regimes in South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. In the 21st-century, it has been accused of sponsoring and supporting several terrorist groups as part of its proxy conflict with Iran.
1950–1951 Baghdad bombings refers to a series of bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad, Iraq, between April 1950 and June 1951. There is a dispute around the true identity and objective of the offenders behind the bombings, and this issue remains unresolved.
Two activists in the Iraqi Zionist underground were found guilty by an Iraqi court for a number of the bombings, and were sentenced to death. Another was sentenced to life imprisonment and seventeen more were given long prison sentences.[10] The allegations against Israeli agents had "wide consensus" amongst Iraqi Jews in Israel.[11] Many of the Iraqi Jews in Israel who lived in poor conditions blamed their ills and misfortunes on the Israeli Zionist emissaries or Iraqi Zionist underground movement.[12] The theory that "certain Jews" carried out the attacks "in order to focus the attention of the Israel Government on the plight of the Jews" was viewed as "more plausible than most" by the British Foreign Office.[13][14] Telegrams between the Mossad agents in Baghdad and their superiors in Tel Aviv give the impression that neither group knew who was responsible for the attack.[14]
Israel has consistently denied involvement in the bombings.[15]
The 'Lavon Affair' was an unsuccessful Israelicovert operation, code named 'Operation Susannah', conducted in Egypt in the Summer of 1954. As part of the false flag operation,[16] a group of Egyptian Jews were recruited by Israeli military intelligence to plant bombs inside Egyptian, American and British-owned civilian targets, cinemas, libraries and American educational centers. The attacks were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian Communists, "unspecified malcontents" or "local nationalists" with the aim of creating a climate of sufficient violence and instability to induce the British government to maintain its occupying troops in Egypt's Suez Canal zone.[17] The explosions were timed to happen several hours after closing time, and did not cause any fatalities. However, an operative died when a bomb he was taking to a movie theater ignited prematurely in his pocket. In addition, two operatives committed suicide after being captured and two more operatives who were tried, convicted and executed by Egypt.
The operation ultimately became known as the 'Lavon Affair'. Following this operation the Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon was forced to resign. Even though Israel denied any involvement in the operation for 51 years, the surviving members were honored by Israeli President Moshe Katzav in 2005.[18] The operation is cited as a case study in critical terrorism studies.[19]
1954 forced landing of Syrian civilian aircraft
On 12 December, the Israeli Air Force intercepted a Syrian civilian plane and forced it to land at Lod Airport[20] where the passengers were held for two days.[21] The Syrian Airways (Compagnie Arienne Syrienne) Dakota plane was flying from Damascus to Cairo with five passengers and five crew members, when two Israeli fighter jets ordered it to divert course and land, by (according to a Syrian statement) threatening to fire upon it. Detained passengers included Cherif Kotmeh of the Syrian Embassy in Cairo, two other Syrian nationals, and an Egyptian lawyer's wife.[22] These foreign nationals were later taken to their respective borders and released.[23] An American businessman was released immediately.[22]
Israeli authorities claimed that the aircraft crossed into Israeli territory near Acre before it was forced down,[23] while Syrian official statements claimed the plane had been flying over the high seas.[24] At the United Nations, Syrian delegate Ahmed Shukairi denounced “a shocking act of aggression.”[25] Reporting to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs Defense Committee the following week, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett stated that the plane had not been in Israeli airspace, but merely in an area managed by Lod's air traffic controllers, and there was "no precedent" for "requiring a plane to land" in such circumstances.[26] The Syrian government immediately alleged that the detention was connected to the detention of five Israeli soldiers involved in a December 8 border confrontation.[22]
Livia Rokach,[27] Kameel Nasr,[28] Noam Chomsky,[29] and Donald Neff[30] have each described the incident as state-sponsored hijacking or terrorism. Historian of airline hijacking Philip Baum concluded instead that it was far from terrorism.[31] Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett's diary states that Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan intended "to get hostages in order to obtain the release of our soldiers in Damascus."[32] Sharett wrote to Defense Minister Lavon that, "our action was without precedent in the history of international practice. What shocks and worries me is the narrow-mindedness and the short-sightedness of our military leaders. They seem to presume that the state of Israel may—or even must—behave in the realm of international relations according to the laws of the jungle."[33][34]
1970s–1980s military support to dictatorships
Since the 1970s, Israel has provided military support to a range of dictatorial regimes in South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia.[35]Penny Lernoux called it a "Who's Who" of dictators.[35] Between 1970 and 1980, Israel accounted for 80% of military imports in El Salvador leading up to the Salvadoran Civil War.[35] Israel also provided 100 advisors, pilots for combat missions, and a computer system to monitor resistance activity in the country.[35] In Guatemala, Israel was the sole arms supplier during the terror that followed the election of General Lucas García in 1978, events that included the Panzós massacre.[36] In Indonesia, as reported by Noam Chomsky, Israel served as a proxy for the United States, providing aircraft used to massacre the Timorese in the late 1970s.[35]
Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners
After the 1979 massacre of an Israeli family at Nahariya by Palestine Liberation Front militants, Israel Defense ForcesChief of StaffRafael Eitan instructed Israeli General Avigdor Ben-Gal to "Kill them all," meaning the Palestine Liberation Organization and those connected to it.[37] With Eitan's approval, Ben-Gal charged Meir Dagan with running the operations.[37] 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.[37]David Agmon, at the time head of Israel's northern command, was one of the few people who was briefed on its operations.[37] 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."[37]
By September 1981, the Front's operations consisted of car bombs exploding regularly in the Palestinian neighborhoods of Beirut and other Lebanese cities.[37] 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.[40] FLLF operations came to a sudden halt just prior to the June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon,[40] 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,[40] 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.[41][42][43] A third bombing occurred on Syrian-controlled Baalbek on 7 August 1983, which killed about 30 people and injured nearly 40,[40][44] 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.[45]
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.[47][which?]
Israel provided funding,[56] weapons[57] and medical assistance to wounded Syrian rebels[58] crossing the border of "the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights"; most of this assistance has gone to Al-Nusra Front (now Tahrir al-Sham).[59]Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi notes that "this[,] however[,] does not prove that it is a matter of Israeli policy to provide treatment for Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham members."[60] Israeli officials stated that they provide humanitarian aid to wounded combatants and civilians regardless of their identity.[61][62] According to a March 2015 report in The Wall Street Journal, two-thirds of "the Syrians treated in Israel" were military-age men.[59] One UNDOF report stated that two boxes of unspecified content were transferred from Israel to Syrian rebels and that the soldiers of IDF met with Syrian rebels in the east of the border.[61] Israel is believed to share intelligence with the rebels.[63] "Former head of Israel's military intelligenceAmos Yadlin explained Israel's rationale: "There is no doubt that Hezbollah and Iran are the major threat to Israel, much more than the radical Sunni Islamists, who are also an enemy."[59]
IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot has acknowledged that Israel has provided weapons to rebel groups in Syria.[57]
Likewise, in the 2008–09 conflict, Falk observed how the Goldstone Report concluded that the Israeli strategy was "designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population".[64] Falk stated: "The civilian infrastructure of adversaries such as Hamas or Hezbollah are treated as permissible military targets, which is not only an overt violation of the most elementary norms of the law of war and of universal morality, but an avowal of a doctrine of violence that needs to be called by its proper name: state terrorism."[64]
On 17 and 18 September 2024, thousands of handheld pagers and hundreds of walkie-talkies intended for use by Hezbollah exploded simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria in an Israeli attack.[65] The attack killed at least 42 people, including at least 12 civilians, and wounded more than 3,000.[66]
Belgian deputy prime minister Petra De Sutter called the incident a "terror attack."[67] The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention condemned the incident as "terrorist attacks against Lebanese people".[68] In official statements, the attack was also labelled terrorism by Hamas and by Iran.[69]Leon Panetta, the former-CIA director, stated, "I don't think there's any question it's a form of terrorism."[70]European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell condemned the attack, saying they were aimed "to spread terror in Lebanon".[71]
^*Crenshaw, Martha; Pimlott, John (2015), "Western Sponsors of Terrorism", International Encyclopedia of Terrorism, Routledge, p. 680, ISBN9781135919665, 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.
Johnson, Dale L. (2017), Social Inequality, Economic Decline, and Plutocracy: An American Crisis, Springer, p. 123, ISBN9783319490434, Israel, a nation that engages in state-sponsored terrorism in the extreme, has received more American military and economic aid than any country in the world, allowing the continuation of the Palestine occupation and violent repression of the resistance.
Wright, Robert (13 February 2012), Israel and Proxy Terrorism, The Atlantic, archived from the original on 8 May 2019, retrieved 28 June 2019
Nasr, Sandra (2009), "Israel's other terrorist challenge", in Richard Jackson; Eamon Murphy; Scott Poynting (eds.), Contemporary State Terrorism: Theory and Practice, Routledge, pp. 68, 74, 81–82, ISBN9781135245160, From the foregoing, it is surely indisputable that Israel is committing acts of state terror of many kinds on a daily basis in the Occupied Territories... It is reasonable to conclude that until all appropriate steps to prevent IDF abuse against unarmed Palestinian civilians are taken by authorities, Israel is culpable and guilty of using state terror tactics.
^Angus McDowall; Rania El Gamal; Sami Aboudi (August 2014), Mark Heinrich (ed.), "Saudi king labels Israeli offensive in Gaza a war crime", Reuters, archived from the original on 2022-06-20, retrieved 2018-06-02, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah broke his silence on Friday over the three-week-old conflict in Gaza, condemning what he saw as international silence over Israel's offensive and describing this as a war crime and "state-sponsored terrorism".
^History Behind the Headlines: The Origins of Conflicts Worldwide, vol. 5, Gale Group, 2002, pp. 313, 319, ISBN9780787659110, Clearly Syria sees Israel as a terrorist state and has even suggested to Washington that Israel be added to the U.S. government's list of state sponsors.
Jeffrey Heller (9 June 2010), Diana Abdallah (ed.), "Netanyahu says ready to testify in flotilla inquiry", Reuters, archived from the original on 26 November 2021, retrieved 2 June 2018, The bloodshed triggered an international outcry and strained relations between Israel and its once-close Muslim ally, Turkey. Israel called the troops' actions "self-Defense." Turkey described the killings as "state-sponsored terrorism."
^Yemeni Statement(PDF), United Nations, archived(PDF) from the original on 2021-07-03, retrieved 2018-06-02, We demand the Security Council to ensure the physical safety of the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, and to provide protection for the Palestinian people against Israeli state-sponsored terrorism, in addition to showing respect for the wishes and the will of the Palestinian people.
^Klausner, Samuel (1998), "The Jewish Exodus from Iraq 1948-1951", Contemporary Jewry, 19 (1): 180–185, doi:10.1007/BF02963432, JSTOR23455343, Most of the 120,000 Iraqi Jews, transported to Israel through Operation Ezra and Nemehiah in 1950-1, believed they had been stampeded into fleeing by the Israeli Mossad. Many still believe that when registration for emigration slowed, members of the Zionist underground tossed hand grenades into Jewish institutions. This suspicion has contributed to the alienation of Iraqi immigrants from successive Labor governments.
^British Embassy in Baghdad, FO371, EQ1571, Baghdad to FO, 27 June 1951, "one theory which is more plausible than most is that certain Jews have endeavoured, by throwing bombs at certain buildings, to focus the attention of the Israel Government on the plight of the Jews in Iraq so that they would keep the airlift moving quickly, and, possibly as a second object, to induce those well-to-do Jews who had decided to remain in Iraq to change their mind and emigrate to Israel."
^S. Teveth (1996). Ben-Gurion's spy: the story of the political scandal that shaped modern Israel. Columbia University Press. p. 81. ISBN978-0-231-10464-7.
^Sharett, Moshe (2019-03-19). My Struggle for Peace, Volume 1 (1953–1954): The Diary of Moshe Sharett, 1953–1956. Indiana University Press. ISBN978-0-253-03736-7.
^Rokach, Livia (1980). Israel's Sacred Terrorism. Belmont, MA: Association of Arab-American University Graduates.
^Nasr, Kameel B. (1997). Arab and Israeli Terrorism: The Causes and Effects of Political Violence, 1936-1993. McFarland. ISBN978-0-7864-0280-9.
^Chomsky, Noam (2015-03-23). Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World. Haymarket Books. p. 86. ISBN978-1-60846-442-5.
^Baum, Philip (2016-03-10). Violence in the Skies: A History of Aircraft Hijacking and Bombing. Summersdale. p. 54. ISBN978-1-78372-790-2. This statement [(Noam Chomsky's claim that it was 'the first airplane hijacking in the Middle East')] is far fetched; a naive error of judgement it may have been, calculated terrorist attack it was not.
^Chomsky, Noam (2015-03-23). Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World. Haymarket Books. p. 86. ISBN978-1-60846-442-5.
^Sharett, Moshe (2019-03-19). My Struggle for Peace, Volume 1 (1953–1954): The Diary of Moshe Sharett, 1953–1956. Indiana University Press. ISBN978-0-253-03736-7.
^"It must be clear to you that we had no justification whatsoever to seize the plane, and that once forced down we should have immediately released it and not held the passengers under interrogation for 48 hours. I have no reason to doubt the truth of the factual affirmation of the U.S. State Department that our action was without precedent in the history of international practice. ..... What shocks and worries me is the narrow-mindedness and the shortsightedness of our military leaders. They seem to presume that the State of Israel may or even must-behave in the realm of international relations according to the laws of the jungle. (22 December 1954, 607)" Rokach, Livia (1980). Israel's Sacred Terrorism. Belmont, MA: Association of Arab-American University Graduates.
^ abcdefgBergman, Ronen (2018). Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations. Random House. pp. 234–247. ISBN978-1400069712.
Frenkel, Sheera; Bergman, Ronen; Saad, Hwaida (18 September 2024). "How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 20 September 2024. Retrieved 19 September 2024. Even before Mr. Nasrallah decided to expand pager usage, Israel had put into motion a plan to establish a shell company that would pose as an international pager producer. By all appearances, B.A.C. Consulting was a Hungary-based company that was under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In fact, it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation. They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.
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