Let’s imagine that an international jihadi network, with cells in London and Europe, had just been busted, with dramatic arrests in Britain, Germany and Austria. Let’s imagine that the group had been planning a string of atrocities, with a weapons cache discovered in Vienna.
Let’s imagine that security services had unearthed ‘tens of thousands of Euros in cash, numerous data storage devices and mobile phones, gas pistols, firearms, ammunition, knives, and related literature’. You’d have expected such a story to make the news, right?
Wrong. On Monday, the Israeli prime minister’s office announced that this precise scenario had unfolded, with Mossad handing intelligence to MI5 and European agencies that enabled them to bring the jihadis to justice and foil their murderous ambitions. The name of the gang? Here’s a clue: it coordinated with leaders in Qatar and Turkey. You guessed it.
In a statement that would chill the heart of any Briton or European were they to have heard it reported, Benjamin Netanyahu’s office warned: ‘Since the October 7 massacre, the Hamas terrorist organisation has been working with renewed vigour to build infrastructure and recruit terrorist cells in Europe and other arenas, similar to the Iranian regime and its proxies.’
When people talk of Iranian ‘proxies’, they are referring to groups such as Hezbollah, the Houthis and less well-known terrorist gangs in Syria and Iraq. Over the decades, Tehran built these up into a ‘ring of fire’ around Israel, which was only dismantled after the Mossad pager operation last year, followed by Israel’s airborne humiliation of the Iranian regime during those fateful 12 days in June.
That is what the Israelis are saying that we are starting to face here. A network of proxies. A nascent ring of fire, preparations for a 7 October of our own, awaiting activation.
The reason for the unofficial western media blackout remains a mystery. Perhaps it had something to do with Britain’s petulant and patronising disdain for an ally that has never had the luxury of enjoying our privilege of forgetting the necessity of war.
Yesterday, the Daily Telegraph revealed that our army had ‘pointedly stayed away’ from a major international conference in Israel at which military insights from the conflict in Gaza would be shared. The Germans went along. The Canadians went along. Even the French went along, for God’s sake. But His Majesty’s Armed Forces apparently thought it beneath them. Who cares about learning about the cutting edge of urban warfare when you have fingers to wag?
But such moral luxury has a way of betraying whomever indulges it. If you ask me, our top brass should really have a conversation with Yossi Cohen, the renowned Mossad spymaster.
This is the man who came up with the famous pager operation, masterminded such audacious operations as the theft of the Iranian nuclear archive in 2018 and the remote-controlled assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020, and negotiated the Abraham Accords. And he has been outspoken on the extensive assistance his agency has given to the West.
The former Parachute Regiment officer Andrew Fox and I recently interviewed Cohen on our podcast, The Brink. Mossad, he told us, regularly provides western countries with intelligence that has saved countless lives over the years. (The pager caper, he disclosed, was just the tip of the iceberg; Israel has manipulated equipment in ‘all the countries that you could imagine’. MI6 could surely learn a thing or two from that?)
The Israelis are supposed to be the baby-killing génocidaires
‘I have come to accept that it is not even close to being a reciprocal process, not because of any lack of will on behalf of allies or potential partners, but because they struggle to help themselves,’ Cohen said. ‘I have asked them all, “Do you need us, the Israelis, to tell you what’s going on in your nations?” And the unanimous answer was, “Yes, we do.”’
How embarrassing for Britain. When I asked Cohen whether Israel would withdraw such support in retaliation for our shameful, unconditional recognition of a state of Palestine, he looked genuinely bewildered. The imperative to protect life and support allies would always eclipse such temporal politics, he said.
The thwarting of the European Hamas network is surely a case in point. How many innocents were saved? How many British citizens? With all due politeness, and without political point-scoring, the prime minister’s office highlighted this. ‘The Mossad, together with its partners in the Israeli and global intelligence and security communities, is leading extensive efforts to thwart terrorism against Israeli, Jewish, and innocent targets worldwide,’ the muted statement said.
So why wasn’t it reported? One can only speculate that it didn’t fit the popular narrative; the Israelis are supposed to be the baby-killing génocidaires, the Nazi white supremacists, the apartheid-loving hooligans who dress up in women’s clothing, harvest human organs and train their dogs to rape Palestinian detainees.
A story along those lines would have found airtime, even if it wasn’t true. (Think I’m joking? Ask the BBC.) But a true account of how Israel’s security services saved British and European lives? Tumbleweed.
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