Israel's "Prisoner X" Was An Australian Ex-pat Who Died In Custody

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This article talks about the Israeli Government setting up an 'intensive inquiry' into the case. There are 2 reasons why I've included it here. It briefly mentions the earlier Israeli inquest into Zygier's death and it shows one way the official conclusion may be formed. Following the 'Killed Children' sub-heading have a look at the decision to include the statement 'he had been compelled to kill a boy and girl while providing security for an operation in Lebanon' which is followed by 'he was hospitalised for a month with trauma'. Creates sympathy and also possibly a seed for explaining suicide, due to PTSD (don't forget it's already been said that he died in the bathroom -- which evidently wasn't monitored), if a reason is required later on down the track. There are other reasons that this is important, that are probably specific to Australian sensibilities, but I shan't go into them.


Israel to conduct 'intensive' Prisoner X probe
18th February 2013

Israeli officials have announced the country's parliament will conduct what it calls an "intensive" inquiry into the Prisoner X case.

Last week, the ABC's Foreign Correspondent program revealed that Ben Zygier was found hanged in a secret prison cell near Tel Aviv in 2010.

The Australian-Israeli citizen was thought to be an agent for Israel's Mossad spy agency, and Israel went to extreme lengths to cover up the death.

It imposed a total media blackout on the case but was forced to ease the restrictions after the story made headlines across the world, rendering the local gag order ineffective.

Australia's Foreign Minister Bob Carr has ordered his own department to prepare a report into the case and has also asked Israel to explain the circumstances surrounding the detainment and death.

Israel now says it will hold an "intensive" inquiry.

"The intelligence subcommittee of the [Knesset] foreign affairs and defence committee decided to hold an intensive inquiry into all aspects of the affair of the prisoner found dead in his cell," the committee spokesman Asaf Doron said.

He gave no further details.

In his first comment on the affair, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that shining too much light on intelligence activities could "badly damage" state security.

"Overexposure of security and intelligence activities can damage, and damage badly, state security and that is why in every debate we must not underestimate the security interest," he said in remarks to the cabinet communicated by his office.

"In the reality in which Israel lives, it must be a central interest," he said in a thinly veiled criticism of media speculation as to what might have been Zygier's precise intelligence role and the nature of his alleged offence.

Mr Netanyahu spoke shortly after Mr Carr's office said it was seeking answers.

"I ask everyone: let the security forces continue to work quietly in order that we can carry on living in peace and security in Israel," Mr Netanyahu said.

"We need to ensure that we protect the normal working of our security branches," he added, expressing "complete trust" in Israel's security forces and legal system.

Mr Carr said his office was preparing a report looking at all communications between Australia and Israel, including between its security agencies.

"We have asked the Israeli government for a contribution to that report," Mr Carr said yesterday.

"We want to give them an opportunity to submit to us an explanation of how this tragic death came about."

'Killed children'

Over the weekend, a senior Israeli official said Australia's intelligence community was "deeply involved" in the case and had even interrogated Zygier on suspicion he was spying for the Jewish state.

Israeli daily Haaretz reported remarks by unnamed former acquaintances of Zygier who said that he told them stories which seemed incompatible with a genuine secret agent.

The paper's defence analyst, Amir Oren, wrote that Zygier bragged to one friend, a former special forces soldier, of his Mossad connections and confided to another that during his military service that he had provided back-up to Israeli agents operating in Lebanon, in the course of which he had killed local children.

"Ben left the army and told me that he had been compelled to kill a boy and girl while providing security for an operation in Lebanon," Mr Oren quoted the friend as saying.

"He told me he was hospitalised for a month with trauma. Afterward he went back to Australia and several years later returned to Israel."

"It astounds me if that could really happen," the friend added.

"If so, how did they recruit him into the Mossad?"

Israel's justice ministry is reportedly mulling whether to allow publication of the inquest into Zygier's death, which returned a verdict of suicide.

According to Maariv newspaper, parts of the inquest are likely to be published in the coming week after attorney-general Yehuda Weinstein decides what to delete for security reasons.

Senior legal officials are also debating whether charges of negligence should be levelled over Zygier's death.

Zygier, who immigrated to Israel in around 2001, is understood to have been arrested in February 2010 on charges which remain subject to a tight gag order.

Ten months later, he was found hanged in his cell despite the fact that it was under 24-hour surveillance, sparking a welter of criticism and conspiracy theories in both Israel and Australia.

Source.

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Here is an interesting opinion piece done by Jeff Sparrow (author of 'Killing: Misadventures in Violence' and editor of the Overland Literary Journal).
He asks familiar questions:

How many other Prisoner X, Y and Zs are languishing anonymously in tiny cells? If a well-educated middle-class Australian-Israeli boy can simply be disappeared, how do you suppose an impoverished Muslim might fare?

Silence over Zygier echoes attitudes of Stalinism
18th February 2013

Israel today is not the Soviet Union of the '30s. But that attitude of turning a blind eye to obvious injustices is all too familiar from the history of Stalinism, writes Jeff Sparrow.

In the 1920s, Harry Pollitt, a key leader of British Communism, fell in love with a young activist called Rose Cohen. By his own reckoning, he proposed to her (unsuccessfully) 14 times.

Cohen later moved to the Soviet Union, where, in 1937, she was arrested as a spy. The Russians never reported her fate but we now know that in November that year, guards dragged Cohen to the basement of Moscow's Lubyanka prison and shot her in the back of the head.

Coincidentally, Pollitt was in Moscow when the secret police came for Cohen. Behind the scenes, he lobbied on her behalf with high profile officials, including, it seems, Stalin himself. Yet when Pollitt returned to London, he and his Communist Party colleagues refused to call publicly for Cohen's release, going so far as to denounce others who did. 'Any charge that may be brought against [Cohen],' wrote the Daily Worker, 'will be tried according to the forms of Soviet justice. The British government has not right whatever to interfere in the internal affairs of another country and its citizens. It is not surprising that the reactionary press is in full cry in support of the British protest …'

The Cohen affair comes to mind in the reaction to the extraordinary tale of Israel's 'Prisoner X'.

Back in 2010, the Israeli news site Ynet reported that an anonymous prisoner was being kept in solitary confinement, in conditions of secrecy so great that even his guards didn't know his name. That report was taken offline within hours, after pressure from the Israeli government.

Last week, ABC television identified Prisoner X as the Australian-Israeli man Ben Zygier - and Israel once more sought to gag the media. Nonetheless, we now know that Zygier was detained in early 2010 and then died later that year, supposedly by hanging - despite 24 hour surveillance in a 'suicide proof' cell.

Even from this sketchy information, an obvious question arises: why has there been such little public outrage about Zygier's treatment?

In 2010, more than a dozen condolence notices for Ben Zygier appeared in the Australian Jewish News, including from major organisations such as Jewish Community Council of Victoria, the Jewish Holocaust Centre, and the National Council of Jewish Women. Yet, according to The Age, last week none of these groups were willing to comment on what had been done to him.

As Bill van Esveld from Human Rights Watch points out, secret detention without trial and without access to lawyers is a flagrant breach of international law. Whatever the crime, whatever the circumstances, disappearing someone like that represents an egregious affront to civilised judicial norms. There's all sorts of reasons why states should not be allowed to keep anonymous inmates in hidden jails, not least because of the potential for prisoners to mysteriously die in custody.

This should not be controversial. It's as basic a moral point as opposing murder or torture.

Yet, as the AJN notes, both the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry declined to make a statement after the ABC's report. When the Jerusalem Post contacted the Zionist Federation of Australia, it was told: 'we won't surprise you... but no comment.'

Bear in mind that Zygier was not an obscure figure. As Elissa Goldstein writes:

The Zygier name is well-known in the community: Geoffrey Zygier, Ben's father, was once the head of the JCCV, the most important Jewish organisation in the state of Victoria, of which Melbourne is the capital. He's currently the executive director of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission, the Australian equivalent of the ADL. The JCCV and the ADC, like almost every Jewish institution in Australia, are politically conservative and ardently pro-Israel.

It's that political identification with Israel that seems the problem.

Again, you can hear the ghost of Rose Cohen.

Francis Beckett, the historian of British Communism, documents how the independent socialist Maurice Reckitt tried to save Cohen.

'When we turned to the left wing for help we were met with a blank refusal to give or suggest any assistance whatever,' Reckitt wrote later.

'A few offered the lame pretext that it would be better for Rose if everyone kept silence; others added the barefaced assertion that Soviet justice could be relied on … Others, again, still more scandalously asserted that no individual's fate was of consequence if they came into the conflict with the interests of the Soviet Union.'

These were, as Reckitt noted bitterly, people who 'had been for years the very closest friends and admirers of the woman in this appalling predicament.'
Is there not an obvious parallel with those organisations who knew Zygier and his family yet still refuse to publicly condemn the flagrant breach of human rights that his treatment represents?

After the ABC story broke, the Sydney Morning Herald spoke to Zygier family friend Henry Greener. Greener, quite admirably, declared he would no longer let sleeping dogs lie.

'We all knew there was something suspicious and underhanded about Ben's death,' he told the paper.

Nobody wanted to go there because of the suppression order in Israel. But now that the cat's been let out of the bag, we are going to find out a lot more, and in that process I think there should be justice for Ben, to find out what happened, because nobody really knows.

Compare Greener's courageous response to the shameful reaction from the Zionist Council. Its spokesman declared that the Zygier affair was 'a family tragedy and there is nothing more to say.'

Nothing more to say? What about the allegations that, after the supposed suicide, Israeli intelligence cordoned off the cell, refusing access to emergency services, the coroner or prison staff? What about the response of the Australian Government, which has now walked back Foreign Minister Carr's initial denial knowledge, even as a senior Israeli official now claims the Gillard Government had detailed knowledge of everything that took place?

If Zygier had died in custody in a different country, does anyone believe that the Zionist Council would be as publicly indifferent?

Harry Pollitt did, within certain limits, campaign for Rose Cohen, trying for years to find out her fate. But, shamefully, he didn't draw any broader conclusions. In particular, he never asked, if someone like Cohen could simply disappear, what was happening to those without her connections? What did her arrest say about the society as a whole?

We might pose the same questions about the Zygier case. How many other Prisoner X, Y and Zs are languishing anonymously in tiny cells? If a well-educated middle-class Australian-Israeli boy can simply be disappeared, how do you suppose an impoverished Muslim might fare? As Gideon Levy asks in Haaretz:

What about Arabs and Palestinians, who don't have an investigative reporting TV program on Channel 2? How many of them have been made to disappear and have disappeared, 'committed suicide' and died?'

Indeed, Amnesty International says that Palestinians in the Occupied Palestian Territories (OPT) continued to be tried before military courts and routinely denied access to lawyers during pre-trial interrogation, that allegations of torture and other mistreatment continue to be made and that, in 2011, the Israeli authorities held at least 307 Palestinians from the OPT in custody without charge or trial.

That's the context in which Haaretz quotes (paywall) an unnamed family friend explaining the local reaction to Zygier's death:

The silence is because people don't know. I don't know anything. I don't want to know anything.

Israel today is not the Soviet Union of the '30s. But that attitude - that not wanting to know about obvious injustices - is all too familiar from the history of Stalinism.

It's worth pointing out that Harry Pollitt wasn't a monster. He was an idealistic working class activist who saw the Soviet Union as an alternative to the grinding poverty his mother had been forced to endure.

'Defending the Soviet Union gives you a headache?' he once snapped at a heckler at a meeting in 1956.

'You think I don't know that? All right - if it gives you a headache, take an aspirin.'

His willingness to dose himself against the reality of Stalinism turned Pollitt from an honest militant into a propagandist who whitewashed horrific atrocities - including the murder of the great love of his life.

Writing about Cohen's case, Reckitt noted 'the corrosive influence of Communist ideology upon rudimentary morals and natural affection.' The response - or rather the lack of one - to the Zygier revelations suggests that a blind loyalty to Israel produces a similar moral corrosion.

Source.

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Another report from the journalist who broke the Prisoner X story last week.
He reveals that sources have told him Zygier had met with, and been debriefed by, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).


Zygier arrested after leaking Mossad work to ASIO sources
By Trevor Bormann. 18th February 2013.

Suspected Mossad agent Ben Zygier was arrested by his own spymasters after they believed he told Australia's domestic intelligence agency about every aspect of his work with the Israelis, sources say.

The ABC's Foreign Correspondent program understands that Zygier met with ASIO officers in Australia and gave comprehensive detail about a number of Mossad operations, including plans for a top-secret mission in Italy that had been years in the making.

It is unknown who initiated the contact.

Sources have told the ABC that on one of four trips back to Australia in the years before his death in 2010, Mr Zygier - who also used the surnames Alon, Allen and Burrowes - applied for a work visa to Italy.

Last week, Foreign Correspondent revealed Mr Zygier was secretly jailed in Israel's Ayalon prison, where it is claimed he committed suicide after 10 months in prison.

His incarceration was a state secret in Israel; the security services going to extraordinary lengths to conceal his plight.

The ABC now understands Mr Zygier was one of three Australian Jews who changed their names several times, taking out new passports for travel in the Middle East and Europe in their work for Mossad.

Foreign Correspondent has been told Mr Zygier set up a communications company in Europe for Mossad, a venture that employed the two other Australian dual citizens.

The company exported electronic components to Arab countries as well as Iran.

Mr Zygier returned to Australia frequently with his wife and children, at one stage enrolling in an MBA at Monash University.

It was during one of those visits he had contact with ASIO.

The ABC believes Mossad became concerned after it discovered Mr Zygier's contact with the Australian spy agency.

Mossad was worried he might pass on operational methods and secrets of the organisation, including information about the major Mossad operation planned for Italy.

Relations soured

The relationship between Israel's intelligence agencies and ASIO soured when Australia expelled an Israeli diplomat in 2010, after an investigation found that Australian passports were used in a suspected Mossad operation to assassinate Palestinian arms trader Mahmoud Mabhouh.

Foreign Correspondent's revelations last week have caused a political earthquake in Israel, with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling for his citizens to support the work of intelligence agencies.

At the opening of a cabinet meeting yesterday, Mr Netanyahu rejected criticism of Mossad emanating from the Foreign Correspondent report.

The death of Mr Zygier has been the subject of a top-secret investigation in Israel that ended only two months ago; a judge finding he had killed himself in his highly secured, reportedly suicide-proof cell.

The judge also ordered an investigation into whether prison guards were derelict in their duty.

In Australia, Foreign Minister Bob Carr is set to release his own inquiry into the affair, expected to outline to some extent "which agencies knew what" of the arrest and death of Mr Zygier, and how the Department of Foreign Affairs managed the case.

Source.

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G'day All,

It's just been reported that the Israeli court has approved the release of the cause of death report on Ben Zygier.
Feels like this story is needed to be kept alive.

ASIO source says Zygier was working as a double agent.
That helps the Australian public like him and the Israeli Government comes out of it smelling of roses (they locked up a traitor so the security services will be left alone).

There'll be an inquest (or six) and appropriate noises made at all the right times, maybe even some low level bureaucrats might get a smack on the backside, sacked or even light jail time (though I doubt it).

All in all this smells of "handling".

The game plan was already in place when the story was eventually released and the Government waited 'til the optimum moment for peak effect.

Yet again, I think this is part of a game for increased power and control while re-assuring the populace that "All Is Well".

Time will tell.

Addendum:

I just remembered, we're just over a week away from finding out the results of the tests run on Arafat's remains. Maybe nothing, maybe something, maybe co-incidence. Get the press and public all in an uproar and distracted to try and manage the results if they come back that he was poisoned. Might be games within games within games.

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Prisoner X revelations 'massively damaging Israel'
By Eleanor Hall. February 21, 2013

An Israeli defence specialist says the ABC's revelations about the death of Prisoner X have done extraordinary damage to Israel.

Alon Ben-David, senior defence correspondent with News Ten in Israel and senior fellow at the Centre for International Communications at Bar-Ilan University, also said he had no doubt that Australian-Israeli Ben Zygier was a Mossad agent.

Last week, the ABC's Foreign Correspondent program revealed Zygier was found hanged in a secret prison cell near Tel Aviv in 2010.

The Australian-Israeli citizen was thought to be an agent for Israel's Mossad spy agency, and Israel went to extreme lengths to cover up the death.

It imposed a total media blackout on the case but was forced to ease the restrictions after the story made headlines across the world, rendering the local gag order ineffective.

"I can't even begin to describe the amount of damage that this affair has caused," Mr Ben-David said.

"Every time the picture and the name of a Mossad agent appears in the paper, it is hard to explain but just imagine what's going on in the countries around us since the ABC aired this story initially.

"Iran, Lebanon, Syria - they all check to see when this person visited them, who was he with, who did he meet inside the country, what cell phone he used, can they trace back the calls, can they reconstruct text messages?

"Circles and circles of damage that can't even describe."

Last week, Israel confirmed having held an Israeli-Australian citizen in solitary confinement under a false name.

When asked what he thought Zygier must have done to be locked up in Israel's highest security cell, Mr Ben-David said: "I think Zygier divulged very sensitive information to a foreign element.

"They say he spoke to a journalist and he spoke about the people he worked with and how they work and methods of work and all kinds of operations that are being conducted.

"It is quite clear I think for the Israeli agencies that Zygier was not acting out of malice.

"There was no motive of greed, no ideology. I don't know if he was trying just to boast but he did something very serious and when he was jailed they weren't sure how to treat him.

"It was clear that he is not a criminal but still he did something very wrong. That's why they negotiated a plea bargain with him.

"He was charged with divulging information, critical information to a foreign element that was not supposed to be exposed to that kind of information."

Inquest

The inquest into Zygier's death returned a verdict of suicide, committed in what was meant to be a suicide-proof cell, though findings released in a government report also referred to abrasions to his arm and traces of sedative in his system.

While questions have arisen following the release of these details, Mr Ben-David insists Zygier took his own life.

"No, not at all," he said when asked if he doubted the verdict.

"First of all, you know, in Israel we don't kill other Israelis even if they are charged with serious crime, so clearly they were trying to protect him, they were trying to look after him but unfortunately he managed to do that."

Mr Ben-David concluded by saying he has a lot more information regarding the Prisoner X case that he is unable to divulge owing to a gag order

"It is not completely out there," he said. "I mean, as I said, parts of it are coming out now but many parts haven't come out yet.

"I am bound by the Israeli law in what I can say and what I cannot say about the matter."

Source.

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This is an interview with Israeli defence specialist, Alon Ben-David, into the damage revelations that Zygier was a Mossad operative has done to operations. It is the interview referenced in the above article and conducted by Eleanor Hall who was also the the articles author. A longer interview with Alon Ben-David is available at the end of the transcript.


Prisoner X revelations 'massively damaging Israel'

An Israeli defence specialist says he has no doubt that the Australian-Israeli, Ben Zygier, who was exposed by the ABC last week as Israel's Prisoner X, was a Mossad agent. Alon Ben-David is the senior defence correspondent with News Ten in Israel, and is also a senior fellow at the Centre for International Communications at Bar-Ilan University. He tells The World Today the ABC revelations about the mysterious death of Prisoner X have done extraordinary damage to Israel, and that he knows more about the case than he can reveal.


Download mp3

Transcript

ELEANOR HALL: Now to the latest in the Prisoner X saga. An Israeli defence specialist says he has no doubt that the Australian-Israeli, Ben Zygier, who was exposed by the ABC last week as Israel's Prisoner X, was a Mossad agent.

Alon Ben-David is the senior defence correspondent with News Ten in Israel and is also a senior fellow at the Centre for International Communications at Bar-Ilan University.

He says the ABC revelations about the death of Prisoner X have done extraordinary damage to Israel and that he knows more about the case than he can reveal.

Alon Ben-David joined me earlier in The World Today studio

ALON BEN-DAVID: It has caused huge damage to Israel. I mean I can't even begin to describe the amount of damage that this affair has caused. Every time the picture and the name of an Mossad agent appear in the paper, it is hard to explain but just imagine what's going on in the countries around us since ABC aired this story initially. Iran, Lebanon, Syria, they all check to see when this person visited them, who was he with, who did he meet inside the country, what cell phone he used. Can they trace back the calls? Can they reconstruct text messages?

Circles and circles of damage that can't even describe.

ELEANOR HALL: You have no doubt by the sound of it that Ben Zygier, the Australian was recruited by the Mossad?

ALON BEN-DAVID: I think it is quite clear today, yeah.

ELEANOR HALL: So the prime minister's latest intervention into this is to insist that Ben Zygier did not have contact with Australian security services. I mean how could the Israeli prime minister even know that and why would he be so insistent on this point?

ALON BEN-DAVID: I think he was trying to make a point that Zygier wasn't charged with making contact with Australian agencies. He was charged with divulging information, critical information to a foreign element that was not supposed to be exposed to that kind of information but it was important for him to make clear that none Australian agency was involved or that Israel has any complaint to any Australian agencies because despite the Dubai affair, the Israeli/Australian agencies have very good work relations and I think it is important for Israel to keep it that way.

ELEANOR HALL: Israel's deputy prime minister says this case concerned extreme circumstances that demand extreme measures. You've been analysing and reporting on Israeli defence issues for a quarter of century, what do you think Ben Zygier must have done to be locked up in Israel's highest security cell?

ALON BEN-DAVID: I think Zygier divulged very sensitive information.

ELEANOR HALL: But to whom?

ALON BEN-DAVID: To a foreign element. They say he spoke to a journalist and he spoke about the people he worked with and how they work and methods of work and all kinds of operations that are being conducted. It is quite clear I think for the Israeli agencies that Zygier was not acting out of malice.

There was no motive of greed, no ideology, I don't know if he was trying just to boast but he did something very serious and when he was jailed they weren't sure how to treat him. It was clear that he is not a criminal but still he did something very wrong. That's why they negotiated a plea bargain with him.

ELEANOR HALL: So do you think this is connected to the assassination in Dubai and the Israeli government's alleged misuse of Australian passports?

ALON BEN-DAVID: No, whatsoever.

ELEANOR HALL: There is a suggestion that there was an Italian operation that was being prepared. Would it be connected to that?

ALON BEN-DAVID: Well, I think it is a common practice among many intelligence agencies around the world to use civilian companies as cover for their operation but you have to understand that it takes years to establish such an operation and dozens of people so this is, when such an operation goes down it is a loss of a lot of investment and of great sources.

ELEANOR HALL: You're certain that leaking to the Australian intelligence services or even to the Australian Government directly would not have been enough for Ben Zygier to be imprisoned in this way?

ALON BEN-DAVID: I don't think that he leaked anything. I'm not saying that he had no, well Netanyahu said that he had no contact. I'm not sure that he had no contact at all with the Australian agencies but I don't think that he gave them that critical information. And the fact that they placed him in that particular cell with cameras, you know, that tells you that they were concerned about what he might do to himself.

ELEANOR HALL: The official report that Ben Zygier suicided in what was meant to be this suicide-proof cell, what do you make of the findings that were also in this partially released government report about the abrasions to his arm and about the traces of sedative in his system? Do you have any doubt that it was suicide?

ALON BEN-DAVID: No, not at all. First of all, you know, in Israel we don't kill other Israelis even if they are charged with serious crime so clearly they were trying to protect him, they were trying to look after him but unfortunately he managed to do that.

ELEANOR HALL: If he had already released this information that Israel was concerned about why would the authorities be trying to silence him if the information was already out there?

ALON BEN-DAVID: It's not completely out there. I mean, as I said, parts of it are coming out now but many parts haven't come out yet.

ELEANOR HALL: You sound like you know a lot more about this case than perhaps the public knows.

ALON BEN-DAVID: I am bound by gag order. I mean I am still bound by the Israeli law in what I can say and what I cannot say about the matter.

ELEANOR HALL: Now you say that it's been extremely damaging to Israel. What are your fears at this point if more of this information were to be revealed?

ALON BEN-DAVID: We will lose more and more intelligence assets, more operations that took years to build will go down and even people may be put at risk if they won't be called home fast enough.

ELEANOR HALL: From what you know of the case, do you think that the Israeli authorities are treating the Australian Government with the sort of respect that's due to an ally?

ALON BEN-DAVID: Yeah and even more. I think the Israelis, that the Israeli government is aware of the public pressure that is being built here in the last week or so and they just wanted to help their Australian colleagues and make it clear to the Australian public, the ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) or ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service) are not part of the problem and by the way I think that both agencies were aware of Zygier activity even before his arrest.

So I think that Australia, that Israel was completely transparent and Australia was informed in every milestone of this affair.

ELEANOR HALL: Alon Ben-David thanks very much for joining us.

ALON BEN-DAVID: Thank you.

ELEANOR HALL: That's Alon Ben-David is the Senior Defence correspondent with News Ten in Israel and is also a senior fellow at the Centre for International Communications at Bar-Ilan University.

He is in Sydney as a guest of the Jewish Board of Deputies and on our website you can listen to a much longer interview with him where he talks about his discussions with the Jewish communities here in Australia and the Mossad recruiting process and about the threats to Israeli in the region, including the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran.

Audio of longer interview:


Download mp3


Source.

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The report from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on the case of Ben Zygier (aka Prisoner X) has been completed:

Report-into-DFAT-s-handling-of-Zygier-case.pdf.

Here is Foreign Minister Bob Carr's speech in relation to the report that has found problems with the department's handling of the case:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ySvn4Zuwip0

-- Pan

[Corncrake]

Israel pays dead Mossad agent’s family $1mn ‘hush money’

http://rt.com/news/mossad-agent-payout-israel-716/

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Posted by Corncrake (here)
Israel pays dead Mossad agent’s family $1mn ‘hush money’

http://rt.com/news/mossad-agent-payout-israel-716/

Remember Arafat's test results are due back in a few days (mid-September was the last report I read).
Might be a little link here with everything else that's going on...

The response from the West to the Syrian situation (and Israel's lack of a defined position in relation to Assad's regime), Israel still rattling its sabres over Iran (Steinitz remarked on the link between Syria & Iran a few days ago), then there's the situation in Egypt and finally let us not forget that the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are currently under way...

Then there's the Russian-US agreement (just announced) on the destruction of the Syrian chemical weapons which leaves the Syrian civil war on-going.

Imagine what a "positive" verdict on Arafat's remains would lead to...

3rd Intifada pops to mind.

-- Pan

Addendum

Oh and don't forget that there are also reports that officials in Israel are concerned that Moscow and Washington might ask them to submit to supervision of their chemical weapon stockpile (source)(which doesn't officially exist but is thought to have existed, according to CIA reports, since at least the 1980's [source])