Mossad, the CIA and Lebanon

The assassination of Rafiq Hariri: who benefited?

By Bill Van Auken

17 February 2005

The US media has responded predictably to the assassination of former
Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, echoing the bellicose threats of
the Bush administration against Syria and amplifying unsubstantiated
charges that the regime in Damascus was the author of the killing.

Leading the pack was the Washington Post, which editorialized on
Wednesday that "The despicable murder of Mr. Hariri benefits no one
outside the rogue regime in Damascus—and the world should respond
accordingly."

The editorial acknowledged that the "crudeness of the killing and the
denials by the government of Bashar Assad will cause some to wonder
whether it has been framed for a crime it may have desired but did not
commit." But the Post hastened to assure its readers that the
assassination was "the panicked act of a cornered tyrant," terrified
by the forced march to democracy which Washington has supposedly
initiated in the Middle East with the recent elections in Iraq and the
Palestinian territories.

"Crude" is the appropriate designation for the Post's arguments, which
amount to nothing more than war propaganda. The newspaper's charges
are both unsupported and nonsensical. Their transparent purpose—much
like the stories about Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction"—is to
promote the policy of aggression which the Bush administration is
pursuing in the Middle East.

The Post's brief against Damascus is based on the well-known
detective's maxim: to discover who committed a crime, ask the
question, "Who benefits?" Washington's newspaper of record asks the
question in order to supply its predetermined answer: "the rogue
regime in Damascus."

But precisely how has Syria benefited from the murder? Its immediate
concrete consequences are mass demonstrations organized by anti-Syrian
political forces in Lebanon demanding that Damascus withdraw its
troops from the country, a ratcheting up of Washington's threats of
anti-Syrian military aggression, and the prospect of Lebanon
descending into civil war.

That the assassination of Hariri would produce such consequences—all
of them extremely threatening to the Syrian government of Bashar
Assad—was hardly unforeseeable. Whatever else may be said about the
Baathist regime in Damascus, it is committed to its own survival and
its leaders are not insane.

What of the acknowledged doubt—summarily dismissed by the Post—that
the Syrian regime is being "framed" for a crime it did not commit?
Curiously, the newspaper gives no indication of who might be
responsible for such a frame-up. Here, however, the question of "who
benefits" is definitely worth pursuing.

The powers that most clearly stood to advance their strategic aims by
having Hariri assassinated and blaming the crime on Syria are the US
and Israel. Among those who play the game of speculating who organized
the car bombing in Beirut, the smart money is undoubtedly on
Washington and Tel Aviv.

Under pressure from Washington, the United Nations Security Council
passed Resolution 1559 last September, demanding that Syria withdraw
its troops from Lebanon. This political fact sheds light on the
decision of the White House, before the blood on Beirut's streets had
dried on Tuesday, to issue a statement blaming Damascus. This entirely
unsupported charge was followed by instructions to Washington's
ambassador to slap the Syrian regime with a demarche and leave the
country.

In the midst of Washington's provocative moves against Syria, for
which the killing of Hariri supposedly provided justification,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared, with consummate
cynicism, that the US was making no presumptions as to the authors of
the crime. "We're not laying blame," she said, "It has to be
investigated."

The US media went beyond adopting an uncritical attitude to the US
response, treating the bellicose statements of the Bush administration
as though they constituted, in and of themselves, some kind of proof
of Syrian culpability. "US Seems Sure of the Hand of Syria," read the
headline in the New York Times. NBC's Middle East correspondent wrote
that the recall of the US ambassador represented "the first indication
that the US knows something about Syrian involvement in the
assassination attempt."

It indicated nothing of the kind. Rather, it suggested that Washington
was prepared in advance to seize upon Hariri's death as a pretext for
escalating its threats against Damascus.

The Bush administration has in place extensive plans for military
action against Syria. Unable to crush the resistance in Iraq—and
unwilling to acknowledge that it is a manifestation of popular
hostility to the US occupation—the Pentagon has long accused the
Syrian regime of harboring a "command-and-control" center of Iraqi
Baathists that is supposedly masterminding the attacks on US forces.
The logic of the US colonial venture in Iraq, far from Bush's fanciful
talk of burgeoning democracy throughout the Middle East, leads to new
wars of conquest against any and all regimes that fail to collaborate
with Washington.

Various Middle East "security" experts have been quoted in the media
describing Syria as "low-hanging fruit" in Washington's military
pursuit of hegemony in the region. The regime is viewed as isolated
and vulnerable.

Washington also hopes to use the assassination to pursue French
support for US strategic aims in the Middle East. France, the former
colonial power in Lebanon, has its own fish to fry, and joined the US
in supporting the UN resolution demanding a Syrian troop withdrawal.
Secretary of State Rice urged closer collaboration in her visit to
Paris earlier this month, calling for an end to the divisions provoked
by the US war in Iraq.

The maneuvers against Syria manifest as well the unprecedented
coordination of US and Israeli policy in the region. Damascus is a
primary target because it has provided sanctuary to Palestinian groups
that have opposed Israel, including the Islamist organization Hamas.
It has also failed to curb the growing influence of the Lebanese
Shiite movement, Hezbollah, which forced Israeli troops out of
southern Lebanon after 20 years of occupation. It is hoped in both
Washington and Tel Aviv that either forcing Syrian troops out of
Lebanon or carrying out "regime change" in Damascus will undermine
Hezbollah's position and open the door for renewed Israeli control on
both sides of its northern border.

Tel Aviv calculates that the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon or the
toppling of the Baathist regime in Damascus could bring to power a
Lebanese government more amenable to Israeli demands. In particular,
both want Lebanon to grant citizenship to the estimated 400,000
Palestinian refugees inside that country, a move that would
effectively abrogate their right—never recognized by Israel—to return
to the homes from which they were expelled in the course of the
creation and expansion of the Zionist state.

The timing of the assassination, barely a week after Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas
announced their truce in Egypt, is noteworthy. It is quite possible
that any limited concessions the Israeli regime may agree to make as
part of the "peace process" with the Palestinians will be repaid by
Washington giving the green light for Israeli provocations and
military actions against Syria.


US officials tied to Israel planned attack on Syria

The killing of Hariri has set the stage for the implementation of
plans for US aggression against Syria that have long been nurtured by
a group within the US administration that is closely tied to Israel
and the right-wing Likud bloc, in particular. Prominent among them is
David Wurmser, Vice President Dick Cheney's adviser on the Middle
East. Wurmser played a leading role in the creation of a Pentagon
intelligence unit that sought to fabricate a case for linking the
Iraqi regime with Al Qaeda in the months leading up to the US
invasion.

In 1996, Wurmser co-authored a report drafted for incoming Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, entitled "A Clean Break: a New
Strategy for Securing the Realm." It called for a repudiation of the
"land for peace" formula that had served as the basis for Middle East
peace negotiations, in favor of a plan to "roll back" regional
adversaries. It advocated the overthrow of the Iraqi regime of Saddam
Hussein and recommended Israeli strikes against "Syrian targets in
Lebanon" and within Syria itself.

The co-authors of the report included Douglas Feith, the current
undersecretary for policy at the US Defense Department, and Richard
Perle, the former chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.

In 2000, Wurmser helped draft a document entitled "Ending Syria's
Occupation of Lebanon: the US Role?" It called for a confrontation
with the regime in Damascus, which it accused of developing "weapons
of mass destruction." Among those signing the document were Feith and
Perle, as well as Elliott Abrams, Bush's chief advisor on the Middle
East, who was recently appointed deputy national security advisor.

This document urged the use of US military force, claiming that the
1991 Persian Gulf War had proven that Washington "can act to defend
its interests and principles without the specter of huge casualties."
It continued: "But this opportunity may not wait, for as
weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities spread, the risks of such
action will rapidly grow. If there is to be decisive action, it will
have to be sooner rather than later."

If one asks the question, "Who benefits?" the answer is clear. The
destabilization of Lebanon, the mobilization of the US-backed
opposition to the pro-Syrian government in Beirut, and the
vilification of Damascus all serve to advance US and Israeli strategic
plans long in the making.

It is not just a question of motive, however. Israel has a long
history of utilizing assassination as an instrument of state policy.
The Israeli regime has not infrequently carried out acts of terror and
blamed them on its enemies.

Among the more infamous examples was the so-called Lavon Affair, in
which the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad organized a covert
network inside Egypt which launched a series of bombing attacks in
1953. The targets included US diplomatic facilities, and the attackers
left behind phony evidence implicating anti-American Arabs. The aim
was to disrupt US ties to Egypt.

In its long history of assassinations of Palestinian leaders, many of
them carried out in Beirut, the Israeli regime has routinely attempted
to implicate rival Palestinian factions.

Car bomb killings in Beirut are a regular part of Mossad's repertoire.
In the 1970s and 1980s, when the Israelis invaded Lebanon, such
bombings were a fact of daily life, and many of them were attributed
to Israel.

Among the more recent killings is that of Elie Hobeika, an ex-Lebanese
cabinet minister and former Christian warlord, in January 2002. He was
killed along with three bodyguards by a remote-controlled car bomb on
a Beirut street. Hobeika, who participated in the massacre of
Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in 1976,
had announced just days earlier that he was prepared to testify on the
role played by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the killings.

Last June, a Lebanese magistrate indicted five Arabs who were said to
be working for Mossad in connection with a plot to assassinate
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. At least one of the
defendants testified that Mossad had organized the Hobeika
assassination.

In May 2002, Mossad carried out the assassination of Mohammed Jihad
Jibril, the son of Ahmed Jibril, the leader of the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. Israeli Defense Minister
Benjamin Ben-Eliezer commented cynically at the time, "Not everything
that blows up in Beirut has a connection with the State of Israel."

In August 2003, Ali Hassan Saleh, a leader of Hezbollah, was
assassinated in Beirut. Israel denied any knowledge of the killing,
but it was seen throughout Lebanon as a Mossad operation.

Since 2002, Mossad has been headed by Meir Dagan, who formerly
commanded the Israeli occupation zone in Lebanon. Sharon reportedly
gave Dagan a mandate to revive the traditional methods of Mossad,
including assassinations abroad.

Washington has itself revived the methods of "murder incorporated"
that were historically associated with the CIA, boasting of
assassinations of alleged Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen and elsewhere.

While the Washington Post and other US media outlets echo the White
House in denouncing Syria as a "rogue regime" guilty of the Hariri
assassination, the two governments responsible for the great bulk of
the killing and political murders in the Middle East are Israel and
the United States.

In contrast to the jingoist propaganda of the American press, it is
worth noting the editorial comment published Wednesday by the Daily
Star, the Beirut English-language daily, dealing with the broader
political implications of the assassination.

"The fact that within just hours of the murder five distinct parties
were singled out as possible culprits—Israel, Syria, Lebanese regime
partisans, mafia-style gangs, and anti-Saudi, anti-US Islamist
terrorists—also points to the wider dilemma that disfigures Lebanese
and Arab political culture in general: the resort to murderous and
destabilizing violence as a chronic option for those who vie for
power," the newspaper stated. It continued, "That madness has now been
even more deeply institutionalilzed and anchored in the modern history
of the region due to the impact of the American-British invasion of
Iraq and the new wave of violence it has spurred."

The murder of Rafiq Hariri constitutes a brutal warning that the US
war in Iraq is only the beginning of a far broader campaign of
military aggression aimed at crushing resistance to US and Israeli
domination. This escalating militarism is creating the conditions for
a conflagration throughout the region.

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