AxisMundi Jerusalem

Frayed cloak, rusty dagger?

Seems someone on the Mossad’s hit-list just won a reprieve.

A botched assassination exercise by Israel’s overseas intelligence service on Monday has thrown a rare spotlight on its secret tactics, as well as raising questions about professionalism.

According to witnesses, a black-clad man in his 20′s attached a magnetic replica bomb to the door of a car parked in Tel Aviv’s tony port district, and tried to slip away. He was spotted by two diners at a nearby restaurant who, thinking him a terrorist or mob contract-killer, alerted police.

Confronted by the cops, the suspect revealed that he was on a Mossad drill. The story surfaced on Tuesday evening, after government censors dropped a gag order.

Was it a training exercise for a novice spy? Probably not. The Mossad is known to dispatch its cadets onto the streets of Israel, and beyond, to learn basic surveillance and infiltration skills. But assassination missions are reserved for select squads of veteran operatives.

(Besides, if the first rule for espionage trainees is “don’t get caught”, the second is: “If caught, don’t admit you’re a spy.”)

That suggests that the Mossad chose Tel Aviv port for a “model run” — Israeli spooks’ term for a rehearsed operation in a safe area that closely resembles the real target’s environment. In such drills, eluding detection and making a getaway are key. Less important is the weapon of choice. Israelis are familiar with the effectiveness of booby-trapped cars thanks to the assassination in 2008 of Hezbollah mastermind Imad Moughniyeh in Syria, and of two brothers from Islamic Jihad in Lebanon in 2006. Arabs blamed both bombings on the Mossad, which, under long-time director Meir Dagan, is widely understood to be taking the fight to Israel’s foes abroad.

Coffee Politics

An Israeli coffee chain is boycotting ‘Turkish’ coffee in response to the current anti-Turkish sentiment in Israel following the screening in Turkey of a TV drama which portrays Israeli soldiers in a negative light.

Marketing manager of Ilan’s Coffee House Michal Steg said the chain decided to pull its “Istanbul coffee” off the shelves as a way to show support for Israel.

“We sell more than 30 kinds of coffee and one of them is called Istanbul coffee, cafe Istanbul, and… we decided that we are going to take part of the feelings that we had in Israel and not to sell this coffee like for the next few weeks, days,” said Steg. “The idea is because we wanted to be part of what’s going on here and to feel more patriotic and so its a more kind of symbolic way to show it”.

Coffee shop regulars had mixed opinions about the coffee shop’s reaction to the political dispute.

“I know politically this is a bit of a tough time with Turkey but it’s still a friendly nation and I’m sure there are other forums to solve these problems but I wouldn’t go to the route of boycotting goods and products,” said Len, a Tel Aviv resident.