Jumping the Gun in Hamas Official’s Death
February 11, 2010 – 3:54 pmIn his weekly Canadian Jewish News media analysis column “According to Reports,” Paul Michaels, CIC Director of Communications, says that, despite having no evidence, some reporters are ready to find Israel guilty of an alleged assassination attempt.
Assassinations, even alleged assassinations, in the Middle East are bound to attract a lot of media attention, especially if Israel is deemed to have carried them out.
That was surely the case late last month, when Hamas initially accused Israel of having recently assassinated one of its members.
What’s interesting is the different ways this story was reported and how it evolved.
Under the headline “Hamas Official Murdered in Dubai Hotel” (New York Times, Jan. 30), Robert Worth and Isabel Kershner reported that Hamas revealed the previous day that one of its senior officials, Mahmoud Mabhouh, had been murdered in his Dubai hotel room (on Jan. 20), and that it held Israel responsible and threatened to retaliate.
While the Times reporters noted that Mabhouh “is said to have organized the capture of two Israeli soldiers during a Palestinian uprising in the 1980s” and that he “was imprisoned several times by Israel,” in the absence of any evidence, they did not speculate about the party responsible. They wrote only that “Israeli officials declined to comment.”
However, Reuters reporter Khaled Yacoub Oweis, in “Israel accused in death,” (National Post, Jan. 30) was less cautious about attributing responsibility. Oweis wrote that “Israel has killed dozens of leaders and military figures in Hamas, founded two decades ago as a religious resistance movement against Israeli occupation. Mr. Mabhouh is believed to have been an Israeli target since engineering the capture of Israeli soldiers in the 1980s during a Palestinian uprising.”
Oweis quoted the Dubai police chief: “I cannot rule out the possibility of Mossad involvement in the assassination of Mabhouh.” But not ruling it out is very different from taking it for granted.
Taking Israel’s responsibility for granted seems even more pronounced in Patrick Martin’s Feb. 1 Globe and Mail story, “Israel is prime suspect in killing of Hamas official.”
Martin’s opening line, “The apparent assassination of a senior Hamas official poses serious consequences for Israel – and for certain Israelis” points, without qualification, to Israel.
While Martin, like Oweis, noted that according to the Dubai police chief the Mossad is “one suspect” and quoted him as saying that “I don’t exclude any party that has an interest in the assassination,” Martin himself mentioned no other possible parties other than Israel. In Martin’s account, Israel is not only the “prime” suspect, it’s the only suspect.
Nonetheless, when he wrote that Mabhouh “was developing Sudanese connections that have helped facilitate weapons smuggling from Iran into Gaza” and that “Hamas acknowledged that Mr. al-Mabhouh was in Dubai to buy weapons,” Martin opened the door to a consideration of other parties which might also have an interest in seeing this senior Hamas operative dead. Martin, however, didn’t pursue it.
Martin mentioned Ha’aretz reporter Avi Issacharoff, who wrote about the assassination. Ironically, on the same day Martin’s story appeared, Issacharoff provided the following revelation in Ha’aretz:
“A preliminary investigation conducted by Hamas suggests that the assassination of one of its officials in Dubai last month was likely carried out by agents of an Arab government, and not by Israel’s Mossad spy agency…A Hamas source told Ha’aretz on [Feb. 1] that Mabhouh was wanted by authorities in both Jordan and Egypt, where he previously spent a year in prison.”
Citing a Hamas leader in Lebanon, Issacharoff added that Hamas also “suspects its Palestinian rivals in the West Bank,” namely, Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority.
Back on Jan. 29, Issacharoff and Amos Harel (“Choosing Up Sides in the Middle East”) remarked that with Iran’s increasing and destabilizing intrusion into the region (supporting Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas) “Egypt and Jordan are coordinating security matters with Israel in an impressive way.”
So it shouldn’t be difficult to assume that in the case of Mabhouh several parties, any of which acting alone, or in concert, could have been responsible for his murder.
Journalists writing about this – while there is only speculation and no hard evidence at this time – need to keep a broad, open mind, especially in light of the changing balance of regional forces.
Possibly related posts:
