Israel and state-sponsored terrorism
[13][14] Telegrams between the Mossad agents in Baghdad and their superiors in Tel Aviv give the impression that neither group knew who was responsible for the attack.
The attacks were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian Communists, "unspecified malcontents" or "local nationalists" with the aim of creating a climate of sufficient violence and instability to induce the British government to maintain its occupying troops in Egypt's Suez Canal zone.
[24] At the United Nations, Syrian delegate Ahmed Shukairi denounced “a shocking act of aggression.”[25] Reporting to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs Defense Committee the following week, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett stated that the plane had not been in Israeli airspace, but merely in an area managed by Lod's air traffic controllers, and there was "no precedent" for "requiring a plane to land" in such circumstances.
[22] Livia Rokach,[27] Kameel Nasr,[28] Noam Chomsky,[29] and Donald Neff[30] have each described the incident as state-sponsored hijacking or terrorism.
"[33][34] Since the 1970s, Israel has provided military support to a range of dictatorial regimes in South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia.
[35] Israel also provided 100 advisors, pilots for combat missions, and a computer system to monitor resistance activity in the country.
[35] In Guatemala, Israel was the sole arms supplier during the terror that followed the election of General Lucas García in 1978, events that included the Panzós massacre.
[36] In Indonesia, as reported by Noam Chomsky, Israel served as a proxy for the United States, providing aircraft used to massacre the Timorese in the late 1970s.
The aim of the series of operations was to "cause chaos among the Palestinians and Syrians in Lebanon, without leaving an Israeli fingerprint, to give them the feeling that they were constantly under attack and to instill them with a sense of insecurity.
[39][40] By September 1981, the Front's operations consisted of car bombs exploding regularly in the Palestinian neighborhoods of Beirut and other Lebanese cities.
[40] FLLF operations came to a sudden halt just prior to the June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon,[40] only to be resumed the following year: first a 28 January 1983 strike on a PLO headquarters at Chtaura in the Syrian-controlled Beqaa Valley, killing 35,[40] coupled by a second on 3 February at West Beirut that devastated the Palestine Research Center offices and left 20 people dead, including the wife of Sabri Jiryis.
[50] According to an NBC article, two anonymous U.S. officials stated that the Obama administration knew about the assassination campaign but had "no direct involvement, while Mohammad Javad Larijani blamed the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK).
[53] According to a 2012 report in Foreign Policy, Mossad agents disguised as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers also recruited members of Jundallah—"a Pakistan-based Sunni terrorist organization ... responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children"—to carry out "false flag" operations against Iran, straining Israel's relations with the United States.
[59] Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi notes that "this[,] however[,] does not prove that it is a matter of Israeli policy to provide treatment for Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham members.
[64] Likewise, in the 2008–09 conflict, Falk observed how the Goldstone Report concluded that the Israeli strategy was "designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population".
"[64] On 17 and 18 September 2024, thousands of handheld pagers and hundreds of walkie-talkies intended for use by Hezbollah exploded simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria in an Israeli attack.
"[70] European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell condemned the attack, saying they were aimed "to spread terror in Lebanon".
