IRAQ WAR - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Times: Israeli Agents Are in Iraq...Maybe |
|
by MARC PERELMAN Forward Newspaper Online Entered into the database on Saturday, July 23rd, 2005 @ 14:22:09 MST |
|
Buried in the middle of a short July 14 news story about Turkey's request that
Iraq extradite two Islamists held at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, The New York
Times made a stunning allegation: Israeli intelligence officials are operating
in Iraq. The story, written by the Times correspondent in Istanbul, Sebnem Arsu, mentions
in its third paragraph that "a [Turkish] Justice Ministry official said
that Iraqi officials had yet to reply to the request, and that the return of
the suspects might be delayed if American or Israeli intelligence agencies wanted
to interrogate the men before they left Iraq." On Wednesday the Times appeared to be backpedaling from the allegation. "The particular sentence probably should have been articulated more clearly.
The source did not know for a fact that Israeli intelligence operates in Iraq,"
said Rick Gladstone, the assignment editor on the Times's foreign desk, in an
interview with the Forward. He added that Arsu had told the paper that the Turkish
source was talking hypothetically about possible reasons for the delay in extraditing
the two Islamist suspects. Gladstone said the Times has no plans to run a correction or clarification. The two Turkish Islamists, Burhan Kus and Sadettin Akdas, were arrested by
American troops in January, according to the Times. Turkey believes they had
a key role in the November 2003 bombings of two synagogues, the British consulate
and the branch of a British bank in Istanbul, the Turkish foreign minister said
last week. By claiming in passing that Israeli intelligence operatives were intervening
alongside Americans in Iraq, the Times seemed to go even further, if unwittingly,
then investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. Last year, in an article in The New
Yorker, Hersh claimed that Israel had established a significant presence in
the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan from where it was running covert operations
in Iraq and neighboring Syria and Iran. But the Times report last week suggested
that Israeli agents were working in coordination with American forces in central
Iraq. At the time, Israeli officials flatly denied Hersh's claims. When asked about the recent report in the Times, David Prince of the Israeli
consulate in New York said, "We don't know anything about this so we can't
comment on it." The issue of Israeli presence in Iraq is a sensitive one given the widespread
belief in the Muslim world that America invaded Iraq on behalf of Israel. A
few months ago, a senior Iraqi official, Midhat al-Alusi, was expelled from
his party and his two sons killed after he traveled to Israel last fall. In
addition, rumors circulated that Israelis had participated in or at least inspired
the abusive interrogation of suspects at the Abu Ghraib prison. Given the fact that the targets of the two suspected Islamists included Istanbul's
Neve Shalom and Beth Israel synagogues, it would make sense for Israel to be
interested in the suspects, said Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Jewish
Congress's Council for World Jewry. "It would be logical for countries that work together to defeat terrorism
to cooperate," said Rosen, who claims he has no knowledge about an Israeli
intelligence presence in Iraq. "It would not be the first time Israel cooperates
with an Arab country on those issues." Rosen was among several observers who noted that the sourcing of the allegation
to a Turkish official was not incidental. Turkish officials have privately complained
about Israel's intelligence meddling in Iraqi Kurdistan, as most vividly illustrated
in the Hersh piece last year. Turkey officials have repeatedly stressed their
fear that the war in Iraq could eventually lead to the creation of an independent
Kurdistan that would inflame Turkey's own Kurdish minority. A major Turkish news outlet, the daily Cumhuriyet, reported that a key source
for the Hersh article, which cited three senior Turkish officials denouncing
Israel's actions, was Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul. Turkish officials denied the allegations at the time, but two sources familiar
with the issue said they had heard confirmation that Gul was indeed the source
from Turkish officials. They added that Israel's alleged role in Kurdistan was reportedly the real
reason behind the tension between Israel and Turkey at the time of the New Yorker
piece. Ankara then criticized Jerusalem for its strikes against Hamas leaders
in Gaza, recalling its ambassador to Israel for consultations and canceling
a planned visit by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Both countries have since mended fences, with Gul traveling to Israel in January
and Erdogan making his first visit there in early May. An official at the Turkish mission to the United Nations said he could not
comment. |