| Author | Message | | Edithann | | Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 6:38 am Post subject: Israel assassination teams and our contributions.... |
| http://www.gordonthomas.ie/old_briefs/sept2001.htm
Israel's deadly snipers are using "invisible" nickel-tipped transuranium bullets to kill key Palestinian targets. The bullets have no tell-tale muzzle flash when fired. There is no recoil from the specially adapted U.S. super-pressure rifles that have twice the range of ordinary sniper rifles and a killing distance of a mile.
The bullets and rifles were originally designed by the CIA armourers to be used by NATO special forces against bodyguards of wanted war criminals in the Balkans.
The request for the weapons was made by Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon to George Tenet when the 45 year-old CIA chief made his failed peace mission to the Middle East earlier this summer.
Tenet raised the matter with President George Bush - who agreed to supply Israel.
Fifty of the state-of-the-art weapons and ten thousand rounds of "invisible" bullets were flown out of Kennedy Airport, New York, on an El Al freighter to Tel Aviv.
Israel's best army snipers - some of whom are women - were sent to a secret base in the Negev Desert to familiarise themselves with the weapons.
They will be deployed around the Gaza Strip and the West Bank this coming week.
Until now Israel snipers have been unable to operate at night - due to the risk of discovery from the give-away flash from their rifle barrels. Now, using special night sights also developed by the CIA, the snipers will be able to pick out a target without any risk of detection once they shoot.
Unlike other bullets the "invisible" ones make no sound as they travel towards a target.
"Not only is it an effective killing weapon but it is designed to create panic. A target can be standing in the middle of a crowd one moment. The next moment he keels over - dead", said an Israeli source.
Prime Minister Sharon has also ordered Mossad's most secret unit - its kidon assassination teams - to be deployed in the killing fields of Gaza and the West Bank.
The decision to deploy the teams has led to a sharp response from Washington. National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said that anything which "undermines an attempt to create an atmosphere of calm is provocative".
But Ariel Sharon insists any response he authorises is "no more than an attempt to show the Palestinians they must learn that they will achieve nothing through violence and terror".
Yasser Arafat's Information Minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said the deployment of specially-equipped snipers and the kidon teams "shows the world that Israel is ready to use any methods to destroy us."
The kidon unit normally operates overseas - killing terrorist leaders who mastermind the suicide bombers from afar. Since the intifada started a year ago kidon teams have struck in West Beirut, Cairo and Athens.
But under the ever-escalating violence in Israel, the teams have been ordered to focus on targets within Israeli's borders from this coming week.
The unit consists of forty-two men and six women. All are in their late twenties and are based in a restricted area of a military base near the desert town of Beersheba. The area includes a mock-up of an Arab village, a suburban street and a variety of buildings where the kidon teams practice their deadly art.
They practice with a wide range of hand-guns and knives and learn how to administer a lethal injection in a crowd. Their brief is always to make a killing appear accidental.
Their evenings are spent reviewing films of successful assassinations - including the shooting of President John F Kennedy.
They also study their failures. The most embarrassing was the September 1977 failure of a kidon unit to kill Hamas leader Khalid Meshal in the streets of Amman, Jordan.
The team had been equipped with a deadly poison made from the seeds of a castor-oil plant. It had worked before with spectacular success on a London street in September 1978. A Bulgarian defector, Georgi Markov, was killed by a KGB agent who jabbed him in the thigh with the tip of an umbrella smeared with the nerve agent.
But the kidon team sent to Amman bungled their mission - and were captured.
It had needed an abject apology from Israel's then Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to the late King Hussein before the luckless would-be assassins were freed.
To avoid such a debacle again, the kidon teams have studied the faces and habits of every potential target.
These include the Hamas and Islamic leaders as well as key members of Yasser Arafat's Force 17. The PLO commando unit has long been Arafat's personal security force.
But down the years kidon units have assassinated its members - most notably those involved in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Every member of the team that had killed the athletes was cornered and killed by the kidon.
Each kidon unit is a team of four. One is assigned to do the actual killing, the others provide back-up such as a getaway car or planting obstructions for pursuers.
Operating against the PLO, they have been provided with clothes purchased in the Gaza alley shops. They eat the same food as their victims.
Every three months a kidon member has a meeting with a Mossad psychiatrist on handling stress and how to relax.
Later they undergo aptitude tests to establish their emotional stability and self-confidence. Each kidon is assessed to see if he or she shows signs of becoming a "lone wolf". That could be fatal in an operation where teamwork is essential.
Part of each training day is given over to testing a kidon's sheer physical stamina. There is a forced march in the fierce noonday heat of the Negev Desert. Afterwards a kidon faces further psychological tests.
Sample questions: "An Arab girl spots you on an important mission: do you kill her to preserve your mission?" "You are taken prisoner: do you surrender or kill yourself?" "You come across a wounded Israeli soldier hit in the intifada. Do you stop to save him knowing he will certainly die - though it means aborting your mission?"
The questions are intended to see how a kidon reacts under pressure. How long does he or she need to give an answer?
Each of the kidon teams assigned to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip can pass for locals. All are not only fluent in Arabic but also the local patois. | |  | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk | 
