Snowden reveals Israeli assassination

While enjoying an evening meal overlooking a view of the Mediterranean Sea from his beach front home in August 2008, Syrian Brigadier General Mahmoud Suleiman was killed when two shots fired by a sniper struck him in the head and the throat. Media speculation at the time of the incident suggested that the fatal shots had been fired from a yacht parked nonchalantly off the coast nearby.

The revelation found in papers leaked by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden that Israeli special forces were behind the assassination of the chief adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad again underscored the penchant for creativity which has historically been a signature of the Jewish state’s clandestine operations.

On a number of occasions the Shin Bet or Shabak, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency; the Mossad, its foreign security service, and the Israeli army have all used tactics which might be considered innovative and unorthodox.

So using a civilian yacht to get close enough to the Syrian general to accomplish the alleged hit would not be the most elaborate ploy ever used by a team dispatched by Jerusalem. During the 1976 Entebbe operation, Israeli commandos used a black Mercedes limousine to fool Ugandan soldiers guarding an airport where hostages were being held into thinking that president Idi Amin himself was arriving. The ploy worked allowing for the successful completion of one of the most famous rescue operations of all time in which more than 100 Israelis held in a terminal building at Entebbe airport were saved.

In another instance four years earlier, a team of Israeli commandos infiltrated the Lebanese capital of Beirut in order to assassinate targets linked to the Munich massacre — the slaughter of Israel’s Olympic team at the 1972 Games. The commandos appeared to be revellers out for a date, while some, including future prime minister Ehud Barak, dressed as women.

Surprise can be key to the success of such operations — either allowing Special Forces enough time to complete their mission while surrounded by overwhelming odds or allowing them to strike an opponent from a direction from which they thought they were safe.

Deceiving the enemy is one method of achieving surprise, said Danny Yatom, a retired Israeli army general and a former director of the Mossad. “We have proved that we can be very creative … due to a lot of experience that we have gathered,” Yatom, who took part in the 1972 Sabena Flight 571 hostage rescue operation, said.

The need for Israel to be inventive is quite clear, Yatom said. “All the time we are few against many; (this has) caused us to be creative.”

But Israel’s ingenuity in the application of military force goes beyond elaborate disguises and methods of gaining access to a target locations. In 1996, Israeli security services assassinated Hamas brigade commander Yahy Ayyash, known as “the Engineer” due to his skill in the construction of explosive devices, using a bomb hidden inside a telephone. Having identified a home Ayyash used as a safe house, Israeli operatives were able to persuade a Palestinian who had access to the building to swap the home’s phone for one that they provided. The new telephone had a listening device within it, the Shabak told the local informer. What they didn’t tell him was that it also contained a small amount of explosives.

The exact details surrounding Ayyash’s death were not publicly acknowledged until former Shabak chief Carmi Gillon described the state’s involvement in the 2012 documentary Gatekeepers. Mogadishu The massive truck bomb that killed 15 people, including a Kenyan diplomat, and wrecked Somalia’s premier hotel has stunned the capital and raised fears the Islamic extremist al-Shabab rebels are escalating their violence. Senior police official Capt. Mohammed Hussein said Monday “This is a very worrying situation,” he said. “This happened despite all the security precautions in place.” The bomb was made of a ton of explosives and destroyed dozens of nearby homes. Authorities say the toll could have been much higher since the truck exploded outside the hotel’s blast walls, but bombs of such magnitude are a new phenomenon. Hobart, Australia A woman watched her father being mauled to death by a large shark on Saturday while they were diving off the Australian island state of Tasmania, police said. The adult woman had returned to their boat with scallops they had collected then became concerned that her father, in his late 40s, had not surfaced after her, Insp. David Wiss said. “His daughter became worried and went down and checked on her father,” he said. “She saw a very large shark. She saw her father being attacked by the shark.” Sharks are common off Australia’s beaches, but the country has averaged fewer than two deadly attacks a year in recent decades. Premature babies are more likely to become introverted, neurotic adults and to struggle in relationships and careers. Babies born very early can suffer trauma during medical intervention, which may change the way their brains develop. University of Warwick researchers compared the personalities of 200 people born very premature (at or before 32 weeks) or underweight (less than 1.5 kilograms) in 1985-86, part of the Bavarian Longitudinal Study, with another 197 who were born at term in the same maternity units. The study found those born very prematurely or underweight scored significantly higher for introversion and neuroticism, and were also more likely to report higher levels of autistic spectrum behaviours.