The Link interviewed Naeim Giladi, a Jew from Iraq, for three hours on March 16, 1998, two days prior to his 69th birthday. For nearly two other delightful hours, we were treated to a multi-course Arabic meal prepared by his wife Rachael, who is also Iraqi. "It's our Arab culture," he said proudly.

In our previous Link, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe looked at the hundreds of thousands of indigenous Palestinians whose lives were uprooted to make room for foreigners who would come to populate confiscated land. Most were Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. But over half a million other Jews came from Islamic lands. Zionist propagandists claim that Israel "rescued" these Jews from their anti-Jewish, Muslim neighbors. One of those "rescued" Jews-Naeim Giladi-knows otherwise.

In his book, Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews, Giladi discusses the crimes committed by Zionists in their frenzy to import raw Jewish labor. Newly-vacated farmlands had to be plowed to provide food for the immigrants and the military ranks had to be filled with conscripts to defend the stolen lands. Mr. Giladi couldn't get his book published in Israel, and even in the U.S. he discovered he could do so only if he used his own money.

The Giladis, now U.S. citizens, live in New York City. By choice, they no longer hold Israeli citizenship. "I am Iraqi," he told us, "born in Iraq, my culture still Iraqi Arabic, my religion Jewish, my citizenship American."

John F. Mahoney
Executive Director, AMEU

The Jews of Iraq

By Naeim Giladi

I write this article for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors. I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called "cruel Zionism." I write about it because I was part of it.

My Story

Of course I thought I knew it all back then. I was young, idealistic, and more than willing to put my life at risk for my convictions. It was 1947 and I wasn't quite 18 when the Iraqi authorities caught me for smuggling young Iraqi Jews like myself out of Iraq, into Iran, and then on to the Promised Land of the soon-to-be established Israel.

Israel's foreign minister has said there is "no reason" to believe that his country's spy agency was behind the killing of a senior Hamas figure in the United Arab Emirates, but did not explicitly deny involvement.

Hamas has blamed Israel for the murder in a Dubai hotel room last month and the emirate's police force has refused to rule out the possibility that the 11 suspects wanted by investigators were working for Mossad.

Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, told Army Radio on Wednesday: "There is no reason to think that it was the Israeli Mossad, and not some other intelligence service or country up to some mischief.

The Mossad assassins could have felt only satisfaction when the news broke that they had succeeded in killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas military commander, in Dubai last month.

The Israeli government's refusal to comment on the death has once more gained worldwide publicity for Mossad, its feared intelligence service. Its ruthless assassinations were made famous by the film Munich, which detailed Mossad's attacks on the terrorists who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Long ago, the agency had established that silence is the most effective way to spread terror among its Arab enemies.

In the past year, al-Mabhouh had moved to the top of Mossad's list of targets, each of which must be legally approved under guidelines laid down over half a century ago by Meir Amit, the most innovative and ruthless director-general of the service. Born in Tiberius, King Herod's favourite city, Amit had established the rules for assassination.

US President Barack Obama nominates Robert Ford as Washington's first ambassador to Syria in five years as Damascus emerges an influential peacemaker in the Middle East.

Washington recalled its envoy after Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated in early 2005 in a bombing the West blamed on Syria.

Obama's choice now awaits the Senate's approval to become the diplomat to formally launch the resumption of diplomatic ties between the US and Syria.

The White House announcement comes a day before top State Department official William Burns went to Syria as part of Washington's efforts to expand dialogue with Damascus on "all aspects" of a strained relationship.

Obama has recently turned to Syria for help with mediating between Palestinians and Israel after his tantalizing first year in office saw no breakthrough out of the current deadlock in the Middle East peace process.

Jerusalem - The Israeli foreign minister said today there was no reason to assume that Mossad assassinated a Hamas military commander in a Dubai hotel room, even as suspicions mounted that the spy agency made the hit using the identities of Israelis with European passports.

While few people are privy to the cloak-and-dagger operations of Mossad, senior Israeli security officials not directly involved with the affair said they were convinced it was a Mossad operation because of the motive and the use of Israeli identities.

The officials characterised it as a significant Mossad bungle.

British authorities are investigating how six British nationals apparently had their identities stolen by suspected Mossad agents on a mission to assassinate a Hamas leader in Dubai.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office confirmed that the identities used by six members of the 11-strong hit squad were those of real British passport holders living in Israel. "We believe the passports used were fraudulent, and have begun our own investigation," a spokesman said.

Authorities are considering the possibility that British passport details were copied from the originals by hotel or immigration staff while the holders were travelling.

While the names, passport numbers and dates of birth on the fraudulent passports matched the originals, the photographs and signatures differed.

China has urged the US to immediately withdraw a decision on a meeting between American President Barack Obama and exiled Tibetan leader Dalai Lama.

China Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ma Zhaoxu on Friday fiercely protested against the planned meeting.

"China firmly opposes the Dalai Lama visiting the United States and US leaders' contacting with him," Xinhua quoted Ma as saying.

"We urge the US side to fully understand the high sensitivity of Tibet-related issues, honor its commitment to recognizing Tibet as part of China and opposing "Tibet independence."

Senior officials in Beijing have warned Washington against the meeting. The US has ignored Beijing's warnings, saying Obama will meet the Dalai Lama next week.

Israel is a young nation, yet its intelligence apparatus has a long and sordid history. From staging Muslim terror attacks in Egypt in 1954, to orchestrating 'Arab' terrorist hijackings in 1976, to directing 'al-Qaeda' terror attacks in 2006, there seems little that the Mossad will not do in an effort to give legitimacy to the Israeli government's slow genocide of the Palestinian people and bolster the American government's phony 'war on terror'.

That the Mossad eagerly assassinates all enemies of Israel (real, imagined and fabricated) is generally accepted, if not condoned, but the details of precisely how agents go about their dirty work has remained sketchy to say the least, with the revelations of former agents like Victor Ostrovsky the most reliable reference. The recent murder of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel, however, gives a never-before seen inside look at the extent to which the Mossad operates 'by way of deception'.

It's not unique, but it's certainly not often that foreign spies are caught redhanded in New Zealand, let alone arrested, imprisoned and deported. We are a long way away from the world's major battlefields. As former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, so pithily put it: "New Zealand is a dagger aimed at the heart of Antarctica". It has happened before, primarily during the good old Cold War when there were various incidents involving Soviet diplomats, up to the rank of Ambassador, usually accused of being in cahoots with officials of the former pro-Soviet Socialist Unity Party. None of those diplomats was ever charged with anything; as they all held diplomatic immunity, they were simply told to leave the country. The most famous "spy scandal" involving the Russians led to the infamous 1970s' arrest, trial and acquittal of famous NZ economist and high ranking public official, the late Dr Bill Sutch. He was the only New Zealander ever prosecuted under the espionage provisions of the former Official Secrets Act, and his case represented one of the many nadirs in the half century of our glorious Security Intelligence Service (SIS).

Cases involving foreign spies from "friendly" countries are even more rare. It is a given that the US, Britain and Australia have Intelligence officers operating here, usually under diplomatic cover. But nothing has ever been done about them, even when there have been demonstrable instances of meddling in NZ's internal political affairs, most notably by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Our "friends" the French went too far with the 1985 fatal bombing, in Auckland Harbour, of the Rainbow Warrior by its agents. Routine Police work and the sheer nosiness of ordinary Kiwis led to two of those agents being arrested, tried and imprisoned (and released in an indecently short time, as a result of crude political pressure applied by France). But that was the only previous occasion where foreign spies (not to mention bombers and killers) have been actually prosecuted.

Mossad, the Israeli spy agency, has been hit with new allegations that its agents use Canadian passports to conduct foreign covert operations.

The allegations surfaced yesterday in a courtroom in Auckland, New Zealand.

The court heard that one of two men charged with participating in an organized crime group to obtain a false passport had earlier travelled into the country with a Canadian passport.

Urie Zoshe Kelman, 30, entered the country with Canadian documentation five years ago, on Feb. 2, 1999, the court heard. His stay lasted eight weeks and he left the country, headed for Melbourne, Australia, using a temporary replacement Canadian passport obtained while in New Zealand.

Senior government officials in New Zealand have told reporters there that Mr. Kelman and Eli Cara, his 50-year-old co-accused, are agents of Mossad, the Israeli foreign spy service.