THE HIDDEN PRICE OF GILAD SHALIT

(October 26, 2011)

by Barry Chamish

I received numerous e-mails saying, "You said Gilad Shalit was dead. You were wrong. Ha-ha." Such ignorance! What intelligent observer believed he could be alive without word for him for two years? Now we learn from former Labor Party head Amir Peretz that Israel and Hamas had been negotiating in secret for his release since 2006 and we know that the reason for the silence came from the top... and I'm not all that dumb.

    True dumb came from the negotiating geniuses of the government who thought Shalit was worth 1027 security prisoners including 450 murderers. To the thousands of friends and relatives of the many hundreds of Israeli victims, there is no justice in Israel. You mass-murder then show a little patience and you'll be free to murder again at the next "hostage," meaning ransom, negotiations. At the least, Shilat MUST be put in a court marshal where his capture, (his commanding officers refused to rescue him when they had a likelihood of succeeding), and his insane release agreement, is debated publicly.

    But, forget it. That can only happen in a clean democracy.

    In all probability, the Shalit deal was part and parcel of a triangular package intimately involving the US, Egypt, and the historical friends of the Jews, the Krau...ahem, the Germans.

The day after Shilat was free, President Shimon, Madman, Peres brought in the German mediator and thanked him and Reich-Chancellor Angela Merkal for their role in freeing Shalit. Can you imagine a party less caring of Jewish lives than the krau, Germans to mediate the deal?

    Now here is how the deal must have worked. A few weeks before Gilat's release, the Iranians freed two American prisoners held as Amero-Israeli spies, for a mere $900,000, a bargain in today's inflationary market. And barely a fortnight after the Gilad deal, Israel sent 25 prisoners to Egypt to secure the release of again, an American, imprisoned as an Israeli spy. At least the Egyptians knew this was no coincidence:

http://www.ejpress.org/article/54052

Egypt mediated between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas to secure a deal under which more than 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners were freed this week in exchange for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.  "All reports suggest that the Shalit deal will not be the only one concluded between Arabs and Israel in the coming days," Al-Ahram said.

Now the Israelis vehemently deny that Ilan Grapel was a spy, but if you were Egyptian, what would you think? An Israeli paratrooper, wounded in the 2006 war against Hizbullah, he arrives in Egypt with an American passport and:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4081873,00.html

Al-Masry al-Youm reported that Grapel met with members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical elements.The report also claimed Grapel met with journalists and academics in cafes in Cairo, purchased an Egyptian flag, and demonstrated at Tahrir Square on the Friday following former President Hosni Mubarak's ouster.According to the report, Grapel also attempted to travel to eastern Libya, to areas controlled by rebel forces.'Mistake or strange behaviour'Al-Ahram weekly reported that during his stay in Egypt, Grapel visited synagogues, including the Jewish community building in Alexandria, where he identified himself as a news agency reporter or a European tourist. The paper further noted Grapel concealed his Israeli citizenship during his visit.

And it gets even more suspicious:

http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/81491/mob-tactics/

Why Cairo chose Grapel as its test case seems to be merely a matter of convenience. Yes, the Queens native served in the Israeli Defense Forces in the 2006 war, where he was injured fighting Hezbollah. Yet the fact that Grapel, a law student at Emory University in Atlanta, had taken a job in Cairo in May with St. Andrew s Refugee Services, a Christian organization that mostly provides legal aid for Sudanese refugees, is perhaps what first attracted the attention of Egyptian authorities. African refugees Christians and Muslims are a sensitive issue for the Egyptians, not least because their mistreatment in Egypt has caused many of them to flee to friendlier vistas across the border in Israel.

And the case for spying just gets worse:

http://beta.news.yahoo.com/alleged-spy-egypt-immigrated-is
rael-u-104948754.html

Two years later, in 2008, Grapel took part in the Israel Project's media fellows program in Jerusalem on "educating top young leaders in how to educate the
press on Israel and Iran."In a comment that appears on the Israel
Project's web page about the program, Grapel said he had been
impressed by an Israeli Foreign Ministry's official's briefing on
conveying Israel's positions to the Arab world."It would be very
rewarding for me if I were to be able to communicate as effectively
(as the official) in such anti-Israel environments,"

A judiciary source in Egypt said the arrested man had been active in
Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the revolt against Hosni
Mubarak, after the former president stepped down.A statement issued
by Egypt's public prosecutor said the suspect, ordered held for 15
days, had been sent to Egypt to recruit agents "trying to gather
information and data and to monitor the events of the January 25
revolution.

If I were the Egyptians, I'd lock up this foreign troublemaker for my country's security and clearly, Israel agreed. With Egypt as host of the Shalit negotiations, Israel cut a deal for him, even though, he was an American prisoner. Obviously, America used Israel's leverage with the Egyptians to free their prisoner, which working ever so slightly backwards, means they pressed Israel on all aspects of the Shalit deal.

But that was easy compared to the kind of leverage Iran held over the US. They held two out of three American "hikers" captured in Northern Iran after "accidentally" wandering into their country from Iraq's Kurdistan province, an American virtual den of spies and subterfuge against them. And whaddya know, one of the spies, "Joshua Fattal's Iraqi-born Jewish father, Jacob, had emigrated to Israel as a child and later came to the United States, where he married Fattal's mother, Laura. In an effort not to draw attention to their ties with Israel after Josh's arrest, the family decided that rather than having his father involved in public efforts for Josh's release, the task would go to Josh's brother, Alex, a doctoral student at Harvard University, and to Josh's mother, Laura, who was born in the United States. "

Like that stopped Iran from knowing who he was!! And guess where the trio had been just before starting on their hike:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0730/In-ironic-twist-Iran-detained-US-hikers-critical-of-Israel-and-America

Just weeks before the three were taken captive, says Mr. Meckfessel, they were in Israel to visit another friend, US activist Tristan Anderson. Shortly after taking photos during a demonstration against the Israeli separation barrier, Mr. Anderson was shot with a teargas canister in the head by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and hospitalized in Israel for a year...A year ago, the four friends had set out from Syria, where they were volunteering to help Palestinian refugees, on a hiking trip to Kurdistan, in Northern Iraq, recounts Meckfessel.

Well, imagine that! A few weeks before being captured, the three were in Israel preparing what the Iranians would believe was a plausible alibi. The cover story was they preferred Palestinians over Jews. Don't kid yourselves: the Iranians knew Fattal's father was Israeli and that he had just been in Israel. They played dumb while they set the terms for the prisoners Hamas would get for Shalit, in return for they freeing Fattal and his buddy Shane Bauer. Of him:

Shane Bauer wrote for publications such as The Nation, Mother Jones, and the Christian Science Monitor. A photojournalist who has won multiple awards and had his work published internationally, he's documented everything from tenant conditions in San Francisco SROs to conflict-ridden regions in Africa and the Middle East. There will be a screening of a new video made about his work, as well as a film Bauer produced with David Martinez documenting a group of armed rebels in Darfur.

I know a bit about how journalism is used as a cover in espionage. At the Bakaa recruitment center in 1979, I became close with fellow recruit Michael Oren, today's Israeli ambassador to Washington. After our duties ended we met. I told him, basically about eating sand for my duty, and he told me about being recruited by the Mossad and given press credentials from the Kansas City Star to travel from Iran to Syria spying for the state. As noted in the csmonitor:

These hikers remind me somewhat with Daniel Pearl (widely reported and known dual Israeli-Am erican citizenshi p) - who doesn't believe Pearl was debriefed by Mossad and or CIA once he was done 'reporting ' on sensitive Pakistani nuclear issues? How could Mossad/CIA NOT debrief assets near the heart of the Pakistani nuclear program or on the border of known Israeli Special Forces activity in Iran? It would be negligent. Israel is running special forces and spies in precisely this area.

I can imagine that Israel's denials of Fattal and Grapel being their spies are sincere. BUT I can accept that Egypt and Iran didn't buy it and forced inconceivable concessions in the Shalit deal, with the US and Germany on their side.

     And I'll wager that is exactly what happened.

end

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