To Believe or not to Believe
Daily Telegraph’s Andrew Gilligan doesn’t believe the British Foreign Office:
“The (British) Foreign Office denied claims that it had been tipped off about the use of British passports before the hit, insisting: “We only received details of the British passports a few hours before the [February 15] press conference held by the police in Dubai.”
But the Irish foreign ministry has confirmed that it knew Irish passports had been used by the hit squad as early as February 4 – and it would seem surprising if Britain did not know at least that soon too. The use of “European” passports in the hit was being claimed by the Dubai authorities as early as January 29. Not for the first time, the British government may not be being wholly frank about what it knew and when it knew it.
The fact that Britain may have waited to get angry until the story got on TV tends to support the view of one Israeli government source that the UK is merely “going through the motions of outrage to mollify the media”. According to one former intelligence source, MI6 has been reassuring Mossad that everything ‘would blow over’”.
The angriest Brit this week was our Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Any abuse by Israel would be an “outrage”, he said. I see the the duty to remind you all. David Miliband is listed on an Israeli propaganda site as an “Israeli Hasbara Author”. Miliband is also an interventionist. Bearing this in mind, should we believe him? Was he outraged for real?