A Bit of BS

Uzi Mahnaimi is well-known for his outlandish claims, always in the realm of the unprovable, either correct or otherwise.

Tzipi Livni: terrorist-hunter secret of woman tipped to lead Israel

The frontrunner to become Israel’s next prime minister, Tzipi Livni, was a Paris agent for Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence agency, in the early 1980s when it ran a series of missions to kill Palestinian terrorists in European capitals, according to former colleagues.

But was she really invovled?

They say Livni, now foreign minister, was on active service when Mamoun Meraish, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organisation, was shot dead by a Mossad hit squad in Athens on August 21, 1983. She was not directly involved in the killing, in which two young men on a motorcycle drew alongside Meraish’s car and opened fire, but her role in Mossad remains secret.

So secret that even Uzi doesn't know.

Livni joined Mossad after leaving the army with the rank of lieutenant and completing a year at law school. From her base in Paris she travelled throughout Europe in pursuit of Arab terrorists.

Well, that's what the Mossad does, among other things.

“Tzipi was not an office girl,” said an acquaintance. “She was a clever woman with an IQ of 150. She blended in well in European capitals, working with male agents, most of them ex-commandos, taking out Arab terrorists.”

Livni has never talked about her years with Mossad, but a glimpse of the nature of the work was given by her closest female partner on European assignments. “The risks were tangible,” said Mira Gal, who became head of her ministerial office. “If I made a mistake the result would be arrest and catastrophic political implications for Israel.”

And what did her parents do?

Her career was forged in the violent creation of Israel. Both her parents were arrested for terrorist crimes in the 1940s. Her mother Sarah, who died recently aged 85, was a leader [???] of Irgun, the militant Zionist group that operated in Palestine at the time of the British mandate and whose exploits included train robbery. [what no mention of the King David Hotel explosion?]

“I was disguised as a pregnant woman and robbed a train carrying £35,000,” she said in an interview shortly before she died. “Then we blew up another train en route from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.”

And her father?

Livni’s father, Eitan, was sentenced to 15 years in jail for attacking a British military base. He escaped. [from Acre. And he was Operations Commander for a few years]

Can't a serious newspaper get a story right?