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Originally posted by Agit8dChop
Ive been in NZ all week and the first i heard of this was a news paper at the airport with quite a detailed run down.
Apparently the van the Israeli's were using was smashed by a pillar, some managed to escape and fled to a pre-arranged emergency meeting point, afterwhich they were rushed out of the country within 24hrs..
Christchurch didnt have power, water yet these few managed to flee so easily?
Also, Armed NZ swat like teams cornered and expelled a un-certified israeli search team from the disaster zone in the days following the quake, this team was sent in from israel immediately after the quake to cleanup any evidence.
Wellington Regional Jewish Council Chairman David Zwartz said the story was unhelpful. "We are very pleased to hear the prime minister's statement and we are also disgusted... with how the story appeared from the very beginning to be a total beat-up and fabrication," he told NZPA.
Secret information contained on the police national computer would be like gold to foreign intelligence agencies, and highly valuable for espionage purposes, says investigative journalist and SIS expert Nicky Hager. "You've got potential names you could steal and use, you've got all their backgrounds. You've got this fantastic resource on another country," he said. "If you're an intelligence agency that would be a very high-value thing to seize."
If Israeli spies were based in Christchurch, their original mission would probably have been passport-related. New Zealand passports were highly sought-after by foreign spies as they raised low levels of suspicion at immigration checks.
Originally posted by bluemirage5
reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul
Hate to tell you this but the Israeli EQK search and rescue specialists are the very best in the world; Japan would come in second.
US needs to stop its unconditional support
OTTAWA–Diplomats are trying to find out more, while security officials are staying mum about a man with a Canadian connection arrested in Egypt and charged with spying for Israel. Mohamed Essam Ghoneim el-Attar was detained in Cairo last month, but the charges against him – and three alleged Israeli cohorts – were not made public until the weekend. El-Attar has been variously described as 26 or 31 years old, as an Egyptian native who also holds Canadian citizenship, and as someone who obtained a residence permit in Canada by using a false name. "We are aware of reports of the arrest," Bernard Nguyen, a spokesman at Foreign Affairs headquarters in Ottawa, said yesterday. "We have been in contact with our embassy in Cairo and we are investigating." The department had not confirmed the man's citizenship or other details of his background last night. Egyptian authorities say el-Attar, a one-time student at Al-Azhar University, left his homeland in 2001 for Turkey, where he was allegedly recruited by Israeli agents. He is said to have come to Canada in 2003, with Israeli help, and was still living here when he travelled to Cairo in January and was arrested at the airport upon arrival. It's also alleged that, while in Canada, he was paid by the Israelis to spy on people of Egyptian or other Arab descent, and that he used his job at an unnamed bank to obtain information about certain accounts. His three supposed Israeli accomplices, who were charged in absentia in Cairo, were identified by the state news agency as Daniel Levi, Kemal Kosba and Tuncay Bubay. The latter two are said to hold dual Israeli-Turkish citizenship. Barbara Campion, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, wouldn't say whether the agency is interested in the affair. "We never comment on operational matters (and) we never confirm whether we're interested in particular people," said Campion. It's a matter of public record, however, that CSIS closely monitors what it calls "foreign interference," the spy agency's term for foreign intelligence services that target ethnic communities in Canada.
Originally posted by TheRepublic
now what on earth are the israelis doing in new zealand of all places? looking for the ring in mordor? i mean i know they have spies everywhere but why are they so interested in new zealand of all places? any thoughts?
Originally posted by bluemirage5
Many wonder what NZ is prevy to, a tiny little country in the South of the Pacific, that the Israelis may want.....well, thats a secret, hence as to why the Israelis keep coming back to NZ in the first place.
Originally posted by bluemirage5
reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul
Hate to tell you this but the Israeli EQK search and rescue specialists are the very best in the world; Japan would come in second.
- Family's fear over victim's passport
In a statement to Fairfax this morning, Gil Ingel criticised the "incompetence" of teams that tried to rescue or recover the bodies, including of his son Gabi Ingel, trapped by the February 22 Christchurch earthquake.
"Once I have understood that the NZ rescue teams are likely to give up much too soon on any attempts to rescue our sons, as they would have no problem to leave them to die in the wreckage even if they had still been alive, just so the rescue teams avoid taking any risk (real or theoretical), we managed to get a group of most professional people, who have vast experience in these kind of operations (unlike the person who headed the operation in Christchurch)."
Sources said questions were being asked at the highest level and that state employer the State Services Commission was also involved in the hunt for the source.
A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said: "The New Zealand SIS is investigating the suggestion that information was provided to the media by an SIS officer."