The world’s silliest spy network

It’s Mossad! 

In 2008, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s official news agency, Wafa, reported that Israel (read: Mossad) had released poison-resistant rats to drive Arab residents of Jerusalem out of their homes. Training rats so as to distinguish between Muslim, Christian and Jewish residents of a city must be a remarkable scientific achievement, but apparently “Project Mickey Mouse” must have failed, as evinced by Jerusalem’s demography today.

In 2011, Saudi Arabia announced that it had “detained” a vulture carrying an Israeli band. The griffon vulture was carrying a GPS transmitter bearing the name of the Tel Aviv University and was condemned for being a part of a “Zionist espionage plot.” Mossad’s “Operation Angry Birds” had failed and I do not know if Saudi courts ruled to behead the Zionist spy vulture, sentence it to life in prison, or force it to reveal the names of his collaborators in return for a pardon; but there were rumors that hundreds of camels may have been implanted on the Arabian Peninsula to spy for Israel. 

That same year, one of two Turkish celebrities who had been accused of raping call girls defended himself by saying that the whole incident was “an Israeli plot against him.” Once again, Mossad had been caught red-handed. The Israeli spy network had successfully infiltrated into the Turkish red-light district, but “Operation Amorous Crescent and Star” failed to deceive the Turkish star and his fans. 

And most recently, a migratory bird, a common bee-eater, caused alarm in a Turkish village in the southeast after villagers thought it was an Israeli spy. According to reports, villagers’ suspicions were aroused when the bird was found dead in a field with a metal ring around its leg stamped “Israel.” They called the police after deciding its nostrils were unusually large and may have carried a microchip fitted by Israeli intelligence for spying. 

But this time “Operation Eliyahu Hanavi” went surprisingly well, as the gullible Turkish authorities took the bait that it is common practice to fit a ring to migratory birds in order to track their movements. Fortunately, the Zionist bee-eater was dead and could no longer spy for Israel. All the same, the Turkish intelligence machinery should adopt a pre-emptive strike policy and randomly question migratory birds passing through the Turkish airspace. 

Being accused too often by readers for being a Zionist columnist (and an undercover Israeli agent), I feel obliged to warn Mossad that it should put a halt to the practice of stamping fellow spies with names like Israel and Tel Aviv University.

For instance, I successfully spent several years of my journalistic career as an Israeli agent in perfect disguise because I had cleverly refused Mossad’s proposal to have on my right arm a tattoo reading “Mossad agent no. 2119129.” My spying career would no doubt have progressed if the readers of this column had not been smart enough to uncover me. 

Acting as silly as the country’s intelligence agency, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) reportedly decided to deploy 20,000 commandos on Greek Cyprus. There must be something wrong about the figure in the Turkish state Anatolia news agency’s reporting. I feel obliged to correct: In fact, the IDF plans to deploy 200,000, not 20,000, commandos on Cyprus, although it has only a few tens of thousands of commandos in Israel. This new special operation unit will mostly consist of vultures, bee-eaters and poison-resistant rats. 

Driving through Central Anatolia last month I smiled at a huge banner in the heart of a town, which read: “Inform the police when you see strangers and suspicious persons – on the police hotline 155.” An updated version of this clever neighborhood watch policy could read: “Inform the police when you spot Israeli spies disguised as pink elephants and dragons – with stamps that read ‘Israeli spy.’”