False flag

False flag attacks are carried out in ways calculated to deceive the victim as to the nature of the perpetrator, conventionally (though not necessarily) by a device such as flying false colours. Operations of this nature have sometimes been used in commerce and politics.

Please Note - This article is offered as an adjunct to the Wikipedia article "False Flag". It aims to fill in some otherwise puzzling gaps, presenting missing incidents from a "Neutral Point of View" to the "Reliable Source" standard of Wikipedia. However, see "Notes" at the end, where some information acceptable to the Wikipedia, and quoted from there, is not to a high standard.

Important examples inadequately covered at WP

1954 Lavon Affair

The Wikipedia article on "False Flags" barely mentions the so-called "Lavon Affair", now known to have been carried out by locally recruited Israeli agents in Egypt. (It can probably be described as the "most significant ever case of False Flag"). Israeli agents "recruited nine young Egyptian Jews to stage terrorist attacks that, they thought, would be blamed on local insurgents and would discredit Nasser's rule" (Jewish Review, 2004.^[1]) Two named individuals served 7 year sentences in Egypt, five(?) served 13 years and two commmitted suicide.

While there were no deaths from the bombs placed in Egyptian, US and UK facilities in Alexandria and Cairo, the consequences for internal Israeli politics and international peace were considerable and antisemitism was incited.^{[citation needed]} Pinhas Lavon was wrongly blamed and forced to resign and the innocent Prime Minister Moshe Sharrat was replaced by one of the perpetrators, David Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion went on to concieve and carry out a number of wanton provocations and killings, including the 1956 attack on Suez, the mass-killing of Egyptian POWs and the first major destruction in Gaza. Six years later, a secret internal inquiry led to David Ben-Gurion's resignation but Sharret and Lavon's reputations were never officially cleared.

The Wikipedia article on this affair at Lavon Affair calls it "disastrous for Israel in several ways" and fails to mention any effects on Egypt or Egyptian Jews, but is otherwise largely complete and trustworthy.

Acknowledgement by Israel

One of the perpetrators who had committed suicide was re-interred with military honour on Mount Herzl in 1959.^[2]

In 2005 Israel publicly honored "the three surviving members of the bomber ring" and presented each with a certificate of appreciation for their efforts on behalf of the state, ending decades of official denial by Israeli President Moshe Katsav.^[3]

Descriptive terms

This significant terrorist campaign is always known as an "Affair". Zionist sympathisers are reluctant to describe it as a "False Flag" but the term is used by ex-Knesset member Uri Avnery in his writings^[4]^[5] and is used in the book "Global Terrorism", 2004.^[6] Israeli sources were censored, on the rare occasions it was mentioned terms such the "unfortunate business" were used.^[7]

1950 Baghdad bombings

The April 1950 bombings that helped panic most of the 150,000 Jews of Iraq to leave for Israel have never been claimed by the Zionists.

The Wikipedia presents a large number of other reasons why the Jews would have wanted to leave and strongly implies that the existence of Israel, and the activities of the Zionists in Iraq did nothing to cause problems for the Jews. But in the article on "Jews in Iraq" (Oct 2011) it does say:

The true identity and objective of the masterminds behind the bombings has been the subject of controversy. A secret Israeli inquiry in 1960 found no evidence that they were ordered by Israel or any motive that would have explained the attack, though it did find out that most of the witnesses believed that Jews had been responsible for the bombings.^[8]^[9] The issue remains unresolved: Iraqi activists still regularly charge that Israel used violence to engineer the exodus, while Israeli officials of the time vehemently deny it. Historian Moshe Gat reports that "the belief that the bombs had been thrown by Zionist agents was shared by those Iraqi Jews who had just reached Israel".^[10] Sociologist Phillip Mendes backs Gat's claims, and further attributes the allegations to have been influenced and distorted by feelings of discrimination.^[11]

Journalist Naeim Giladi's position that the bombings were "perpetrated by Zionist agents in order to cause fear amongst the Jews, and so promote their exodus to Israel" is shared by a number of anti-Zionist authors, including the Israeli Black Panthers (1975), David Hirst (1977), Wilbur Crane Eveland (1980), Uri Avnery (1988), Ella Shohat (1986), Abbas Shiblak (1986), Marion Wolfsohn (1980), and Rafael Shapiro (1984). In his article, Giladi notes that this was also the conclusion of Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who outlined that allegation in his book "Ropes of Sand".

Other accounts state that arms were stock-piled in synagogues by the Zionists and were shown to the Iraqi services by a captured member of the underground.

International Law, with examples

Naval warfare

The Wikipedia section here says that "This practice was considered acceptable in naval warfare, provided the false flag was lowered and the national flag raised before engaging in battle" and covers (as at Oct 2011) the following: "Auxiliary cruisers" in both World Wars, Q-ships, the German commerce raider Kormoran sinking the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney in 1941, the use of a Kriegsmarine Ensign in the St Nazaire Raid and the destroyer Campbeltown made to resemble a German destroyer.