There was a moment of silence in the press room. Only the clicking of cameras could be heard. Then there was an eruption of applause and cheers, and even the stoic Attorney General revealed a wide grin.

The foreign captivity of our citizens has been a contentious issue for years. It mostly revolves around hunting, which is a national pastime here. Many go overseas to hunt, often illegally. Foreign governments have demanded that our citizens cease hunting in their countries, and have often arrested our citizens they have caught on suspicion of hunting. The domestic pressure at home is not if we should curb our hunting habits – we’ve been raised since childhood on how to hunt animals – but how we can return our nationals that have been arrested overseas. There are a few brave citizens that speak against hunting here, but it’s not so much of a social issue here anymore because we already killed off all our animals at home. That is why we have to go overseas to hunt.

I was still uneasy about the impending prisoner release. In a few short hours the country had been whipped into a nationalistic frenzy, the streets filled with people waiting for their fellow countrymen to return home. While I was excited to have my brothers return home after years in foreign jails, I was not totally comfortable with the fact that the government was willing to bring back anyone, regardless of whatever crime they have committed or were charged for.

My friend Mike is a cool-headed cynic, and I thought I could talk to him to get some perspective. I asked if he was comfortable having some of our country’s most notorious hunters return to our neighborhoods and streets, and reenter our society.

“Of course! They’ve been held in jails by foreign governments for acts only they consider crimes,” Mike answered. “Besides, there are no more animals left here for them to hunt, so what’s the worry?”.

Yet, I was still concerned. I was beginning to think there was something wrong with a society that only teaches one side of the issue. I couldn’t help but feel that we lost our self-control. I didn’t hear anyone ask if we should have all the hunters returned, even the ones that killed baby animals, or endangered species, for example. Hunting had become so pervasive in our society that people were only focused on the return of their countrymen, and not the acts they carried out.

Crowds started to gather in Aya Shaya Square, named after our countries first and most famous hunter who was killed while hunting several years ago just when it started to become a popular sport. A leopard has snuck up and mauled him. Some reports said his head was severed. His gruesome death and intrepid spirit, which took him hunting into uncharted territories, made him a national hero.

Our country has a great sense of irony and humor. Mocking the environmentalists overseas that jail our hunters, green flags were being handed out and waved by the crowd, while speakers were being set up on a stage in anticipation of the return of the hunters.

A young volunteer reached out to hand me a flag, but I hesitated. “Don’t you want a flag to greet our brothers upon their return home?,” he asked.

“I’m excited, don’t get me wrong, but do we know who all of these people are? What if they killed innocent animals? We could be welcoming some really terrible people back into our society,” I answered.

“Innocent animals? What are you talking about? They’re animals, what’s the difference? And having our brothers return home after languishing in jail is more important than whatever alleged “crimes” they committed overseas,” he retorted.

He thrust a flag in my hand and ran off to hand out the rest.

I stood there, looking at the stage, the flags, and the spectacle that was unfolding around me. I’m proud of my country, but I’m worried that we’ve lost our sense of justice to some form of extreme nationalism. I felt there is something terribly wrong with a society that welcomes with open arms some of the world’s most notorious hunters.

I don’t fear what may happen to the animals overseas in the future. After all, they’re just animals. I fear what the hunters may do at home, and what all this says about us.

The hunters come home. (Reuters)

One of those things is the impending release of Ilan Grapel, an Israeli-American dual citizen who was arrested by Egyptian authorities in June for allegedly spying on Egypt on behalf of Israel. Israel, and US Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY), for whom Grapel interned for in 2002, deny he is as a spy. His supporters argue he was in Egypt working for a NGO, Saint Andrew’s Refugee Services. He arrived in Egypt at a time of immense political instability, which contributed to his arrest.

Throughout October, before the news that a deal for Schalit had been reached between Israel and Hamas, stories were surfacing that a deal was at hand for Grapel’s return to Israel in exchange for somewhere between nine and eighty-one Egyptian prisoners being held by Israel. Later reports also indicate that the Grapel deal is a part of the Schalit package, which was mediated by Egypt.

The curious thing about the Grapel saga is how much little attention it is receiving. On the surface, it makes sense that a soldier kidnapped from Israeli territory in the midst of a surprise attack by an enemy that tunneled in to an army base and killed two of his comrades is more emotionally gripping. Schalit was just nineteen years-old, looked even younger, and was doing the same military service that all Israelis must endure at the time of his kidnapping. All of these factors, plus a relentless public relations campaign led by the Schalit family, led to strong public awareness and support for his release.

A massive protest in support of Gilad Schalit in Israel in 2010. His cause was very popular, with many supporters seeking his release "at any cost."

Grapel’s arrest has received nowhere near the same support the Israeli public showered on Schalit, even as 1,027 prisoners and terrorists were released for him. Grapel is twenty-seven years old, was not captured during his army service on Israeli soil, and doesn’t have parents living in Israel to lobby on his behalf. But Grapel’s case should be an all-Israeli story: he decided to leave his American lifestyle after graduating for Johns Hopkins University, and was wounded while serving as a paratrooper in the 2006 Lebanon War (see 2006 Haaretz interview with Grapel in link). Israel is an immigrant country, and the paratroopers have a special place in Israeli military folklore, but Grapel still fails to grab headlines.

It’s hard to guess if there would be more or less public awareness and support of Grapel’s case if he was imprisoned by Egypt for five years like Schalit was for Hamas. I assume, judging by the lack of enthusiasm surrounding his upcoming release, that in five years the average Israeli would not care anymore about Grapel than they do now, probably less. However, Gilad’s story captured the hearts of Israelis from the beginning, and his family’s campaign maintained its momentum for over five years. The Schalit cause was championed by Israeli celebrities, the protest tent outside the Prime Minister’s home was always occupied, the “Gilad is still alive” bumper stickers and t-shirts were always visible throughout the country, and Schalit remained a popular cause. The Schalit family created a PR machine that could not be stopped, and the media was happy to fuel it while the Israeli public went along for the ride, culminating with 70% of the country following his release on TV last Tuesday.

When the news broke of Schalit’s upcoming release, Facebook was exploding with updates of “Is it true??”, “Can’t believe the news!”, and “Gilad’s finally coming home!”. Today, Facebook and the Israeli public are curiously quiet for Grapel.

Ilan Grapel's arrest has failed to create a similar populist reaction as Gilad Schalit's kidnapping.

Below are my recollections and thoughts on 9/11. They’re personal, simple and lacking the opinionated language that most of my pieces contain. For ten years since that day we have heard countless arguments about how it happened and why it happened. Regardless, 9/11 has changed our lives, and I invite readers to share their stories about that day in the comments section below. I’m an average person who was strongly affected by 9/11 like most of us. The stories and the sacrifices of the victims and first responders carry the most weight, but after ten years we need to continue to heal and to share our stories, whether heroic or not. Here’s mine:

September 11, 2001 is etched in my memory as one of the most beautiful days I have ever seen. Even without the awful events that transpired that day I still may have remembered it for the sheer brilliance of its sunshine, pleasantness of its air, and the desire it gave us all to just sit outside and enjoy the perfection of that wonderful Tuesday.

One of the distinct visions I have of that fateful day is the ride home from school. It was early afternoon and the private high school I attended in Mamaroneck, NY, had closed early due to the day’s events. (A teenager’s dream in a real-life nightmare.) One of the school janitors drove several students that lived outside of Westchester County home in the school van. There are two things I remember clearly from that drive. The first is driving past the eerily empty Scarsdale Fire Department. They, along with fire fighters from around the Tri-State area, had embarked to Lower Manhattan to assist in the rescue effort. The vacant garage reminds me of our serene lives we had until that day that had left, never to return. The other memory of that car ride is when the van banked left around a bend in the Cross County Parkway and the sky opened up before me displaying  an amazingly deep and perfect blue color, without a cloud to be seen. As Lower Manhattan started to resemble scenes from the apocalypse, the rest of New York still looked like paradise. What a strange, twisted day.

It is this contrast that symbolizes the changes in our lives since 9/11. We (collectively meaning the West and the United States in particular) were naïve, ignorant, and blissfully content. Since then, we’ve fought wars, been exposed to cultures, religions and countries we were hardly interested in before, and dealt with a completely new reality. The sun had set and the next day would not be as pretty.

It’s shocking to think back to that day and see how little we knew. Terrorism was far from the minds of most Americans after the first plane hit the North Tower. It took many some time to comprehend what was transpiring even after the second plane hit the South Tower. But now we’re no longer ignorant. We’re bloodied, jaded and trying to figure out when it will all end. Will it all end?

I can only hope our new reality will come to an end because beautiful days have since never been the same.

The two groups I am referring to are the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) anti-Israel supporters, and the other being those Israelis that took part in a boycott of cottage cheese because of the ridiculously high prices dairy producers (and the government) have set for the beloved cheese. Yes, a country that has fought through years of terrorism and warfare now finds itself on a new battlefield that is well-lit, polished, and air conditioned: the dairy isle.

As the BDS campaign gets more and more attention, and the attempts at another Gaza flotilla continue to dominate the airwaves, I find the convergence of the two groups so amusing because of the origins of the two sides. Those that are actively involved in BDS in the West are people who have put the Israeli-Palestinian issue high on their political agenda, and have to put a lot of time and effort into their cause. Your average American supermarket isn’t really loaded with Israeli products, but the BDSers seek them out and take the time to campaign against them, pressure Israeli companies to not support the IDF, and make poorly executed choreographed dances with catchy tunes. (I was humming “Stop buying Sabra and Tribe, don’t support Israeli apartheid” to myself for at least three days. Good stuff.) If you’re an American, to be active in the Israeli boycott you have to be proactive, zealous and assertive about a political situation in which you have little connection.

But on the opposite end of the spectrum you have the pretty careless demeanor of the average Israeli. Unlike the BDSers, their lives are no longer taken over by politics and the conflict. After all, the major social concern that was dominating the lives of Israelis on Facebook the past two weeks has not been something related to security or even the flotillas, but it was cheese.

I write these words as I sit in a café on a sun drenched street in central Israel. Teenagers gossip at the table next to me, pedestrians are on their cellphones blabbing away, and the drivers in their cars are moving along and getting impatient with each other. Whatever is preoccupying these people’s minds is something mundane. Life in Israel has become life like anywhere else. Yet across the world in Europe and America there are people fervently trying to make life for Israeli companies more difficult. They’re so focused on the occupation, Zionism, and the other terrible things the Israelis do. Their calling is of a higher moral cause, not of higher consumer prices. With each passing day and each house that sprouts up in a settlement they get more and more frustrated. But in Israel, things get more normal, more dull.

As I thought about the efforts of the tireless BDSers I felt a strange kinship with them. Both they and I have had a long fight against some form of Israeli tyranny. And as an op-ed in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal explained, “in the face of a global campaign to boycott its goods, and an ever-ascendant shekel, [Israel] raised its exports 19.9% in 2010′s fourth quarter and 27.3% in the first quarter of 2011.” For all their efforts, Israel has only sold more products. But my boycott was over and as I walked down the aisle of the supermarket I grabbed a cottage cheese and put it in my cart. At that moment I sighed, thinking of them and all their hard work, tirelessly fighting against the country in which I live.

Then I bought an extra one, just for them.

Some slick moves of a BDS dance-off

To review, “a suspected US drone strike in Pakistan may have killed a man considered al Qaeda’s military brain.” In other words, some weird explosion that came out of nowhere, but probably a drone, has killed, hurt, or caused no harm to a person who may have or have not been leading al Qaeda’s military operation (that is, as opposed to their peaceful operations).

It does appear now that the terrorist in question, Ilyas Kashmiri, was killed. This is another big blow to al Qaeda. He was a seasoned veteran of guerrilla warfare, and was leading al Qaeda through their next phase in their war against their enemies. He cryptically told the Asia Times in 2009 that the 2008 Mumbai, India attacks were “nothing compared to what has already been planned for the future.” Although al Qaeda today has a more decentralized model than it had in the past as I discussed in a recent post, Kashmiri took a major leadership role and was still looking beyond the battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His death is another big victory for America’s campaign in the region against al Qaeda.

It is also important to note that this was another high-level assassination carried out on Pakistani soil on the heels of the bin Laden raid last month. It’s a good sign that America is not backing off the targeting of its enemies that are residing in Pakistani territory. Many questioned how the bin Laden raid would impact US-Pakistani relations, but for now, the US is still going after those that need to be killed or captured.

This is a conclusion that is not hard to reach after analyzing the way al Qaeda has morphed in the years following 9/11. When al Qaeda had a safe haven in Sudan and then Afghanistan, they were more centralized and structured. In Afghanistan, al Qaeda could meet, plot and train, but this all came to an end with the US-led invasion in late 2001. Although the invasion led to a major transformation of how al Qaeda operated, the idea that the organization needed to decentralize was envisioned before 9/11 by a terrorist visionary that is less well known to Western audiences than bin Laden.

Al Qaeda’s transformation into what it is today can be traced back to a Syrian named Abu Musab al Suri. His story, and how he became a rival of bin Laden, explains the internal dynamics of al Qaeda and why it remains a threat today even after bin Laden’s death. Al Suri argued that al Qaeda needed to operate in a more decentralized manner, with cells operating autonomously. Al Suri himself operated somewhat autonomously within the al Qaeda framework, operating his own training camps within Afghanistan teaching his own jihadist philosophy. As a former member of a radical wing of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, al Suri is considered radical by his al Qaeda colleagues. According to al Suri’s plan, the central leadership of al Qaeda would serve as a glue and attacks carried out by cells around the world should be credited to al Qaeda to give a sense of a unified front against Islam’s enemies. As my friend Jason Wiseman writes in his “Security Brief” blog in Konekt, al Qaeda “acts as a fast-moving entity that associates and dissociates itself with local elements while maintaining its global character.” Wiseman also outlines how al Qaeda’s current, decentralized strategy plays out: “a single trainer recruits others to form an al-Qaeda cell, the trainer will continue to travel and set up 3-5 autonomous cells in different locations. Only the trainer knows about the other cells and its members. Once these cells have been formed, the trainer will engage in a suicide operation, erasing the link between the cells.” This is al Suri’s vision, not bin Laden’s. Central al Qaeda is just to give an appearance of a major force of global jihad, not an operational strategy.

The type of terrorism that much of the Western world today is dealing with is homegrown terrorism, and the trend is continuing in that direction. On the flip side, because al Qaeda no longer has a central location from which to operate, a major 9/11-scale attack is more difficult for them to undertake. Interestingly, al Suri actually was opposed to the 9/11 attacks for that very reason; it led to the US assault on al Qaeda’s territory and the destruction of its operational headquarters. (Experts believe al Suri was unaware of planning for the 9/11 attacks, and his criticism came after the event.) Despite his objection, al Suri still wanted to publicize bin Laden as al Qaeda’s leader simply for appearances to help al Qaeda recruit using bin Laden’s star power.

Today, al Qaeda is more of a global ideology than anything else. When an “al Qaeda offshoot” claims an attack, it’s more likely that they simply support al Qaeda’s goal of global jihad rather than have actually worked with anyone in the group’s leadership. Terrorism analyst, Dr. Boaz Ganor, in an analysis piece in the Jerusalem Post writes that these offshoots, many of which are around the Arabian Peninsula and headquartered in Yemen “were more active in recent years and are perhaps more dangerous than the core al-Qaida group whose leadership was busy worrying about self-preservation.” Indeed, al Qaida’s core has been less active, but their followers continue in their path.

I couldn’t get too excited about bin Laden’s death, because, in the end, it doesn’t change much in the realm of global security and counter-terrorism. The death of a mass murderer is a good thing, but while bin Laden is gone, his violent vision of a global confrontation between Islam and the rest of the world lives on. And this ideological goal mixed with al Suri’s decentralized operational strategy has combined to give us the al Qaeda and homegrown terrorism that we know today. As Dr. Ganor writes, “Inspired by al-Qaida leaders, independent homegrown terrorists personally incite and initiate suicide operations but do so without direction from or operational connection to al-Qaida.”

While Osama bin Laden is dead, al Qaeda, its ideology, and the threat is poses, is certainly not.

Much of the information here stems from “Abu Musab Al Suri: Architect of the New Al Qaeda,” by Paul Cruickshank and Mohannad Hage Ali and can be accessed here.

Al Suri, pictured here, in Europe.

But promptly at 10:00 AM yesterday all I could hear was birds chirping, a slight breeze rustling the trees and the long whine of the air raid sirens. I never knew Tel Aviv could be so peaceful. No cars, construction, or shouting in the streets. Just air and a strange scream filling it.

The sirens, sounded every Holocaust Remembrance Day, are so fitting. It allows everyone, literally the entire country, to stop and think for a few minutes about the tragedy that befell this nation. The sirens also bring life to a halt. All human activity, the day-to-day routine stops and the earth has a deathly silence as if the Holocaust is still with us at that very moment. No one moves, no one lives. Everyone, except for the birds and the trees, is dead.

It’s strange how things so quickly return to normal. As the sirens started to wind down, I could start to hear the city’s hum returning to life. The second the sirens disappeared a cell phone rang. The man standing in front of me picked up the bag he placed on the car next to him and returned to his trip. The Hungarian embassy across the street went back to work, and cars started to pass. It’s not all a coincidence, of course. The person on the other end of the line of that phone ringing also heard the sirens and as they ended for him/her, they called their friend who happened to be my neighbor. The cars that started to pass had stopped at the previous intersection during the siren. A friend of mine who lives on my street two blocks down saw those cars stopped in their tracks from her balcony. Now they’ve returned to life and are on their way, passing me now.

It’s surreal how life can just stop on a dime and then resume without a second thought. Those minutes of silence were oddly quiet and dead, an abrupt end to life. What better way to commemorate the Holocaust, when European Jewry also came to a strange and abrupt end.

In Tel Aviv, pedestrians and a security guard at the Hungarian embassy stand still. (Photo credit: Ben Jaffe)

A man takes a break from his errands on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Tel Aviv, Israel. (Photo credit: Ben Jaffe)

The current Israeli weekend starts on Friday out of respect to the Jewish Sabbath, which begins at sundown that evening. Israel’s current weekend cheats the country out of a full day of leisure. Israel’s Friday is a day caught between two modes. It’s a day for errands and personal matters as the only non-work day that (some) shops are open, yet many banks and businesses are closed. It’s also a day for leisure, yet public transportation grinds to a halt at sundown, and many of those businesses that decided to open on Friday close early in the evening. As for Saturday, malls are closed and public transportation doesn’t start until the evening, giving the Israeli little time to shop or travel.

A switch to a Saturday-Sunday weekend would not just give Israelis more relaxation and family time, but the Israeli economy would also benefit. As a county with few natural resources, Israel’s economy relies upon the country’s ability to produce goods for export, as well as tourism. Although Israel’s hi-tech sector is a modern marvel, the country’s business relationships with American and European countries could continue to grow. But only working with foreign counterparts four days a week on Monday through Thursday, instead of five, hurts those connections. Israel is fortunate to be just two hours ahead of the United Kingdom and one hour ahead of Western Europe. With modern communication, Israel can be talking with its European colleagues all week if needed, but Israel’s current work week unnecessarily reduces the time Israeli companies are available to their European colleagues.

A major element of Israel’s growth and national survival is its ability to absorb Jewish immigrants from across the world. Of all the cultural differences between Israel and other countries, the one thing that so many olim “can just never get used to,” as I hear time and again from my fellow North Americans, is their lack of a free Sunday. This problem for potential olim has been recognized by others in addition to Shalom. The weekend switch was part of Yisrael B’Aliyah’s platform before they merged with Likud in 2003. Support also come from Habayit Hayehudi MK Zevulun Orlev who has also proposed the bill. Giving Israelis Sunday will remove one more obstacle for hesitant American and European Jews, an educated and wealthier demographic that is vital for Israel’s future.

Supporters of this bill fear the religious sector may reject the change because religious families need Fridays to prepare for Sabbath. However, according to Globes, Shalom has already presented the bill to the haredim and they do not plan to object. Some religious Israelis on an individual basis may be hesitant to give up their Fridays. From personal experience, as a religious Jew who worked in the United States before living in Israel, I can say the weekend in the Diaspora is much more relaxing than the one in Israel. Sabbath preparations simply need to be done before Friday, with the two or more hours after work on Friday left for the final touches. Religious Jews outside of Israel properly maintain a professional career Monday-Friday, and still observe Sabbath. Israeli Jews can do the same, especially in a country that already has an awareness of what Sabbath is. In fact, the religious have the most to gain by switching to a Saturday-Sunday weekend because they will add a full day to relax to their week.

Israel has so much time and money to gain by switching to a Saturday-Sunday weekend. It took the Christian world almost three centuries and a powerful Roman emperor to change their weekend. All Israel needs is an unrelenting Vice Prime Minister and some courage to make a change for the better.

“What makes a work “Jewish literature”? Does the author have to be Jewish? Does the novel or story need to focus on a Jewish issue? How do we define what falls under the category of “Jewish literature” and what does not?”

This was a very thought provoking question, and I started to think about it again as a similar, yet more complex issue has arisen within the Jewish world.

As colleges brought their fall semesters to a close before the cold and snowy winter gripped the United States, a very hot debate had started among Jewish campus groups.  The recent disagreement has been over whether campus Hillels in colleges across the world should allow all Jewish organizations to get access to their space, or not. This has brought the question of Jewishness back to mind, but this time the debate surrounds Jewish identity, not literature.

The debate picked up steam when the president and CEO of Hillel, Wayne Firestone, wrote an op-ed in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency defending Hillel’s decision to forbid the group Jewish Voices for Peace from using Hillel space on campuses across America. JVP holds campaigns to “divest from companies that specifically profit from the occupation” [in Israel/the Palestinian territories] and has a history of disrupting pro-Israel speakers, including Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu recently in a November 2010 speech. The debate, however, is not over the credibility of their tactics. Rather, the issue is that since JVP is an organization headed by Jews that covers a very Jewish issue – Israel – should it be able to use the Hillel’s space and be included under the organization’s umbrella? Just because it doesn’t fit into the pro-Israel mold doesn’t mean they should be excluded, they argue. A valid argument and complex issue indeed.

I argue that the sole criteria for an organization to be Jewish isn’t that it is led by Jews, or that it focuses on Jewish issues. As for Jewish leadership, JVP has that element, but it cannot be considered a Jewish cause. In fact, it’s an anti-Jewish cause. A program dedicated to telling people not to buy products from Jews cannot be considered Jewish, even if they use the perverse argument that this will somehow, someday, benefit Israel.

Furthermore, the logic behind the argument that the Hillel must open its door to all things Jewish is flawed. I witnessed firsthand the tense relationship between various groups in the Hillel on my campus. On the religious level, Conservative, Reform and Orthodox communities shared a small space and the proximity sometimes caused feelings of frustration over events, scheduling conflicts, space and funds. But due to cool heads and good old-fashioned tolerance, things worked smoothly and everyone, regardless of their background or religious outlook, got along. There was a common goal shared by all the groups, that of strengthening Jewish identity and connection, regardless of the differing religious outlooks. And underneath any internal conflict Jews may have, Israel has always been a unifier. Allowing groups such as JVP into the Hillel would remove one of the most important glues that binds modern American Jewish students together, especially at a time when so many have so little that keeps them connected to their Jewish identity. The pro-Israel communities of the Hillel would feel threatened by sharing space or funding with a group such as JVP, and friction would surely ensue as there is no bond that connects the two groups and no shared goals. If Firestone allowed anti-Israel groups into the confines of the Hillel, he would have destroyed the vitality of the Hillel and everything that it stood for.

Ben Sales of New Voices Magazine has come out against Firestone, arguing that he “betrayed the organization’s mission.” This disregards the fact that one of Hillel’s tenets is to support Israel and therefore Firestone is not betraying any mission of the organization. But the idea that Hillel be a place for all Jewish programming regardless of the group’s message should not be used a recipe for organizational suicide.

It’s difficult to ascertain exactly what makes a work of literature “Jewish”. But it’s a lot easier to figure out if a group is Jewish, or just calls itself Jewish in order to advance their political cause, especially if their cause is anti-Jewish. Arguing that advocating for divestment from Israel and staging events that question the legitimacy of the state is a pro-Israel campaign and a “Jewish” cause is just a ploy. These are anti-Jewish campaigns dressed in Jewish clothes. The Hillel does not need to open its doors to groups that will weaken the fibers of Jewish identity and damage the foundation of the Hillel. Allowing those groups would not strengthen the unity of the Jewish community, as they claim, but rather tear it apart.

Jewish Voices for Peace protestors at a JVP rally.

Dr. Evil: You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that cannot be done. Ah, would you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?
Number Two: Sea Bass.
Dr. Evil: [pause] Right.
Number Two: They’re mutated sea bass.
Dr. Evil: Are they ill tempered?
Number Two: Absolutely.
Dr. Evil: Oh well, that’s a start.

You may recognize this conversation from Austin Powers, but this conversation is not so funny once you realize that it actually transpired at the headquarters of the Mossad’s Division of Aquatic Technology. This Mossad plot was unveiled earlier this month and it is clear that this is just the beginning of a new wave of Israeli terror.

According to Egyptian sources, the Mossad is behind two recent schemes to destroy the tourism industry in Egypt, a major contributor to that country’s fragile economy. First, there was the fatal shark attack at a Red Sea resort on December 5th that killed a German tourist. This came four days after Russian divers were also attacked in the same area. Sharks are never sighted by Egypt’s Red Sea resorts, and two shark attacks on tourists smells very fishy. But don’t take my word for it:

“What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark (in the sea)… is not out of the question,” said South Sinai Governor Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shoush. Egyptian television also interviewed a “famous diver” who believes that sharks that are not native to the Red Sea were being “monitored [by Israel] to attack in Egypt’s waters only.” He’s an anonymous  “famous diver” on Egyptian television, so this theory is pretty much irrefutable.

But the Mossad was not done after their successful shark attack. This week an Israeli terror cell was discovered with the intentions of kidnapping Japanese and Chinese tourists in the Sinai peninsula with the same goal of undermining the Egyptian economy.

This clearly is only a test run by the Mossad. They’ve mastered the capability to train sharks to differentiate between Egyptian and non-Egyptian (i.e. Israeli) resorts, identify tourists at said resorts in order to incur the most economic damage possible, and attack with fatal results.

The next step: sharks with lasers. Nothing is more terrifying than evading a shark attack only to be burned by a laser beam attached to the creature’s head. According to my Egyptian sources (which are just as reliable as the “famous diver”), the sharks are being trained to aim their lasers at the arms and legs of tourists so they drown while keeping the torso intact. Special Mossad diving teams are on standby to then retrieve the limbless bodies to harvest their organs, a plot we are very familiar with.

Sharks attacking your enemy’s economy. A brilliant plot. The Elders of Zion would be proud.