If Israel does as China does, the thinking goes, Israel-bashing will dissipate.
Tel Aviv, October 6 - Ministry of Defense officials refused to deny reports today that the Jewish State's international intelligence and operations arm has granted preliminary approval to a plan that calls for the capture and imprisonment in hard conditions of a sect of Muslims living mainly in China, where the government there has placed thousands of those Muslims in "reeducation" and concentration camps rife with torture and human rights violations, and has faced no material backlash from the rest of the world for those policies - prompting thoughts here that the Mossad might try to immunize itself against the constant torrent of international criticism by following the same path.
High-level diplomatic and intelligence figures in Israel provided no counterindication when asked about the likelihood of an Uighur-kidnapping initiative; the refusal to deny the existence of such an operation, however preliminary its status, has sparked speculation in analyst circles regarding when, rather than whether, such a move might take place in the coming months. An analyst familiar with Israel's intelligence processes assessed the motive for the measure as an attempt to prevent Israel-bashing: China perpetrates mass-incarceration and torture of Uighurs, and faces no real international censure economically, diplomatically, or culturally, neither for those abuses nor for its numerous other repressive and oppressive policies. Some Israeli officials, the analyst explained, proposed doing just as China does, and perhaps then the disproportionate negative attention Israel gets from NGOs and hostile groups will dissipate.
"It's sound thinking," observed the analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to compromise his sources in the Mossad, Ministry of Defense, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "The main challenge, as I see it, lies in gaining penetration into Uighur areas of China to conduct the abductions, and then the extractions. The imprisonment and torture parts I think fall on the easier side of things, once the Uighurs are 'safely' in Israel."
Experts also noted that considering the difficulty of the operation, Israeli must have settled on Uighurs as the target population only after ruling out more-convenient minorities, in countries other than China. "The obvious choices, closer to home, are various ethnic groups in Africa," noted Tenn Denschuss, a retired Danish diplomat and now a consultant. "But the way those groups get treated doesn't indicate that abusing them confers any sort of immunity from opprobrium, because those countries would be treated badly regardless. My guess is Israel made the assessment that only China's treatment of Uighurs fits the hypothesis, and if it comes to conducting the mission, that's whom it will target."
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