Page 18 - TORCH #1 - Autumn 2015

ISRAELI SPY
DOLPHINS
AND OTHER CONSPIRACY THEORIES
In August of this year, Hamas reported they had captured an ‘Israeli spy dolphin’.
Hamas’ naval commandos captured the animal during a training mission in the sea off the coast of the Gaza strip and brought it ashore. However, no photographs of the alleged marine secret agent have been released.
marine biologists to track sharks, not to remote-control them.
In May 2012, a dead bird known as a European bee-eater was discovered by villagers with an Israeli leg-band in south- east Turkey. Villagers worried that the bird may have carried a micro-chip from Israel to spy on the area and alerted local officials. Turkey’s agriculture ministry examined the corpse of the bird and assured villagers it is common to equip migratory birds with rings in order to track their movements, but not before a Turkish counter-terrorism unit got involved.
There are many other stories like this involving tagged birds. Amr Yossef,
Adjunct Professor of Political Science at
the American University in Cairo, wrote
that these conspiracy theories result from
a misconception among neighbouring countries that Israel is all-powerful. He wrote, “Notwithstanding that such allegations have no factual or logical grounds, no one stops to ask why should an Israel facing serious security challenges (Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.) busy itself with that kind of stuff.”
Whilst these accusations are somewhat humorous, it is important to note these misconceptions about Israel. For the general public along with media outlets of some of Israel’s closest neighbours to jump to such conclusions shows the way in which Israel is sadly perceived.
The dolphin was described as an Israeli innovation for the purpose of “assassinating Hamas naval commandos”. Al-Quds newspaper reported the dolphin had
been “stripped of its will” and turned
into “a murderer” by the Israeli security services. They went on to declare that the development of such a weapon showed the extent of Israel’s anger and indignation at the formation of Hamas’ naval combat unit.
Whilst Hamas marked its first naval victory over Israel, everyone else looked on in bemusement. Surprisingly, however, these outlandish ‘zoological conspiracy theories’ are not new. Here are just a few of the other incidents:
In 2010, Egyptian officials accused Israel
of carrying out shark attacks in Egyptian waters using remote controlled sharks. The accusation was that Mossad (Israel’s secret service) was using these sharks in an attempt to affect tourism in Egypt. It was alleged that the GPS tracking device found on one of the sharks was in fact a “guiding device” planted by Israeli agents.
Describing the conspiracy connection to Israel as “sad”, Professor Mahmoud Hanafy, a marine biologist at Suez Canal University, pointed out that GPS devices are used by
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