Final_Judgment

[410] Final Judgment 507
According to Deacon, it was in this period (which, we will note,
followed the Kennedy assassination) that "China gradually became
disillusioned with what it regarded as 'bourgeois military Arab regimes' in
the Middle East and Chinese support for Palestine guerrillas eased off in the
early seventies when Peking's indictments of Israel seemed somewhat
moderated." 1025
"In 1973," Deacon pointed out, "an Israeli double-agent was reported to
have been effectively master-minded Israeli-Chinese intelligence
operations in Africa. 1026 And in light of Israel's intimate ties with factions
in French intelligence (not to mention the French role in Israel's nuclear
development) it is more than of passing interest to note, as pointed out by
Deacon, that: "In Khartoum in the early seventies, the Chinese Intelligence
Service was credited with having established some unusual links with both
the French Intelligence in neighboring territories, north and south, and with
Israel." 1027
It is very clear that there were many areas in which Israel and Red
China had mutual interests. Richard Deacon said, quite correctly, that one
of those areas was "in a joint effort to thwart Russian influence in the
Middle East" 1028 which, in the coming years, led the two countries to
engage in a wide variety of endeavors even while, publicly, Israel and the
Asian communist giant were ostensibly at odds.
For example, as noted by Benjamin Beit-Hallahman, by the 1970's, the
combination of Israel, Saudi Arabia and China were supporting the anti-
Soviet forces in Afghanistan. 1029 Both China and its enemy, Taiwan, also
joined Israel in supplying arms to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. 1030
In supplying arms to Iran, Israel's logic, according to Israel's thenambassador
to the United States, speaking in 1982, was "to keep channels
to the Iranian military open, with the ultimate aim of bringing down the
Khomeini regime." 1031 According to Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, "Israel
wished Iran to win against Iraq, which is an enemy Arab state." 1032
THE MOSSAD AND CHINA
Israeli historians Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, writing in their history of
Israeli intelligence summarized the nature of the covert relationship
between Israel and Red China as it was conducted through the Mossad:
"Acting widely as an alternative diplomatic service, the Mossad has
opened doors and maintained relations with dozens of countries which
prefer that these connections not be known . . . The Mossad simply gives
the other nations an easy way out—receiving military, medical, and
agricultural advice from the over-enthusiastic Israelis without risking
economic or political boycotts by the Arab world . . .
"Both the spy-diplomats and the official diplomats of Israel are thrilled, in
fact, when a foreign nation does agree to establish open relations with the
Jewish state . . . In most cases, however, Israel has to live with the reality