Mossad Australian Passport Scam - How not to win friends and influence countries

[Bigfella]

To be completely honest, I've got a lot of friends in Australia that I met during my travels, and I also met a lot of Germans, Brits and Irishmen, the main groups of people whose passports were used. Out of all my friends, only 3 or 4 had even heard of the hit, and after I explained what happened, the vast majority of all my friends didn't really care that their country's passports were used.

Yes, we choose our friends by how close their opinions are to ours, but I haven't heard anything in the news of any massive uproars by civilians of said countries protesting the usage of their passports. Most civilians are perfectly content to let their governments handle these kind of things.

BR,

Don't want to get in the way here, but I think there is a point in here worth addressing. I don't think the issue here is public 'uproar'. There probably won't be one. As issues in the public mind go this isn't a big one, but it doesn't have to be to do Israel damage.

As you are no doubt aware, Israel has image problems (fairly or otherwise - not the issue here). This adds a potential negative, if only a small one. The fact that it is necessary to explain anything is immediately an issue because many/most of those who find out about the use of passports won't hear the explanation - it will take more time than they can be bothered with. Better not to create the problem in the first place (ie, use someone else's passports).

The second issue here is probably more problematic. The people who will probably be most p1ssed off about this are actually the people in a position to cause Israel the most problems - politicians & government officials. They are much more likely to get upset about the misuse of their official documents. They are the ones who handle the relationship between the two nations. They are the ones who might feel that they are being disrespected by a nation they have strongly supported in an unfriendly world.

Few people are going to weep for our dead terrorist, but it strikes me that the potential irritation to friendly nations was unnecessary.