Responsible mainly for intelligence collection and covert operations, including paramilitary activities, it is one of the three institutions in the Israeli Intelligence Community. The other two are known as Aman and Shin Bet tasked for military intelligence and internal security respectively. Together, these three agencies are responsible for a long string of covert operations including assassinations of opponents, spying on friends and foes alike and tracking down and killing the Nazis of the yore.

On January 19, 2010, life was snuffed out of one Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his hotel room in Dubai. Traveling without bodyguards, he was en route to Bangkok. Allegedly, Mossad was on his spoor from Damascus, tracking him finally to his hotel room in Dubai. A team of at least 27 suspects, carrying fake or fraudulently obtained passports from various nations, seven of which assumed the names of Israeli dual citizens, worked in tandem to carry out the hit. So professional was the hit that for days Mabhouh's death was ascribed to natural causes.

According to a detailed report in The Daily Mail on Sunday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had personally congratulated members of the Mossad team that allegedly killed Mabhouh ahead of their departure to Dubai.

The Mossad normally conducts its tasks flawlessly. Traces of its involvement usually do not surface for years. Not this time, however. The whole exercise, though successful, started stinking to high heavens within days.

UAE, a tiny oil rich emirate in whose city Dubai the hit was carried out, broke the news of the assassination and that forged Irish, British, German, Australian and French passports were used by some of the suspects in the slaying of the Hamas commander. The UAE, an otherwise pacifist country, has bared its teeth at Israel and continues to pull layers off the ugly deed with each passing day.

Israel neither confirms nor denies the killing. Mossad chief Meir Dagan, in the meanwhile, sees no reason to resign over assassination in Dubai, and Prime Minister Netanyahu is unlikely to ask him to, according to a close associate of the Israeli spymaster. World embassies, however, continue to reverberate from the incidence.

The British Embassy in Israel says a special police investigator has been flown in to meet with the dual British-Israeli nationals whose British passports were used in the assassination. Israeli ambassador to London Ron Prosor met the head of Britain's diplomatic service, Peter Ricketts, after being called to a meeting at the Foreign Office. Britain has publicly urged Israel to cooperate fully with its investigation into the apparent use of counterfeit British passports by suspected Israeli assassins.

Ireland followed Britain in summoning its Israeli ambassador to explain how passport details of three Irish citizens were used by an Israeli group of suspected assassins. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has condemned the assassination of Mabhouh and called for the truth about the killing to be established.

The suspected 27-person hit team also includes three individuals using allegedly fake Australian passports sparking an outrage among Australians. The Israeli ambassador to Australia was promptly sent for and reportedly warned that the Australian government expects Israel's full cooperation in the investigation. The Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith was quoted saying by The Australian newspaper, "I made it crystal clear to the [Israeli ambassador] that if the results of that investigation cause us to come to the conclusion that the abuse of Australian passports was in any way sponsored or condoned by Israeli officials, then Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend."

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd went a notch higher according to the local news media. He warned, "We will not be silent on this matter.....Any state that has been complicit in use or abuse of the Australian passport system, let alone for the conduct of an assassination, is treating Australia with contempt, and there will therefore be action by the Australian government in response."

With the assured backing of its time tested patron, the United States of America that shoots down UN resolutions even on bad wording for its protégé and for the moment stands silently by, whether or not Israel will heed these warnings is anybody's guess. According to anofficially acknowledged list, despite similar warnings in the past, Mossad's list of accomplished assassinations is rather long. Here are just a few prominent names on that list;

Abdel Wael Zwaiter, a Libyan embassy employee and a PLO representative was killed in Rome on Oct 16, 1972. Ghassan Kanafani a Palestinian writer was killed in Beirut that same year. Wadie Haddad, a PFLP (Polpular Front for Liberation of Israel) commander, was killed in Germany in 1978. Ali Hassan Salameh, a high-ranked PLO leader, was killed in 1979 by a car bomb in Beirut. Zuheir Mohsen, leader of the pro-Syria faction of the PLO, was shot in front of a casino in Cannes in 1979. Yehia El-Mashad , an Egyptian nuclear scientist, was killed by Mossad agents in his room at the Méridien Hotel in Paris in 1980. Mamoun Meraish, a senior PLO official, was shot in his car by Mossad agents from their motorcycle in Athens in 1983. Atef Bseiso, a Palestinian official, was shot several times in the head at point blank range by two Mossad gunmen in his hotel room in Paris in 1992.

Hatikva, Israel's national anthem, inspires millions of Jewish people the world over. Its first four lines read:

As long as deep in the heart, The soul of a Jew yearns, And forward to the East To Zion, an eye looks

Many eyes, some dead some still alive, now look to Zion and its patron to explain how one country can act as an international thug, take another people's land, kill them when they struggle to get a piece of it back, stop at virtually nothing, and, this time, draw five other countries into the bloody games of espionage that it plays and gets not a rap on the knuckles where a sledge hammer is long due.