Tweet about this, Hillary – From Ma’an (and Arabic and Hebrew sources):

TEL AVIV, Israel (Ma’an) — An Israeli company is recruiting mercenaries to support Moammar Gadhafi’s efforts to suppress an uprising against his regime, an Israeli news site said Tuesday.

Citing Egyptian sources, the Hebrew-language news site Inyan Merkazi said the company was run by retired Israeli army commanders.

The report claims that many high-profile former Israeli officers have been illegally trading weapons in several African nations, and have faced interrogations over their activities in the past.

The news site said the head of the company recently met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli intelligence chief Aviv Cokhavi. It added that the officials all approved the company’s recruitment of mercenaries to help Gadhafi.

The leader’s brutal crackdown has killed at least 1,000 Libyans so far, human rights groups say.

According to the report, Israeli officials approved the recruitment out of fears that if toppled, Gadhafi would be replaced by an “extremist Islamic regime.”

During Gadhafi’s four-decade rule of the north African state, he has been one of Israel’s most vocal critics.

Company representatives recently flew to Chad to discuss the matter with a high-ranking Libyan intelligence officer Abduallah Sanusi, the report said. During the meeting, Sanusi agreed to pay the company to recruit up to 50,000 mercenaries from African countries, according to the news site.

So, as we contemplate sending in U.S. forces to battle these mercenaries provided – in part – by “our greatest ally in the Middle East” – will the U.S. media just let it happen and bury the fact that Americans are being killed by people hired by Israelis?

Don’t hold your breath.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hCOng1GCTQ

Update – Friday 3:00 pm PST:

1. Gordon Duff has taken up this subject at Veterans Today.  Duff has a mixed reputation on the web, but sometimes his articles are fully informed, and on some intelligence-related matters, valuable.

In his long, rambling article on the Israeli role in the mercenary hire, which he does not appear to question, Duff describes a long-term covert relationship between Libya and Israel.  Here’s his description of what is going on now:

Though Israeli advisors and intelligence personnel have been on the ground in Tripoli for some time, there are questions as to whether the Gaddafi’s regime can hold on until substantial aid arrives, particularly in light of increasing pressure for a US strike, widely called for,  bringing Gaddafi’s rule to an abrupt end.  Sources in the region tell us:

“Israeli military advisors have been “in place” since the first and Mossad teams who have long used Libya as a base of operations in Africa are working to “decapitate” rebel leadership.”

2.  There have been no credible followups to Thursday’s reporting on the subject of an Israeli relationship to mercenary hiring for Libya.  I posed the following questions as a comment to marsdragon’s post on this same set of subjects:

1. Does Gadhafi use middle men to bring in mercenaries?

2. Has he done this in the past, and is he using such companies now?

3. What are the firms used by him, if it is the case that he has employed them?

4. Stolen or forged passports have been confiscated from captured or intercepted mercenaries. How were these acquired? Are they being listed somewhere?

5. How are the mercenaries from Chad or other Saharan border countries getting in?

6. Where are their points of departure?

7. Whose aircraft are being used?

8. Where are the aircraft landing in Libya or adjacent to Libya?

9. Is Gadhafi using private contractors from any Western nations or Israel to shore up his regime?