An explosive new memoir by a former Swedish secret agent, Gunnar Ekberg, claims that the Israeli Mossad worked with Sweden’s ultra-secretive intelligence agency IB in the 1970s to infiltrate the latter’s leftist organizations and identify “subversive elements,” and in the process the Mossad offered to kill a prominent Swedish intellectual.

“They’ll Die Anyway” chronicles the relationship as one where the Mossad aided the Swedes and the Swedes passed along information on Palestinian organizations in Sweden. The activist and journalist in question is Jan Guillou who was very active in the Palestinian movement at the time and remains a critique of Israel occupation and America’s foreign policy to this day.

Ekberg describes a conversation he had where his intelligence chief asked “what do we do about Jan” after the journalist revealed the existence of the IB; which at the time was a national security and lead the IB to fall into panic. Ekberg then informed his superior that “our Jerusalem friends offered to ‘take over’ his case,” i.e. to kill him. Ekberg then told his superior to decline the offer at which point the superior informer Ekberg that he already did, “I told the Israelis we don’t kill people in Sweden.”

Neither IB nor the Mossad have commented on the book and Jan Guillou has voiced doubt that the Mossad ever planned to kill them. “I’m not know as a defender of Israel or of the Mossad, but, in this case, the notion they offered to take me out is absurd,” Guillou stated.

He added that Ekberg may have just wanted “to squeeze [his] name into the book, along with the word “murder” because it’ll attract attention and publicity.” That may be so, but it is not beyond the Mossad to kill innocent people - intellectuals or lay - who express solidarity with the Palestinians in either the Middle East or Scandinavia.

In 1972, the Mossad detonated a car bomb that killed at the time the preeminent Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani and his 14-year old niece. Why? Ghassan never held a gun in his life, he never joined a Palestinian resistance group and he never advocated violence; he was an intellectual who kept the spirit of the Palestinian people alive through his short stories - his “Men In the Sun” is a loved classic to this day - and the paper he founded: al-Hurriyyah. Ghassan meant the word to the Palestinians. And because of that, because he gave voice to his people, the Mossad killed him - and did not mind killing his niece alongside - in an effort to demoralize the Palestinian people.

Ghassan Kanafani

Israel sent a letter bomb to Bassam Abu Sharif, a journalist for the PFLP at the time, that left him with scars - four fingers lost, half-deaf and half-blind - that he continues to live with.

Then there is Anis Sayigh. Sayigh was not involved in any Palestinian group - resistance-based or otherwise. He received his doctorate from Cambridge and went on to found the first Palestinian think tank in Beirut. A diligent researcher - he wrote 20 books on Palestine and the Arab world - he was an inconvenience for Israel which wanted and still wants to destroy Palestinian identity and culture. Attacking Palestine’s poets, journalists and writers who give voice to the struggle, write about the present cause and document the history was supposed to subdue the Palestinian people - or so Israel thought. But it just makes Palestinians stronger and they continue to march ahead. Sayigh was the victim of three Israeli letter bombs that have left his hands nearly entirely torn off.

And, finally, there is Ali Bushiki. On July 21st, 1973, while laying down next to his pregnant wife by a swimming pool Bushiki was assassinated by the Mossad. Why? What did Ali do? Ali was a Moroccan waiter working in Norway. The Mossad mistook him for Abu Hasan Salamah [which they thought co-planned the Munich killings; which he did not even know about which shows the double-incompetence of the Mossad.] Ali’s death led the Norwegian police to actually track down and arrest the two Mossad agents who killed Bushiki, but in a secret agreement with the Israeli government - and this was only a few decades removed from the Holocaust so there was a lot of Western guilt that Israel cynically manipulated - the two terrorists were released. A Moroccan waiter killed in front of his expecting wife. And the Mossad never even sent the soon-to-be-mother an apology and/or monetary compensation.

This is what the Mossad is made of. Guillou is giving them too much credit by putting it past them.