the eeriest video ever?

Our faculty lounge always has the television set to BBC or al-Jazeera, and whichever it was today, I saw a few clips of that closed circuit TV footage of the January hit squad in Dubai that killed a top Hamas commander in his hotel room.

What I didn’t realize is that there was 27 MINUTES’ WORTH OF CLOSED CIRCUIT FOOTAGE of the hit team arriving at the airport, performing surveillance, trailing their target from the airport to the hotel, staking out the hallway, etc. At one point the target even seems mildly worried by one of the guys hanging out near the elevator (and rightly so; he should have listened to his instincts). It’s just about the eeriest video montage I’ve ever seen, all the more so due to its absolute silence.

My first thought is… Whoever organized this probably isn’t too happy at what an incredibly sophisticated piece of video was produced by UAE State Security. As far as I know, this is unprecedented. We all know we’re being filmed most of the time by now, but the fact that they were able to find so many of the team members so quickly amidst all the closed circuit footage that must exist in Dubai… I suppose computers assisted in doing this, but it’s still an unbelievable work of public outreach by the authorities in Dubai.

Anyway, there’s no actual violence in the video, so don’t let that concern stop you from watching it. It’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen: real-life espionage in progress, all leading up to an assassination.