“CIA report: Israel will fall in 20 years.” That is the title of an email that I received 48 hours ago. Pretty sensational too. My first reaction, I admit, was: So that’s what Chas Freeman and like-minded friends of his must be cooking up in American intelligence circles. Apparently a study had been carried out and “made available only to a certain number of individuals.” And who was leaking it? Someone by the name of Franklin Lamb, described here as an international lawyer, in an interview with Press TV.

That same evening I happened to be giving a talk and I mentioned this email. Shocks all round. On proper inspection, however, the quoted language was certainly suspect. What projects the demise of Israel in this report is “the looming spectre of colonial Apartheid” — a phrase lifted straight from the loony Left lexicon. The rapid disintegration of South Africa and the Soviet Union offers precedents for what would occur in Israel — a notion also current on the loony Left. Israelis are said to be applying for visas and fleeing abroad, with California or even Russia as their destination. Having supported Israel for so many years, the American public “may not take it any more.” That, of course, is the deepest wish-fulfilment of every anti-Zionist and Muslim hater of Israel. Anything is possible these days, but could the CIA really have put its hand to anything of the kind?

Well, no, it didn’t. Press TV exists to promote Iran. Franklin Lamb may or may not be real. The internet carries the information that someone of that name is associated with the American University of Beirut, and also wrote a rather childish primer in praise of Hizbollah, which is a strange thing for a real, live American to be doing. What we’re dealing with here is disinformation pure and simple. The usual smearing of Israel is made that much more believable by being put into the purported mouth of the CIA. In Tehran and Beirut they must be congratulating themselves on this wheeze and hoping that it will become an established fable manipulating public opinion in their favour.