Israel Engages in Espionage and Treachery Against Her Allies

Despite the fact that the United States has been more than generous with Israel, it has not always been appreciated, which is one more reason why Canada has to be careful, when pledging our undying and unconditional love to a foreign country.

A final reason to question Israel’s strategic value is that it does not behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and to refrain from ‘targeted assassinations’ of Palestinian leaders). Israel has provided sensitive military technology to potential rivals like China, in what the State Department inspector-general called ‘a systematic and growing pattern of unauthorised transfers’. According to the General Accounting Office, Israel also ‘conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any ally’. (1)

Jonathan Pollard and Israeli Espionage

Johanthan Pollard is a former civilian intelligence analyst who was convicted of spying for Israel, receiving a life sentence in 1987. Several activist groups, and high-profile Israeli politicians, have lobbied for his release, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has again written to president Obama. According to the Washington Post:

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent a letter Tuesday to President Obama, formally asking for the release of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the American entenced to life in prison in 1987 for spying for Israel in a case that shook U.S.-Israeli relations.

The CIA has consistently opposed releasing Pollard, as have U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials who have argued that clemency would show unacceptable leniency toward a spy who had turned over tens of thousands of pages of classified information. Pollard, who worked for the Navy as a civilian intelligence analyst, began spying for Israel after he met an Israeli officer on leave in the United States in 1984. He was arrested outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington 18 months later and is currently imprisoned in North Carolina.

Pollard operated at the same time as another spy Ben-ami Kadish, who pleaded guilty to charges of passing classified information to Israel during the same period . Much of the information gathered by these men was passed on to the Soviet Union in return for more exit visas for Soviet Jews.

In 2004 it was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had passed classified information about U.S. policy towards Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying organization in the U.S, while he was working for the Defense Department. Two former employees of AIPAC (Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman) also faced charges (that would later be dropped) that they assisted him in the AIPAC espionage scandal and passing classified national defense information to an Israeli diplomat Naor Gilon.

And yet during this time, the U.S. continued channelling money and military hardware to Israel. "Israel is hardly the only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value." (1)


And any mention of Israel and 9/11, garners accusations of buying into a Jewish conspiracy, and yet even Fox News ran a four part series on Israeli spies who failed to share vital information before the attacks.

Some 60 Israelis, who federal investigators have said are part of a long-running effort to spy on American government officials, are among the hundreds of foreigners detained since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Fox News has learned. The Israelis, a handful of whom are described as active Israeli military or intelligence operatives, have been detained on immigration charges or under the new Patriot Anti-Terrorism Law. Federal investigators said some of them failed polygraph questions inquiring about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.

There is no indication the Israelis were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance and not shared it. A highly placed investigator told Fox News there are "tie-ins," but when asked for details flatly refused to describe them. "Evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified, I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It is classified information," the source said.

Bringing up any of this does not make you anti-Semitic, it just makes you distrustful of a foreign nation with an agenda. I think we have a right to question their motives, because it's pretty clear that they would not give us the same undying support we are giving them.

Sources:

1. The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, By: John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, London Review of Books, March 23, 2006