Enemy mine

EVERY now and then there seems to emerge a vague if transient realisation in some small circles of American polity that Israel may not be their absolutely best buddy of all time ever. The issue of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 in which 34 US soldiers were killed — suppressed and spared from scrutiny as it was — pops up now and then, as it did a few days back on the anniversary of the attack when US Rep Thomas Massie brought up the attack on the floor of the US House of Representatives and spoke about how this was a deliberate and planned assault by the Israelis and not, as Israel has long argued, a case of ‘mistaken identity’.’ Survivors of the attack have long argued this, with Richard Brooks, the Liberty’s chief engineer echoing other survivors by saying “it was a deliberate attack. They knew who we were. They wanted to sink us”. Naturally, the usual suspects popped up, calling it a conspiracy theory and accusing Massie and others of — you guessed it — antisemitism. After all, how could the self-declared Jewish state ever work against its greatest benefactor?

But just a week before Massie spoke came another report, this time purportedly from the US Department of Defence, warning that the threat of Israeli spying on the US had gone from ‘high’ to ‘critical’, which is the highest such level. Israel, the report claimed, has been working overtime not only to collect information on US military personnel in the Gulf but also singled out high-level personnel such Steve Witkoff who was the lead negotiator in the nuclear talks along with the Pentagon’s top policy official Elbridge Colby and his deputy Michael DiMino. As part of these efforts, attempts were also made by Israel’s Shin Bet to plant listening devices of US secret service vehicles. US defence personnel working in Israel also reported discovering spyware on their phones.

It’s by no means the first time Israel has tried to snoop on the US, despite a 1951 agreement to do nothing of the sort.

The report also states that Israeli spying was stepped up in late 2024 when the first reports of a rift between the Joe Biden administration and Israel began to emerge and only increased with the election of Donald Trump. Naturally, Israel denies all this.

America has always been a prime target for Israeli espionage.

This isn’t an aberration, despite having agreed not to spy on each other, America has always been a prime target for Israeli espionage. Sometimes the secrets obtained were military, such as when Tel Aviv used the services of Jewish Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan to obtain nuclear secrets for Israel. Milchan wasn’t shy about his involvement, having later said to Robert DeNiro: “Yeah I did that. Israel’s my country.”

Obtaining information about US policy towards Middle Eastern states, and especially Iran, has always been a priority; in 2006, Lawrence Franklin, a former Defence Department official, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for handing over classified documents related to US policy on Iran to two Jewish members of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee which, apart from its main job of bribing US politicians, apparently also has a sideline in espionage. Defeat is an orphan and AIPAC fired the two employees and the US government obediently dropped charges against them without even the token exercise of a plea bargain. As for Franklin, his sentence was commuted to 10 months of house arrest and 100 hours of community service. And everyone lived happily ever after.

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