Hacker News Reader

Comment by c3534l | Hacker News Reader

Actively working against US foreign policy goals seems to be a pretty egregious act. If proven true, that seems like it would seriously erode or destroy the US alliance with Israel. There's a lot of institutional weight towards support of Israel, but that action would make them an enemy of US foreign interests.

View on HN

"a 2013 National Intelligence Estimate on cyber threats “ranked Israel the third most aggressive intelligence service against the US” behind only China and Russia" [1]

"Israel among the U.S.’s most threatening cyber-adversaries and as a “hostile” foreign intelligence service." [2]

"Israel’s snooping upset White House because information was used to lobby Congress to try to sink a deal" [3]

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-nsa-document-highlights-is...

[2] https://theintercept.com/2015/03/25/netanyahus-spying-denial...

[3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-spied-on-iran-talks-1427...

Eh it kind of makes sense. Of course they’re going to do their best to spy on America when so much depends on how Americans and their government feel about Israel.

They aren't just spying for info. They are spying to manipulate US policy. so they should be more careful about how the US electorate feels about them.

Well, yea. They're going to try and manipulate American policy because so much rides on how Americans feel about Israel. Certainly they should be careful to not stir up angst and get cut off.

I'd also like to add that this is unfortunately very common. Everybody in the world wants Americans to think a certain way because of the amount of military and economic power the country wields. This ranges from "come visit Mexico" to "the Palestinians are terrorists" to China using Tik Tok (or Russian disinformation campaigns against vaccines) to manipulate people into pro-X stances.

The whole world has turned into an ad.

US is divided internally on how to go forward with the JCPOA. Assuming it was Israel, I don't think the government could muster up enough support to punish a long-time ally for something like this .

I suspect most of the US intelligence community is happy with the attack if it successfully destroyed some of Iran's nuclear capability.

It actually increases the likelihood that they will rejoin the JCPOA under the original limits.

what the policy makers actually say behind closed doors may be very different from their public statements. And i imagine the State Department, being a human agency, don't have a single, moonlithic, agenda.

Republicans will never back down on Israel, regardless of how they affect out policies.

you do know that the support of israel in US politics is completely bipartisan, right?

If not, you should read up on AIPAC and who speaks at their events year after year.

It is, and they promulgate a complete fiction on the importance of keeping Israel close to the US

Tell them to go cozy up to Russia, make good on that ‘threat’, have fun with that

Sort of. The "Patriot" Right and the "Progressive" Left are less pro-Israel than the mainstream Republicans and Democrats that cater to the donor class (and Republicans who cater to the Armageddon-seeking class.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com