Israeli Spyware Firm NSO Demands "Urgent" Meeting Amid Gaza War Lobbying Effort

theintercept.com

8 points·gehwartzen··2 comments

Part of me wonders if the US support is at least partially secured by whatever information has on US Gov officials via NSO. As close as NSO and Israel are I would suspect whatever NSO digs up via contracts with other state actors is also known to Israel and im sure a lot of that is compromising US officials information.

I remember this story [1] story from a few months ago that goes into more detail about NSOs most recent entanglement with the US gov.

[1] https://www.engadget.com/fbi-investigates-use-of-nso-spyware...

It's not needed. The US has a sincere interest in Israel. You don't need to threaten them into it.

Geopolitically, Israel is their only ally in a part of the world that is strategically and economically important. Religiously, there's a lot of sympathy, both from Jews and the (much larger) set of evangelical Christians. In general, Americans are on Israel's side when it comes to the Palestinians; the US has a deep loathing of terrorism associated with Islamic fundamentalism. (Especially after 9/11, but even before.)

Israel has a weird way of treating that, sometimes pissing off their last friend in the world. They probably do have kompromat via NSO. But they don't really need it to get American politicians on their side. They probably keep it around Just In Case, but I doubt that's going on here. Flaunting it would make their position worse, not better.

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