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Comment by 1oooqooq | Hacker News Reader

I guess we now know what intelligence org had the know how for supply chain attacks we we're thinking impossible a few years ago... Thank god they are our allies. :)

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Israel is not really an ally. They routinely spy on the US, and according the the CIA, spy on us as aggressively as the Chinese and Russians do. During the Cold war, they used intel as a bargaining chip and passed classified material to the Soviets. Their nuclear program was started primarily with stolen radioactive material that they exfiltrated from the US. These stories go on and on and on, and they're just the ones we know about. Jonathan Pollard was hardly the only spy, but it was the most high profile.

It's naive to call them an ally. It's an extremely complicated relationship, made more toxic by the extreme power that AIPAC holds over our politicians. Every president since LBJ has been duped, outwitted and embarrassed by Israel. Frenemy would be more accurate.

The USA spies all the time on everybody so by your own def they should be not really an ally of anybody.

I don't think the US is really first tier peer-allies with anyone, all friendly nations are on the spectrum of assets we utilize to cultural vassals that operate as reputationally independent extensions of the American empire.

The primary reason why Israel is widely considered an ally is their extensive intel network across Arabia and possibly half of Africa. No one matches the Mossad and the semi-private private intel industry of Israel in terms of capabilities.

Another reason is that Israel is a relatively stable, Western aligned democracy in a sea of dictatorships, kingdoms, fiefdoms and failed states... which are all organized in OPEC. The US needs a powerful Israel as a check-and-balance against OPEC - a credible threat that if OPEC ever repeats another Oil Crisis, they'll get putsched away.

> They routinely spy on the US, and according the the CIA, spy on us as aggressively as the Chinese and Russians do.

So what, I'm German, y'all spied on Schröder and Merkel as well, and it's only thanks to Snowden we actually know of that.

But OPEC is not a military organization. It is just minor countries trying to agree on a fair and just price of oil.

> It is just minor countries trying to agree on a fair and just price of oil.

Well, and that power can be abused as well, particularly for a military that relies on fossil fuels as extensively as the US. Additionally, there's not just the "classic" way of fighting wars (i.e. shooting stuff and blowing up stuff), but there's also economic warfare - and hiking the price of a vital good in war is an extremely effective weapon.

Don't all agencies spy on each other? Few years the BND (Germany) collaborated with the CIA (America) to spy on other nations

Good thing the US doesn’t spy on allies. What hypocrites they would be!

Except not in NATO, Five Eyes, or even a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In real terms, they're definitely among the more problematic allies. Compared with Germany, UK, France, Australia, Canada, etc.

This is a blatant lie. For example, as part of operation Rubikon Germany and the US spied on Spain, a NATO ally, among other targets. It's commonplace to spy on each other.

I don't understand the 'lie' part here. How is what I stated false? The rest of what you said doesn't invalidate my points.

Nothing they said was a lie though. Yes, everyone spies on each other, but what matters is the level of aggression. Israel ranks up there with China and Russia, and that's an issue.

And it's absolutely true that they did not sign the nuclear non proliferation treaty, and then went on to do nuclear tests off the coast of South Africa in the 1979 Vela incident. And that provided a huge motivation for Israel's enemies (which are absolutely anti-US) to seek nuclear weapons, which caused huge regional instability since then and threatened US national security.

Yes, you can talk about how it's hypocritical that the US gets to do these things and nobody else does. And in a sense it is, but the fact is that at the moment, the US effectively rules the world for better or worse. And it is a fact that Israel's behavior is causing instability that threatens themselves and the US.

Israel is only Israel's ally.

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