Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say | Hacker News Reader

Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say

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I don't think I've ever seen in all of my wide understanding of history, such a tiny state successfully make an empire its vassal. Truly an astounding feat. It would be highly entertaining if it didn't bode poorly for humanity.

I don't like how Americans dismiss their own agency in this all. This is not being forced on us by Israel. A huge and underdiscussed reason why the US and Israel have the relationship they do is because of the roughly 100m American Evangelicals that want it that way. That's also why the GOP is seen as the party more favorable to Israel (not that the Democrats are necessarily adversarial, but they clearly aren't as agreeable as a whole).

It's not American evangelicals. It's been a long campaign and the evangelicals are still being targeted by Israel because no one else is left, but there aren't enough American evangelicals to swing things.

Not to mention, it often comes down to primary voters, to say nothing of Hollywood/media blacklists

> the Democrats are necessarily adversarial, but they clearly aren't as agreeable as a whole).

Democrats only changed recently. For some decades before that, the Israel lobby had significant sway over them (including allowing dems to publicly admit certain things).

All of it was done by Americans. It's just that most of them weren't really loyal to America. All those pro Israel lobby groups are over here, not there.

It’s reminiscent of Dune: - Small devoted religious sect seeds messiah myths in the distant land for generations, so that in their time of need, they can tap of this devotion from “the people in the south” to fight on their behalf

If the Jews invented the idea of Jesus so that they could benefit from an evangelical army 2000 years later, I'd say they've earned it.

OP didn't say it was being forced! American politicians are 100% to blame, Israel just acting in its own interest as it should

Israel is likely to get shredded if it keeps acting "in its own interest". The US doesn't look like it can sustain this global network of military bases and Israel will probably be left high and dry. This Iran war is threatening the entire global economy. That is a lot of potential enemies if the diplomats and analysts come to believe it is because Israel doesn't like peace and negotiation. At this rate Israel could keep winning of battles in the US Congress and in the Middle East right up to the point where it loses the war and gets wiped out.

The risks they are taking are stunning, and the payoffs highly questionable. I don't think this can be said to be in their own interests. Nuclear deterrents go a long way, but at some point they're not enough to defend a group as crazy as the Israeli government if they keep stirring up trouble.

The diplomats in question are Witkoff and Kushner. Whatever they believe about Israel’s motivations, Israel will always have their full support.

Witkoff and Kushner may always give their full support to Israel, but Witkoff and Kushner are unlikely to always represent the United States (and even moreso unlikely to always have the ability to exercise unlimited influence over US policy), and even—especially—were that not the case, the US is unlikely to always have the international power it has recently.

Only roughly half of evangelicals in the US actually support the state of Israel. I've never even heard of any of my local reps mentioning Israel when running, course maybe I either wasn't looking for it, or the target audience?

I have friends from all walks of life, and trust me when I tell you, the GOP isn't all in on Israel. Which is weirder to me, because I'll hear about how antisemitic the right is, and then in the same breath hear people blame them for Israel's support? When you factor in that roughly half of evangelicals (which can be Democrats too mind you) support Israel, I guess that kind of pans out with why you hear both angles? It's just bizarre to me either way.

I know we benefit militarily from Israel when you factor in all the technology we've designed for them, that we can use for ourselves (Iron dome comes to mind), there's also special ops we otherwise might have never heard of like Stuxnet, which is the coolest thing I ever heard about (I mean really, it was impressive). I'm never blindly a supporter of any nation, because all nations can mess up, but I don't like blindly hating people or nations either. Not everyone is so black and white as everyone seems to believe nowadays, often it feels like the truth is somewhere in between.

> Only roughly half of evangelicals in the US actually support the state of Israel.

I'm not sure where you're getting the info on evangelicals but from what I can find, support is closer to 82% [1]. Zionism in the US isn't actually a Jewish issue. It's a Christian issue. For every Jewish Zionist there are ~30 Christian Zionists. Why? It's theological. I'm referring to dispensational premillenialism [2]. To summarize, in this theology Israel is the key to bringing on the End Times and the return of Jesus Christ.

> I've never even heard of any of my local reps mentioning Israel when running

So this is intentional. Israel realizes how unpopular Israel is or just that people don't care so there extensive spending is hidden behind PACs that none of the messaging is ever about Israel. $35 million was spent to oust Thomas Massie in his recent primary. How much of it was about Israel? None. You only find out after the election who AIPAC funded when the intermediary PACs have to reveal their financing.

> have friends from all walks of life, and trust me when I tell you, the GOP isn't all in on Israel.

It's pretty close [3][4]. More importantly, anti-Israel Republican politicians are few and far between. It just isn't a popular stance to take in Republican primaries.

[1]: https://globalaffairs.org/commentary/blogs/american-evangeli...

[2]: https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/dispe...

[3]: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/07/negative-...

[4]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-ahead...

I have heard casual antisemitism from strongly pro-Israel evangelicals. There is no reason to think these attitudes are mutually exclusive.

Theologically their support for Israel is rooted in antisemitism. They need Israel to trigger the end times so Jews and other nonbelievers will be punished and ultimately destroyed.

If you pry and ask the right questions, they'll admit that they don't want this to happen, because they really want all those Jews and nonbelievers to convert and be saved. This is also antisemitism, but it's wrapped up in a millenia-old death cult.

> This is also antisemitism, but it's wrapped up in a millenia-old death cult.

Dispensationalism isn’t a “millennia old”; its a 19th Century doctrine. (Younger than the United States, older than Christian Fundamentalism.)

> Which is weirder to me, because I'll hear about how antisemitic the right is, and then in the same breath hear people blame them for Israel's support?

Despite the Right trying to redefine antisemitism in terms of opposition to the State of Israel, anti-semitism and anti-Zionism are somewhwere between uncorrelated and anti-correlated. Certainly, dispensationalist, eschatologically-motivated Christian Zionism (the main reason for the tie between evangelicalism and support for Israel) is not at all associated with pro-Judaism.

> When you factor in that roughly half of evangelicals (which can be Democrats too mind you)

Evangelicals “can be” Democrats, but again the Israel-Evangelicalism tie is mainly specifically through dispensationalism, which is almost exclusive to White evangelicalism, and White evangelicals split about 85/15 Republican (or Republican-leaning independent) vs Democrat (+Dem leaners).

> I know we benefit militarily from Israel when you factor in all the technology we've designed for them, that we can use for ourselves (Iron dome comes to mind)

Funny that would be the example that comes to mind, because Iron Dome was developed by Israel (by Israeli state-owned defense firms), not by the US for Israel.

You may be confusing it with the similarly named American (proposed) “Golden Dome” system, whose name Iron Dome inspired, but we didn't develop.that for Israel either (in fact, it hasn’t actually been developed), the only connection to Israel is the inspiration for the name.

> Despite the Right trying to redefine antisemitism in terms of opposition to the State of Israel

I don't think it splits along traditional right/left lines. The ADL is not typically considered right-wing, and they're what everyone cites to conflate the two concepts. Furthermore you're seeing this adopted at the university level to effects chilling to campus free speech in ways I've never seen before—again, not typically a right wing bastion. Then you have right-wing figures like Candice Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly who have all spoken out against Israel. Now those may be fringe figures but they're on the right fringe. It seems like it's the center, the broad center, that is scared to rock the boat.

> Which is weirder to me, because I'll hear about how antisemitic the right is, and then in the same breath hear people blame them for Israel's support?

The proto-typical versions of this are (1) supersessionism in more traditional Christian thought, and (2) more modern "dual-covenant" thought. The latter is not always explicitly antisemitic, but can be implicitly so if it sees Jews as primarily fulfilling a Christian eschatological purpose (undergoing mass conversion as part of the rapture).

I think this is correct. There has been bipartisan support of Israel for decades. Netanyahu even mentions in his autobiography that Israeli politicians usually underestimate the strength and durability of the relationship with America.

There is no where near 100m American evangelicals. There’s less than 60m almost certainly. It doesn’t account for everything.

I've seen estimates that 6% of America is evangelical. (Source: my memory.) Note that the estimate comes from an evangelical, who is drawing the lines at what an evangelical considers evangelical; that may not correspond with where others think the lines should be drawn.

But accepting that number, 6% x 340 million people = 20.4 million evangelicals.

Voters—democrats especially—are voting against politicians that don't speak out against Israel. But that's a very recent phenomenon. Democratic leadership strongly supports Israel to this day, including both Schumer and Jeffries. Cory Bush and Jamaal Bowman, both outspoken in criticism of Israel, were each primaried by democrats with support from leadership, and Bell (who ousted Bush) promptly lost in the general. That is—they willingly gave up a house seat just to ensure a pro-Israel party line.

As I said, things are changing, but it's still largely verboten to speak baldly against Israel as a democrat. In the senate, there are people who oppose arms sales to Israel, largely because of the Leahy law prohibiting arms sales to countries who commit war crimes, but few speak strongly against the clear slaughter (let alone describe it as a genocide as the rest of the world seems comfortable doing), or ascribe it solely to Netanyahu. This, when democratic voters mostly do not have a favorable view of Israel, seems to be a fundamental failure of representation.

On the republican side, Massie and previously MTG were opposed. Only about 43% of republican voters strongly support Israel. I don't believe any senator opposes arms sales to Israel. Again, this seems like a failure of representation.

To characterize this as a symptom of evangelicalism is historically understandable, but young evangelicals do not follow this trend, and even historically it's only a small part of the story.

But, americans rarely vote based on foreign policy (something like 3-5% of americans depending on the election). That we well and truly are culpable for.

The part about not voting based on foreign policy is surprising because the presidential campaigns and debates often end up making that a focus.

People will believe what is told to them, such as "greatest ally" story.

Ah but this is were the Temple will fall a second time!

Because the interests of Jews and Christians do not and never will align. Already there are reports of orthodox Jews harassing Christians...

"Christians in Jerusalem fear rising violence"

https://p.dw.com/p/5ELHW

Yeah, I've seen that show too. It's not real. You could tell by the fact they've never mentioned AIPAC in the entire run of the show.

I think there's parallel valid points on all sides. GOP is also split over Israel. Young Republicans/conservatives do not care at all to continue the relationship. There's those evangelicals that also do not represent Americans who increasingly question and neutral/negative towards US-Israel relationship.

I do wonder how long this can continue. American people should have the final say on which relationships are beneficial to them not special interest groups. The fatigue is very real and palpable and its growing to be an ugly force that is also being exploited by extremists.

This trend change in how American youth view Israel is also a big reason why so many social media platforms are exchanging hands, ex. TikTok by blaming some other scary foe like Russia or China. These are mere attempts to buy time at the inevitable in that America is going their own way and it will be ultimately the American people that will decide.

Look at what's happening in South Korea right now. Election fraud has triggered both the left and the right. The usual opportunists and politicians tried to exploit the situation and they were rejected. The fatigue from the people and the current arrangement is turning into visible anger in countries which face serious structural problems due to the huge wealth gap parity and falling birth rates.

One need not look far at places like Quebec or Paris or Belgium to see exactly where this is headed for people who have nothing to do with Israel but are associated by guilt.

Let's not forget the asymmetry. If someone calls that modern Israel isn't the biblical Israel and that in biblical terms it's closer to the "synagogue of Satan" (Revelation 2:9) it risks being persecuted, ostracized, fired, prosecuted, jailed, murdered.

You shouldn't dismiss Israel power in cultural warfare, financial and political ties. Epstein was probably the tip of the iceberg.

And that can be recognized without diminishing the intrinsic dignity of every human being that live in Israel and outside of it independently of race, nationality, religion, etc.

I always thought it was because of Jeffrey Epstein that politicians don't want their dirty laundry aired.

Exactly. It is clear as crystal that Epstein was (is) a Mossad honeypot.

That's really interesting. I am an Evangelical, and no one that I know supports Israel. Could it be something else?

It's always weird hearing yourself described and recognizing approximately nothing, right?

The hubris to think a group of people could precipitate the rapture is just awe inspiring and the hubris to reduce someone's relationship with the creator to some Wikipedia excerpts is a bit less awe inspiring.

That's interesting. Every evangelical with whom I've spoken seems to be willing to give Israel carte blanche

Anyone can call themselves a Christian. One can only tell a true Christian by their fruits. (e.g. love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and many others)

Your movement knows and cares nothing about Jewish culture and uses the resurrection of the state of Israel in that geographic location as a pawn to both rationalize progress towards your doomsday prophecy and the validity of your belief system at all

All so you get an accelerated chance to ride with Zombie Jesus on a cloud to heaven while the rest of us experience supernatural calamity, and most illuminating is the fact that the Jews don’t. get. to. come.

Its all so contrived and opportunistic

Instead of stating that, Israel is masqueraded as our democratic partner in the Middle East where we can store bases as if we don’t have bases in every surrounding country there.

It’s just your sect perpetuating this nonsense. We built this nation devoid of a divine monarchies, the only freaking one with the opportunity and resources for it to matter at the time, and now have to deal with you guys and your anti-intellectual doomsday cult.

The US has no reason to be involved at all. But even beyond that, look at what the US did to Ethiopia and Eritrea under the mere allegation of famine inducing actions:

EO 14046 just a couple years ago put the entire ruling party on the OFAC economic sanctions list, and the military and businesses formed by personnel in either and by their spouses. You know that would be essentially every person in Israel if we held them to the same standard? Should be fine, only antisemitic people believe there’s a disproportionately large consolidation of economic interests amirite, FAFO but just the find out stage

Takes only the stroke of a pen, Congress not needing to be involved at all, and can even apply to our dual allegiance citizens in the US

You seem pretty upset. But, rest assured that I'm not your problem. And, the Gospel has nothing to do with any of that. True followers of Jesus Christ are just here to love Jesus and love those around them.

Anyone can call themselves a Christian. In fact, the bible repeatedly warns about this, and instructs us to test everything. It says one can only discern a true follower of Jesus by their fruits and the company they keep.

Actually, when you talk to a lot of "Christians", you'll find that most don't know the bible, and many worship something else that they picked up from tv, usually Judaism (i.e. do they mention the 10 commandments?).

The conditional paths to salvation is a core aspect of Christianity whether your personal journey and house of worship focuses on that or not

Evangelicalism is an accelerationist sect to get your savior to come back and bring the most devout to heaven at the expense of everyone else, before allowing the world to get destroyed

These are inseparable concepts. You may have simply began identifying as Evangelic just by birth or proximity or to grift your way into a relationship, but again, you are in a death cult that is trying to use Jewish people as pawns ever since their Zionism ideology coincidentally matched your prophecy. And then they are condemned to burn with the rest of us in a supernatural nightmare as our world gets destroyed by your creator’s more powerful creations while you are insulated if you did everything right. That’s what the rapture is.

Your choice and practice of peace and love has nothing to do with Evangelicalism as a distinct Christian sect. Anyone can read inspirational and feel good messages from the book of Psalms from any variant of the text. You don’t even need that Abrahamic religion for that, you dont even need religion for that.

I’m not even writing this for you, you’re cooked and gain more benefits socially and mentally from rationalizing this, I’m writing this for passerby’s, people already noticing cracks in the belief system they associate with.

People that can help get our country out of involvement in this while you guys pretend there is a persecution complex around holidays. Everyone just wants to ignore you.

That’s quite a response! And, the confidence! I appreciate you, man.

Are you denying radical evangelical conservativism exists?

> This is not being forced on us by Israel.

somehow the narrative has been able to conflate Israel with jews. so the first person who says something about halting aid to Israel or stopping the genocide is called "anti semite". The fear from this alone is enough to keep almost everyone quiet, especially journalists. It's a perfect byproduct of cancel culture.

It's the only nation on earth that can't be criticized without the victim card being played every time. Utter a discouraging word about the secular leadership? You're labeled a bigot.

This is a hotly debated topic.

The John Mearsheimer view is that "The Lobby" [1] has effective control over US foreign policy. There's a lot of evidence for this such as AIPAC indirectly unseating anti-Israel candidates. The Thomas Massie primary was the most expensive in history. $35 million. For a primary.

Noam Chomsky on the other hand rejects the notion of "the lobby" [2], instead arguing that Israel is an tool of American imperialism. Then-US Secretary of STate of Alexander Haig is widely believed to have described Israel as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" [3] in a resource-rich region even though that term originated in the Pacific in WW2. The US has had an interest in disrupting Pan-Arab Nationalism [4], preferring a divided Middle East to guarantee access to oil.

The truth lies somewhere in between. There are clearly material interests and the US could shut down Israel in a day if it so chose. But the US has taken actions that clearly aren't in its national interest and the perfect example is the current Iran war.

Under no circumstances was this ever going to end well. The military knew it. General Caine tried to stop it when Trump didn't heed his warnings [5]. The US intelligence community was against it. also saying Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon [6]. Trump instead listened to Miriam Adelson, Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad, who collectively (allegedly) convinced him it would be a Venezuela-like regime change operation.

This move will (IMHO) go down as the largest strategic blunder in US history and it will reshape geopolitics in the Gulf, Europe and Asia for decades. Even other wars that were lost (eg Vietnam, Korea) didn't have this kind of impact. The US could essentially walk away from those at little cost.

My point is that you can't take the Chomsky view as this being purely materialist. It just doesn't fit the evidence.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore...

[2]: https://mondoweiss.net/2011/02/chomsky-materialism-and-the-i...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsinkable_aircraft_carrier

[4]: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v12...

[5]: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/25/politics/caine-iran-hegse...

[6]: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-intel-community-agreed-b...

I agree that Chomsky's assessment hasn't made sense for a while. Maybe it did until, I don't know, the camp david accords, but at some point the Lobby became too integral to even clearly acknowledge. Perhaps Citizens United helped metastasize the problem. It's also simply a dogmatic, cultural reflex at this point: to not support Israel is politically unthinkable on the hill. It was political suicide for so long the older politicians especially are incapable of even milquetoast critique.

It's also worth noting that the public is so aware of AIPAC that it's become a bit of a too-visible stink. More and more pro-israel money is being funneled through other mechanisms: Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), NORPAC, United Democracy Project (UDP), Pro-Israel America. There are also regional pacs, like To Protect Our Heritage PAC in Illinois, SunPAC in Florida, etc.

Hum... I don't think Chomsky's opinion on the matter has any relevance at all.

He's there right at the Lobby. We have no way at all of knowing he's saying it doesn't matter because he saw it doesn't matter, or because it dictates what he says.

What? Noam Chomsky has been labeled a self hating anti-Semite by AIPAC. For decades.

The same Noam Chomsky which was a friend of Epstein which had ties to Israel high schelon.

John Mearsheimer fully discredited himself around the start of Ukrainian war.

How do you figure?

Mearsheimer was right: Putin wrecks Ukraine.

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...

Why would an article from 2019 be a counterargument to criticisms from 2022? Especially when the first sentence of that article is a prime example of Mearsheimers blind spot: that the Russians aren't actually realists, but instead are a kind of idealist focused on Russias dignity as a (percieved) great power. Almost like virtue ethics as opposed to the consequentionalist ethics of realism.

I don’t agree with the assessment, but in terms of a great power being very interested in the interests of a small country, consider Serbia and Russia before WWI.

I agree vassal is the wrong term... but we are currently committing global economic suicide on behalf of Israel's interests. I'm not sure what word is appropriate. Perhaps we need a new one.

I'll look at Serbia, thank you.

While too big a subject to cover well here, the Serbia / Russia thing is different to US / Israel.

Primarily a Russia friendly Serbia was important for Russian trade routes (Black Sea to Mediterranean via the Dardanelles.) In other words geography made Serbia important.

In a twist on that theme, the strait of Hormuz is important to, well everyone, and we now see how geography can magnify a countries strategic value.

There were other factors which came into play with Russia. Ethnically Serbia was aligned with Russia - similar to the US / Israel relationship today.

It also didn't hurt that Russia at the time was experiencing internal discontent and this was a convenient way to thin the population, and get rid of malcontents. (Ironically would end up having the opposite effect of organizing, arming and training an army that ultimately would be instrumental in the revolution. )

The history leading up to ww1 is fascinating- so many players, all with really "big picture" goals, mostly with weak leadership.. Ultimately conflict was inevitable- if it hadn't been the arch-duke it would have been something else.

suzerain

In part it's because they have the best intelligence apparatus in the world. I'm very impressed at how far above their weight they're punching.

If you can see enough of what an intelligence apparatus is doing to be impressed I'd say they're not doing a very good job.

What they seem to be most unique in is the impunity of their operations, like when they assassinated a completely innocent guy in Norway, of all places: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair

wow, that's shocking to read. Didn't hear about this in any European news.

Assassination is sort of the mossad's thing. I highly recommend the book "Rise and Kill First" (by an Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman) who describes this approach to international relations as something approaching an addiction. He alleges they've assassinated more people than any country on earth since their founding in 1948 and lays out a very convincing picture (to the extent he can—there are moments when you can tell he would like to state things more baldly).

The best intelligence apparatus in the world missed the Oct 7 planning which Egyptian intelligence noticed, told the Israelis about directly, and still went ignored?

Hence the theory that they did know, but chose to let it happen in order to justify the following escalation

They're also obviously fine with breaking eggs to make an omelette. Given their history, they seem to regard breaking eggs as the goal, and making an omelette as an afterthought.

Regardless of anything else, absolutely no one is calling shin bet the best in the world at what they do. The FBI is much more effective. It's the israeli agencies that focus on transnational threats human and signals intellegence (mossad and 8200 respectively, along with other groups in the laters perview under military intellegence).

I believe they let the oct 7 attacks go through to serve as a pretext for Netanyahu to level Gaza. No evidence whatsoever.

Perfect excuse for the ongoing genocide.

This is what I ask everyone who thinks October 7 was an attack launched by Hamas of its own volition.

Anyone who's been to and seen the Gaza border knows how impossible it is to cross - unless of course there was some inside permittance.

I've been and I've seen. It is a fence. A very long fence. You can't cross it with bare hands, and if you try, you will be shot. This is not the case when dozens of bulldozers simultaneously cross the fence and many thousands of trained terrorists coming out of tunnels and cross the fence through the openings. If you don't have prior intelligence, you can't stop it.

Hamas are fanatics and were dumb enough to try it. They also had the tunnels, missiles from Iran. But I"m quite inclined to believe the Israeli leadership let it happen as a pretext to crush them afterwards, level Gaza, maybe even go against Hezbollah and Iran, but that's a bit too far fetrched.

That's precisely what I meant. Hamas always had these plans on how to launch an attack. Israel gave them the opening. And why is everyone forgetting the fact that Yahya Shinwar was basically a Mossad puppet by the time he was released? They released him precisely because they thought that he was milder compared to his contemporaries in Doha.

People who've been to that border in normal times know how fiercely that border is protected.

It escapes me how a Palestinian born in a refugee camp and involved into lifetime strife against Israel can also be a Mossad puppet, but who knows.

Hamas are crazy fundamentalists that Iran is using along with Hezbollah to perpetrate attacks against Israel. Just what Netanyahu needs to start another war.

it's not, they have a good PR. Best intelligence is quiet.

>Any man who must say, 'I am the king,' is no true king

Where was that apparatus on october 7th?

France has the best intelligence apparatus. Recommend checking it, that's also why they are way under the radar. If achieving intelligence by any means was the goal, yeah then Mossad.

Let's compare facts: There's only 10M people there. I think PR skews reality massively

Population metrics deskew this distorted reality: France has 69M, China has 1.4B, Russia 143, Germany 83M people. Mathematically and from a technological sophistication standpoint, these governments must have higher advancements and frequency of successful Intel vs Israel. Mathematical probability speaks against Israel.

if this was the case, there would be no state sponsoring palestinian terrorism for a long time.

Look at what happened after 9/11, it's pretty clear there's a wide difference between how US consider its own security matter vs israel's one.

Can you list the measures by which you believe that Israel has made the US its vassal?

American companies must sign a document signifying they will not boycott Israel if the company wants to get government contracts, it was illegal to burn the Israeli flag in the US before it was illegal to burn the US flag, 99% of congress votes in favor of Israel (as evidenced by Thomas Massie’s recent primary Israel will spend $$$ to buy a US politicians seat if they do not support Israel).

solarhoma sez "it was illegal to burn the Israeli flag in the US before it was illegal to burn the US flag,"

It is legal to burn the USA flag in the USA.

Ok. Then my point stands even more firmly that you are able to burn the flag of the country you reside in yet cannot burn the flag of a foreign nation.

Nope. For the most part in the USA you can burn any flag provided you aren't violating some property law or safety statute by doing so.

Massie going against Trump is why he lost. Plenty of republican politicians are against Israel.

The money to oust Massie came almost exclusively from pro-Israel groups. Who then celebrated their ability to control US elections.

Really it comes down to religion, and Israel being the bastion of anti-islam in the Middle East. Doesn't hurt that they are also liberal democracy and have advanced economy as well.

> liberal democracy

With a big honking caveat-asterisk that it only applies if you're on the right side of the apartheid.

Well, on the right side of the border. Everybody within the actual borders can vote, regardless of race, religion, etc. In a lot of ways it's a more democratic system than the US has, with multiple functioning parties.

The "apartheid" part is the people in the West Bank and Gaza, who are not Israeli but also not their own country.

>Well, on the right side of the border.

Which border? The Israelis don't recognize a border, which is why they have illegally annexed the Golan Heights in Syria, are currently attempting to colonize Southern Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel has never published their official borders. Even Somaliland has declared their borders but the "only democracy in the middle east" has never done so in it's entire history.

Israel has clearly defined borders. If youre are talking about the West Bank there’s area a, b and c which are controlled by Israel, both, and PA respectively. I’d call that borders.

Israel has never defined its own borders. This is easily googleable. There are borders that are well understood by the international community but it is a fact that the state of Israel itself has never defined it's own borders.

Sure and they exercise sovereignty far beyond those borders in a blatantly illegal manner. They do not acknowledge their de facto borders because it would be admitting to acts the world would be required to condemn to maintain the pretense of law and order.

> Everybody within the actual borders can vote

Unless you're a Palestinian in illegally annexed Jerusalem... Then you don't have citizenship and have to keep proving that you live and work in Jerusalem to avoid losing the residency rights.

I mean if voting for a parliamentary representative is your barometer, would you consider Russia a liberal democracy? Or Iran? Both have formal democracies, and Iran even seems to have pretty contentious ones replete with unexpected reformist upsets. If voting at all is your barometer, we could toss in Cuba, China, and North Korea. Apartheid is not characterized by voting rights but by a qualitative difference in access to justice when pursuing basic rights. Think: Jim Crow south. Formally, black people had access to all the same public things white people did. In practice, it took nearly a hundred years to work its way through the courts to be afforded true protection by the state.

Plus, you need only to look at marriage & inheritance laws and access to citizenship to see that the state is dedicated to jewish people—arguably, a jewish supremacist state with a non-jewish underclass.

What’s wrong with Islam?

The US is neither a vassal of Israel nor simply doing its bidding. That is poor propaganda.

If you operate with a lens that forces you to ask "how is this Israel's fault?" without ever asking any other question, you're going to end up mostly with answers that are only for entertainment value the same way you would if you asked any LLM a leading question that already assumed a desired answer.

> The US is neither a vassal of Israel nor simply doing its bidding.

This is propaganda as well, only more agreeable to you.

What questions did you ask to arrive at that conclusion?

It's not Israel's "fault" that American leaders are slavishly loyal to them. Israel is just putting their country first, as is their duty. It's 100% on American politicians for failing in their duty to put America first

> Israel is just putting their country first

Is walking down the street, slugging everyone that gets in your way, "putting yourself first?" Is moving your fence into your neighbor's lawn and then pulling a gun on them when they come to talk about it "putting yourself first?"

At some point Israel needs to reckon with the fact that its behavior is beyond selfish, it's suicidal.

We are putting America first. Usually when we get involved in anything, it's a result of many reasons intersecting. We tend to wait until enough reasons pile up that acting is worth it. If the only reason you can think of is Israel, who trained your brain to default to that? Who does it benefit for them to be invested in making you think that way?

You are bombarded with so many things that tell you everything is bad and going wrong in the world, it's easy to get pulled into the gravity of it without ever asking what is going right? So much so, people deny anything is going right, emotionally.

There is a large gap between what the general populace understands about the world and how it works, versus the actual logic that causes the world events. When the gap is large like that it takes more effort to understand and so fewer people in the world will. The harder it is to understand, the easier it is for people to spread lies about. Does consensus alone make something true? No.

Don't miss the attempt of the removal of Section 224 of the US NDAA at the same time, a polarizing development in discussions on Israel, to put it mildly.

https://www.aipac.org/memos/america-israel-defense-ndaa-224

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2026/06...

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-israel-military-congres...

> Top U.S. officials often take extra care when traveling to Israel, sometimes using burner phones and computers and taking extreme caution when speaking in hotel rooms during official trips, the current and former U.S. officials and experts said.

> Israel has “a hyper-aggressive intelligence service,” said Emily Harding, vice president of the Defense and Security Department and director of the intelligence, national security and technology program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. “They are exceedingly interested in what we are up to,” Harding said of the Israelis.

And these are considered their closest allies.

What do they do with others.

That's a big reason why they're "allies" - if Israel can identify which US politicians are pro/against Israel, they can promote or impede their rise to power accordingly.

The top U.S. officials do the same when traveling to any country. Everyone does this to everyone else.

Not true. Israel has a reputation for being exceedingly intrusive and aggresssive with US personnel. Just go watch intel community interviews online.

As is the US. Go watch same interviews.

So? The claim was "Everyone does this to everyone else"

Agreed. The whole intensity discussion is pointless.

This could be 'curiosity' about negotiation with Iran, as there is what could be considered an AI merger between the 2 countries ; the FY2027 NDAA (H.R. 8800) bill text was officially released by Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) on May 26, 2026. - House Armed Services Committee markup was set for June 4, 2026. https://www.uschamber.com/security/letter-to-house-armed-ser... Section 224 of the FY2027 NDAA, titled “United States–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” is a draft provision sponsored by Chairman Mike Rogers and Ranking Member Adam Smith. It aims to deeply integrate U.S. and Israeli defense industries and militaries through joint R&D, testing, manufacturing, technology sharing, training, information-sharing, network integration, and data fusion. AI is one of several technologies included, not a standalone “AI merger.” The provision is still a House committee draft, not final law, and may be amended before passage.https://www.uschamber.com/security/letter-to-house-armed-ser...

The parasite completes its lifecycle, consuming the host.

I was reading about Israel interfering with US elections and spying on the US decades ago.

Why is this news now?

Us gives Israel money, Israel uses that money to buy people in power in the US, those bought people then ensure US taxpayewr money flows to israel to...and so the cycle continues.

Nothing explains the US being subservient to Israel than this.

The reason it's news today is because intelligence services, which are venerated by american journalism, brought the issue forward.

...but in general, the conflation of Israel with Jewishness, and the conflation of anti-zionism with anti-semitism, has allowed the entrenchment of Israel's interests in broad daylight against our best interests.

US gives Israel weapons not money.

We give both. We currently have an MOU to provide Israel with $3.8B a year, including $500 allocated for missile defense, through 2028. This is distinct from direct military aid. In total we have furnished nearly $100B since Israel's founding.

People always mention the direct foreign aid but fail to mention all the other money flows. They receive many times more money each year in private investment and open trade agreements. I believe the figure is close to 90-100 billion USD each year going to Israel from the US. This doesn’t include the free movement of Americans to Israel for tourism, owning a second home, etc.

Is Israel allowed to use the non-military aid to donate to AIPAC, and can AIPAC receive that without being reclassified as foreign agent?

US taxpayers buy the weapons.

> A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., said in a statement that it is “completely false” that Israel spies on the U.S. “Israel does not gather intelligence on American entities, let alone US government officials,” the spokesperson said. “Israel intelligence collection efforts are aimed at its enemies, not its allies. Any claims to the contrary are either misinformed or politically motivated.”

Not even a teeny weeny bit of spying on your allies?

They want to spy on the enemy, but they need to spy on everyone to know who is the enemy, obviously

Where did it say they consider the US an ally?

I don’t think it said anything about countries

The rumor is that this hornet's nest got kicked because Netanyahu called Trump to complain about a classified cabinet meeting that the Israelis had not been briefed on.

Legitimate question, what would Israel need that we don’t already openly provide?

Protection from the risk that the tide might turn on them despite their extensive political lobbying? Just taking a guess here but probably not far off.

One of the YouTube "CIA former spies" explained it very well (paraphrasing): "we shared the F-35 with them, but we kept about 10% of the technology to ourselves and sold them a variant. That wasn't enough for them, they ran an espionage operation to get the remaining 10%".

Dirt on anyone proposing that we stop openly providing such assistance?

"The designation stems from concerns within the Pentagon that Israel is making a particular effort to surveil top U.S. officials to get information on the Trump administration’s internal deliberations and decision-making on the conflicts in the Middle East, the officials said."

So Israel wants to know what Trump is going to do next.

Don't we all.

Seems like he's the only one that doesn't feel any need to think about this question.

Which, of course, is deliberate. He has weaponized uncertainty to perfection.

If that was true, he wouldn't keep losing negotiations.

Weaponized against us, the American people, not against any of our geopolitical rivals.

The vessel state now fully controls its host, but I think public sentiment is reversing it just a little.

Anything that the chief-executives of either government can exploit to keep themselves out of jail.

I mean, they did just start a war with iran as a joint venture with trump.

I could understand why anyone who starts a joint venture with trump would be nervous about trump selling them out. It is trump after all. Probably is a logical thing to be concerned about.

there's currently disagreements with Israel on their approach to Lebanon being way more aggressively and murderous than "necessary", whatever that means. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5904899-trump-ne...

The well publicized disagreements are just diplomatic cover. The USA can look tough. Israel might back off for a little bit. Everyone looks good for a moment. Reason has prevailed. Then it'll all go back to Israel's criminal "gaza policy" in South Lebanon, continuing the wanton murder of 1000s of civilians under the guise of "they use children as shields". Well yeah, it's endless guerilla warfare and now hezb has drones. Diplomacy is the only way.

You can't really negotiate when one party is a religious fanatical death cult and the other one is Hezbollah.

New blackmail material in case Trump starts to turn on them?

Trump doesn't let Bibi bomb Lebanon and doesn't fight to the last American in Iran

> Trump doesn't let Bibi bomb Lebanon

Sure he does. They did it today!

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0g8jymg92o

Trump doesn't let?

Trump is sitting in a chair in the corner of the room of any negotiation he's in. He's weak at best.

> sitting in a chair

More like sleeping in the chair

It's in the corner, and it's porcelain. But you get it. And people worship that.

combat is a dynamic situation, if you have no idea what its participants can/cant/will/wont do, you cant formulate prevailing tactics.

situational awareness is best when first hand, as someone may be lying to you, or may not even know what they are doing in the first place.

If this is such a threat, why are there Israeli offices in the Pentagon via the ODC? I mean… it isnt as if the USA has been fighting wars on behalf of Israel for nearly 30 years or anything…

"Government suddenly and confusingly starts acting accordingly to what everyone's already know for a long time." This is really quite scary when you think about it. Why now all of a sudden?

Maybe this is a bit glib, but it's because attacking Iran (which everyone knew was a bad idea but which presumably seemed useful as a distraction) turned out to be a bad idea. So the administration is taking it out on Israel, who wanted us to do it.

Israel keeps actively going against US goals. The beginning of the conflict generally had both sides in general agreement. The moment Israel killed the US’s intended replacement, and now continues promoting conflict while the US admin is pushing hard for a peace deal is showing the cracks

Both Netanyahu and Trump have a vested interest in promoting the idea of how much influence Israel has over US foreign policy. For Netanyahu, the propaganda that he manipulated Trump into waging a war against Iran boosts his political image with some Israelis. (And it is near election season in Israel).

Isreal wanted it. Strong and influential amrrican political actors wanted it too. Hegseth wanted it too.

Now that it is shitshow, the same people want to put blame on Israel only.

Because now the manifestation of all this crap has reached a nuclear stage of undeniability.

It has literally been simmering for a long time and now it finally comes out. Taking it out on Israel is not wrong and that's not to say that they (the Israeli government) hold the sole responsibility for this. The US had a say in this as well. But now the US is questioning the benefits of this complete and total asshattery and rightly so. Better late than never I suppose.

Along these lines, but with a bit more:

Israel definitely wanted us to do this, but they've been trying to sell US presidents on this for decades without success. MBS and the Saudis also want this, but you rarely read about that in the news; likewise with the UAE and quite a few others who have even been running their own direct strikes on Iran.

The thing is, and I realize this is a rough climate to say this into: Jews have been the official scapegoats for the Middle East and Europe for what... 1500 years now? That doesn't just go away, and the political expediency of Trump covering his ass and the ass of his Saudi/UAE sources of billions (through Jared, Ivanka, Eric, etc) can't be thrown under the bus to do it.

Meanwhile Israel is being run by a universally loathed man who can't shut up, so it's just easier to pretend that's it all their fault.

Or, because different factions in the regime are at odds with eachother - there's MAGA, who are a sock puppet for whatever Netanyahu wants, and who spearheaded the idiotic war with Iran, and there's the entire military, which thinks that this war is by far the dumbest thing they've been asked to do... This year.

Did this announcement come from the military side of things, or the MAGA side of things?

> So the administration is taking it out on Israel, who wanted us to do it.

Well, it is clear to see that this is Netanyahu's ploy, but the thing is that Trump constantly lies about this. "There are negotiations", but then the US bombs again. To me it seems as if Trump operates in a way that makes it impossible to have anything else but drop bombs onto Iran. In this way he resembles Putin, who tries to occupy more and more land belonging to Ukraine. Putin has no alternative to this either, similar to Trump. (Yes, Putin could in theory stop his war, but he tied his identity to it. I don't see how he can stop it, without having achieved officially stated goals of his genocidal invasion.)

How can a vassal state with 1/60th your GDP 'influence' your nation into a war ? It's a rhetorical question. It can't.

Makes the MAGA military look incompetent. The US has a history of botched wars around the globe, most of which have little to do with Israel. If I'm drawing from data, then the Iran conflict is consistent with the post-war military movements of the US.

Now that the communists are no more, Israel is the next best scapegoat. The way I see it, Israel's current leaders are happy to be scapegoats because the war benefits Ben Gvir and a radicalized Likud. It allows them to consolidate domestic power and pursue aggressive foreign objectives under shadow of the Iran conflict.

I hope Netanyahu has thought this through. He has burned through 100 years of western guilt in the span of 3 years. To break even, Israel's military excursions must secure outsized outcomes, to the tune of decades of security. Because, I believe we are entering a couple of decades of bipartisan & unprecedented* anti-semitism.

* Figuratively speaking. Historically ofc, anti-semitism is pretty precedented.

> everyone knew was a bad idea

It was a good idea if it was also timed during the popular uprisings. But the 20,000+ die-hard citizens that would have effected regime change were slaughtered months ago. So now it's just a scared populace hunkering in place while USA warships and jets dominate their country.

And the Iranians fire off the occasional drone swarm on UAE.

"GOP lawmaker wears Israeli military uniform to Capitol Hill" - https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4254384-brian-mast-israel...

It boggles the mind just how egregious this was.

I would not classify myself as anti-Israeli, fwiw. I just think wearing the military uniform of a foreign nation to your job governing our nation is despicable and borderline treasonous.

"You're fucking crazy": Trump fumes at Netanyahu in call on Lebanon - https://www.axios.com/2026/06/01/trump-netanyahu-israel-leba...

Elections. The Trump administration joined the war hoping that any positive outcome in the Iran war would boost its mid-term prospects. Netanyahu attacked Iran and Lebanon because he faces elections in a few months and he wants to prolong all his wars till the election is over - apparently Israeli electorate don't tend to vote out a PM during a war. Trump has now realised the Iran war has been a political disaster and is looking to extricate out of it, through temporary ceasefires (which means he can resume the war later - which is standard US policy with a weaker foe). That doesn't work for Netanyahu because if he loses this election, he could also find himself behind bars due to some corruption conviction. Thus, he is working to sabotage Trump's ceasefire deals as he needs the wars to go on till October, when the elections will presumably be held ...

It's amazing how many people have died just to keep Netanyahu out of jail.

I think supporting Israel has crossed the threshold from "a heavy political dead-weight" into "political suicide" for any politician on the US.

The base is complaining, and they need a scapegoat.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the talking points start being ‘Israel caused high gas prices!’ soon.

  > Why now all of a sudden?

The government already considered them a threat. Just like everyone else, including themselves (the gov isn't a single entity).

What changed is geopolitics. Official and publicly calling them a threat.

What this also changes is how gov works with companies. How these companies can subcontract and to who. Which, let's be honest, most companies don't give a rats ass if they are hacked. Sure, they lose money, but it's almost always a slap on the wrist and since every company works this way there's no market signal to express that you care even if you do. (I'd still encourage people to install apps like Signal, degoogle, and all that. Your individual choices still do matter, even if it's only us nerds)

Same reason that FISA Amendments Act (2008) was passed less than two years after Mark Klein revealed Room 641A.

Same reason that CISA (2015) was passed less than two years after the Snowden revelations.

Once the secrets are open, the feds can codify them into law. They were never going to change their behavior.

Israel is going to be a marvelous scapegoat. If dispensationalists are really in charge, the US will turn its back on them for 3.5 years, the first half of the tribulation.

USA almost certainly spies on Israel (and everyone else) far deeper than anyone spies on them.

They sure do, but looking at recent events, you can make an educated guess on which country has more influence over the other. Part of it can be attributed to spying and knowing dark? secrets.

It's hilarious listening to CIA insiders talk about spying.

John Kiriakou [1] will spend 3 hours talking about the CIA's torture program (illegal) and NSA spying on Americans (illegal). In the same conversation, he will insist that the US would never spy on Israel because it is illegal.

Who is this fooling ?

[1] Senior ex-CIA official, whistleblower & internet meme phenomenon.

Who knows who's telling the truth these days. [1] I just assume it's always spy-vs-spy every which way from Sunday.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vukPEDWaBHg

Since the 1951 Angleton-Harel Secret Pact, there has been an unwritten agreement that CIA and Mossad will not spy on each others countries. Kiriakou (who is a wonk) confirmed as much in recent remarks.

But no one without at least a TS really knows

Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi

Between Israel and Russia is anyone surprised that all of the memes about a certain party being infiltrated by the Russians and then also all of them being bootlickers of Israel have merit to them?

I've worked for a couple Israeli startups and what I will say is: never again. I've experienced all of the stereotypes and more, firsthand.

Probably because Trump had a heated conversation with Netanyahu and this is some sort of “consequence”.

One reason is that blaming Israel for the Iran FUBAR situation is very convenient, especially for keeping MAGA on board.

The right wing pundits are already working overtime on X and elsewhere to blame Israel and concoct all sorts of explanations why Trump authorized the strike (the most amusing is that he "was possessed by demons").

Blaming Israel may have been coordinated with Netanyahu, who has nothing to lose and is probably perfectly fine with the blame as long as he gets his war and parts of Lebanon.

Blaming Israel has many historic precedents from Clinton to Trump, often through planted leaks or deliberate hot mics.

maybe someone in China, put 2 million and 2 million together and hired themselves a zionist genocider baby killer on the make!

Removing all US financial support for Israel and supporting sanctions and ICJ actions is the only way forward.

> Removing all US financial support for Israel and supporting sanctions and ICJ actions is the only way forward

Or at least starting with ceasing financial aid to Israel. If they want our weapons, they should have to pay for them. This has broad, bipartisan support in a way sanctioning Israel doesn't yet.

I’m confused isn’t there a bill to merge Israel and US intelligence/military together in various ways?

I’m more confused by your username. Wow.

I believe it’s in reference to the humor TV show Letterkenny which has a beer brand called Puppers. Characters on the show often ask for another fucking puppers.

"dang! Those fuckin puppers ate the shoe again"

I would assume simple

Every Big Tech company employs hundreds of "former" Israeli spies - Google just brought on another 900 via their acquisition of Wiz (to add to their existing 6000).

This is well known and documented. It should not be downvoted. Zionism in Big Tech is a huge issue. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese documented this extensively in her report that got her sanctioned by the US. [0]

TurboTax had IDF soldiers in uniform in their offices. [1]

[0] https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ahrc5923-... [1] https://thegrayzone.com/2026/04/28/tech-giant-employees-idf-...

Presumably he's a reservist who was drafted after his country was invaded, and tried to attend a few work calls (although he should have been on paid leave) while drafted. What's the issue?

Also one reservist is not "soldiers", and a video call is not "in their offices".

> What's the issue?

You are literally commenting under an article titled "Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying" - it should be easy to determine the conflict of interest here.

The Inslaw affair still gets discussed pretty often in security circles, as does Pegasus and FORCEDENTRY. Israel's spyware poses a threat only eclipsed by China, to most Americans.

The vast majority of people in the USA do not want to destroy the state of Israel so I am not sure why you are making some conspiracy about (((zionists))) controlling big tech companies.

Basically everyone in the US is a zionist. Especially once you point out that Israel has 200+ nuclear weapons and it would be a horrible idea to try and destroy them.

> Basically everyone in the US is a zionist.

What? What kind of world view is that? Surely not a factual one.

I have no view here other than what I hear from people and news. What stokes me is that people like you are really shocked and surprised when confronted with the truth.

Of course it's true.

Israel has 200+ nuclear weapons. Most people aren't stupid enough to think that trying to destroy a country with 200+ nuclear weapons is a good idea.

If they understand this simply idea, that makes them a zionist, almost by definition.

This is total nonsense and you sound like a bot. A bad one at that. This is pathetic.

Fear is not equivalent to zionism. In addition to that, Russia has many more nuclear weapons and is getting destroyed at this very moment.

> Fear is not equivalent to zionism.

Saying that it's a bad idea to destroy Israel absolutely is Zionist.

It's accepting that Israel will exist and attempts to destroy it should not be enacted. In this case, because of the nuclear war.

> and is getting destroyed at this very moment.

No they aren't. Russia isn't going to collapse as a country. Thats ridiculous. The worst case scenario for them is continued economic damage and a full withdrawal from Ukraine.

But Moscow going under was never on the table, and yeah if it was actually truly threaten by an invading army, I'd absolutely expect nuclear weapons to be in the table.

To apply the same thing to Israel, sure in some wild world that isn't the current universe, I could see them being pushed out of, like their current Lebanon areas and for the fighting to stop in Gaza, ect. And nuclear weapons aren't going to be used.

But that's not the same as Jerusalem being threatened. Yes, if an invade army was taking over half the country, with boots on the ground, yes the nukes would fly.

It arguably almost happened in fact, in one of the previous Arab wars. Nothing even close to that will happen any time soon though (because Israel isn't losing).

I have met only a handful of Americans that thinks Israel should not exist. They have all been for a two state solution. Yes, basically everyone in the US is a zionist.

The movement is growing slowly but surely. More and more people want nothing to do with them, and to want to cease sending tax dollars that enable them to continue their atrocities.

Having opinions on where tax dollars go has little do to with someone advocating for destroying an entire nuclearly armed country.

Basically nobody in the USA wants it do that.

Well, I for one can’t imagine someone more qualified to work in content moderation at Meta than someone who spent his or her formative years murdering unarmed children in the Gaza Strip. These companies need morally grounded, paragons of decency to set the example for us all.

The Snowden disclosures revealed that the US was regularly spying on Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, the EU, and the UN. Also of course the CIA was spying on Congress.

One can only imagine that many of these countries were also spying on us in various capacities, albeit with fewer resources. Israel is a bigger concern because they're extremely good at it, but I'm sure it's nothing new.

From the article:

>While it is commonplace for allies and adversaries across the globe to spy on each other, the current and former U.S. officials said Israel’s recent efforts have gone well beyond what is typical and expected espionage.

It should also be noted, that the EU countries which this espionage targeted were not happy about it at all, and did not find it one bit normal.

Yes, espionage is not an act of war and is a regular occurrence, even between allied nations. You can see this clearly during WW2 now that much of the information has been declassified. Great Britain ran an extensive intelligence operation in New York prior to US entry into the war.

How many of those countries openly lobby politicians in USA though?

Every single one.

Do you’ve proof for that? On the other hand, AIPAC is out there for anyone to see

Ah, the whole, "Everyone does it, why are you picking only us?"

They used to for their warcrimes, genocide, apartheid, and literally every other thing they are guilty of.

It's important to not frame this as a US vs Israel thing. Israel is, at best, the last of the Western world's settler colonies, and as such, is serving a purpose, a so-called landed aircraft carrier. [0]

The fact that there is tensions in the government regarding Israel means that the entities that found value in Israel are losing out to those that don't. So-called America-first powers no longer see 1st-tier support of Israel as in the interests of the US.

This will not go well with Zionists, who are still supported by massive backing and financial interests. They will spend a LOT of money to keep Israel the US's "top ally" despite it being no such thing in any meaningful way. Israel is a tool of the Western imperial forces.

The fact that this story is breaking means that Zionism is getting more-and-more toxic to people in power.

[0] https://michael-hudson.com/2023/11/israel-as-a-landed-aircra...

Putting politics aside, are any tech companies actually taking preventive steps in response to this new risk?

My understanding is that the DIA is generally the least corrupt of America's many intelligence agencies

Like him or not, Kiriakou has been saying for years that Israel is the biggest threat for spying.

I wanted to like him, but then after watching a few podcast appearances I realized he loves to play every side. He usually just reflects the hosts beliefs back to them.

It also doesn’t help that he’s trying to line up a pardon from Trump, as well.

I remember when orange people would flag your comments whenever you mentioned Mossad spying on people

Mazel Tov!

I remember back in 2004 when the pentagon found an Israeli spy in the Pentagon. This has been going on for decades and I'm sure it will go on for decades more at this point.

Why spy when you can just command to hand over … or else release the files you got on everyone ?

President Trump has written a strongly worded check to Netanyahu in response (according to The Onion)

It's the most reliable source of news these days.

Is even dumber than that.

Funds for Israel flow. Trump was yelling expletives down the phone at Netanyahu this week. Trump has been leading an Israeli war.

It’s dizzying, and it’s almost as though there is a lack of sound minds involved.

Has the US ever been easier to manipulate or spy on?

Seems legit.

The department of homeland security’s twitter account is based in Irsael

if your boss suddenly asks you to carry a pager, do not accept it.

Trump already accepted a gold pager from his boss (Bibi).

I wish I was joking.

These threads are always fun.

The mental gymnastics of the Israeli "splainers" will never fail to amaze me. Israelsplainers perhaps.

I want to say that it's just Netanyahu who needs to go away but it's actually much, much more than just him. The tide is shifting methinks and rightly so (and finally).

> Israelsplainers perhaps

The Israeli wumao: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasbara

  Hasbara has no direct English translation, but roughly means "explaining". It is a communicative strategy that "seeks to explain actions, whether or not they are justified".

  [...]

  In its 2025 budget, Israel planned to spend $150 million on hasbara, a 20-fold increase.

  In the 2026 budget, NIS 2.35 billion (about $730 million) has been allocated to hasbara.

I appreciate the comment and I'm well aware and fully clued up on the history of Hasbara and the rest. I actually thought the word "Hasbara" was closer to "explanation". Close enough lexically I guess.

I just find this really depressing and I hope that there will be an end in sight. The happenings of right now is the stuff of horror novels.

But still, it is fucking disturbing shit which somehow has a place in the world.

How convenient using a term that can't/won't be translated to "propa ganda" . How meta lol.

That page is probably the most perfect demonstration of any concept which exists on Wikipedia

I mean 730 million isn't a lot, right? It's all good all safe. 730 million dollars. Which could solve hunger in parts of Africa. But let's just use it to protect our image.

If one wants to see them in blatant action, just head to Reddit's /r/worldnews

Who need enemies with allies like that.

Didn't Trump recently ban Sean Strickland for critisizing Israel?

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/sean-strickland-says-hes-b...

Trump is like the ultimate tool of corruption - whether it is Russia or Israel or whoever, you name it. Dude flops to the highest bidder. No wonder US oligarchs are currently controlling the USA.

Strange, I thought this was well known. See the leadership of most prominent tech companies.

What are you referring to? The only major tech company I’m aware of that had (until recently) an Israeli leading the company was Oracle, but Safra Catz stepped down as CEO last year.

It's pretty clear that he doesn't just mean Israelis

They literally merging US military with Israel lol

Israel doesn't really need to spy on the US. They can just ask Kushner.

It's crazy how the media just intentionally ignores Israel's ethnic cleansing in Gaza but cares about a billion other fake issues. Rachel Maddow gaslighted half the country into thinking Russia was controlling the White House... meanwhile ignoring that we're starting wars at Netanyahu's request/demand. Or how Israel tried to blackmail Clinton over Monica Lewinsky. We can never actually assess our relationship with Israel--anything but slavish devotion is immediately called anti-Semitism.

I really dislike when a tiny fraction of the conspiracy theories become true since it validates people who believe in them. But I have to admit I do have one of my own, pegasus and related spyware can gain a lot of power over politicians i.e. blackmail which makes me think about how much of our politics are based solely on the fact that politicians often find themselves exploiting their powers and then possibly getting caught by spyware turning them into somewhat of a tool.

Why did you not believe this particular theory before? It never seemed like an outlandish idea to me at all that some US politicians could be blackmailed by foreign interests.

I don’t get this blanket rejection of “conspiracy theories”, it’s like the moment you describe something as a conspiracy theory a large group of self identified intellectuals just dismiss it offhand. It doesn’t make sense as a category, of course people conspire.

If I could propose a lesson to be learned, maybe stop categorizing things as “conspiracy theories” and take each theory on the merit of its evidence and how it fits the facts.

It was too "popular" of a conspiracy theory to be true, it was the cognative conclusion that was attributed to israel without any real backing behind it. I think it's telling that it took this long and this much pressure to ever consider it a "threat".

I don't believe blackmail is the most effective thing. The problem with blackmail is that even if you do as the blackmailer says, they still have the threat hanging over you forever. That increases the risk that they do something desperate.

What is effective, isn't blackmail, but complicity. Doing bad things together. Then you get a shared interest. The people Epstein had blackmail on, knew that he wouldn't use it casually, because after all there would be no way to use it without implicating himself. But if he were desperate, he might. So the victims had an interest in keeping Epstein not desperate.

So it's the bad things they do together which is dangerous. Even things they do in full view of the public can work, because the threat isn't necessarily that the public finds out, it's that if one is held accountable, then all are at risk.

I think it's closer to dragging them into a conversation. Something along the lines of: "Hey I know you did X, let's talk about Y and maybe to Z since you're already in deep shit."

I think what made Epstein effective was balancing the blackmail with favors for complying. If all you do is get dirt on people, eventually it will fail. But if you give them something too, they are less resentful.

[flagged]

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

Also, please don't use quotes to make it look like you're quoting someone when you aren't. That's an internet snark trope, and thus breaks the "Don't be snarky" guideline too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's mostly about X conspiracy theory turned out to be true, so the Y conspiracy must be true! The fact that it even has to be a conspiracy theory that later gets validated is what annoys me, asking questions is okay, claiming conspiracy as fact is not.

Thinking that Israel potentially spies on the US government is not what anyone reasonable would call a conspiracy theory.

I hate that people will take “political blackmail is real” and jump to “the moon landing wasn’t real”

I've heard very few if any "conspiracy theorists" talk about sexual blackmail because it's boring. The appeal of a conspiracy is that it grabs people's attention. And there are certain types of attention whores who will spout theories about flat earth, or fake moon landing, because it gets them instant attention and engagement. This is what I think the GP meant, that s/he hates that these people were "right" about politicians being compromised.

Why must all conspiracy theories be bucketed together as if it's a single entity and culture. Conspiracies are real and as old as time, and treating any analysis or discussion about them as part of a greater crackpot culture just acts as cover for real ones. In fact there is evidence that the CIA is behind some of the crackpot theories to muddy the water.

Do you blame them? If a global ring of elite pedophiles turned out to be true in spite of all the gaslighting and denial, then why couldn’t the moon landing also be a conspiracy?

Keep in mind that the elite class couldn’t give two shits what the peasant class thinks. In fact, having us believe in false conspiracies helps distract the masses from the true conspiracies :)

Astounding to watch the mental gymnastics at play.

It’s like how Israeli lobbying orgs state that “claiming Zionist orgs control the media is antisemitism”, and then the solution is literally “we should use our contacts & supporters in the media to stop this kind of rhetoric”. Beautiful.

This is pathetic. Raising this? This is the level of "intelligence" you get when you pretend to remove all DEI/wokeness and just leave the ones that cater to you. Pathetic.

I had a few GS15s sit down with me in 2019 and explain to me directionally the vibe on Israel. Changed my viewpoint forever.

For ~50 years America has subcontracted to Israel a portion of its intelligence operations and sometimes largely for plausible deniability, other times because we cannot spy on our own citizens - the last part wasn't said explicitly - but what I could grok.

IMHO, the Israeli apparatus has gone far off the reservation in their operations and have lost favor in the past 5 years, especially in DC.

Israel's intelligence apparatus has historically participated in cleaning dirty narco cash via affiliates to finance intelligence operations back home (mostly thorugh hapoalim, safra, leumi, and signature bank), sold hacking tools to narcos, running guns, cleaning blood diamonds, and running kompromat where they deemed it is needed.

Rwandan and Guatemalan genocides probably wouldn't have happened to the stunning degree if the Israelis weren't illegally selling munitions into both. Also hard to get clarity if they were doing this as our subcontractors or going off the reservation.

Signature Bank's collapse was a sign that your local Israeli-intelligence agency linkedin money laundering apparatus was going to have volatility that there would be volatiliy in the middle east.

There was a time in the 90's onwards where one could wlak into signature, hapoalim, leumi, or safra with 10M in narco cash and get it cleaned, or so I'm told. https://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/19/finally-the-us-is-busting-is...

2023: 500k Israelis protesting against Netanyahu, blood diamonds going down in value b/c of lab grown diamonds, and the implosion of their money laundering apparatus cornerstone (Signature bank) probably was a positive signal for disruption in the Israeli way of life in mid 2023.

The large question at play amongst the GS15s that I've heard murmured in DC is if America should subcontract security operations to a non-AUKUS passport holders, and Israel is the vendor in question.

A lot of CIA seems bifurcated on their viewpoint of Israel. No idea when that happened.

Our relationship with Israel costs us $10-$20/barrel in increased fees and 50B-100B/yr to have our military in the region.

One thing that is fascinating - the Israelis are getting blamed for Iran right now - but the Hormuz volatility greatly increases their cost of living - and we are the greatest beneficiary.

We are the largest producer of nat gas, helium, methanol, LNG, and Oil.

I think the "hormuz volatility" has a terminating condition - APAC buying these US products in larger sizes. As it was explained to me, the reason the prices aren't 150 is because while maritime stuff is problematic - the surrounding 5 countries to Iran have ways to get the energy via pipeline and power line.

World is a complex place, they're our subcontractor for now....no clue if they will be in the future but the trend is no.

So this is the USA under Trump. Anti-semitism as official government policy. Didn't take long for him to show his true colours as dictator.

Bots in full effect now?

This guy literally helped killing thousands of Israel's "enemies", out of which a majority are innocent civilians. Above everything, you are showing your true color.

We are all fooling ourselves if we don't consider that Israel is interfering in our elections too.

AIPAC publicly brags about this.

https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-world/aipac-says-it-was-pro...

https://www.reddit.com/r/illinois/comments/1ry8tha/aipac_ope...

The Thomas Massie situation is extremely suspicious.

Israel would be deeply impacted by the results of the negotiations, so is this surprising or unexpected? Any nation including the US would most likely do the same in a similar scenario over what is considered to be almost existential negotiations.

It would be a massive scandal if any of our other allies were conducting this level of spying on our country's senior leadership, for the sole purpose of manipulating their decision processes to the foreign ally's benefit. Israel needs to learn to play by the rules.

I don't think we can assume that easily that it's perfectly normal to spy on allies, especially when one ally is the biggest military power in history, & their direct sole protector

Dude, the Epstein scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. It goes way deeper than that

They are surrounded by a murderous imperialist religion that is currently purging the remains of all other minorities. The only "ally" they have halfway around the world is split in half, one half abadoning the values the alliance builds on, the other in full blown denial of all reality not fitting into some utopian messianic vision. Man, i would send spies to the ISS to, if i was on a spacewalk and some maniacs in the airlock started a fight on how to cut my lifeline..

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