Israel: Friend, Enemy or Pakistan?

Over the decades it has come to look like Israel is much more enemy than friend to the US, or at least something akin to Pakistan in terms of relationship with the US. Despite massive US diplomatic and economic support ever since 1949, Israel these days seems mostly independent. It is willing to deal with whoever best serves its interests. It acts as if US interests are of little concern. Over the years, US interests have absorbed great damage over its support for Israel. The US has paid dearly for defending and supporting Israel. 

One of the constant acts of an enemy is Israel's aggressive spying on the US. That has been going on for decades and it continues today. Its aggression in this area goes beyond what one would expect from allies. The latest Israeli insult comes from a sophisticated hack of cell phones of some key people by an Israeli hacker company. The Washington Post writes:

The Pegasus Project, an investigation by The Washington Post and 16 other news organizations in 10 countries, was coordinated by the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and advised by Amnesty International. Those two groups had access to a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers that included surveillance targets for clients of the Israeli spyware company NSO Group, which they shared with the journalists. Over the past several months, the journalists reviewed and analyzed the list in an effort to learn the identities of the owners of the phone numbers and to determine whether their phones had been implanted with NSO’s Pegasus spyware.

The investigation was able to link more than 1,000 government officials, journalists, businesspeople and human rights activists to numbers and to obtain data for 67 phones whose numbers appeared on the list. That data was then analyzed forensically by Amnesty International’s Security Lab. Thirty-seven of those showed evidence of an attempted Pegasus intrusion or a successful hack.

Further analysis indicated that many of those intrusions or attempted intrusions came shortly after the phone number had been entered onto the list — some within seconds — suggesting a link between the list and subsequent surveillance efforts.

The most sophisticated spyware is generally deployed by law enforcement or intelligence agencies, and there is a robust private market to provide those tools to nations that can afford them, including the United States. It has long been suspected that terrorist groups and sophisticated criminal gangs also have access to spyware. Spyware from another Israeli company, Candiru, was used to infect the computers and phones of activists, politicians and other victims through phony websites masquerading as pages for Black Lives Matter or health groups, cybersecurity researchers at Microsoft and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab said this month.

NSO has long said that Pegasus cannot be used to successfully target phones in the United States and that it should be used only against “suspected criminals and terrorists.” But research groups have found that it’s also been used to spy on political figures, journalists and human rights workers — findings confirmed by the Pegasus Project investigation.

There is little meaningful legal protection against being targeted by spyware in most of the world. NSO says Pegasus cannot be used on numbers inside the United States, Israel’s most important ally. The United States has some legal restrictions on spyware, including the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was enacted in 1986 and bans “unauthorized access” of a computer or phone, but its vague language has meant that it’s often unevenly applied in court. Some states have passed cybersecurity and privacy laws, such as California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, which bans electronic tampering or interference. WhatsApp has cited both laws in an ongoing court case against NSO.

Israeli spies whop are caught and jailed in the US are treated as national heroes in Israel once they get out of the slammer. Johnathan Pollard spent 30 years in US jail for spying for Israel. He was arrested in 1985. His escapades cause major damage to US national security. The AP comments on his fun story:

America stabbed Israel in the back, so Israel stabbed America in the back

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

In this Nov. 20, 2015 file photo, convicted spy Jonathan Pollard leaves a federal courthouse in New York. Pollard, an American who served a 30-year sentence for spying for Israel, defended his actions in his first interview since arriving in Israel to a hero's welcome in December 2020, saying America had “stabbed Israel in the back” by withholding intelligence from its ally. In excerpts from the interview with the Israel Hayom daily published on Monday, March 22, 2021, Pollard describes his happiness at being a free man in Israel.

Jonathan Pollard, an American who served a 30-year sentence for spying for Israel, defends his actions in his first interview since arriving in Israel late last year. He says America had “stabbed Israel in the back” by withholding intelligence from its ally.

In excerpts from the interview with the Israel Hayom daily published Monday, Pollard describes his happiness at being a free man in Israel while expressing regret that he was not able to father children because of his incarceration.

Pollard, now 66, sold military secrets to Israel while working as a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy in the 1980s. He was arrested in 1985 after trying unsuccessfully to gain asylum at the Israeli Embassy in Washington and pleaded guilty. The espionage affair embarrassed Israel and tarnished its relations with the United States for years.

Pollard was given a life sentence. U.S. defense and intelligence officials said his spying caused great damage and strenuously argued against his release. But after serving 30 years in federal prison, he was released in 2015 and placed on a five-year parole period. Pollard arrived in Israel to a hero’s welcome in December.

He told Israel Hayom that at the time of his spying the U.S. government was keeping intelligence from Israel and lying to it, claiming he witnessed it himself at meetings.

“I know I crossed a line, but I had no choice,” he told the newspaper, adding that the threats to Israel were “serious.”

After all the US has done for Israel and the huge damage it has suffered in the process, it is arguably time to stop supporting that nasty little country. The cost-benefit is bad, sort of like the cost-benefit from tax breaks for religion in the US. It is long past time to cut the financial and diplomatic umbilical cord and acknowledge and treat Israel for what it is, an enemy that just won't back down.[1]

Questions: Does such criticism, and other criticisms, of Israel amount to anti-Semitism, holocaust denial, Nazism and/or fascism? Those are the standard Israeli and Israel supporter responses to criticism of Israel. 

In terms of relations with the US, is Israel almost completely a friend, almost completely an enemy, Pakistan (~70% enemy and ~30% friend or ambiguous) or something else, e.g., ~50% friend/ambiguous and ~50% enemy? 

Should the US continue its generous financial, military and diplomatic[2] support of Israel? 

Footnote: 

1. Politico reported in 2019: 

The U.S. government concluded within the past two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, according to three former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.

But unlike most other occasions when flagrant incidents of foreign spying have been discovered on American soil, the Trump administration did not rebuke the Israeli government, and there were no consequences for Israel’s behavior, one of the former officials said.  

The devices were likely intended to spy on President Donald Trump, one of the former officials said, as well as his top aides and closest associates — though it’s not clear whether the Israeli efforts were successful.

Trump is reputed to be lax in observing White House security protocols.

Reputed to be lax? That is a gross understatement. Known to be lax, sloppy and unconcerned is much closer to the mark. 

2. Foreign Policy (FP) wrote in may of 2021:

The latest round of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians ended in the usual way: with a cease-fire that left Palestinians worse off and the core issues unaddressed. It also provided more evidence that the United States should no longer give Israel unconditional economic, military, and diplomatic support. The benefits of this policy are zero, and the costs are high and rising. Instead of a special relationship, the United States and Israel need a normal one.

Once upon a time, a special relationship between the United States and Israel might have been justified on moral grounds. The creation of a Jewish state was seen as an appropriate response to centuries of violent antisemitism in the Christian West, including but hardly limited to the Holocaust. The moral case was compelling, however, only if one ignored the consequences for Arabs who had lived in Palestine for many centuries and if one believed Israel to be a country that shared basic U.S. values. Here too the picture was complicated. Israel may have been “the only democracy in the Middle East,” but it was not a liberal democracy like the United States, where all religions and races are supposed to have equal rights (however imperfectly that goal has been realized). Consistent with Zionism’s core objectives, Israel privileged Jews over others by conscious design.

Standard Israel response to criticism: You're just a hateful baby-killing, Nazi anti-Semite