Replies

“think about how many US spies have been thrown out of Israel and get back to us with that number, okay?”

Sure, two Google clicks:

__________________________

“Caroline Glick offers policy advice for Israel in her Jerusalem Post column . . . as the late Yitzhak Rabin once noted, every few years Israel discovers another US agent committing espionage against the state. Rather than make a big deal about it, and in spite of the fact that some of the information being stolen is deeply damaging to Israel’s national security, out of a sense of comity with Washington, Israel keeps the scandals quiet and generally deports the spies. . . “

++++++++++++++++++++++++
1986 case of Yosef Amit.

Amit was a major in Israeli military intelligence. At one point, he worked in the secretive “Unit 504,” which is responsible for coordinating spies in Arab countries neighboring Israel, and he also had close contacts in the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency. In the mid-‘80s, Amit was recruited by Tom Waltz, a Jewish CIA officer based in the CIA’s station in Tel Aviv. And, until his arrest, he furnished the CIA with classified information about Israel’s troop movements and its plans in both the occupied territories and Lebanon.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sunday, June 5, 2005
American sub spied on Israel

American sub spied on Israel

Aaron Lerner Date: 5
June 2005

Israel Television Channel Two military affairs correspondent Ronnie Daniel
revealed this evening that the submarine Israel chased from its territorial
waters last November was an American spy sub. The vessel was identified by
the Israeli Navy 18 kilometers from shore near Haifa, and fled shortly after
discovery. IDF commanders admitted it wasn’t the first time a Western
submarine had been intercepted spying on Israel.

Daniel indicated that Israel does not know what the spy sub was focusing on.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dec. 10, 2008 update: A Reuters reporter, Dan Williams, got a look at a new official history of Israel’s intelligence services due out later this month that contains new evidence of U.S. spying on Israel. Titled in English “Masterpiece: An Inside Look at Sixty Years of Israeli Intelligence,” it is as official a document as can be, with prefaces by the chiefs of Israel’s military intelligence, Shin Bet, and Mossad and the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center as publisher.

Williams found that “American spy agencies use technologies like electronic eavesdropping, and trained staff from the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, for ‘methodical intelligence gathering’.”

Barak Ben-Zur, a retired Shin Bet internal security service officer, wrote in the volume that “The United States has been after Israel’s non-conventional capabilities and what goes on at the decision-making echelons.” Asked by Reuters for operational details on U.S. spying efforts, Ben-Zur declined. But he described the American efforts as largely benign, given close defense ties between Israel and the Bush administration. “At the end of the day,” he said, “the United States does not want to be surprised. Even by us.”

++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregory Levey - The New Republic - May 8, 2007

“When I first started work at the Israeli prime minister’s office as a speechwriter, I already held a security clearance from a previous job. Still, to obtain the higher level of clearance required for my new position, I had to go through a battery of security tests, interviews, and background checks. Nothing strange there, but then I noticed that the security agents seemed most concerned that I might be spying—for the United States. In fact, much of the questioning turned on this issue. And my clearance was twice delayed because I had a few (not very close) acquaintances who worked in American intelligence. It had never occurred to me that the Israelis were concerned about American espionage, which seemed to me like the least of their troubles, so I asked an Israeli counterintelligence agent if this was really such an issue. “Definitely,” he nodded gravely. “They’re trying to spy on us all the time—every way they can.””

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(Reuters, 12/10/2008) - “The United States routinely spies on Israel to try to gather information on its assumed atomic arsenal and secret government deliberations, a new official history of Israel’s intelligence services says.”

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Etc.