Why was Israel spying on the US or was it at all?

Moshe-Mordechai van Zuiden - The Times of Israel: The Blogs - September 15, 2019

It started with a claim in Politico that Israel had been spying on the US.

Politico is a serious medium with a nice leftwing/rightwing balance. I see no ground to suspect that they just wrote that to get publicity or sow enmity. Yet, it has been accused of antisemitism in the past couple of years and that could be a reason why Antisemites would give them this "scoop."

What are its sources? Their report is supposedly "based on accounts provided by three former U.S. officials." How do we know that they spoke the truth? Maybe there was no spying at all. And who says that Israel must have done this? One source added: "that as opposed to other incidents of foreign spying on U.S. soil, the Trump administration did not rebuke the Israeli government or took any official steps against it." One good reason for a Trump "inertia" could be that this "spying" was completely made-up.

Unsurprisingly, another US intel source denies it: Though everyone spies on everyone, since the Pollard debacle, Israel doesn't spy on the US.

So, who's telling the truth? I'll come back to that.

Israel denies it. But had it done it, it would also deny it, so that's futile.

However, the spy story is so unbelievable because it says that Israel had been spying on Trump which is as unuseful as lowering spy devices into a fish bowl with one goldfish. Because that's how transparent (and orange) Trump is. You kiss him twice and he tells you everything that's on his mind.

Netanyahu suggests that his political opponents in the upcoming election have done this. That's, of course, just electioneering. It is contrived to assume that the opposition would foster animosity between Trump and Bibi to show that the latter isn't such a successful international diplomat.

The Iranians make fun of it: The US doesn't need enemies [read: Iran] with friends like that [Israel]. Nail on the head. Israel and the US are buddies.

Still, going into history and numerous details does not give an answer.

Motive

There seems no smoking gun. But from the above people, who's a motive?

Recently, Jonathan Pollard has again requested permission to leave for Israel, this time on humanitarian grounds - his wife is seriously sick.

Antisemites in the US intelligence community have stopped this aliyah for decades now. Their greatest pretext: we need to remind Israel all the time that it should never spy on its prime ally again. So, they have "reason" to lie now again that Israel is not trusting the US and spying on its friend. To make sure that Pollard is not excused to leave.

They have the motive - they have done it, as far as I'm concerned.

US President Trump doesn't believe the spy story. If it was any other administration in any other country or epoch, I would have doubted this. So often, a government has spread rumors against Jews to deflect anger against it upon the Jews, next to "deplore" the aggression against them.

But, because of the way Trump relates to Jews, I don't suspect him of this. And he can prove that I'm right. By releasing Jonathan Pollard and his wife to Israel and even come to the airport to bid and wave them goodbye.

The only People with a memory will remember this forever.

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