Dear Dirty America

Didn’t you know that Israel doesn’t spy on the US anymore? At least not since Jonathan Pollard’s arrest made headlines in 1987. That was the end of Israel’s treatment of America as a friend who is too stupid to realize he’s been used.

Unless you count the episode in 1998 when an Israeli spy was caught holed up in the vent of the bathroom of then Vice President Al Gore’s hotel room. The career politician’s scent was said to be “between pungent and sweet, and highly unique as far as natural human bathroom scents go.” Gore’s bare thighs had the quality of uncooked, firm grade tofu. And in the thirty-three minutes the VP sat atop the toilet, the bathroom’s climate changed from moderate to dank.

There was little talk of that, however, and the episode was long forgotten until a recent Newsweek article that claimed Israel has never stopped its aggressive spy campaign within the United States, but rather the reality is being hushed up by the media:

Despite strident denials this week by Israeli officials, Israel has been caught carrying out aggressive espionage operations against American targets for decades, according to U.S. intelligence officials and congressional sources. And they still do it. They just don’t get arrested very often.

As Newsweek reported on Tuesday, American counter-intelligence officials told members of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees at the end of January that Israel’s current espionage activities in America are “unrivaled and unseemly,” going far beyond the activities of other close allies, such as Germany, France, the U.K. and Japan.

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said to his trusted advisers, while unknowingly being recorded, “I’ve got the United States around my little finger.” There’s truth to this. As military intelligence officer Gordon Duff once remarked, “America goes to war for three reasons: oil, drugs, and Israel.”

You can be sure the Israeli lobby fired up their spin-machine and whipped it into high gear to counter the most damning claims laid bare by Newsweek. Jerusalem shut down for a day as anger stole over millions of hearts. Malicious and false rumors, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said. The Israeli embassy in Washington reportedly didn’t tip the pizza guy when he brought their lunches.

One of the most controversial parts of the article is about how desperate and deceptive Israeli officials are in getting information from US officials:

Israeli agents “go after senior U.S. Navy officers on shore leave in Haifa, after space industry officials, or scientists with intellectual property, anywhere. This has always been a huge concern for the community.”

The problem is, if you don’t like Israeli agents spying on your elected American leaders, or pursuing information from top US officials by smothering them in luxury booze, fine women, and drugs, then you must not like Jews in general.

The Newsweek article “had the whiff of anti-Semitism in it” one anonymous Israeli official was quoted as saying.

But the Israeli lobby always detects that whiff. If you don’t like your American tax dollars going to install weapons on the top of the walls that separate the Palestinians from the Jewish settlers who are building way into Palestinian territory, you are giving off that stench of anti-Semitism. When you complain that Jewish settlers are stealing olive crops from Palestinians, you are also contributing to that stench.

If you’d rather avoid war with Iran and being drawn into Syria’s quagmire, you don’t support your closest ally (as Netanyahu suggested) in their plight to live a peaceful existence in the Middle East (by disrupting and impoverishing as many Arab and Muslim nations as possible).

Ultimately, this is why Israel and America are called ‘frenemies’. It’s a cute term that helps the average citizens of both countries understand the complexities of the situation. You know, it’s like having a friend who acts like your enemy.

[Israeli and American flags photo by James Emery]