How intense is spying on Israel? This intense.
2013 Report: To evade surveillance Netanyahu has no office computer, email or private phone, and sometimes resorts to “gestures”
With news that Israel spied on the Iran nuke negotiations, there is high dudgeon in some quarters.
Extending the administration’s Bibi-bashing news cycle apparently was the intent of the U.S. officials who leaked the information to The Wall Street Journal.
While Israel denies spying on U.S. officials, as opposed to targeting the Iranians with whom U.S. officials had communications, the incident is being exploited.
But there needs to be a reality check.
Friendly governments spy on friendly government. That’s how friends make sure who are their real friends.
The way the U.S. allegedly found out Israel was spying on the nuke negotiations was because the U.S. was spying on Israel.
The U.S. spying on Israel created a small media storm on December 2013, when a batch of Snowden documents were released, as The Guardian reported:
Senior Israeli officials have called on the US to stop spying on Israel, after revelations that the National Security Agency had intercepted emails from the offices of the country’s former leaders.
It is the first time Israeli officials have expressed anger since details of US spying on Israel began to trickle out in documents leaked by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden….
Leading Israeli officials work on the assumption that they are being monitored. Officials use special secure lines for certain types of communications, and for the most sensitive matters, issues are discussed only face to face in secure rooms.
But it gets more intense, as this article at the time in The Times of Israel reflected, Spy-target Netanyahu uses ‘gestures’ and ‘codes’ in sensitive discussions:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu routinely assumes that he is being spied upon and therefore goes to extraordinary lengths to prevent his work being compromised by foreign agencies, Israeli TV reported on Friday night, in the wake of revelations that US and British intelligence services intercepted emails in his office and that of his predecessor Ehud Olmert and also spied on former defense minister Ehud Barak.
Netanyahu has no computer in his office, does not use email, and does not maintain a private phone, Channel 2 reported.
More dramatically, when discussing especially sensitive issues even at his home, Netanyahu and guests sometimes resort to “gestures” rather than speech, because of concerns that they are being listened to, Channel 10 reported
It added that Netanyahu conducts his most sensitive discussions in the offices of the Mossad intelligence service, because only there is he confident that he is safe from listening devices.
Netanyahu’s aides will tell you that he sometimes “speaks in codes” during discussions, the Channel 10 report said, and that even when it’s not entirely clear what he means by the “code” name for this or that official, they can’t ask him because he won’t tell them.
No need to feel sorry for the Israelis.
Everybody does it. Including the Iranians.
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Comments
Bibi says no Palestinian state during his election run, obama goes wild about words mean things.
Iran says death to America, per obama it’s only rhetoric for their citizens (and how free are Iranian elections really?)
Political rhetoric is like “if you like your plan…” and “hope and change.”
However, if “Death To America!” is what your population wants to hear, and you repeat it out of, ahem, political need, then this is in an entirely different category.
Not to mention… the idea that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, needs to be careful about how his people look at him, to the point of having to chant death threats he doesn’t mean… well, that’s bullshit walkin’. Very stupid thing to say.
http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2015/03/24/intended-for-a-domestic-political-audience/
…and that Tojo cat was just a rabble-rouser.
The parallels are getting a little too thick to ignore.
In Driscoll’s piece there’s a link to David Brooks in which appears tweets, by some twits in my opinion cause I’m too old to make sense of the construction of some of them.
Is there perhaps an iApp for oldsters that translates these tweets into something understandable? 🙂
Reverts to gestures? Bet I know which one he uses when the topic is Obama. I also bet it translates the same in Hebrew.
And the interestiung thing is the article says israel doesn’t have the capability of spying on US communications – the infor came from Europe.
Read some time in February about the Europeans updating Israel on the negotiations.
There’s this link where US blames Israeli officials for leaking info.
http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/61534-150218-ny-times-us-asked-europe-to-limit-reports-to-israel-on-iran-talks
The accompanying video is worth watching.
“sometimes resorts to “gestures”” Battle language. See the movie “Dune”.
Cone of Silence™
Yeah, Bibi needs one of those, or maybe his own secure shoe phone.
Okay. Obama is saying he’s spying on Israel. Which is how he discovered Israel knows more about this “iran deal” than it should.
You think Americans would embrace “the iran deal?” And, it’s only Israel thinning the air?
As to “no computers” in the boss’s office … probably more true than not, around the first world! Imagine to have to call in an IT person, to find out the machine’s unplugged.
Oh, and while we’re at it, I doubt most executive offices rely on watching TV. (TV, which gave birth to couch potatoes.)
Yes, little obama-boy is having a temper tantrum. And, he has the prime minister of Afghanistan in his office. So in a speech he refers to him as Karzi. (Spell it any way you like.)
I can’t imagine this stuff upsets Bibi.
Depends on the executive.
A head of state in a private office(not a public meeting office) I bet has at least one tv.
A head of a Fortune 500 company? They’re GOING to have a tv in their office.
A exec at a media company? 3 at the minimum. Most of the media execs I have known had 5 tvs and ALL of them were constantly on the financial channels and news networks (Fox News, cnn, MSLSD, CNBC, and Bloomberg news, I think)(this was before fox financial).
You don’t need a spy network to read Obama’s mind. Come on now. He is an open book or, rather, I should say, he is a public library of twisted twaddle. “Dreams From My Father”, “Rules for Radicals”, “Harvard For Penniless Smack Daddies and Dummies” “How to Rig an Election Using Acorn,” “DIY: How to Become a Fatuous Illinois Senator in No Time.” etc.
Hussein is his middle name. Golf is his game. Ma Val is the brains of the operation. Ya see.
When not gesturing “twinkles up or “twinkles down” I think Obama and his surrogate child love child Kerry are behind closed doors lobbying the Iranians for at least one of the 19,000 Iranian centrifuges. Obama earnestly wants to place one in his Presidential library back here, somewhere in his deadly community home town.
Obama’s legacy will then be that he stopped one Iranian centrifuge from enriching Uranium. And at the same time he enriched his crony pals and millions of illegals at taxpayer expense through financial vehicles such as Obamacare, tax credits and taking jobs from Americans and giving illegals minimum wage, quid pro quo to vote Democrat. These ‘promising’ Americans, these illegals, include those at the lowest rungs of society: narco-terrorists, Islamic Radicals and deadly felons. (And don’t forget Obama made every effort to stop the U.S. economic centrifuge from enriching growth).
BTW: Chicago’s Mayoral choices: Liberal elitist Rahm “Godfather” Emanuel and
further left than Che Guevara, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia”
God help us.
“a public library of twisted twaddle”
Yup. Stealing that one.
The administration found out about this when Israel notified the Republican members of Congress – they were spying on the congressmen not Israel.
You mean after all this time the Obama administration has channels of notification other than the main stream media?
How dare Congress know what the Executive branch is doing!
But wasn’t the NSA spying on Congress?
Israel vehemently denies spying directly on the US and I’m inclined to believe them. Dictatorships lie routinely, democracies tend to be truthful. Democracies under constant fire (Israel and Apartheid South Africa) are/were extremely careful to be truthful in the international arena.
The most likely scenario is that this was leaked to further the US/Israel rift. There was a similar leak about spying last year, with a nasty undertone and some of that verbiage was in the WSJ report. It is a form of demonization and is the lowest form of diplomatic attack.
Apparently spying on Iran, finding out what the US offered it, and then informing Congress of the fact is considered spying on the US and engaging in hostile acts. Because Congress is the enemy of peace.
Pretty scary stuff, huh?
Alex Jones turns out to be right on just about everything.
http://www.infowars.com/
Israel repeatedly refutes any claims that they spied on the US. No fact I’ve seen reported on the NYT or elsewhere disproves that. Note the difference between facts and assertions. However, if Israel spies on Iran, or any Arab country, which they should and which they do, they will necessarily sometimes pick up conversations between those countries and the US. This is appropriate. Also, Israel will hear from friendly countries who do spy on us, or who are involved in the discussion in the first place, and they are obliged to use that information for their self-preservation.
All of this is of no import however, within the context of this “episode”. The Obama administration informed the press of Israel’s “spying” because they are setting the stage for an improvident deal with Iran and sanctions against Israel. I don’t believe Obama is a Muslim, but he is self-evidently a Muslim sympathizer, and his man-crush on Iran defies all reason. History will not be any kinder to him than the present is being.
The question then is, “which side of the Sunni/Shia divide” does Obama sympathize with?
That which will work as a proxy for him so that he can turn around, rub his hands and sink his putt?
Oh, and Yemen went down the toilet. Yemen sits in a crucial spot. And, also directly under Saudi Arabia.
There are lots of unhappy arabs milling about. And, they also use covert operations.
There used to be times (in administrations long ago), when Israelis would visit the White House to transfer information they picked up clandestinely. You need hand gestures with this? Most people just roll their eyeballs at the junior varsity player in da’ white house. (Where his wife is redecorating rooms. And, the florist lady got fired. Not just fired. But “walked out da door.”) These people must be one heck of a pleasure to work for. (Not.)
A country that spies on its own citizens has no moral standing to complain about being the target of foreign espionage.
Bibi has no email? Something Hillary should have considered.
If 2016 doesn’t work out for Hillary and she’s still hard up for money, perhaps she and Lois Learner could find spots in the Mossads IT department.
Israel would be foolish not to spy on the betrayer in chief. He is enabling Iranian nuclear weapons with endless and pointless negotiations over a treaty that’s going to allow them nuclear weapons. While at the same time Obama is standing aside while Iran takes down our allies in the ME.
Real patriots need a spy in the White House to learn about the lies and destructive anti-american activities of Tyrant Obama the Liar.