Israel’s recent security chiefs, often at odds with the country’s political leadership, have joined forces with serving and former politicians to deny a Newsweek report suggesting Israel routinely spied on Americans including then vice-president, Al Gore.
Former Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin was among those to dismiss the allegations.
“Israel is certainly not spying in the United States,” Yadlin said. “This is a former Military Intelligence head telling you this. If you bring all of the past Military Intelligence chiefs from the past 29 years, since [the arrest of Jonathan] Pollard, or the past heads of the Mossad, they will tell you the same.”
Yadlin said he expects the leaders of the U.S. intelligence community to address the American public in response to the report, and to “either say that this is baseless, or present facts.”
The most blunt of comments came from retired Mossad head Danny Yatom, who trashed the Gore story as “delusional.” Columnist Ron Ben Yishai dismissed the story, “Anyone in the loop knows that if Israeli intelligence services wanted to spy against Al Gore, it could have done so in numerous ways, especially while in Israel where they enjoy a home field advantage,” and that the “spy” was likely just a “maintenance worker.”
Likewise, Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz believes the overall report is hardly credible.
“In all my meetings with US intelligence officials, I’ve never heard one claim about Israeli espionage in the United States,” Steinitz said.
Israel’s last ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, rejected the claims pointing out that “Israel doesn’t spy against the US, period.”
Indeed, the countries say, cooperation between them right now is at a tremendous level, whether in defense or civilian life, as summed up in a May 7 readout during the visit to Jerusalem of U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice.
“The delegations shared views candidly and intensively, in the spirit of the extraordinary and unprecedented security cooperation between our two countries.”
Two well connected Israeli columnists with extensive knowledge of Israel’s intelligence community rebutted the Gore story. Ronen Bergman called the Newsweek report “too unrealistic.” Ron Ben Yishai, who was cited above, attributed the placement of the story to the “vindictiveness” of the American intelligence community. Both columnists suggested that the American intelligence community was motivated to push the story because of the recent rumors that Jonathan Pollard could be released.
Aside from the implausibility of the charges, one of the few sources to be named is Paul Pillar. Pillar achieved some prominence during the George W. Bush administration as a critic of the Iraq War. In addition he has emerged as a vicious critic of Israel. Ari Lieberman catalogued some of Pillar’s attacks on Israel including appearing at “National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel ‘Special Relationship'” earlier this year and contributing to an anti-Semitic blog in 2012 comparing “Israel to Apartheid-era South Africa.” In 2013, Pillar was on a panel at the anti-Israel Jerusalem Center’s annual conference.
In addition to being a source for the Newsweek article, Pillar recently wrote an article titled The Sheldon Primary for the National Interest–a piece about Sheldon Adelson that was critiqued by John Hinderaker at the PowerLine blog. Hinderaker lamented that when they were friends some forty years ago, Pillar “was as honest, as intelligent, as idealistic as anyone of my acquaintance” but that now he had become an “anti-Israel smear merchant.”
[Photo: The Israel Project]