I remember being quite blase when a story broke about Israel spying on the US. I just didn't find it that shocking. Nations -- even friendly nations -- don't take each other at their word. They spy on each other. It didn't surprise me that Israel spies on us, and I'd be shocked if we don't spy on Israel.
And it turns out we do! Again, nothing shocking here. If anything, the most interesting twist is that the leaker was an Israeli Jew working for the FBI on contract, who was worried about what he perceived to be Israel's overly aggressive tendencies (he gave the info he intercepted to a left-wing Jewish blogger). It's such a delicious inversion of the trope that Jews can't be trusted to put American interests over Israeli ones.
How about this Mossad conspiracy theory: the Mossad used Liebowitz and Silverstein to kill three birds with one stone: (i) shame their government into *not* attacking Iran, (ii) trap a rat, and (iii) make a shrill blogger a little nervous.
ReplyDeleteOkay, okay probably crazy.
But it's not crazy to hypothesize that Dagan, who thinks attacking Iran is stupid, may have used a strategic leak.