As we noted yesterday, the New York Times doesn’t think it’s news that the National Security Agency is sharing intelligence data it collects on Americans with Israel. But the story is making waves. Notice the sarcasm in the kicker, from Connor Simpson at the Atlantic Wire:
Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported Tuesday that president Dilma Rousseff was so miffed over the National Security Agency snooping into her communications that she decided to cancel her trip to the White House on October 23…
This is one of the biggest diplomatic backlashes the White House has seen (not involving Russia) since the NSA scandal broke...
As soon as Rousseff’s cancellation was confirmed, the White House announced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit September 30. Since the NSA shares much of its intelligence with Israel, they probably still have a lot to talk about.
The NSA-Israel story is roiling folks all over. From Scott McConnell at the American Conservative:
The ugly truth we now know is that two months after assuming office, Obama or an underling acting in Obama’s name signed an agreement to transfer Americans’ personal and private information to Israel….
For decades, top American officials have acted almost as if they can’t think for themselves, they see everything in the Mideast through the optic of whether it is “good for Israel.” But this is different than that, and worse. The Americans in Israel’s camp at least think that “what’s good for Israel is good for America”—or at least so they proclaim, publicly. But no one can imagine that feeding Israel eavesdropped information on Americans is good for those Americans—that’s why this ugly program has been kept secret. We have Edward Snowden to thank, otherwise we might never have known how far the rot has gone.
I for one do not trust the Israeli government not to make access available to Israeli businesses to use for industrial espionage purposes. The politics of helping Israel spy on private US citizens for national security reasons is one thing, allowing Israel access to all that on-line business activity for potential competitive advantage, that’s another. Both are as big as stories get, so, the real story is the MSM’s effort to belittle it.
Israel can ask for anything and it will have it from US . So why is this sharing?
This is the product of the Rumsfield ” the unknown unknown ” that American did not know but Israel wanted to find out from American sources.
I agree that what is good for Israel is good for America.
As promised, I ended my 12 year subscription to the NYT today and the conversation was quite prolonged. I clearly stated my reason for the termination – the outrageous omission of coverage of the NSA-Israel story and then the explanation, insulting to any intelligent reader, that it wasn’t a significant story.
I explained that I had borne the pro-Israel spin on stories for many years, but this was too much, admitting that the Lustick piece was a step in the direction of balance, though buried in the Sunday Review.
The operator offered me 12 weeks at half price, then 24 weeks at half price, then a promise that my objections would be made known to those in charge with a note that I was on the verge of cancellation – but I held out and insisted that the strongest message I could send would be not a threat to cancel, but the completed action itself.
I hope others have done the same – we little people have to do what we can.
And now I’m off to read the WaPo with a Kindle subscription. Come on, Jeff, let’s see some good journalism!
“he tells me he is horrified: ‘There seems to be no limit to the violations to their hard-won liberties that Americans will put up with in the catchall name of counter terror.'”
John le Carre interview by Philippe Sands, The Financial Times, Sept 7.
“There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man….
“America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived.” Chesterton, “What I Saw in America” quotes.