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Will the US Share Intelligence with Israel’s New Left Wing
Intelligence Initiative?<br>
By: emptywheel Tuesday March 22, 2011 8:00 am<br>
<br>
Ha’aretz reports that Israel’s Military Intelligence set up a group
several months ago dedicated to collecting intelligence on
non-Israeli leftist organizations that criticize Israel.<br>
<br>
<i>Military Intelligence is collecting information about left-wing
organizations abroad that the army sees as aiming to delegitimize
Israel, according to senior Israeli officials and Israel Defense
Forces officers.<br>
<br>
The sources said MI’s research division created a department
several months ago that is dedicated to monitoring left-wing
groups and will work closely with government ministries.<br>
<br>
[snip]<br>
<br>
Military Intelligence officials said the initiative reflects an
upsurge in worldwide efforts to delegitimize Israel and question
its right to exist.<br>
<br>
"The enemy changes, as does the nature of the struggle, and we
have to boost activity in this sphere,” an MI official said. “Work
on this topic proceeds on the basis of a clear distinction between
legitimate criticism of the State of Israel on the one hand, and
efforts to harm it and undermine its right to exist on the other.”<br>
<br>
The new MI unit will monitor Western groups involved in boycotting
Israel, divesting from it or imposing sanctions on it. The unit
will also collect information about groups that attempt to bring
war crime or other charges against high-ranking Israeli officials,
and examine possible links between such organizations and terror
groups.<br>
</i><br>
Now aside from thinking generally that this is a bad idea, I’m
particularly concerned about whether or not the US will share
intelligence with Israel on such issues.<br>
<br>
For example, the initiative says it will look for ties between
groups critical of Israel and terrorist groups. How is that
different from the investigation of a bunch of peace activists’ ties
with humanitarian organizations which has suggested the peace
activists have ties to Hezbollah? And since we know OLC gave the
President and certain Federal Officials the green light to ignore
privacy protections on the sharing of grand jury information in the
PATRIOT Act, does that mean our government will readily share the
information they’re collecting in that grand jury with the Israelis?<br>
<br>
And to some degree, the Israelis wouldn’t even have to rely on
intelligence sharing, per se. In his book The Shadow Factory, James
Bamford spent some time detailing the Israeli ties to key companies
in our electronic surveillance, companies like Verint, which
intercepts and stores communication, PerSay, which does voice
mining, NICE, which does voice content analysis, and Narus, which
enables real-time surveillance on telecom lines. Between Verint and
Narus, Bamford writes,<br>
<i><br>
Thus, virtually the entire American telecommunications system is
bugged by two Israeli-formed companies with possible ties to
Israel’s eavesdropping agency–with no oversight by Congress.</i><br>
<br>
And we can find such ties closer to home, too. The company that had
been paid by Pennsylvania to track potential threats to critical
infrastructure which ended up tracking First Amendment protected
speech, the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response, is an
Israeli company. Among other groups it tracked (one key focus was
anti-fracking groups) were peace organizations–precisely the kind of
group that might oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza.<br>
<br>
The concern that federal and state entities have been paying
companies with Israeli ties to collect information on groups that
might include the same peace groups targeted by this new initiative
in Israel is one thing.<br>
<br>
But think of the other logical possibility. Our federal and state
governments usually show some embarrassment when they get caught
collecting intelligence on peace groups (though that doesn’t seem to
stop it from happening over and over again). What will stop those
same government entities from asking Israel to collect such
information?<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/03/22/will-the-us-share-intelligence-with-israels-new-left-wing-intelligence-initiative/">http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/03/22/will-the-us-share-intelligence-with-israels-new-left-wing-intelligence-initiative/</a>
[with links]<br>
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