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DOSSIER: Yuval Steinitz
Israel’s Strategic Threats Minister: U.S. conducting smear campaign

“In all my meetings with U.S. intelligence chiefs and the political officials who are responsible for them, I have not heard a single complaint about Israeli spying on the United States.”
JERUSALEM — Israel has determined that allies of President Barack Obama were trying to delegitimize the Jewish state.

Officials said elements within and close to the Obama administration were repeatedly leaking information meant to portary Israel as an enemy of the United States. They cited a series of articles of purported Israeli espionage against Washington. Read MORE

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“One gets the impression that someone is trying to sabotage the excellent intelligence cooperation between the United States and Israel,” Israeli Strategic Threats Minister Yuval Steinitz said.
Steinitz was referring to a series of reports by the online Newsweek magazine, which in May asserted that Israel was conducting more espionage operations than any ally of the United States. The articles said the administration, which was reducing visas for Israelis, has briefed Congress on alleged Israeli spying on the U.S. defense industry.
“In all my meetings with U.S. intelligence chiefs and the political officials who are responsible for them, I have not heard a single complaint about Israeli spying on the United States,” Steinitz said.

Steinitz said he would discuss the reports when he meets Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein on May 13. Ms. Feinstein, a California Democrat close to Obama, has been regarded as hostile to the Jewish state.

“I will insist that false reports of this kind be repudiated,” Steinitz said.
Newsweek did not detail U.S. spying in Israel. In 2008, then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice submitted a memorandum that called for increasing espionage on Israel, including information on the country’s civilian and military communications, command and control and satellites.

“Official and personal phone numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail addresses of principal civilian and military leaders,” the Oct. 31, 2008 memo, released by Wikileaks two years later, said.

Over the last year, the U.S. intelligence community has leaked information deemed damaging to Israel. They included alleged Israeli air strikes on Hizbullah weapons convoys and Syrian military arsenals.

“There is growing anger from U.S. intelligence officials at their Israeli counterparts, who have repeatedly embarrassed them,” Israeli defense analyst Ron Ben-Yishai said.

Officials linked the latest reports to an administration reassessment in wake of the failure of talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. They said the articles were meant to portray Israelis and their supporters as a danger to the United States.
“The minute you call a country as an espionage threat then everybody who supports that country are no longer considered loyal to America,” an official said. “The potential repercussions of this go way beyond Israel.”

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