Next Time Someone Gets Indignant about Israeli Spying on the United States …

... refer him to this little item, "American sub spied on Israel," from Aaron Lerner at the Independent Media Review Analysis:

Israel Television Channel Two military affairs correspondent Ronnie Daniel revealed this evening that the submarine Israel chased from its territorial waters last November was an American spy sub. The vessel was identified by the Israeli Navy 18 kilometers from shore near Haifa, and fled shortly after discovery. IDF commanders admitted it wasn't the first time a Western submarine had been intercepted spying on Israel. Daniel indicated that Israel does not know what the spy sub was focusing on. (June 5, 2005)

May 8, 2007 update: Gregory Levey, Israel's United Nations speechwriter and a senior foreign communications coordinator for Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, has this to say in an article titled "Spy Games: America's efforts to spy on Israel."

While Israel has certainly spied on the United States in the past (and likely continues to do so), it may actually be the United States that is the nosier country—and the one that enjoys far more license in such covert activities. If one party should be paranoid about prying eyes—and I'm not sure either should—it should be the Israel.

Levey then tells a personal anecdote and quotes an Israeli counterintelligence agent whether Israelis are much concerned about American espionage. "Definitely," he nodded gravely. "They're trying to spy on us all the time—every way they can." A former U.S. intelligence official then replied to the question, whether the United States spies on Israel: "As an American, I would certainly hope so." There is "definitely an inordinate amount of focus" on Israel in U.S. intelligence. Are there people in the Israeli government and military who feed information to the United States, reverse Jonathan Pollards, he replied "It wouldn't surprise me at all." Levey gives one specific example, the 1986 case of Yosef Amit.

Amit was a major in Israeli military intelligence. At one point, he worked in the secretive "Unit 504," which is responsible for coordinating spies in Arab countries neighboring Israel, and he also had close contacts in the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence agency. In the mid-‘80s, Amit was recruited by Tom Waltz, a Jewish CIA officer based in the CIA's station in Tel Aviv. And, until his arrest, he furnished the CIA with classified information about Israel's troop movements and its plans in both the occupied territories and Lebanon.

Apr. 24, 2008 update: Reacting to the arrest of 84-year-old Ben-Ami Kadish on charges of spying for Israel that date back 25 years, Caroline Glick offers policy advice for Israel in her Jerusalem Post column:

as the late Yitzhak Rabin once noted, every few years Israel discovers another US agent committing espionage against the state. Rather than make a big deal about it, and in spite of the fact that some of the information being stolen is deeply damaging to Israel's national security, out of a sense of comity with Washington, Israel keeps the scandals quiet and generally deports the spies.

By arresting an 84-year-old World War II veteran …, the US is sadly showing Israel once again that nice guys finish last. If Israel wants to be treated with respect by the US, the lesson of the Kadish affair, of the Syrian raid and of the Pollard affair is that Israel had better start pushing back.

The first thing it should do is arrest officials suspected of transferring classified materials to the US without authorization. It should then publish the names and details of US spies whom Israel previously caught and treated with kid gloves. Then it should publicly demand that Bush release Pollard from the prison where he rots, while the likes of Hizbullah agent Nada Prouty - who penetrated both the FBI and the CIA - is expected to receive a six-month prison sentence for her crimes.

Dec. 10, 2008 update: A Reuters reporter, Dan Williams, got a look at a new official history of Israel's intelligence services due out later this month that contains new evidence of U.S. spying on Israel. Titled in English "Masterpiece: An Inside Look at Sixty Years of Israeli Intelligence," it is as official a document as can be, with prefaces by the chiefs of Israel's military intelligence, Shin Bet, and Mossad and the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center as publisher.

Williams found that "American spy agencies use technologies like electronic eavesdropping, and trained staff from the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, for ‘methodical intelligence gathering'."

Barak Ben-Zur, a retired Shin Bet internal security service officer, wrote in the volume that "The United States has been after Israel's non-conventional capabilities and what goes on at the decision-making echelons." Asked by Reuters for operational details on U.S. spying efforts, Ben-Zur declined. But he described the American efforts as largely benign, given close defense ties between Israel and the Bush administration. "At the end of the day," he said, "the United States does not want to be surprised. Even by us."

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