According to recent reports, activists, journalists, and politicians around the world have been spied on using malware developed by a private Israeli tech firm.
The software, called Pegasus, was developed by Israel’s NSO group, and was exposed in a data leak containing over 50,000 phone numbers that belong to people targeted by NSO’s clients for the last 5 years.
One of the people targeted was Hanan Elatr, the wife of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was allegedly murdered by a ‘Saudi hit squad’ in 2018. Her phone was apparently targeted before his death.
The list of the over 50,000 targeted phones was shared recently with a variety of newspapers, including The Washington Post. If a number appears on the leaked list, investigators say that it means that the phone was targeted for hacking
The data also shows that the cell phone of Mexican freelance journalist, Cecilio Pineda Birto, was also exposed just a month before he was murdered by gun-wielding attackers at a car wash.
Devices that are successfully hacked by Pegasus are effectively turned into 24-hour monitoring devices, allowing whoever sent the virus to keep constant tabs on them.
Hackers are given full access to all the phone’s data, including previous text messages and contact lists, along with stored audio, video and photo files.
This is not the first time Israel has targeted American citizens.
It is the general consensus in Washington DC that Israel conducts the most aggressive spying and surveillance on the US, American politicians, and its citizens of any country in the world, even including China.
In 2018, Israel was accused of planting mysterious spy devices near the White House, around the capitol building, and throughout Washington DC specifically to spy on President Trump.
The miniature surveillance devices, commonly known as “StingRays,” mimic regular cell towers to fool cellphones into giving them their locations and identity information.
The devices were intended to spy on former President Donald Trump, according to one of his former officials, as well as his top aides and closest associates.
Former US Navy analyst, Jonathan Pollard, who spent 30 years in a US prison for selling government secrets to Israel, arrived in Israel in April of 2021 to a hero’s welcome.
“We are ecstatic to be home at last after 35 years,” Pollard, 66, said after landing at Ben Gurion Airport, where he and his wife, Esther, were greeted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Pollard was born and raised in Galveston Texas, though upon arrival to the Jewish state, he kissed the ground of what he calls his real home.
In 1985 Pollard pleaded guilty in the espionage affair, and was highlighted in a Fox News investigation that exposed more than 60 Israeli spies who may have known about the 9-11 attacks before they occurred.
In 2004, another Jewish American pentagon official was accused of obtaining and passing secret to the state of Israel.
The F.B.I. gathered evidence that the official passed classified policy documents to officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a major pro-Israeli lobbying group, which in turn provided the information to Israeli intelligence, according to investigators.
The Pentagon official was later revealed as Douglas Feith and reportedly gave the Israelis a sensitive report about American policy toward Iran, along with other materials.
Feith has been described as an architect of the Iraq War.
A Pentagon Inspector General report found that Feith’s office had “developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on Iraq and al-Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers.
The deceased American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell were also reportedly Israeli spies who used underage girls to blackmail politicians into giving information to Israel, according to their alleged Mossad handler.
Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli spy and reportedly Epstein’s handler recently went on the record, and said unequivocally, that Jeffrey Epstein was working for Israeli intelligence operations, and running a classic honey trap operation: Lure people inside, record their activities, and use it to blackmail them.
Ben-Menashe was also the handler of Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend and ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
AIPAC and WINEP are the main core of what many call the ‘Israel lobby,’ but many political scientists describe the lobby as 75 separate organizations, making it the most powerful lobby in Washington DC. Other groups sometimes considered a part of the overall lobby are groups like the ADL and Canary Mission, which sometimes directly or indirectly receive funding from the same donors, and broadly advocate for the same interests.
AIPAC alone was rated Washington’s most powerful lobby by most of congress in 1997 when asked by fortune magazine, and in 2005, a national journal study found the same thing. Jewish Americans make up the vast majority of the lobby, devoting their life to push American policy in a pro-israel direction, even if that becomes a detriment to America’s interests.
Upon the news breaking about the hacking of thousands of American citizens, many Americans were asking why conservative media outlets were silent.
Americans were equally perturbed by the silence of conservative media following President Joe Biden bowing down on his hands and knees in front of Israeli leaders while they laughed hysterically.
In 2009, most of the American conservative media seized on President Barack Obama’s deep bow to Japan’s emperor during his visit, accusing the former U.S. commander in chief of groveling to a foreign leader.
Obama greeted Emperor Akihito, whose father ruled when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, with a handshake and a nearly 90-degree bow, sparking furious online commentary from conservative media pundits, much of it negative.
The same conservative media pundits who were furious over Obama groveling before a foreign leader are nowhere to be found in 2021, following an even more embarrassing occurrence with now President Joe Biden.
Israel has continued to defy the US for decades, and lied about actions they have taken which have greatly harmed the US and American citizens.
From selling exclusive US military technology to China in 2005, to the 1981 bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, there are countless examples of how Israel has acted more like a foe than a friend. Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, the attack on the USS Liberty, and the Lavon Affair are other more egregious examples.
Top conservative pundits, many of whom represent themselves as ‘America First,’ have yet to comment on any of these topics.
