06/25/2024 / By Cassie B.
The U.S. has been sharing increasing amounts of intelligence with Israel lately, according to a new report, even as the Biden administration tries to outwardly distance itself from the unpopular war in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of people.
According to an in-depth report by the Washington Post, the Pentagon has been providing an “extraordinary amount” of intelligence to Israel, including “drone footage, satellite imagery, communications intercepts and data analysis using advanced software, some of it powered by artificial intelligence.”
Their information came from current and former intelligence officials for both the U.S. and Israel, who characterized the degree of sharing as being unusually high, even when you consider the long-term friendly relationship between the two countries.
This is something National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan freely admitted in a White House briefing with reporters last month. He said the U.S. has given Israel “an intense range of assets and capabilities and expertise” and the intelligence provided is “not tied or conditioned on anything else. It is not limited. We are not holding anything back. We are providing every asset, every tool, every capability.”
This has prompted concerns on the part of numerous officials and lawmakers that the intelligence is being used by the Israeli military for air strikes and other military operations. This would go against the Biden administration’s stipulation that intelligence provided by the U.S. not be used for targeting regular Hamas fighters in its military operations.
Instead, it can only be used to locate hostages and top Hamas leadership such as October 7 attack mastermind Yehiya Sinwar and Hamas military wing commander Mohammed Deif, both of whom have been on the State Department’s terrorist list for nearly a decade.
Of course, monitoring this is challenging; the U.S. essentially has to take Israel’s word for it, which is not exactly considered reliable. One member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colorado), an army combat veteran, has questioned how the Biden administration can be certain the intelligence we give them isn’t being used for their military action against Hamas. He co-authored legislation that requires the national intelligence director to inform Congress of instances where American-provided intelligence used by other countries leads to civilian casualties.
Many Americans are unaware that the U.S. supplied some of the intelligence that was used to locate the four Israeli hostages who were rescued last week, including overhead imagery. While this may sound acceptable on the surface as this was approved use of the intelligence by the U.S., the rescue operation caused more than 270 Palestinians to die in what became one of the deadliest single events in the war so far.
Despite this, Sullivan was insistent in an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union that the U.S. did not participate in the rescue operation. Although this is technically true, it’s quite misleading since it appears the mission may not have happened without help from American intelligence.
“There were no U.S. forces, no U.S. boots on the ground involved in this operation. We did not participate militarily in this operation,” he said.
The publication also reported that Israeli officials asked for specific American intelligence to help locate hostages during the early days of the war, including certain pieces of information and technology to analyze significant volumes of imagery. This included sophisticated and highly detailed satellite imagery that Israel did not possess.
Some Israeli intelligence sources said that while they used to have outstanding intelligence capabilities, an over-emphasis on developing new technology and gathering intelligence has resulted in a dangerous lack of analysis of information, which means they have been unable to act on it.
A former State Department official under the Obama administration, Jeremy Shapiro, told Politico that some European diplomats he is in contact with are concerned that Biden’s support for Israel’s actions in Gaza could cost him the election and hand the presidency to Donald Trump.
“The level of concern is something between panic and terror,” he said.
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