Biweekly Discussion - Has Israel Conspired Against the U.S.?

This is going to be an online meetup using Zoom. If you've never used Zoom before, don't worry — it's easy to use and free to join.

Here's the link to the event: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82827730099?pwd=aDAxQkd5YTRwTVRmSTVuckxmek9HUT09

Meeting ID: 828 2773 0099
Passcode: 702748

HAS ISRAEL REPEATEDLY CONSPIRED AGAINST THE UNITED STATES...

...OR ARE ENEMIES OF ISRAEL MERELY PROMOTING ANTI-ZIONIST CONSPIRACY THEORIES?

INTRODUCTION:

Israel and the United States are long-time allies, but in this discussion we'll examine several allegations often found on conspiracy theory websites about incidents where Israeli leaders appear to have orchestrating secret missions to hurt U.S. interests. You can find a lot of allegations about Israeli plots in the news media coverage of the Muslim world (e.g. Qatar's Al Jazeera & Iran's PressTV) and Russia (e.g. RT & Sputnik), and they'll occasionally focus on claims that the Israelis are bad allies for the U.S. in the hopes of hurting the alliance. Domestically, allegations of secret Israeli plots are common among some left-wing activists, particularly in the BDS Movement, as well as on the fringes of the political right, particularly among some paleoconservatives and those who follow the Alt-Right blogosphere.

These claims about Israel betraying the U.S. have been given more prominence in recent years due to the efforts of the "Groypers", i.e. the highly vocal followers of right-wing pundit Nick Fuentes who often heckle mainstream conservative speakers like Charlie Kirk & Ben Shapiro when they show up to speak on college campuses. They'll ask about the USS Liberty incident during the Q&A period or just shout out things like "Google Dancing Israelis!" and "Google the Lavon Affair!" hoping some curious College Republicans will do an internet research and have their minds blown. (For more details on the Groypers clashing with mainstream conservatives, you can check out this Vox article:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/11/20948317/alt-right-donald-trump-jr-conservative-tpusa-yaf-racism-antisemitism )

So are all these salacious stories about top-secret Israeli military technology, IDF atrocities, Mossad's covert ops, and moles in foreign governments that one encounters online merely anti-Zionist propaganda & conspiracy theories from stupid people who've seen too many spy movies and hate the Jews? Some of it certainly is... but it's not clear that all of these claims are complete bunk. As we'll see, Israel - like virtually all countries - has some "skeletons in their closet" when it comes to spying and covert military operations. The question here is whether Israel has done more objectionable things than most countries and if it has harmed Americans & American national interests enough that the U.S. should sever ties with Israel... And that requires that we try to separate the implausible conspiracy theories from the verifiable scandals in U.S.-Israel relations.

To avoid harping on the easily debunkable stuff, I've decided to skip some of the wildly speculative & implausible conspiracy theories about Israel -- for example, the idea that Israel had JFK assassinated with the help of Meyer Lansky & the ADL so the U.S. wouldn't interfere with their nuclear weapons program, or that Israeli agents orchestrated the 9/11 attacks with remote control planes as a false flag to provoke the U.S. into invading the Middle East, or that Mossad agents secretly rescued Jeffrey Epstein from prison and left a body double in his cell to fake his death. I hope it's clear from our past discussions of conspiracy theories why highly complex plots like the 3 mentioned above should be assigned a very low prior probability of success, not to mention an almost astronomically low chances of success coupled with a long-term mainstream media blackout. If not, please review the discussion outline from one of our older meetups entitled "Evaluating Conspiracy Theories" - https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/djzwsrybcpbtb/

It's also worth pointing out that many anti-Israel conspiracy theories fall prey to an overuse of the "cui bono" heuristic, i.e. if Israel could conceivably benefit from some bad event, some people assume they must be behind it. Anti-Israel bias can also lead to "privileging the hypothesis", i.e. starting with the belief that Israel is behind some bad event and then cherrypicking the evidence that fits that hypothesis, ignoring whatever evidence doesn't fit, and never investigating alternative hypotheses. Privileging the idea that "Israel did it" overlooks the problem that even if we reject the mainstream media narrative, there were still multiple powerful actors, foreign & domestic, that potentially had something to gain from JFK's assassination, the 9/11 attacks, Epstein disappearing or dying in prison before his trial, etc. Conspiracy theorists often look for apparent holes in the official explanation of events and then construct an ad-hoc counter-narrative about the "real" perpetrators - in this case, the Israelis - in a manner similar to creationists making a "God of the gaps" argument (i.e. what Rationalwiki calls a "didit fallacy"). Often, conspiracy theorists have spent so much time in online conspiracy forums that they can present a "Gish gallop" of supporting factoids that are individually weak or outright false, but as a whole they overwhelm the opponent's ability to refute them and have the rhetorical effect of "proof by verbosity". Even if they can't produce a coherent counter-narrative, some conspiracy theorists often enjoy trolling people with a "just asking questions" strategy (a.k.a. JAQing off). "Just asking questions" can initially appear to be an unbiased inquiry, but it's dishonest in cases where all of the questions involve casting suspicion on only one actor - e.g. Israel - since that shows they're still privileging their hypothesis. See the following links for explanations for these terms:
https://rationalwiki.org//wiki/Cui_bono
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Privileging_the_hypothesis
https://rationalwiki.org//wiki/Didit_fallacy
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

To find the most parsimonious & plausible explanation, we must often expect a few unexplained holes or shortcomings in even the best-supported hypothesis. Typically, the most rational approach is assign prior probabilities for a range of hypotheses for a given event & based on what we know about how such things typically happen, consider the evidence we have about the specific event in question, and then use Bayesian updating to roughly calculate posterior probabilities for each hypothesis & see which one is most probable.

In this meetup, we'll focus on allegations that are more plausible due to some substantiation from mainstream sources, yet still mysterious because they're treated as unresolved even by many government investigators & mainstream scholars. While some defenders of Israel often try to lump these more evidence-based allegations in with the wilder conspiracy theories and dismiss them all as "anti-Semitic", I think that's a dishonest criticism when we're merely talking about Israel's foreign policy in away that doesn't cast any aspersions on Jews as an ethnic group or religion.

To avoid motivated reasoning, those of us in the skeptic community should probably try to remain somewhat agnostic about the overall "goodness" or "badness" of Israeli foreign policy and just evaluate the evidence for each alleged Israeli plot, comparing it to what we know about the covert activities of Israel & other nation-states from research in international relations, military science, the emerging fields of "national security studies" & "intelligence studies", and investigative journalism based on declassified & leaked government documents.

Initially, I planned to start by looking at Operation Susannah (a.k.a. the "Lavon Affair"), a series of "false flag" attacks by Jewish saboteurs on British & American properties in Egypt in the summer of 1954, apparently meant to anger the Western powers against the Egyptians and persuade the British to retain their occupying troops in Egypt's Suez Canal zone. While the Israeli government denied any involvement for many decades, in 2005 they publicly admitted it for the first time. Since the Israelis have admitted it, there's no mystery any more about what happened, so I've decided there's no point in reviewing it in a discussion devoted to "conspiracy theories" where we assess their plausibility. But we can consider how the Lavon Affair indicates a general willingness of the Israeli government to use false flag attacks. Defenders of Israel often point out that, while indefensible, the Operation Sussanah attacks were undertaken at night when the facilities were uninhabited to avoid casualties. The operation appears to have been orchestrated by a small "cabal" within the Israeli government that was quickly exposed, and despite efforts at suppression the general outline of the conspiracy was revealed in a left-wing Israeli tabloid, HaOlam HaZeh, by whistleblowers who leaked details to the journalist Uri Avnery. Thus, unlike the surrounding Arab states, Israel's democratic governance & relatively free press can be seen as providing a check on government conspiracies. For a brief overview on the Lavon Affair, check out the Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair

I also thought about covering the cases of Jonathan Pollard & Ben-Ami Kadish, both of whom were arrested, tried & convicted for spying on the US government for Israel, as well as Lawrence Franklin who was convicted of passing classified documents to AIPAC. However, once again, there's not much mystery to resolve in these cases. The Israeli government acknowledged a portion of its role in Pollard's espionage in 1987 and issued a formal apology to the U.S., but did not admit to paying him until 1998. Israel denied any connections to Franklin's activities, and it's unclear how serious the charges were considering since charges were dropped against the two AIPAC officials Franklin showed the classified documents to and Franklin himself only got house arrest & community service. Kadish was arrested in 2012, and he pled guilty and admitted to spying for the Israeli government, and although the Israeli government didn't acknowledge him, he was reported as an Israeli asset in the Israeli media at the time. Defenders of Israel have pointed out that the US also routinely spies on Israel (e.g. the Yosef Amit & Andrzej Kielczynski cases, as well as Operation Anarchist), and while spying between allies is shocking to the average layperson it is considered normal & fairly benign by those with any knowledge of international relations. For a brief overview on theses cases, check out their Wikipedia entries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Ami_Kadish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Franklin_espionage_scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosef_Amit
https://www.jonathanpollard.org/2001/051801a.htm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Anarchist

So which cases retain enough mystery to be worth investigating?

In the first section, we'll cover the beginnings of the Israeli covert nuclear program, the tensions it caused with the U.S., and how this may tie into the "Apollo affair". The Apollo affair refers to an incident in 1965 where a US company, the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC), in the Pittsburgh suburbs of Apollo and Parks Township, Pennsylvania was investigated for losing several hundred pounds of highly enriched uranium. From 1965 to 1980, the FBI investigated Zalman Shapiro, the company's president, over the loss of the uranium. Shapiro was a long-time Zionist who had contacts among high government officials in Israel, including a contract to build nuclear-powered generators for Israel. He was suspected for many years of diverting some of the uranium to Israel, enough to make several nuclear weapons. The Atomic Energy Commission, the CIA, and other government agencies conducted additional investigations, but no criminal charges were ever filed. We'll look at the evidence and consider whether it suggests the uranium was secretly trafficked to Israel or merely wasted on-site through leaks, ending up in the local soil & water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apollo_Affair

Second, we'll look at the Israeli attack on a US Navy surveillance ship, the USS Liberty, in international waters off the coast of the Sinai peninsula during the Six-Day War in 1967. There were several investigations conducted into the incident by the U.S. Navy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, the U.S. House and Senate, the NSA, and the Israeli government. All investigations into the matter similarly blamed lack of communications and found no reason for anyone involved to face criminal charges. There's no dispute about whether or not this event occurred and whether it was really the Israelis that attacked the ship. The official explanation from the Israeli government is they mistook it for an Egyptian vessel, and they apologized & paid compensation to the survivors. However, several crew members of the USS Liberty continue to this day to argue that there was no way the Israeli military could have mistaken their ship for an Egyptian vessel and that it must have been an intentional attack. They've pressed for a new Congressional investigation but so far have not got much traction. The main questions we'll explore here are whether this attack was truly an accidental case of "friendly fire" or may have actually been a failed attempt at a "false flag" attack to frame Egypt and draw the U.S. into the war or to cover up Israeli war crimes against Egyptian POWs in the Sinai peninsula.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

Third, we'll look at the some allegations about Israeli spying that were made in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, with the most comprehensive reporting coming in a special report by Carl Cameron at Fox News in December of 2001. There was the case of the five so-called "Dancing Israelis" who were seen celebrating on the roof of a white van parked in lower Manhattan on 9/11 & taking pictures of the Twin Towers as they fell. There doesn't seem to be much dispute about the NYPD police arresting several Israeli citizens on 9/11, who were then questioned by the FBI & deported back to Israel. There were also a large number of young Israelis posing as "art students" who reportedly approached various US government offices, especially the DEA, and many of them were arrested, questioned & deported shortly after 9/11. (The Fox News special report also mentioned some concerns about data leaks from several Israeli tech firms involved in the US telecommunication systems, but these concerns are more tangential & are probably best left for a future meetup.) The questions here are whether these Israelis were government agents and engaging in espionage on US soil, or perhaps they were just engaged in shady business enterprises or some sort of criminal enterprise like drug smuggling. If they were spies, we'll consider what what purpose they may have had, and whether they had engaged in surveillance of Muslim terrorist cells in the U.S. that may have given them some foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories#Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_student_scam

Lastly, we'll look at some recent allegations that billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's involvement in the sex trafficking of underage girls was actually part of an elaborate Israeli intelligence operation designed to generate blackmail material on U.S. politicians, business executives & celebrities. These allegations haven't received much coverage in the mainstream news media, but they're not merely idle speculation & rumor mongering. These claims stem from a former Israeli intelligence officer, Ari Ben-Menashe, who claimed in an interview back in September of 2019 that he met Epstein back in the 1980s and that that Jeffrey Epstein and his female companion Ghislaine Maxwell were both intelligence assets of Israel, and that they sought out powerful politicians and public figures to entrap them in compromising situations. We'll look at whether intelligence services have used underage "honey traps" in other cases, and we'll also look at other sources who've provided information on Epstein's ties with powerful Israeli figures -- from this, we'll try to gauge how plausible Ben-Menashe's allegations are. (Note that I don't want to spend much time discussing conspiracy theories about Epstein's suspicious death in prison, which is tangential to his possible ties to Israel. We may address Esptein's death in a later meetup.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ari_Ben-Menashe#Jeffrey_Epstein

RELEVANT MATERIAL FROM PAST MEETUPS:

In our last discussion two weeks ago, entitled "Were 9/11, Iraq, Libya & Syria Conspiracies", we covered the "LIHOP" (let it happen on purpose) conspiracy theories about 9/11, although we didn't mention Israel. We focused on the idea that the Bush administration may have ignored warnings about an impending terrorist attack because they wanted the American public to become outraged and give them the justification for intervening in the Middle East. We also addressed allegations that the Bush administration purposefully overlooked & obscured the possible involvement of Saudi Arabia in the 9/11 attack. See Part 1 of the discussion outline if you want to review this:
https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/sxpscsyccmbzb/

We covered the influence of the "neoconservatives" and the "Israel lobby" on U.S. foreign policy in a meetup back in June entitled "Neoliberals, Neocons, and NWO 2.0". The group of conservative intellectuals known as the "neocons" certainly had a lot of influence during the Bush administration and enthusiastically backed the 2003 Iraq invasion, as did the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, but as we discussed there were also a significant amount of support for the war among Democrats & U.S. foreign policy didn't change drastically under Obama, suggesting there's a much broader & bipartisan foreign policy consensus at work. Similarly, while Israel certainly has a strong lobby in the U.S. and plays a key role in helping shape U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, other allies like Saudi Arabia & Turkey play a major role, and the lobbies of the oil & defense industries do as well. It's also worth noting that most American Jews are not "neocons" and skew liberal in their political beliefs, and tend to vote for the Democratic Party. While most American Jews support Israel's right to exist, many are critical of Israel's policies. Those who see U.S. foreign policy as a product of a Jewish/Zionist conspiracy have to ignored a lot of other influences to maintain that belief. See Parts 3 & 4 of my discussion outline:
https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/nfbkqqyzhbjc/

The USS Liberty incident bears some similarity to other naval incidents that have been alleged to be false flag attacks, particularly the USS Maine incident that started the Spanish-American War and the Gulf of Tonkin incident which led to the official entry of the U.S. into the Vietnam War. All 3 incidents involved the US deploying a naval vessel to a foreign conflict zone, ostensibly to monitor the situation in a neutral capacity, only for it to be attacked (or apparently attacked) in a suspicious manner. The major differences are that the official explanation of the USS Liberty attack was different - i.e. friendly fire - and it didn't create a pretext for drawing the U.S. into the Six-Day War. We addressed the way suspicious naval incidents can spark wars & conspiracy theories in a meetup back in November of 2018 entitled "False Pretexts and Acts of War":
https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/lckqkqyxpbgb/

We briefly mentioned the Jeffrey Epstein case in a meetup back in June of 2018 where we discussed why a segment of the American public was willing to believe in the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory about sex-trafficking at the Cosmic Ping-Pong pizza parlor in DC connected somehow to John Podesta, whose leaked emails seemed to conspiracy theorists to have some weird "codes" related to elite pedophile rings. We considered whether the negative publicity surrounding not only the Epstein case but also the charges brought against Dennis Hastert & Anthony Weiner for sexual involvement with underage victims might make "Pizzagate" seem plausible. Conspiracy theories about elite pedophile rings often involve "base rate neglect" - i.e. people don't realize that a certain percentage (~2%) of adults are sexually attracted to prepubescent children & younger teenagers, and a larger percentage are attracted to older teenagers. So in any large group of people, whether it's church officials, youth sports coaches, the entertainment industry, or politicians, there will unfortunately be a roughly predictable number of sexual predators that don't require elaborate child sex-trafficking rings or "Satanic ritual abuse" cults to find their victims. In most high-profile cases, child sexual abuse appears to be enabled by a culture of willful ignorance and/or implicit tolerance for the "indiscretions" of powerful men and a retroactive "conspiracy of silence" as institutions attempt to minimize their legal liability as accusations come to light.
https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/251067305/