My colleague Ben Caspit wondered this week in Al-Monitor whether those providing the information, or maybe fiction, regarding Israeli spying on the United States are connected to senior officials in the US government.
If indeed the White House, Pentagon or State Department decided to taint the relationship between Washington and Israel, this should worry Israeli citizens no less than the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Even if the Barack Obama administration is not party to this conspiracy, however, it is not enough to placate those seeking to help Israel. Why did the editors of an esteemed American magazine like Newsweek choose to publish a story that harms the Israeli-US relationship despite the vigorous denials of the highest diplomatic and security echelons in Israel? How did it come to pass that those very senior echelons are less credible than a dubious journalistic story about a man in an air-conditioning duct?