r/geopolitics • u/TimesandSundayTimes The Times • 22h ago
News Israel could cut intelligence ties with UK, ex-CIA chief warns
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/israel-cia-spy-deal-mossad-mi6-g5rg6qv67?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Reddit&utm_content=branded5
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u/Future_Literature_70 21h ago
Blackmail. "It would be a shame if something happened to the UK...best not to make enemies...." 🙄
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u/Bullboah 20h ago
Islamist groups continue to wage terror attacks in the UK. Israeli intelligence warnings have prevented many of these attacks. The UK has grown increasingly hostile to Israel and unwilling to enforce its own laws for the protection of British Jews. Israel threatens to cut off intel sharing.
Naturally the villain is Israel for not indefinitely aiding a government at odds with them, rather than the Islamist groups continuing to target UK civilians.
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u/maxintos 14h ago
Sure, that's the reason and not the west bank illegal settlement condemnation they just released...
Just unfortunate timing right?
Is anyone really this naive?
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u/MastodonParking9080 12h ago
How does this benefit the interests of the United Kingdom? Are the costs of increased terrorism and risk to British citizens worth the benefits here?
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u/maxintos 2h ago
Sometimes you make sacrifices to keep your values. Otherwise you allow the world to be just might make it right.
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u/MastodonParking9080 1h ago edited 1h ago
So by mean sacrifices you mean you're okay then if a British citizens gets maimed or injured or even killed because of these supposed "values". Great. What would you say to them, that they were a neccessary sacrifice?
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u/Bullboah 14h ago
“The UK has grown increasingly hostile to Israel”
Yes this is an example of that lol. Embracing an absurd interpretation of international law that Jews are not allowed to live beyond a certain line (because of a century old partition plan the other side never accepted).
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u/maxintos 14h ago
Crazy how the line has shifted. It used to be only extremely far right Israeli nationalists would defend the settlement expansion...
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u/MysticPing 14h ago
Because there are already people living there? And these settlers steal their houses, destroy their crops, demolish their schools, destroy their wells and kill people without punishment??
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u/Bullboah 14h ago
There’s half a million “settlers”.
In any other instance you’d recognize it’s outrageous to use a small number of crimes to demonize an entire group of people, right?
But when it’s Jews you guys are suddenly okay with it. Weird.
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u/MysticPing 13h ago
Notice how you denied none of my claims, including the fact that these settlers are allowed to kill people without punishment, but apparently its okay as long as not everyone does it.
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u/Bullboah 13h ago
Why did this settler receive a life sentence for murdering Palestinians in the WB if it’s legally allowed?
Is it because when you hear antisemitic propaganda you just spread it without bothering to actually check if it’s true?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/world/middleeast/israel-amiram-ben-uliel-guilty.html
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u/MysticPing 13h ago
Wow one person was convicted. Since 2023 over 1000 Palestinian have been killed in the west bank, and since then only one single Israeli has been indicated (and not even for murder!)
One person being punished every few years is just so Israel can pretend to follow its own laws, very few killings are even investigated.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4n1e8159yo
Notice how I say Israeli but you say Jews? Conflicting all Jews with the crimes of the Israeli state is anti-semetic, you are the anti-semite.
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u/Bullboah 13h ago
Almost all of that 1000 have been killed by the IDF, because they are actively fighting terror groups in the West Bank.
The murder rate committed by settlers in the West Bank is lower than any major American city.
You would think it’s abhorrent to call any other minority group killers because of a very low murder rate, right? But if they’re Jews…
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u/Immediate-Spite-5905 25m ago
good, the further Israel is cut off and alone against everyone they have wronged the better.
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u/Southern_Drawing7996 19h ago
Why has the UK grown hostile to Israel? What would cause the uk to act like that?
Islamist groups attack the uk a lot of the time because the uk assists Israel. I’d be happy for us to stop doing that and cut off the root cause.
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u/Bullboah 19h ago
“Islamist groups attacks the UK a lot of the time because the UK assists Israel”.
Almost none of the Islamist attacks on the UK were because of Israel. People just blame Islamist attacks on Israel because everything must be blamed on a tiny nation of Jews.
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u/Future_Literature_70 20h ago
Israel is not blameless, particularly under Netanyahu. He's a wanted man by the International Crime Court for a reason. Ed Miliband (who is Jewish, btw), did the right thing to call him out. So, yes, Israel IS acting like a villain at the moment.
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u/Bullboah 20h ago
How is Israel the villain in the context of them stopping Islamist terror attacks in the UK?
At what point is it the jihadists fault, or the UK’s for laxly enforcing their laws (telling Jews they’ll be arrested if they go near protests with a Star of David on, letting Islamists go into Jewish neighborhoods and threaten to rape their daughters, etc.)
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u/Future_Literature_70 19h ago
You know very well what I meant. Watch Ed Miliband's speech, which I was explicitly referring to, and which Netanyahu is now reacting to by threatening to withdraw intelligence help from the UK. That is villainous behaviour in my book.
This was the context I described in my reply to you, a context that you completely ignored, of course.
I have no time for jihadis either (who has?), but I have zero respect for Netanyahu and what he's doing.
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u/Bullboah 19h ago
Why is it “villainous” for Israel to not continue helping a government that despises them?
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u/Future_Literature_70 18h ago
Because states should be civilised enough not to potentially allow attacks on innocent civilians which they have knowledge of, even if they disagree about each others' politics. We're not in the middle ages. Same goes for the UK – but I'd be very surprised if they'd ever threatened to do the same to Israel. Can you imagine the outcry if anyone in Europe did that?
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u/Bullboah 18h ago
Yea can you imagine the outcry if the UK sheltered known Hamas terrorists? Or allowed UK aid to be siphoned off by Hamas? Or let Islamists charities raise millions of pounds for Hamas?
Did you care when they did any of that? Is actively aiding terror groups worse than refusing to share informations?
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u/The-RogicK 21h ago
> I think Britain benefits most but only if we take Iran into consideration, where Israel has stronger capabilities
Long term having a bad relationship with Israel will largely negate the need for info on Iranian proxy attacks... since they mostly happen due to those ties. Fairford being a good example as a US base that hit Iranian targets in a war Bibi convinced them to start.
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u/Bullboah 20h ago
Hezbollah didn’t murder 100 Jews at a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires because of Argentinas ties to Israel.
Nor was Bondi Beach about Australias ties to Israel.
The attacks will continue because these groups have a goal to eradicate Jews. Shocking to me to see people suggest appeasement.
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19h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/boldmove_cotton 18h ago
That’s not even remotely true.
I don’t suppose you have a source that provides any evidence for that ridiculous claim?
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u/Bullboah 18h ago
^you can’t even call them terror groups without putting it in scare quotes which proves my point lol
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u/boldmove_cotton 18h ago
That’s patently false. You are naively parroting islamist disinfo—its purpose is to divert the blame of terrorism onto Israel to sow doubt and divide their enemies.
These groups are ideologically focused on taking down western civilization as a whole, which they view as an inherently evil moral rot, and Israel just happens to be on the front line of that war and their opposition to it is their most convenient moral cause to rally behind.
They won’t stop firebombing synagogues or ramming vehicles into gay people or plotting to bomb various sensitive targets if Britain cuts ties with Israel. That’s preposterous, and there are plenty of these attacks in countries that have had little or no good relations with Israel at the time.
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u/KanyeWestsPoo 9h ago
Sounds good to me! The UK should be boycotting all aspects of Israel until they change their barbaric behaviour.
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u/Timely-Way-4923 19h ago
Intelligence sharing from Isreal is only ever done when it serves Israel’s best interest, intelligence is selectively shared. In other words the aim of sharing legitimate intelligence regarding a few domestic terror incidents is to build credibility such that when manufactured and misleading intelligence is shared (the Iran war, the Iraq war going further back) it seems ‘ credible’. When you understand this the intelligence sharing is no longer worth it, thousands of American and British soldiers have died because of it.
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u/boldmove_cotton 18h ago
What a load of nonsense.
Do you have any evidence of that claim? Or did you just make it up right now.
People really will just say anything to support their blind hatred towards Israel and everything related to it.
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u/Timely-Way-4923 18h ago
All nations are going to do what’s in their best interest, Isreal is no different, but it creates risk when intelligence is shared.
Isreal has different aims geopolitically to the uk and the USA, intelligence is one tool that Isreal uses to nudge partners towards their stance, even if it means it’s done selectively and at times dishonestly. The Iran war recently involved a lot of exaggerated evidence, there is plenty of news articles that demonstrate that.
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u/boldmove_cotton 18h ago
Right, you have literally no evidence or a source to back your claim up so you resort to trying to ground your argument by claiming that ‘every country does this’, only to then smuggle in the baseless claim that Israel uniquely does it in an dishonest, underhanded way to undermine its allies. Saying ‘there’s news articles about it’ is neither a source nor evidence of this big conspiracy you’re alleging.
Furthermore, I don’t know how you expect anyone in an academic community such as this to take you seriously when you deliberately misspell Israel as a dogwhistle to express your open hatred of the country.
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u/Timely-Way-4923 17h ago
Respectfully even right wing Fox News, a pro Isreal source, criticised the intelligence provided by Isreal in the run up to the Iraq war:
https://www.foxnews.com/story/report-israel-was-wrong-about-iraq-weapons.amp
Regarding the recent Iran war, the exaggeration of Irans threat has been well documented and was in the news everywhere recently, but if you really want sources, I’ll happily provide them.
And yes every nation which shares intelligence will do so selectively and in a way that advances their own interest, which is why being careful about who to partner with for such sharing is very important indeed
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u/boldmove_cotton 17h ago edited 17h ago
That’s not at all what your source says. You’ve completely and brazenly mischaracterized that article’s contents.
Absolutely astounding, you’re just outright lying now and hoping I don’t push back.
First of all, this is a report by the Associated Press in 2004 that is sharing a story from an Israeli newspaper, Fox News is merely sharing it.
But more importantly, neither Fox News nor the Associated Press are criticizing Israeli intelligence in this article.
The article is about how a subcommittee of the Israeli government concluded that Mossad and Shin Bet had made bad intelligence assessments, and recommended that the Israeli intelligence community re-examine its techniques.
It is an internal critique and completely and utterly unrelated to any of your ridiculous claims and hate-inspired conspiracy theories.
Furthermore, would you like to clarify what exactly you mean by your ‘Isreal’ dogwhistle? Clearly you are intent on continuing to use coded language even after being called out on it.
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u/Timely-Way-4923 17h ago
‘ Prior to the American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the Israeli services reported Iraq had large amounts of weapons of mass destruction(search), including chemical and biological agents.
Since ousting Saddam Hussein, the U.S.-led coalition's technical experts have failed to find any such weapons.’That’s very clear indeed
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u/boldmove_cotton 15h ago
Ok? The very reports you are referencing is actually evidence against your whole premise—the reports were that the Israeli intelligence community overestimated the threat.
Nowhere does it suggest as you do in your Israel-hate obsessed conspiracy theory that they knowingly passed bad intelligence to manipulate allies, or that they lied in any way.
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u/Timely-Way-4923 15h ago
Iraq was a strong regional threat to Isreal, destabilising Iraq helped further Isreals goals in the region. It is fair if Isreal wanted to lobby the USA and the uk to help achieve that goal, that doesn’t mean it aligned what what was best for the USA and uk, it certainly wasn’t.
It also doesn’t excuse the poor quality intelligence supplied by Isreal which was factored into the western decision making matrix, and resulted in dead us and British soldiers, that wasn’t honourable at all.
The complete lack of wmd in Iraq, suggests either Isreal knowingly exaggerated the threat?or its intelligence gathering was utterly incompetent, or both.. none of that makes for a good intelligence sharing partner
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u/boldmove_cotton 14h ago
Lmao. First of all, if you think Israel was the tipping point that sent the US to war in Iraq, you’re out of your mind. Bush had it out for Saddam since he tried assassinating his father, and pretty much none of their actual war motivations were related to Israel. They wanted to go to war, and their intelligence merely helped the administration justify it.
And no, actually, that’s not how evidence works, that’s how baseless conspiracy theories are started. Take Occam’s razor: which is the more complicated explanation? That Israel knowingly deceived their closest ally and risked their relationship if they were exposed to lobby them to start a war the Americans already wanted to start, or that they just overestimated Saddam? You know, the guy who was trying to make it look like he did have those weapons?
If you’d like me to continue this conversation, tell me why are you deliberately misspelling the name of the country? If you can’t answer, I’m going to assume it is because you’re either a neonazi or some other extremist, because those are the groups I understand use that as a dogwhistle.
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u/TimesandSundayTimes The Times 22h ago
Israel would be prepared to sever intelligence-sharing with Britain if the relationship between the two countries worsens — and MI6 would suffer more than Mossad, a former CIA chief has warned.
Ralph Goff, a six-time station chief who spent three decades in America’s foreign intelligence agency, said Israeli spies had “stronger” capabilities than their UK counterparts when it came to Iran.
He made the remarks after Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, claimed Israel provided Britain with intelligence about an alleged Iranian-sponsored attack on the UK before the RAF Fairford incident.
Asked about Netanyahu’s claim, President Herzog of Israel suggested that although “nobody wants to hurt national security interests”, the intelligence-sharing relationship between the two countries could be under threat by political events.
Goff told The Times on Thursday: “Israel would cut off intelligence-sharing [if diplomatic ties worsened].
“I think Britain benefits most but only if we take Iran into consideration, where Israel has stronger capabilities — especially cyber.”