Greenwald: NSA Docs Show 'Israeli Action in Gaza has US Fingerprints All Over It'

Palestinian families seek shelter at an UNRWA school after evacuating their homes north of the Gaza Strip. (Photo: UNRWA)

New documents leaked by Edward Snowden show how intelligence cooperation enables repeated Israeli aggression against Palestinians

A new analysis of the intelligence and military relationship between the U.S. and Israeli governments—bolstered by new top secret NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden—exposes the deep complicity of American foreign policy when it comes to enabling Israel's continued occupation of the Palestinian territories and its ongoing aggressive military assault on the Gaza Strip.

Reported by The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald on Monday, the new NSA documents show how the U.S. spy agency "has significantly increased the surveillance assistance it provides to its Israeli counterpart, the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU; also known as Unit 8200), including data used to monitor and target Palestinians."

According to Greenwald, the "new Snowden documents illustrate a crucial fact: Israeli aggression would be impossible without the constant, lavish support and protection of the U.S. government, which is anything but a neutral, peace-brokering party in these attacks. And the relationship between the NSA and its partners on the one hand, and the Israeli spying agency on the other, is at the center of that enabling."

One newly published document discusses how U.S. intelligence agents work together with their Israeli counterparts to gain access to “geographic targets [that] include the countries of North Africa, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, South Asia, and the Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union.” The document also details how the relationship includes “a dedicated communications line between NSA and ISNU [that] supports the exchange of raw material, as well as daily analytic and technical correspondence.”

On Sunday—for the third time since Israel's attack on Gaza began nearly a month ago—a civilian shelter administered by the United Nations was bombed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, killing at least ten people and wounding dozens of others. UN Secretary-General condemned the attack as a "moral outrage and a criminal act" and again demanded an end to what he called "madness" in Gaza. Israel has repeatedly defended its actions in Gaza amid global condemnation and the U.S. has repeatedly stressed that Israel has the "right to defend itself" and was the only country to vote against a measure by the UN Human Rights Council recently calling for a formal investigation of "war crimes" over the repeated attacks on Gaza civilians at hospitals, UN shelters, and highly-populated residential areas.

Greenwald argues the evidence contained in the newly disclosed NSA documents support the analysis that he and other critics of U.S. policy vis-á-vis Israel have repeatedly stressed:

The new documents underscore the indispensable, direct involvement of the U.S. government and its key allies in Israeli aggression against its neighbors. That covert support is squarely at odds with the posture of helpless detachment typically adopted by Obama officials and their supporters.

President Obama, in his press conference on Friday, said ”it is heartbreaking to see what’s happening there,” referring to the weeks of civilian deaths in Gaza – “as if he’s just a bystander, watching it all unfold,” observed Brooklyn College Professor Corey Robin. Robin added: ”Obama talks about Gaza as if it were a natural disaster, an uncontrollable biological event.”

Each time Israel attacks Gaza and massacres its trapped civilian population – at the end of 2008, in the fall of 2012, and now again this past month – the same process repeats itself in both U.S. media and government circles: the U.S. government feeds Israel the weapons it uses and steadfastly defends its aggression both publicly and at the U.N.; the U.S. Congress unanimously enactsone resolution after the next to support and enable Israel; and then American media figures pretend that the Israeli attack has nothing to do with their country, that it’s just some sort of unfortunately intractable, distant conflict between two equally intransigent foreign parties in response to which all decent Americans helplessly throw up their hands as though they bear no responsibility.

The NSA documents reveal the exchange of cash payments between the U.S. government and ISNU as well as intelligence agreements with other regional intelligence forces, including the Palestinian Authority's Security Forces and Jordanian authorities.

On Monday, the Ma'an News Agency reports:

According to the Ministry of Health, the Israeli offensive on Gaza has left over 1,822 Palestinians dead, including 398 children. Some 9,370 Palestinians have been injured, 2,744 of them children.

Approximately 373,000 children are in need of psychological support as a result of the trauma of the war, according to UN figures.

Over a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to leave their homes throughout the assault.

Israeli indicated it would honor a seven-hour "humanitarian" cease fire on Monday, but the most recent reports indicate that shelling and fighting continued in Gaza and new casualties, including the death of an eight-year-old girl in Gaza City, continue.

Read the full article about the new Snowden doc on The Intercept.