WILL THE ISRAELI SPY FLAP REALLY FADE AWAY?

by Mark Dankof for Global News Net (GNN)

The February 7 commentary by Douglas J. Brown for the Republican GOP USA website, entitled, The Israeli Spy Flap Will Fade Away, But at What Cost? reflects the continued reverberations within both the Bush administration and Republican Party hierarchy in Washington over what shoes may still drop in the unseemly revelations of Israeli spy operations within the United States.  Mr. Brown notes the irony surrounding the U. S.- Israeli intelligence cooperation in assisting Israel to discover the 50-ton Karine-A weapons shipments in transit from Iran to the Palestinians -- at the same time that ". . . Fox News and NewsMax were reporting allegations of Israeli intelligence possibly infiltrating U. S. law enforcement wire-tapping operations." Mr. Brown notes that the allegations are not the first credible ones involving Israeli tapping of U.S. phone lines. Citing the charges swirling around a subsidiary of the Israeli telecommunications company, Telrad, Brown references a Washington Post story of May 7, 1997 and stories from May 2000 in Insight magazine and the Sunday Times, to suggest that a major political and security flap for the Bush administration is around the corner.

A senior source at the Washington-based Conservative Caucus told Global News Net, "You bet we have a problem here. Our constituents divide between the Christian Right folks who believe that our support for Israel should be unequivocal, and American conservatives who believe that Israel should be held to the same standard of accountability for their actions in this country as everyone else. It is a simmering problem that might boil to the surface--both for us as well as for Bush. Especially with renewed questions within the conservative movement over the wisdom of American involvement in a wider Middle Eastern war."

The problem for Bush is: 1) how to sustain the unified political support he needs from the Republican Right for his War on Terrorism and future military operations abroad; 2) how to sustain his unlikely coalition for the War which involves both Israeli and historically friendly Arab states; and 3) how to avoid political embarrassment and catastrophe, domestically and abroad. Future shoes yet to drop could implicate Sharon, Netanyahu, and Israeli intelligence in the wholesale pick-pocketing of American national security secrets. These disclosures could be followed up by potentially damning revelations concerning Israel's wholesale buying of silence on Capitol Hill.

American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) funds and sources of cash linked to powerful forces on the activist Christian Right and Reagan wing of the Republican Party, could add up to some significant shekels.

Co-dependency has become a dangerous and costly game of roulette.

(Mark Dankof (med1chd2@concentric.net) is a correspondent and staff writer with Global News Net and an occasional correspondent with the orthodox Lutheran weekly, Christian News.  A graduate of Valparaiso University and Chicago's Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, he has pursued post-graduate theological study in recent years at Philadelphia's Westminster Theological Seminary. Formerly the 36th District Chairman of the Republican Party in King County/Seattle, and later an elected delegate to Texas State Republican Conventions in 1994 and 1996, he entered the United States Senate race in Delaware in 2000 as the nominated candidate of the Constitution Party against Democratic candidate Thomas Carper and incumbent William Roth.  His writings are frequently reposted in the Iranian Times, Sam Ghandchi's Iranscope, San Francisco and Palestine Indy Media, the London Morning Paper, Nile Media, and Table Talk, the official publication of the Lutheran Ministerium and Synod--USA.)