Trump pushing through law to massively expand US intelligence sharing with Israel

The US is driving ahead with legislation that massively expands defence and intelligence sharing with Israel and eclipses the English-speaking Five Eyes espionage alliance.

It also legally ties America to a nation accused of crimes against humanity.

A mandatory expansion of the already close ties with Israel will give men like Benjamin Netanyahu, indicted for alleged crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, access to the most sensitive secrets held by the US intelligence community. It is being passed through the Congress with bipartisan backing.

This proposed law, the FY2027 Intelligence Authorization Act, runs to almost 200 pages. Tucked away on page 118 is section 622. If, as is almost certain, it is passed, Israel and America effectively become one nation when it comes to sharing secrets.

Previous arrangements under the FiveEyes in which the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand work together and share all but their most sensitive data will be subordinate to the US obligations to Israel.

These could only be done by a vote in Congress.

And it comes as, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon has alerted its millions of staff that Israel has been carrying out hostile acts of espionage against its most fervent ally – the US.

Under the proposed legislation: “Intelligence sharing carried out under this subsection shall include the sharing of information relating to cybersecurity threats, terrorism, sanctions evasion, plans and intentions of state and non state actors, adversarial technology proliferation, missile threats, unmanned aerial systems, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, air and space domain awareness, and other aerial threats relevant to the defense of Israel, United States forces and interests in the region, and regional security partners.”

This effectively ends the autonomy of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigations and many other US security organizations from Israel.

On top of that, it is unclear how, if at all, the US would be able to firewall the information it gets from the UK’s MI6 and GCHQ monitoring and signal intelligence from Israel’s leaders and spies.

Yoav Gallant, former head of the Israel Defence Forces, who has also been indicted by the ICC for alleged war crimes, would have access to US secrets under the new legislation at the discretion of Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu.

The IDF has accepted that about 70,000 people were killed in the Gaza campaign. Of the dead, independent Israeli human rights groups have said around 47,000 were women and children.

Israeli forces and Jewish Israeli militia are currently engaged in a widespread campaign of violence against Palestinian residents of the West Bank where more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed this year.

US intelligence could flow freely to Israeli security forces involved in a campaign that has also recently been underpinned by a racially specific law to mandate the death penalty for only Palestinians accused of terrorism.

The plans for intelligence integration have come close on the heels of a defence pact, also making its way through Congress as the National Defense Authorization Act , that – in section 224 – commits both countries to bilateral research and development, and a massive expansion of the integration of the Israeli and American defence industries.

This would make it even harder for nations like the UK to suspend or ban weapons sales to Israel over its actions on the West Bank or in Gaza, because so much of their military technology is shared with the US.

Britain has not banned weapons exports in Israel because some British parts of the US F-35 aircraft could not be separated from the rest of the aircraft being used to bomb Gaza.

The defence legislation is being opposed by a small bipartisan group led by Congressmen Ro Khanna, a Democrat and Tomas Massie, a Republican.

But criticism of the proposed intelligence changes have been mostly limited to outside Congress where political lobbyists on behalf of the Netanyahu government have less influence.

One of the leading critics of the legislation is Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, who is often described as a “liberal Zionist”.

She said on social media that the proposals to bind Israel into the US intelligence fabric is a “a HUGE deal” that should be openly debated rather than “quietly slipping into law unnoticed”.

Pro-Israeli groups and lobbyists have been pressing hard for closer integration of Israel into the security infrastructure of the US. And for an expansion of the Abraham Accords, which established diplomatic relations with some Arab nations, by incentivising defence and intelligence cooperation with Arab regimes.

Under the new legislation, countries that sign up to normalizing their relations with Israel would also benefit from intelligence sharing from the US.

There is no demand that Israel meet any human rights obligations as a condition of the expanded intelligence relationship with the US.

That is in contrast to legislation to protect intelligence sharing with Ukraine during its defence against Russia’s invasion.

This stipulates that any agreement would be suspended if there was: “Credible intelligence that an element of the government of Ukraine receiving United States intelligence support engaged in a pattern of human rights violations, atrocities, or violations of the law of armed conflict.”