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Comment by ginja | Hacker News Reader

The US spies on its European allies all the time, and I'm sure they spy on Israel too, so that's not super surprising.

As for the USS Liberty, some do argue that it was intentional, but both the Israelis and Americans ended up agreeing that it was a mistake. The US is no stranger to such mistakes either, even more egregious ones like when they killed close to 300 civilians aboard a regular passenger flight following an approved route and in contact with ATC (Iran Air 655).

In the end both the US and Israel are amoral states that act only according to their economic and strategic interests and I feel that this unites them. I wish it didn't, though.

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They officially decided it was a mistake, as it did neither government any good to officially announce that it was intentional. But the sailors that were on the ship say otherwise.

> They officially decided it was a mistake, as it did neither government any good to officially announce that it was intentional. But the sailors that were on the ship say otherwise.

How would the sailors on the ship being attacked be able to know anything like that (e.g. know if the Israeli pilots thought they were attacking an Egyptian ship or an American one)?

> e.g. know if the Israeli pilots thought they were attacking an Egyptian ship or an American one

The sailors would know because they have access to the same information that you do, but a greater incentive to actually do the reading. The Israeli pilots knew it as a US ship, their radio traffic questioning their attack orders - after visually identifying the USS Liberty as a US ship, was recorded and the transcripts widely known about. This happened several times, so unless the Israeli command center had the memory of a goldfish - they intentionally kept sending attack aircraft until they eventually got a pilot to pull the trigger. Why would they do such a thing? Because the US wasn't onboard with the Israeli preemptive strike and they didn't want a signals intelligence boat tipping off the Egyptians. Israel doesn't appear to reciprocate the fond feelings expressed by American politicians - the mere idea of the "Samson Option" is proof enough of that.

> This happened several times, so unless the Israeli command center had the memory of a goldfish - they intentionally kept sending attack aircraft until they eventually got a pilot to pull the trigger. Why would they do such a thing?

To that point, it's worth noting here friendly fire incidents happen all the time in war, as well as attacks against neutral parties. For instance: the US has bombed its own troops probably more times than anyone can count, and it also bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and shot down an Iranian airliner. Why would they do such things? Honestly, it's plausible they they may actually have had the memory of a goldfish, at least occasionally.

While I'm not aware of any formal study on the matter, I do remember them going over the subject at length in a forward observer course: the blame for the majority of airstrike blue on blue falling on the grunt calling for fire. It matched my experience as well - to the point that I'd avoid calling in close air support for anything short of a Custard's last stand scenario. This isn't anything like that, a command center continuously calling in attack aircraft on a target repeatedly identified as non-hostile - being put on and taken off of the situation board... unprecedented. Even if my opinion of the command staff was so low as to grant them a "well, maybe you are just that dangerously incompetent" - the lying makes that even harder to believe (technically impossible claims wrt speed and offshore shelling capability).

The Israeli government had strong incentive to do this, and accounts on the ship were that this was clearly intentional. Why is this so hard for you to believe?

> The Israeli government had strong incentive to do this, and accounts on the ship were that this was clearly intentional. Why is this so hard for you to believe?

Because an imputed motive is not proof of anything, and there's no way "accounts on the ship" could provide the information you claim they do (knowledge of the attackers mental state).

I don't think anyone disputes that the Israelis attacked the ship intentionally, but you can say the same about most friendly fire incidents. The question is if the people who made the attack deliberately decided to attack what they know to be an American ship.

All states act according to their economic and strategic interests right?

And the European allies spy on the USA, rinse and repeat.

I don’t think so. If they do, it is either a) not nearly on they same scale, or they b) are way more competent about it and less likely to get caught.

Given the general incompetence of governments in general (Europe is no exception) I doubt it is (b).

Or (c) announcing this now furthers some unknown usa political goal but there would be no political win for publisizing whatever europe does.

If you can't prove that you probably shouldn't make such unqualified statements. There is plenty of proof for the opposite, afaik none whatsoever for the reverse.

Everyone spies on everyone else.

Reminder that France vacuumed up messages on Enrochat after deploying malware globally, and they have clear text messages from users in any arbitrary country and have not disclosed what they will do with it or what they have.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3aza95/how-police-took-over-...

The specific claim here is that EU countries spy on the US. I do not believe they have that capability, so if you have some proof that would come in handy.

Aside from capability, the relationship between the US and European countries is so biased towards the US that, politically, I just don't think they'd risk it.

The US spies on everyone because they can, and because they have prepared to do basically anything they think might be in their interests; when Germany discovers the US spying on them, what can they really do about it? Whereas if it was the other way, all hell would break loose.

Just to clarify, you're asking for evidence of secret foreign intelligence operations?

Establishing mere capability is pretty trivial: they have diplomats in the United States who can talk to people.

We have plenty of proof of the US spying on allies in spite of those being secret foreign intelligence operations, there is afaik none whatsoever of say the Germans, the Belgians or the French doing something similar to the US.

Spying is intelligence collection. There many ways to collect intelligence. Some completely innocuous like going to a defense trade show and taking pictures. Or using satellites to capture imagery of sensitive locations or developments [1]. Military attaches at embassies who observe their host country’s military developments and operations [2]. These are capabilities that every developed nation has access to. For them not to use it puts them at a disadvantage.

You don’t think the French would love to have known about AUKUS submarine deal before it was made? It’s detrimental to not attempt to spy. The French were blindsided and I’m sure they don’t want to be blindsided again.

[1] https://www.space.com/arianespace-soyuz-rocket-launches-cso-...

[2] https://franceintheus.org/spip.php?article10460

Desire does not equate capability.

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