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Snowden latest: NSA targets Gaza, pumps intelligence to Israel

Dragnet spook agency passes info to Middle East combatants

According to the latest drop of leaks from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the US spy agency provides financial assistance, weapons and signals intelligence to Israel.

The Intercept reports that Canadian, British and Jordanian signals intelligence is also shared with Israel. This intelligence relates to Palestinian targets, including those in Gaza, according to the documents handed to Snowden confidante Glenn Greenwald.

According to Greenwald, one document dated April 2013 reads: “[The] NSA maintains a far-reaching technical and analytic relationship with the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU) sharing information on access, intercept, targeting, language, analysis and reporting.”

Another top-secret document appears to detail a 2009 cooperative surveillance-sharing relationship effort, code named “YESTERNIGHT” by the NSA, GCHQ, and the ISNU. The timing of the sharing arrangement coincides with the 2009 “Cast Lead” Israeli attack on Gaza that marked the last significant conflict in the area before the current, ongoing hostilities.

“[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," wrote Greenwald. "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.”

The documents also appear to reveal one or more covert payments of $500,000 in cash by the Department of Defense, signed for by Israeli operatives, as well as a dedicated line “between NSA and ISNU [that] supports the exchange of raw material, as well as daily analytic and technical correspondence”.

Expanded surveillance collaborations among the NSA, ISNU, GCHQ, the Canadian spy agency CSEC, the Jordanian Monarchy and the Palestinian Authority Security Forces are also detailed in the latest tranche of Snowden leaks. ®

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