Is The Russia Conspiracy Theory About To Morph Into An Israeli Conspiracy?

Is The Russia Conspiracy About To Morph Into An Israeli Conspiracy?

DANIEL GREENFIELD

The Russia conspiracy theory was always an awkward fit.

Hillary Clinton had come bearing a Reset Button to Russia. Obama had run on a Russian reset and there he was on a hot mic telling Russia's Medvedev that he'd have more flexibility to sell out our interests after the election. And the whole Russian hysteria has a strange McCarthy air from the faction that turned McCarthyism into a swear word.

The left is having a good time shouting about Russian traitors with no hint of irony. But it can still only last so long.

What about a conspiracy involving a country that the left really loves to hate, that is often the subject of conspiracy theories and that can really get its anti-Semitic juices flowing?

Here's Jordan Shachtel discussing Robert Mueller's turn of interest toward Israel. And an ugly history of targeting Jews.

Mueller’s suspicions of Israel — and Jews as a whole — go back to his early days as the FBI director.

In 2004, the Mueller FBI alleged that a massive Israeli spy ring was operating out of the Pentagon. The stunning revelations sent shockwaves throughout the intelligence community, and it was followed by endless editorials painting Israel as a nefarious actor seeking to undermine the United States.

Yet it later turned out that the allegations were completely bogus. There was no Israeli spy ring, but rather, what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to target Jews for prosecution. There were several disturbing instances of the Mueller FBI running sting operations attempting to “tempt Jews” to betray their country. “All turned down the offer,” according to the Washington Post. Mueller’s attempts to lure Jews into a trap failed. The botched operation confirmed the troubling reality that elements of the U.S. intelligence community remained attached to anti-Semitism.

But Mueller is just following in the footsteps of Obama operatives who abused national security to spy on their political opponents in a very opportunistic fashion. Israel was one of the pretexts. But so were the UAE (not to mention Russia) and probably any number of other countries that haven't been named.

Still, John Schindler, once a national security pro, before hooking up with Louise Mensch, and going all-Russia all the time, is on it.

“What if the real secret of the Trump campaign isn’t that it’s a Kremlin operation, rather an Israeli operation masquerading as a Russian one?” he asks on Twitter.

And what if it's actually a Swiss operation masquerading as an Israeli operation as a Russian operation?

His rambling Observer piece rather cynically lays out while the Israeli argument plays better.

Indeed, some counterintelligence pros in Washington have a rather different take on the Mueller inquiry than most Americans do. While Moscow’s secret role in subverting our election in 2016 is plain to see and is now denied only by the willfully obtuse or congenitally dishonest, detecting a direct Kremlin hand on the Trump campaign is trickier. Trump’s links to Moscow are visible but remain somewhat obscure.

His ties to Israel, however, are much plainer to see. Based on the available evidence to date, Team Trump’s 2016 links to shadowy Israelis appear just as troubling as those to dodgy Russians...

After all, Putin and his retinue have ample reason to feel let down by Trump. His greasy obsequiousness to Moscow aside, the president’s policies towards Russia have hardly pleased the Kremlin. Sanctions on Russia remain in effect, NATO’s military posture near Russia’s borders is more robust than a couple years ago, and Ukraine is now getting the anti-tank missiles that the previous White House denied it. Unlike so many of Trump’s assertions, his claim that he’s tougher on Moscow than President Barack Obama happens to be true from any policy perspective.

But not so with Israel. Unlike Obama, Trump has gone whole-hog for the Israeli right-wing, boosting Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, who openly despised Obama, at every opportunity. The recent move of our embassy to Jerusalem, long desired by the Israeli Right, is merely the most prominent of Trump’s gifts to his pal Bibi and his ruling Likud party.

It's easier to make that argument... so why not switch to making it.

But you have to shake up conspiracy theories with new gnostic twists or they grow stale. Anti-Semitism is a fun little twist and will bring a whole new demo on board. The Russians were framed. It's really the Jews. And then maybe a secret organization in a bunker. And then space aliens.