Diaspora affairs minister: NSO spyware scandal causing harm to Israel’s diplomatic interests

Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai tells Channel 12 that the NSO Pegasus saga is highly damaging to Israel, including in terms of international support, and that dark arts intel firms need to be reined in.

Israeli high-tech innovation is widely admired and appreciated overseas, he says, “but it turns out that a kind of rogue program has penetrated Israeli high-tech… We have to make certain that entities [such as NSO] are not able to play in the international game, because they directly harm Israeli diplomatic interests and cause harm among those parts of the Jewish public that admire Israel because of its high-tech.”

On his efforts to help improve Israel’s ties with the Democratic party and with US Jewry, Shai says Israel’s standing will be harmed “if we don’t invest efforts today, especially among the young in the Jewish community — which has become more liberal and progressive. The State of Israel has moved to the right, the Jews in the US have moved left, and the gap has widened — to the extent that we are endangering our position when it comes to the Democratic Party.”

“75% of American Jews vote Democrat… If we don’t nurture our relations with US Jewry today, we will lose the Democratic Party tomorrow,” he adds.