Pegasus, NSO Group, surveillance, France, Israel | Homeland Security Newswire

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2021-08-02 08:00:06

Israel has been trying to limit the damage the Pegasus spyware scandal is threatening to do to France-Israel relations. The Moroccan intelligence service used the software, made by an Israeli company with close ties to Israel’s defense and intelligence establishments, to spy on dozens of French officials, including fourteen current and former cabinet ministers, among them President Emmanuel Macron and former prime minister Edouard Phillipe. It would not be unreasonable for the French intelligence services to assume that there was a measure of Israeli spying on France involved here, with or without the knowledge of the Moroccans. Macron, in a phone conversation with Israel’s prime minister Naftali Bennett, pointedly asked for an explanation.

Benny Gantz, Israel’s Defense Minister and a former Chief of Staff, on Wednesday visited Paris on a damage-control mission. His goal: To try to pacify the angry French authorities following the revelations that a sophisticated piece of spyware, produced by an Israeli spyware firm, was sold to Morocco with the approval of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The Moroccan intelligence service used the software to spy on opposition figures, journalists, and civil society activists in Morocco – but also on dozens of French officials, including fourteen current and former cabinet ministers.