[anon007]

I personally was approached by what I now believe was an undercover spy agent in San Francisco. I believe he might have been Israeli.

How we got there is a long story. But, the person (agent) came to a coffee shop that I frequented and made himself very visible talking audibly about certain areas that were my interest.

I'm a very outgoing person so after over-hearing him by the second or third encounter there, I approached him or he approached me by asking to share a table. Don't fully remember.

After several meetings, he tried to goad me into saying things which were utterly antisemitic and anti-Israel. So I started to suspect something was off and those days I had a very good memory and I started noticing some contradictory stories from meetings to meetings.

So suspecting something was wrong, I dropped all contact. Then he started calling me and asking me why I'm not coming to the coffee shop anymore and used other phone numbers that were not identified as his to try to call me.

After a while of ignoring him, he stopped calling. But, the whole experience was rather strange and made me realize how easy it is for the Israelis to run a spy network (or a soft spy network) in the open.

So when I see stories like these, I'm not only not surprised but I'm wondering why there are not more of these published on the press.

edit some related news:

1 - An Israeli spy firm was reportedly hired to dig up dirt on ex-Obama aides involved in the Iran deal

- https://www.vox.com/world/2018/5/7/17327278/ben-rhodes-black...

2 - UK campaign to smear Corbyn. Note, the source here might be a biased here as they're fighting what they perceived to be Israeli occupation

- https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/new-chal...

3 - Additional reporting on Israeli spying on American citizens

- https://www.thenation.com/article/how-israel-spies-on-us-cit...

[dsl]

Please reach out to the FBI counterintelligence unit at the San Francisco field office.

It sounds like nothing came of it, but screenshots of text messages, call logs, or other information you have may be of assistance in other investigations.

[_pmf_]

Why would you want to paint a target on your back?

[arcticfox]

Do you really believe the Mossad is going to assassinate (or otherwise seriously mess with) someone in the United States for reporting a funky, antisemitic conversation?

[TLAFanBoy]

Obviously, no one said anything about "assassination" by Mossad. Your attempted use of reductio ad absurdum was in bad faith.

One would likely be more concerned with being accused of "anti-semitism" and having your name google-bombed by a Zionist smear campaign like Canary Mission. [0] Imagine having a potential client or employer finding your name on a list of "anti-semite Israel haters" for doing nothing more that suggesting Palestinians have human rights or that Israel engages in an aggressive espionage campaign against the United States?

[0] https://canarymission.org/

[benchaney]

Can you give an example of someone who is on that list for nothing more than suggesting Palestinians have humans rights, or that Israel engages in espionage in the United States? I clicked on a few people at random and they were all there because they advocated killing jews.

[throwaway54353]

here

https://canarymission.org/professor/Jessica_Barnes

[50656E6973]

If they believe the person will carry out an attack, why not??

[arcticfox]

I believe the speculation is that they were on a fishing expedition to dig up political dirt / leverage, not perform some type of dangerous attack.

[saiya-jin]

In theory a good suggestion, but Israel specifically gets a lot of free passes, especially from current US govt, so I wouldn't expect any benefit or positive outcome from this, just troubles for OP.

Now if it would be an Iranian spy for example, they would hunt him/them down with the full force.

[EthanHeilman]

>Israel specifically gets a lot of free passes, especially from current US govt

The US has been very aggressive against Israeli espionage [0,1,2] and the president doesn't exercise much control over counter-intelligence investigations.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosef_Amit [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Ami_Kadish

[mcguire]

0 and 2 were accused of passing along US classified information to Israel, not industrial espionage or on third parties.

1 was spying on Israel for the US and was arrested and convicted by Israel.

[Cthulhu_]

What if it's an Iranian spy who managed to convince the person he was an Israeli spy?

[AsyncAwait]

Israel uses the tactic of antisemitism quite often, even when you clearly criticize a government policy of Israel, not the people. So this is nothing out of the ordinary for them and I see no reason to blame Iran for everything Israel does that's unethical. In fact that's their tactic as well.

[PhasmaFelis]

> Israel uses the tactic of antisemitism quite often, even when you clearly criticize a government policy of Israel, not the people.

China has been doing this too. Any time someone brings up Chinese civil rights abuses, there's always one or two people crying racism, even though the victims are (mostly) also Chinese.

[xkgihu7r]

The current US govt? More like, any US govt.

[a_bonobo]

Having just finished reading Rise and Kill First on the history of Israel's targeted killings, getting your target to introduce themselves by talking loudly about their interests around them for several days is a tried-and-tested Mossad strategy. That way, the target will trust the agent more, as they think that they initiated the contact themselves.

[gomijacogeo]

It could definitely have been a "bump" (a manufactured 'accidental' introduction). If you work in a sensitive field, I'd definitely report it. If you hold a clearance, you should have already reported it.

I wouldn't spend much energy trying to second-guess who was ultimately behind the meeting. Especially if it is nefarious, often the initial contact is done with a cut-out or other intermediary and true affiliations are almost never disclosed initially (or perhaps ever).

[bayesian_horse]

I don't quite get why an Israeli spy would like to get you to say something anti-semitic/anti-Israel. Would he want to blackmail you then? Did he want to make sure you are supportive of Isreal, sort of reverse-psychologically?

[heyjudy]

It depends. It could've been grooming for recruitment or unwitting exploitation: either he was trying to prove he wasn't Israeli by dabbling in anti-semitism and/or collect Kompropat that could ratchet up leverage from one minor ask to gradually larger ones.

Several agencies of the US govt are known to deploy facial recognition monitoring of social media for known foreign agents and place calls to employers if their employees take selfies with them, in order to scare the employees that they're a) being watched and b) to make them more paranoid around unknown individuals. Even if it's a casual hang-out at a conference, the US government will nudge average people to make sure they don't associate with people on certain watch-lists if they work for a large corporation in a sensitive field.

PS: If you watch Thom Hartmann and TRNN, Mossad and the Israeli government actively sabotage BDS and nonviolent pro-Palestinian groups on American college campuses with a deep, well-coordinated campaign of dirty tricks and manipulation in order to cover up and confuse people about the Likud hard-liner apartheid state. They're well-funded and student activist groups are absolutely no match to their tactics, resourced and support from both Christian evangelicals and Likud.

[bayesian_horse]

I sense some anti-isreali sentiment among somewhat valid criticism right there.

The issue is complicated by Israel being a US-ally so technically it's not that much of an issue of Israeli "agents" talking to Americans.

[meowface]

That's partly why this is such an effective tactic for Israeli (government or private) intelligence. The presence, or mere accusation, of anti-Israeli government sentiment can be pretty easily spun into accusations of anti-Israeli and/or anti-Semitic beliefs. So it can kind of create a chilling effect on these discussions in general, like in this comment sub-thread. There are so many outlandish conspiracy theories out there about Israel and Jewish people that they can group you in with those types of people and paint you as a kook or bigot when there actually is some merit behind a theory.

There's always a middleground. Never forget that a country's government and intelligence services are not its people. Just as someone criticizing the NSA or CIA or Blackwater shouldn't be assumed to hate Americans, someone criticizing Mossad or Black Cube shouldn't be assumed to hate Israeli or Jewish people.

[bayesian_horse]

The difference between criticism of the Israeli government and Antisemitism is the simplification of the problem and putting the blame solely on the Israelis without making an effort.

"Apartheid state" doesn't make it better, either.

[coldtea]

>The difference between criticism of the Israeli government and Antisemitism is the simplification of the problem and putting the blame solely on the Israelis without making an effort.

Actually antisemitism is being against Jews, and criticism of the israeli government is about particular political and military actions of a certain set of people and a certain state.

If one doesn't have a problem with e.g. Brooklyn jews, then they are not antisemites, no matter how much they disagree with Israel (which they might even believe has no right to exist).

[eecc]

If you can convincingly support how misguided "Apartheid state" is then yes, I would agree. Unfortunately Israeli policy does seem to support the definition.

[ryanlol]

Is it not essentially official state policy in Israel to label anyone criticizing the Israeli state as an antisemite? Hasn't this been one of their primary weapons against the boycotts?

[PavlovsCat]

What of the criticism is not valid, so it can only be explained by "anti-Israeli sentiment"? Is someone who is critical of some of the doings of the NSA or CIA "anti-American"? The issue is complicated by antisemitism being very real, just like there's people who hate America as such. But there is no need to jump to that, especially when you haven't even said what in your estimation makes the criticism only "somewhat" valid.

[bayesian_horse]

"Likud hard-liner apartheid state" is a pretty strong hint.

[PavlovsCat]

For anti-Israel sentiment? Leibovitz and others also dropped pretty strong hints, but you can hardly call them anti-Israel, and Desmond Tutu also urged people to recognize Israeli as being an apartheid state. When the shoe fits, it's time to stop buggering messengers.

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.720653

> "In general, Israeli society is a healthy society, and the majority of it is sane and aims for a Jewish, democratic and liberal country," Ya'alon said. "But to my great sorrow, extremist and dangerous elements have taken over Israel and the Likud Party and are shaking the foundations and threatening to hurt its residents."

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.720715

> Responding to the resignation of Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon earlier in the day, Barak said that it "should be a red light for all of us regarding what's going on in the government."

> "Life-sustaining Zionism and the seeds of fascism cannot live together," Barak told a Channel 10 interviewer.

> Ya'alon's resignation is "the end of a chain that began with the case of the soldier who shot [a wounded Palestinian assailant to death]," Barak said. "Such incidents give us an X-ray image that is opposed to the will of the people.

> "What has happened is a hostile takeover of the Israeli government by dangerous elements. And it's just the beginning."

> To illustrate his point, Barak referred to legislation promoted by members of the coalition, including the law to lift the parliamentary immunity of Knesset members who allegedly support terrorism and a bill to impose Israeli law on Israelis living in the West Bank.

[AsyncAwait]

Considering that South Africa views many of the current Israeli government's actions as similar to what they had[1], I am not sure "apartheid" is such a wrong word to use here.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid#Forced_removals

[moftz]

The foreign agent might have had some suspicion that the target wasn't a fan of Israel or that he was sympathetic to the Palestinians so the agent played a hard-line approach in hoping that he would fall more towards anti-semite than just a person that disagrees with Israel's policies. When you can bond with someone over a passion for something, some technical topic and antisemitism in this case, the target might be more open to sharing more about themselves. They may see the agent not only as a colleague but a comrade. Now the agent has an in as a friend, they can hang out with the target more and share information that two colleagues who don't work at the same place might not necessarily share. Trade secrets, non-public business plans, classified information, and even just access to more people in the community the agent is trying to infiltrate. "Hey Jim, meet my new friend Ben. He's working with blahblahblah right now, I knew you were trying to get funding for some new blablahblah design at work so I figured maybe you two should bounce ideas off eachother". Sounds pretty innocent but maybe Jim is dumber than the first target so the agent gets even closer to the true goal. Maybe Jim has access to source code or production servers for some system the Israelis are trying to hack. Maybe Jim is into fringe activities and can be blackmailed or is careless with his work laptop while the agent is hanging out at Jim's house. Either way, the "cold call" meeting is probably just the beginning of a complex plan to get close to the real targets.

[Haga]

Massive discredit for any cause you push?

[agumonkey]

it's just a bit outside what I/we consider spies roles. This sounds more like the usual PR trick.

[meowface]

It's because it isn't the Israeli government/Israeli intelligence who's doing this (even if many or most of the operatives are ex-intelligence): it's people in private industry. It's plausible some aspects of the Israeli government also have a hand in this stuff, but I think it's explainable without that as well.

NSO Group, the firm mentioned in this and other articles, and firms like Black Cube (hired by Harvey Weinstein to spy on accusers) seem to be effectively running an intelligence-agency-as-a-service model. They'll deploy agents and compromise devices to discredit any potential witness, gather reconnaissance on potential stories that are being written, spread disinformation, influence policy, etc. All you have to do is give them money.

As for the motive: no idea. But this seems to be a popular tactic for discrediting people, especially recently after some people accused NSO Group of helping spy on Jamal Khashoggi (edit: and there's also at least one lawsuit). Tarring their accusers as anti-Semites is one way of dealing with bad PR. I don't know what the parent poster may have done or what their situation might be, but they or their employer may be in competition, or a feud, with some resourceful Israeli companies or individuals.

[noemotion]

Something similar happened in 2016 in Romania, with the chief prosecutor of the national anti-corruption agency.

[agumonkey]

that's what I was trying to say, boldly discrediting people seems outside the spying field. I defined it as 'stealth information acquisition'. Not political con artistry.

[avip]

s/some people accused/lawsuit was put against/g

[darkpuma]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_spying

>Compromise [...] Coercion [...] Extortion

[klmr]

> Note, the source here might be a biased here

That’s putting it mildly: I’m entirely aware that there’s a concerted campaign in the UK to smear Corbyn by fabricating a story from out-of-context quotes and, despite not being a fan of Corbyn, I’m entirely on board with the idea that he’s being unjustly targeted and probably isn’t actually antisemitic. But so far there’s no evidence that Israel is behind this effort. A more likely explanation is that he’s a thorn in the side of the Tories and the conservative-leaning establishment media, and the campaign successfully undermined Labour’s (and specifically Corbyn’s) public support (which the polls clearly reflect: they’re losing out agains the most incompetent and least-liked UK government this generation has seen).

There’s no need for Israeli operatives to get involved, and considering the potential fallout if this got out, it would seem to be a risky undertaking. Much easier to publicly denounce Corbyn, as both Netanyahu and the Israeli ambassador to the UK have done (along with the Foreign Ministry, if I remember correctly).

[noir_lord]

One of the things that annoys me about this debate is that anti-semetic !== Anti Israel

I've no issue with the Jews (I don't actually know any) but specific things the Israeli government does sure I do.

Of course it's useful for people to conflate the two as they do with Corbyn or anyone who condemns Israel.

Frankly I've no dog in the fight, I think Israel and the Palestinian's are frequently in the wrong.

It's quite possible for there to be no 'good guy'.

[isostatic]

The problem with criticism of Israel is that it tends to be disproportionate compared with their criticism of other countries. While some call to boycott Israel due to it's illegal settlements in the west bank - an area it invaded in 1967, few also call for boycotts of Turkey (invaded Cyprus in 1975), China (invaded Tibet in 1950), Russia (annexed Crimea in 2014 and parts of Georgia a few years earleir), UAE (occupied Socotra last year)

[JadeNB]

> few also call for boycotts of Turkey (invaded Cyprus in 1975), China (invaded Tibet in 1950), Russia (annexed Crimea in 2014 and parts of Georgia a few years earleir), UAE (occupied Socotra last year)

I think that this statement is false in almost every case. (I hadn't heard about UAE, so don't have any perspective there.)

[isostatic]

"boycott x", number of google results

  x = israel -- 616k
  x = china -- 57k
  x = saudi -- 50k
  x = russia -- 28k
  x = turkey -- 15k
  x = america -- 15k
  x = iran -- 11k
  x = korea -- 11k
  x = uae -- 10k
  x = britain -- 6k
  x = sudan -- 4k
  x = venezuela -- 2k

[JadeNB]

Sure, and this may be regarded as good first-approximation evidence of your initial claim, that criticism of Israel is disproportionate to criticism of other countries; but I don't think it is good evidence of the claim that few people call for boycotts of China, Russia, and Turkey, which was the specific claim to which I was responding.

Anyway, as far as using Google results to measure societal trends goes, "boycott Microsoft" yields 3.83m results, and I don't think it's fair to conclude that criticism of Microsoft is disproportionate compared to that of all the countries you listed.

[interfixus]

> the west bank - an area it invaded in 1967

Or more specifically: an area it occupied in 1967 during a defensive war against an attacking coalition of neighbour states.

[isostatic]

Sure, it's not the first time Israel was attacked either.

[dsfyu404ed]

>One of the things that annoys me about this debate is that anti-semetic !== Anti Israel

That's the point. People on the pro-Israel side of things know that being antisemitic is very much not acceptable for anyone in a position of power in the 1st world to be in this day any age so they try their hardest to conflate the two.

It's much more obvious when the conflation is much more of a stretch, e.g. "how dare you not support gun control, don't you care about children" or "how dare you not support corporate tax cuts, are you some sort of communist." Conflating Israel as a nation with all Jewish people is subtle enough that you can get away with it most of the time.

It's basically a reverse straw-man where you conflate your position with something that nobody can tear down in a sufficiently politically correct manner (like a race of people) or the opposing position with something so politically incorrect that nobody will stand behind it.

If you're looking for it you'll see this behavior a lot on HN though people are typically slightly more tactful about it.

[gowld]

It works in reverse too, where you can dog-whistle any anti-Semitic statements by saying that you were refering to "Israeli government" or "globalists" or "bankers", not Jews.

[Bartweiss]

This is a significant point; it's definitely not a one-way thing.

At the simplest, there's genuine confusion over symbolism, like people mistaking the Magen David for the Israeli flag. A lot of other times, there's way less excuse; I think the infamous example here is (ex London Mayor) Ken Livingstone comparing a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard. His justification was that people are afraid to criticize Israel - despite having been speaking to a British reporter covering a domestic beat.

Honestly, I think that's part of what makes the conflation so enduring. If it stemmed from one side, people would get used to dismissing it as a partisan move. But depending on who you're appealing to and what you're justifying, it can be run from all different political starting points, so no one is putting it in political cartoons as "that thing the other guys do".

[Gibbon1]

My experience is out and out anti-Semites aren't into making subtle distinctions.

[gadders]

Well, this is the widely accepted definition of anti-semitism [1]. As long as you don't do anything on the list you should be OK.

[1] https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/working-definition-anti...

[pault]

Is "the jews" considered offensive? If someone were to say "the blacks" I would automatically suspect them of racist tendencies.

[pault]

I can't edit the original comment because it triggered the flame war filters, but I'm curious why this is such a controversial question and garnered so many downvotes. I sincerely wanted to know what popular the consensus is.

[bendoernberg]

You're right, when someone who isn't Jewish says "the Jews" it sounds weird and is followed by "control the banks" often enough that it sets me on edge.

[PavlovsCat]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews

ctrl+f "the Jews". I wouldn't make your opinion of what is "offensive" depend on an ad-hoc poll in times where even the most rudimentary looking into things for oneself seems to be getting rare. (or where people think clicking a button constitutes an argument, for that matter)

In this case, the comment also said "the Palestinians", and if you hear someone say "the blacks", as well as "the whites", yet you only retain the one and discard the other, that says more about the absurd climate than that person.

[jonnydubowsky]

You're grammar rules here are inconsistent. The comment said "The Palestinians" not "the Muslims" because they were talking about Palestinians, people who live in Palestine. There are Muslims, Jews, Christians and agnostics living there. Israel's, people who live in Israel, include all varieties of religious groups. When you critique Israel's government policies but say "the Jews" you are incorrectly describing an entire religion when you claim to be talking about a group of people that live in Israel. Any "mistakes" with this logic are suspicious, but maybe they just skipped that part of the grammer?

[noir_lord]

No idea, the Jewish people, judaists insert whatever works for you.

[tuesdayrain]

I've noticed people can be offended when you refer to them by their adjectives. E.g. "blacks" instead of "black people", "autists" vs "autistic people".

[wgerard]

One term encourages the idea that they're people first-and-foremost, with the adjective used to describe a particular subset of people.

The other removes the emphasis on them being people and is pretty depersonalizing.

As you can imagine, it's much worse when it's a historically marginalized group--as an example, fewer people will care if you say "blondes" vs. "blonde-haired people".

[crockstar]

My understanding is that people object to this as it is a means of defining them rather than describing them. In fact, I know people who would be insulted with the use of "autistic people" as opposed to "people with autism"

[noir_lord]

I don’t deliberately go out my way to offend anyone but nor can I be responsible for offending someone looking to be offended, it’s a fine line.

Though this thread has been fascinating.

[nkrisc]

You can just say, "Jews." The article isn't necessary.

[PavlovsCat]

Yeah, but it's also perfectly fine to use it. Jews use it, Wikipedia uses it. The commenter also said "the Palestinians" in the very same comment in which they said "the Jews", making this whole subthread slightly silly. Not that dragging conversation into accusing others of "sentiments" they cannot disprove and one cannot prove them to have, before or even instead of dealing with the factual stuff that all parties can examine and elobarate on, is ever not silly.

[lr4444lr]

What's offensive is that the OP (or generally people like him - not clear of his exact point) thinks he knows Jewish identity well enough that he can divorce it by whatever line he thinks it is (artificially) separate from Israel. Only a tiny minority of very unrepresentative Jews object to the modern state, and they do so only under an even more extreme ideology of what that country should be and who should live in it.

[gbrown]

> a tiny minority of very unrepresentative Jews object to the modern state

[Citation Needed]

I think your comment is far more offensive than someone claiming they take issue with the actions of a nation state.

[lr4444lr]

All denominations of Judaism aside from a few Haredi sects and maybe extreme secularists recognize the modern state of Israel as a legitimate country. Many adherents may not like how certain aspects of it are run, but they hold not anything remotely like what the totality of a position would entail to be "anti-Israel". The general acceptance of the country is about as common knowledge in Judaic studies as anything, and is uncontentious. I challenge you to find otherwise.

[komali2]

The majority religion of a Nation can be irrelevant when criticizing the nation's actions.

I find it surprising more Jewish people don't get angry at the use of their religion to justify/cast smoke clouds around human rights violations by the Israeli government. What a shield to put up - someone's religion! A history of Holocaust! It seems dirty to me, but I don't practice Judaism so I can only comment from the outside looking in.

[cf141q5325]

I never heard of the Torie angle before, is there any evidence to assume that?

There is quite a bit of evidence that pro Israel Lobby groups, as well as Israeli Embassy Staff are heavily involved.

There is a documentary about the whole issue from Aljazeera, which allegedly got censored due to intervention by the Qatar government.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-parts-of-censor...

Some reporter went undercover for 6 month with a hidden camera infiltrating some of the groups.

https://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/thelobby/

As a result, one embassy official had to resign

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/israel-diplomat-force...

[secfirstmd]

Totally agree here. I worked quite closely with Corbyn for a bit on human rights issues (esp. Israel/Palestine) and though I might disagree with him on a lot of things - he most definitely is not Semitic. It is very clear to me for reasons unfortunately I don't have time to outline that there is a very clearly orchestrated campaign against him. Basically, it follow the exact same methods, people, talking points etc of other similar smear campaigns against people in the UK holding views that the Israeli right wing government doesn't like.

[JadeNB]

> I worked quite closely with Corbyn … he most definitely is not Semitic.

Presumably (although I guess your sentence is also true) you forgot an 'anti'?

[secfirstmd]

Doh. Yes. Autocorrect!

[andy_ppp]

Maybe Corbyn is just not a very good politician who wants to try a socialist experiement in right wing Britain.

I sat down and did the maths based on tax revenues and so on and Corbyn's plans roughly call for £500bn of additional borrowing. I'm not saying don't do it but it's scary this isn't communicated clearly to people the costs of renationalising water/rail/university fees etc. etc.

What makes you think there is a campaign against him or just that he simply isn't that popular apart from with a small section of society for whom he can do no wrong (i.e. Labour party members)?

[klmr]

> What makes you think there is a campaign against him or just that he simply isn't that popular

Because his policies are virtually never mentioned, he’s being attacked for made-up allegations instead. This very fact that, as you point out, his policies are not discussed in the media is why people think there’s a smear campaign against him. People wish the press would engage him on policy grounds. As for the borrowing specifically, when this policy was initially proposed by McDonnell, it was made abundantly clear that this would involve large-scale borrowing. See e.g. this article in the Economist: https://www.economist.com/buttonwoods-notebook/2017/05/16/ol...

On a more political note, whether this large-scale borrowing is a good idea is obviously worth discussing. But it would almost certainly be more popular than the Tories’ continued twin policies of privatisation and austerity, which, besides being phenomenally unpopular, is largely based on bad science, to boot.

[andy_ppp]

I actually think that’s clearly not true otherwise Jeremy would be miles ahead in the polls... people do understand what he’s offering they just don’t want it!

[jonnydubowsky]

The spy vs spy comic strip gave us some early lessons on how deep these deceptions can go. Double and triple agents, even people creating anonymous accounts online to put forth whatever unfounded and creative stories they wish about anyone they choose.

[blazespin]

Reputation is everything.

[jorblumesea]

Please report this to a local FBI office, this was obviously an agent trying to co-opt whatever movement you're associated with.

[tomjakubowski]

"Ah, glad to hear Agent Johnson's been doing his job."

[isostatic]

Disappointed to hear Agent Johnson was so obvious

[leesalminen]

A very similar thing happened to a friend of mine in a coffee shop in LA about 15 years ago.

[therein]

Did he have colored cards that he used during conversation?

[porpoisely]

Don't forget the anti-BDS laws state politicians have passed at the behest of israel. I think more than a dozen states have already passed this unconstitutional ( in my opinion ) law. Now congress is looking to enact it nationally.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-06/anti-b...

Replace israel with russia. Can you imagine any politician passing a law criminalizing any company from protesting or boycotting russia? The hubris to even think up such an anti-american law like this is worrying.

[thatoneuser]

This message sounds like propaganda

[stef25]

Either you're leaving out a lot of important parts to the story or you're just being paranoid?

[i_phish_cats]

Sounds like he was just trying to hit on you.

[eesmith]

I disagree. Even if it was meant as flirting, the repeated calls from multiple phone numbers approaches harassment, not "just hitting on" someone.

[mprev]

You’ve clearly never had a stalker.

The behaviour sounds almost exactly like how my stalker inveigled his way into my life and then behaved when I cut him out.

[TomasSedovic]

I would consider stalking closer to "harassment" than "hitting on someone".

[mprev]

Yes, of course, I can see how it looks like I conflated the two. But, I mean, it started out as being hit on, I guess.

[eesmith]

Yes, and harassers - including stalkers - take advantage of the fuzziness. Including by using terms like "just hitting on" for something which is much better described as "harassment".

[skilled]

I would love to throw in a joke in response to this comment but I get the feeling it would not age well.

[yourabanana]

It's fine just say it anyway.

[isostatic]

Corbyn smears himself. With you quoting a site called “electronic infitada” you weaken your case dramatically.