The Bizzare Israeli Art Students Spy Mystery

This intelligence dust-up - where Israel is denying any US espionage- reminded me of an odd story I read a while back: there were dozens and dozens of suspected Israeli agents posing as woe-be-gone art students, caught and deported from the US post 9/11, where they apparantly went around to lots of semi-secret DEA offices tried to sell small paintings.

I found this long article from Salon.com in 2002. Clearly this must be taken with some serious skepticism, but it resulted in real deportations, and small, lingering doubts in my mind about any sexually aggressive hot blond female Israeli art students with inexplicably poor drawing skills and a penchant for visiting federal offices with bad chinese art copies.

According to this article, referencing others in Le Monde and the AP, there were over 140 Israeli art students detained by the US. If only federal agents had basic art history training, they would have caught them so much earlier by spotting lazy, poor quality abstracts. Why isn't this a national priority?

Of course the sociopath right and the fringe left was all over this. It's a rather depressing Google search to dig up the actual news involved. But in this climate, Israeli claims of non spying are pretty non-credible.

(There was an unrelated incident at UW where my friend M- caught a particularly egregious example of plagarism from some lazy, arrogant blond sorority girl, and I want to clarify that in discussing this incident I was not the one who said "who did she have to blow to get this drawing done?" - the universal conclusion of the betrayed women instructors.)

The moral? Neglect the humanities at your national peril.