Israel

[LFC]

Israel's government becomes semi non-functional ... again.

Out of the blue the government of Naftali Bennett appears to be on the brink of collapse as one of the members of his own party, Idit Silman, has moved to the opposition. The development is part of the on-going splintering of Bennett’s own party, Yamina. But a catalyst or trigger appears to have been opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu offering her a ministry in a new Netanyahu-led right-wing government.

For now, the coalition government has lost its majority. But the Knesset isn’t currently in session. So there’s no immediate way for the opposition to topple it. And it would be difficult for Netanyahu to form a majority himself. So this likely means new elections.

Nothing says democracy like open bribery of a opposition member.

[LFC]

Israel continues to descend into being a tyrant state.

The death of Shireen Abu Akleh, Al Jazeera’s celebrated Palestine correspondent—who was shot in the head while covering a gun battle between Israeli army forces and Palestinian fighters in the West Bank city of Jenin last Wednesday—has spiraled from tragedy into a full-blown diplomatic crisis for Israel.

A series of clumsy reactions to the journalist’s death, and the police’s catastrophic handling of her funeral on Friday, where officers beat pallbearers with batons and dispersed the crowds with stun grenades, have left Israel exposed to a diplomatic maelstrom, with criticism coming from even the country’s strongest allies.

Israeli police has not responded to queries about its deployment of anti-terror police at the funeral, or its methods of riot control.

Videos of Abu Akleh’s coffin tipping over, slipping from the pallbearers’ hands and almost hitting the ground drew a rare rebuke from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who personally called Abu Akleh’s family to express condolences over the death of the renowned Palestinian American journalist.

The United States was “deeply troubled to see the images of Israeli police intruding into her funeral procession,” Blinken said, in a statement. “We remain in close contact with our Israeli and Palestinian counterparts and call on all to maintain calm and avoid any actions that could further escalate tensions.”

[LFC]

Ugh. As we discussed somewhere on TRS earlier the execution of journalists is getting more common.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called on Israel to accept responsibility for the fatal shooting of American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who worked for Al Jazeera at the time of her death.

Her colleague Ali Sammoudi was also injured when the two were fired upon on May 11 while covering a gun battle between Palestinian and Israeli soldiers in Jenin. “It is deeply disturbing that Israeli authorities have not conducted a criminal investigation,” Ravina Shamdasani said at a briefing on Friday. “All information we have gathered—including official information from the Israeli military and the Palestinian Attorney-General—is consistent with the finding that the shots that killed Abu Akleh and injured her colleague Ali Sammoudi came from Israeli Security Forces and not from indiscriminate firing by armed Palestinians, as initially claimed by Israeli authorities.”

The accusation follows similar findings by a New York Times investigative team in a report published this week that said “the bullet that killed Ms. Abu Akleh was fired from the approximate location of the Israeli military convoy, most likely by a soldier from an elite unit.”

Israel initially said that due to gunfights between Israeli and Palestinian forces in the area, it was “not possible to unequivocally determine the source of the gunfire.”

[LFC]

What in the actual hell, Israel? Half of you want the criminal back? Is this a sneak peek at what America is quickly becoming / has become?

Israel's Channel 12 News released a poll on Wednesday giving the parties that support opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu for prime minister 59 Knesset seats, two less than he needs for a simple majority in the legislature.

The poll gave the parties in the opposing bloc 57 Knesset seats.

Netanyahu's Likud party received 32 seats and Prime Minister Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid party received 24. They are followed by Defense Minister Benny Gantz's new National Unity Party with 12 Knesset seats, Shas with eight and United Torah Judaism with seven. The two Haredi parties are ahead of Yisrael Beiteinu with six seats, the Labor Party and Meretz with five seats each and Hadash-Ta'al and the United Arab List with four Knesset seats apiece.

Falling below the minimum electoral threshold in the poll are Habayit Hayehudi, with just 1.6 percent of the vote, the Economic Party (1.2 percent) and Balad and Tzeirim Boarim (1.1 percent for each).

The previous Channel 12 News poll, published September 22, gave 60 Knesset seats to Netanyahu’s bloc and 56 to the parties in the current governing coalition.

[LFC]

The Biden Administration gets a big win in the Middle East. Republicans, as expected, don't want to even acknowledge it.

There must be something about Joe Biden winning on Israel policy that drives Republicans nuts — especially when Israel’s government supports the Democrat in the White House.

This dynamic was on full display over the last several days, as President Biden achieved a stunning diplomatic breakthrough that Israel’s government has been seeking for more than a decade: clarity and security over its maritime border with Lebanon.

The Israel-Lebanon maritime border deal is the single most significant advancement towards peace on any of Israel’s borders since the Jordanian peace treaty of 1994. It is to be celebrated.

But unfortunately, the same Republicans who loudly proclaim their support for Israel aren’t interested in acknowledging successful diplomacy by a Democrat during an election season.

Look no further than Republican reaction to the deal.

Of the 23 positive congressional statements made last week about the deal, all but one came from Democrats. The lone Republican statement was from Darrell Issa, a Lebanese American who has long been a proponent of peace and diplomacy in the region. There was silence from the rest of the Republican conference.

Compare this to the Democratic response to the signing of the Trump-negotiated Abraham Accords in September 2020. Joe Biden welcomed them while a candidate in the heat of his own election campaign against Trump — demonstrating how he wasn’t going to play partisan politics with the peace process in the region.

Republicans have done the opposite now and it’s deeply troubling for Israel’s security. Israel depends upon bipartisan American support. Right now, it doesn’t appear to have it.

The reason for this, of course, is clear: Republicans for years have tried to use Israel policy as a political wedge to pry American Jewish voters away from Democrats. For them, supporting a pro-Israel agreement negotiated by a Democrat would undermine their political argument to Jewish voters, and so they reject it.

It’s instructive to look to former president Donald Trump’s statement on Truth Social last week, which was both awash in antisemitism and laid the Republican calculus out for all to see: American Jewish voters are guilty of “disloyalty,” he complained, because “No President has done more for Israel than I have.” Yet, he marveled, evangelicals are “far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.”

Republicans look to the Israel issue to gain Jewish voter support because American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic, typically voting by margins of 70–75% for Democrats in each election.

Maybe most Jewish voters disagree with Republican "values." And maybe many of them know their own history well enough to recognize a false partner when they see one.

[LFC]

The criminal is almost assuredly coming back. WTF, Israel? I guess you're MAGA MIGA controlled now, just like America was and is likely to be again.

Former PM Benjamin Netanyahu appears poised to reclaim the Israeli Prime Ministership after yesterday’s election. Indeed, it looks likely to be by a significantly larger margin than expected. The reason has to do not with questionable polls but with the particular dynamics of the Israeli parliamentary system. Exit polls last night predicated that Netanyahu’s bloc would get 61 or 62 Knesset seats, an extremely tight margin (out of 120) but enough. That was in line with most polls. But he’s now predicted to get 65 seats, a critical difference. What changed is that Meretz, a left-wing party, appears to have fallen just below the parliamentary election threshold of 3.25%. If that holds they’re excluded altogether. So four seats suddenly get pulled out of the center-left bloc and go to other parties. That’s mostly what gets you from 61-62 to 65. It’s not a huge difference. But it’s a critical one and one that stands a good chance of breaking the electoral stalemate of the last four years.

[pnwguy]

From Tom Friedman today:

The Israel We Knew Is Gone

www.nytimes.com/2022/11/04/opinion/israel-netanyahu.html

Imagine you woke up after the 2024 U.S. presidential election and found that Donald Trump had been re-elected and chose Rudy Giuliani for attorney general, Michael Flynn for defense secretary, Steve Bannon for commerce secretary, evangelical leader James Dobson for education secretary, Proud Boys former leader Enrique Tarrio for homeland security head and Marjorie Taylor Greene for the White House spokeswoman.

“Impossible,” you would say. Well, think again.

As I’ve noted before, Israeli political trends are often a harbinger of wider trends in Western democracies — Off Broadway to our Broadway. I hoped that the national unity government that came to power in Israel in June 2021 might also be a harbinger of more bipartisanship here. Alas, that government has now collapsed and is being replaced by the most far-far-right coalition in Israel’s history. Lord save us if this is a harbinger of what’s coming our way.

The coalition that Likud leader Bibi Netanyahu is riding back into power is the Israeli equivalent of the nightmare U.S. cabinet I imagined above. Only it is real — a rowdy alliance of ultra-Orthodox leaders and ultranationalist politicians, including some outright racist, anti-Arab Jewish extremists once deemed completely outside the norms and boundaries of Israeli politics. As it is virtually impossible for Netanyahu to build a majority coalition without the support of these extremists, some of them are almost certain to be cabinet ministers in the next Israeli government.

We can all rightfully fear that in 2025, he'll have a headline about the US that is pretty much the same, and we'll be getting a preview in 2023.

[LFC]

Here come the religious zealots, who Netanyahu will have to keep happy.

[goldenvalley]

Israel is what happens when you let would be theocrats have power in a country.  Corrupt right wingers cater to them to gain power.

[LFC]

Israel is going to be ruled by an absolute cesspool of corrupt dirtbags and grifters.

Together, Deri and Ben Gvir’s husbands have been convicted 55 times, Ben Gvir for terror-related crimes and Deri, most recently, for tax evasion. “The appointment of a convicted felon, Ben-Gvir, as the ministerial overseer of all police activity, hardly raises an eyebrow anymore,” Amos Harel, a columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz wrote about the administrative and political bedlam.

Benjamin Netanyahu is currently on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He denies the charges.

Welcome to Israel 2022, a morass of (alleged and convicted) miscreants, fraudsters and violent extremists.

[AnBr]

Why does reich-wing, criminal and grifter always seem to go hand in hand?

[LFC]

Nov 16, 2022 22:28:43 GMT AnBr said:

Why does reich-wing, criminal and grifter always seem to go hand in hand?

And so often sexually perverse. Don't forget that.

[LFC]

Israel is looking more and more like a failed democracy. Netanyahu is handing out power to the most extreme elements of Israeli society, pushing it closer to being an uncontrolled theocracy.

Netanyahu’s Right-Wing Blitz Is the ‘Most Corrupt’ Day in Israeli History

Netanyahu has signed up to a host of crazy demands in an increasingly desperate bid to return to power with the support of radical right-wing coalition partners.

Israel’s parliament, now with a majority of legislators promising to back incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is on a radical right-wing “legislative blitz” ahead of his anticipated installation on Thursday.

The House has effectively been commandeered to enable Netanyahu’s sixth government by passing laws required to tie up coalition deals with his radical new partners.

Without a series of laws fundamentally transforming Israel’s judicial landscape, Netanyahu has no way of forming a governing coalition, and Israel would be launched towards new elections.

A law passed in the early hours of Tuesday permits the reinstatement of Aryeh Deri, a former interior minister, who resigned from the Knesset last year as part of a plea deal in which he admitted to defrauding the state of $152,365 in taxes, and agreed to leave public life.

That was Deri’s second entanglement with the law: in 2000 he was convicted of accepting bribes and was sentenced to three years in jail, of which he served two.

Netanyahu—don’t forget—is himself on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust, and does not have the parliamentary votes to form a coalition government without Deri’s Shas party. Ergo, the law which allows Deri to become a minister in the Netanyau’s latest coalition.

Baruch Kra, legal analyst for Israel's Channel 13 television, tweeted that “this morning, December 27, 2022, with the passage of the Deri Law, will be remembered as the most corrupt in the history of the Israeli parliament.”

Another law passed under cover of night will benefit Bezalel Smotrich, a nationalist theocrat who hopes to impose “Torah law” on Israel, and a self-described “proud homophobe” slated to become Israel’s finance minister in the new coalition. The law will allow him to take a huge amount of control over the occupied West Bank, which was previously under the sole purview of Israel’s army. It even explicitly limits Netanyahu’s ability to direct policy over the occupied territory.

These changes will also position Smotrich to clash with the Israeli army. On Tuesday, Smotirch attacked Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff General Aviv Kochavi and accused him of “blatant politicization” after Kochavi—in a very rare move—warned Netanyahu on Monday that “electoral deals will break the chain of command” and are “harming the army.”

The appointment of Itamar Ben Gvir, another extremist coalition partner, to a newly created Ministry of National Security, required the late-night passage of another special law, also granting him powers over the West Bank previously held by the Israeli army.

Netanyahu also committed to passing a death penalty law for “terrorists,” ironically demanded by Ben Gvir–the only Israeli lawmaker ever convicted of terror associations.

Under its newly clipped powers, the Israeli army will not even be able to appoint its own chaplains—a responsibility handed to the Sephardic Chief Rabbi as part of Netanyahu's coalition deals.

Gee, does this destruction of the courts make me look fascist? (Just kidding. They don't care.)

Another coalition deal, will grant Jewish religious courts the power to rule on civil and economic matters.

However, critics say the greatest shock about to hit Israel will transform its judiciary from an independent branch of government to a vestigial limb, and is likely to plunge Israel into the area of partial, or authoritarian, democracies such as Hungary and Poland.

A rare 11-member panel of Israel's supreme court is already scheduled to convene next week to hear petitions against Deri's return to power. Appeals against Smotrich’s and Ben Gvir’s takeover of military prerogatives have already been filed.

The supreme court may allow these aberrations to slide based on their passage by a parliamentary majority, but to avoid the specter of legal entanglements in the future, Netanyahu’s new government plans an “override clause” allowing any simple majority of legislators—61 out of 120 Knesset members—to override, or, in effect, annul, Supreme Court rulings.

In addition, the incoming government is expected to neuter the role of government counsel, so that if parliamentary or ministerial legal advisers rule that the government is acting unlawfully, their advice will carry no weight.

[LFC]

It's already getting uglier. My guess is that Netanyahu is turning up the heat in hopes of an explosion that a) helps keep him popular and in office, b) allows Israel to grab another big swath of Palestinian land for "security" purposes, and c) generally places more restrictions on Palestinian in Jerusalem to try to push them out.

The Palestinian foreign minister says Israel has revoked his travel permit, after the hardline Israeli government announced a series of punitive steps against the Palestinians days ago.

Riad Malki said in a statement that he was returning from the Brazilian president’s inauguration when he was informed that Israel had rescinded his travel permit, which allows top Palestinian officials to travel easily in and out of the occupied West Bank, unlike ordinary Palestinians.

Israel’s government on Friday approved the steps to penalise the Palestinians in retaliation for them pushing the UN’s highest judicial body to give its opinion on the Israeli occupation. The decision highlights the tough line the government is already taking toward the Palestinians just days into its tenure. It comes at a time of rising violence in the occupied West Bank, with peace talks a distant memory.

In East Jerusalem, a flashpoint of Israeli-Palestinian tensions, Israeli police said they broke up a meeting of Palestinian parents about their children’s education, claiming it was unlawfully funded by the Palestinian Authority (PA). Police said the operation came at the behest of the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist with a long record of anti-Arab rhetoric and stunts who now oversees the police.

The Palestinians condemned the revoking of Malki’s permit, saying Israel should be the one being “punished for its violations against international law”. Israeli officials could not immediately be reached for confirmation.

The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told a meeting of his cabinet on Sunday the measures were aimed at what he called “an extreme anti-Israel” step at the UN.

On Friday, the government’s security cabinet decided Israel would withhold $39m (£32m) from the PA and transfer the funds instead to a compensation programme for the families of Israeli victims of Palestinian militant attacks.

It also said Israel would further deduct revenue it typically transfers to the cash-strapped PA – a sum equal to the amount the authority paid last year to families of Palestinian prisoners and those killed in the conflict, including militants implicated in attacks against Israelis. The Palestinian leadership describes the payments as necessary social welfare, while Israel says the so-called Martyrs Fund incentivises violence. Israel’s withheld funds threaten to exacerbate the PA’s fiscal woes.

The security cabinet also targeted Palestinian officials directly, saying it would deny benefits to “VIPs who are leading the political and legal war against Israel”.

[jackd]

Whatever happened to the criminal charges against BiBi?

[LFC]

Jan 9, 2023 23:09:53 GMT jackd said:

Whatever happened to the criminal charges against BiBi?

He has control of the supreme court now soooo…

[LFC]

One of Netanyahu's ministers, and one key to keeping his coalition together, is not allowed to serve. Israel's Supreme Court told Netanyahu to fire him. Bibi decided to just ignore them. He has done more than any one person to drive a stake through the heart of Israeli democracy. It appears to be pretty much dead at this point though maybe it will come back once Netanyahu is actually dead.

Israel skid into constitutional limbo on Thursday as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined for a second day to fire a top minister and key ally that Israel’s supreme court barred from holding high office.

On Wednesday, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Aryeh Deri, who is serving as Interior Minister and Minister of Health, was unfit to fulfill a ministerial role due to accumulated moral turpitude.

Deri “is a person who in his life has been convicted three times of offenses, and violated his duty to serve the public loyally and lawfully while serving in senior public positions,” wrote Supreme Court Chief Justice Esther Hayut, in response to a petition presented by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel. She added that Netanyahu could not ignore the “accumulation of serious corruption offenses."

Deri, 63, leads the right-wing religious Shas party that traditionally represents Sephardic Jews. He has been a dominant actor in Israeli political life, and in legal circles, for more than thirty years. But his appointment to senior government positions had been restricted by the “Deri Law,” which in 1993 established the court’s standing to order then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to fire Deri after he was indicted on criminal corruption charges.

“If Aryeh Deri is not fired, the Israeli government is breaking the law,” former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, said in a video. “A government that does not obey the law is an illegal government…If Aryeh Deri is not fired, Israel will fall into an unprecedented constitutional crisis and will no longer be a democracy and will not be a state of law.”

In the early 2000s, Deri served almost three years in jail for corruption and bribery, and was barred from public office for seven years for moral turpitude. He was most recently convicted of tax evasion in January, 2022.

“Having Deri in charge of two of the most important ministries in the government damages the image and reputation of the country's legal system and contradicts the principles of ethical conduct and lawfulness,” Hayut wrote.

You gotta' love that a serial criminal "leads the right-wing religious Shas party", sounding like so much of the Christian Nationalist wing of the Republican Party.

[LFC]

I expect crimes like this to accelerate under Bibi's religious-fascist government. I bet with his military losses in Ukraine, Putin is wondering how this might work to help him steal land from other countries.

Overnight, #Israeli settlers took over Palestinian land in Nablus & declared it a settlement. Just like that!

When the Israeli police came to evacuate the outpost, Israel's Security & Finance Ministers, Ben-Gvir & Smotrich, rushed to defend the settlers & stop the evacuation!

A member of Knesset from the ruling coalition, Son Har-Melech, rushed to the illegal outpost to prevent its evacuation & show support to the Hilltop Youth

She said the outpost was "extremely essential" to undermine Palestinian presence in the West Bank

Israeli politicians are piling on to defend the illegal theft of Palestinian land & the extremist Hilltop Youth group.

Danny Danon, Chair of the World Likud, says #Israel should instead be demolishing the Palestinian Khan Al-Ahmar & promote more settlements!

[LFC]

Juan Cole doesn't have a lot of good to say about the Sec of State's comments on Israel and the Middle East. The concept of Israel being a functional democracy is becoming a farce. Any thought that they have not been and continue to be the primary aggressor in a slow, grinding war where they continue to take territory from the Palestinians is also a farce.

The actually existing Middle East is not cooperating with the Washington representation of it. To hear Secretary of State Antony Blinken speak, you would think that a two-state solution to the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinians is still possible. It is not. You would think there was a “peace process.” There is not. You would think that only Palestinians commit terrorism, not extremist Israeli gangs assiduously stealing Palestinian property while assaulting their families and homes. You would think that other Arab countries are eager to join the “Abraham Accords,” which were acceded to by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. They are not. You would think that Iran is a major threat to Israel. Despite the harsh words Tehran and Tel Aviv have for one another, and despite some shadowy Israeli covert operations inside Iran, the two countries are far apart and do not actually interact much. Iran is mainly a boogeymen, a distraction talked up by the Israeli Right to take the focus off their brutal and kleptomaniac occupation of the Palestinians.

The sordid reality facing Blinken on his Middle East tour is of Egyptian dictatorship, Israeli defection from the ranks of the democracies, Palestinian helplessness, and Iranian weakness. Blinken’s task as the chief American diplomat is to smooth troubled waters. He cannot.

The paradox of America’s superpower status in the Middle East is that it is meaningless. Egypt’s ruling elite knows that Washington would prefer them to be less brutal and more democratic. They won’t be, and they don’t care what Washington thinks. Blinken is forced to shake hands with the repressive dictator and to praise Cairo as a key security partner. Ten percent of the world’s petroleum flows through the Suez Canal, and 12% of global trade. Egypt is not an ally to the US but a gas pump. Its veiled military junta is, from the American point of view, free to crush dissent, as long as it maintains the peace treaty with Israel. Israel and oil. Oil and Israel.

After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Blinken spoke of his condolences for the innocent Israelis killed in the Neve Yakob squatter-settlement in Palestinian East Jerusalem, and of course any decent person joins him in deeply regretting civilian, noncombatant lives snuffed out. But Blinken did not deplore the loss of innocent life attendant on the Israeli military raid into the Jenin refugee camp, a raid that was said to have been about three terrorists in Jenin but which left 10 people dead, including two teenagers and a grandmother.

[LFC]

Jews around the world are beginning to stand up against Netanyahu's ever increasing fascism. Events are scheduled in cities all around the world. While it may seem that the opinions of non-Israeli Jews wouldn't matter much let's not forget that it's their voting blocs and financial support into Israel that help keep the nation going. The last thing they want is millions upon millions of Jews worldwide deciding Israel, or more to the point the gov't of Israel, no longer represents their homeland.

Eager to “take part in the fight to stop the coup d’état,” Israeli expatriates opposed to the new government’s plan to weaken the judiciary are planning a series of demonstrations across Europe and the United States this weekend in solidarity with the massive demonstrations held on Saturday nights in Israel in recent weeks.

Rallies are slated to be held in Barcelona, Berlin, Munich, Oslo, Paris and Rome, among other places in Europe — as well as in Sydney, Australia. In the United States, protests will take place in Boston, New York, Chicago, Miami, Seattle and Los Angeles. In Canada, Israelis will take to the streets in Toronto and Vancouver.

“The people of Israel protested en masse against Dictatorship. Israeli ex-pats and Jewish people around the world will join around the world to Save Israeli Democracy,” UnXeptable, one of the two groups behind the initiative, wrote on Facebook.

“The basis of Israel’s existence is under attack — it’s democracy,” the co-organizer of Defend Israeli Democracy, explained, calling on people “from Vancouver to Sydney to take part in the fight to stop the coup d’état, to make our voice heard in the war for democracy.”

It's all about judicial corruption, the same type that I'm sure Republicans would loooove to enact.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition has said that it intends to enact legislation that would permit the Knesset to override Supreme Court decisions by a very slim majority of 61 votes in the 120-seat parliament, as well as legislation to tip the balance on the Judicial Appointments Committee in favor of politicians. Currently, the judges on the committee effectively have veto power over the appointment of Supreme Court justices.

Justice Minister Yariv Levin also intends to put an end to the reasonableness standard that the High Court has invoked to overrule government decisions that it found to be “unreasonable” — such as the recent appointment of oft-convicted Shas party leader Arye Dery as a cabinet minister.

[LFC]

Is it just me or does it seem like Israel has become a hotbed of companies providing shady to wildly illegal hacking services for money? This is just the latest story, with previous stories about other shady companies including the one selling spyware for cell phones.

A team of Israeli contractors who claim to have manipulated more than 30 elections around the world using hacking, sabotage and automated disinformation on social media has been exposed in a new investigation.

The unit is run by Tal Hanan, a 50-year-old former Israeli special forces operative who now works privately using the pseudonym “Jorge”, and appears to have been working under the radar in elections in various countries for more than two decades.

He is being unmasked by an international consortium of journalists. Hanan and his unit, which uses the codename “Team Jorge”, have been exposed by undercover footage and documents leaked to the Guardian.

Hanan did not respond to detailed questions about Team Jorge’s activities and methods but said: “I deny any wrongdoing.”

The investigation reveals extraordinary details about how disinformation is being weaponised by Team Jorge, which runs a private service offering to covertly meddle in elections without a trace. The group also works for corporate clients.

Hanan told the undercover reporters that his services, which others describe as “black ops”, were available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies that wanted to secretly manipulate public opinion. He said they had been used across Africa, South and Central America, the US and Europe.

One of Team Jorge’s key services is a sophisticated software package, Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims. It controls a vast army of thousands of fake social media profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube. Some avatars even have Amazon accounts with credit cards, bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts.

The consortium of journalists that investigated Team Jorge includes reporters from 30 outlets including Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País. The project, part of a wider investigation into the disinformation industry, has been coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a French nonprofit whose mission is to pursue the work of assassinated, threatened or jailed reporters.

The undercover footage was filmed by three reporters, who approached Team Jorge posing as prospective clients.

In more than six hours of secretly recorded meetings, Hanan and his team spoke of how they could gather intelligence on rivals, including by using hacking techniques to access Gmail and Telegram accounts. They boasted of planting material in legitimate news outlets, which are then amplified by the Aims bot-management software.

Much of their strategy appeared to revolve around disrupting or sabotaging rival campaigns: the team even claimed to have sent a sex toy delivered via Amazon to the home of a politician, with the aim of giving his wife the false impression he was having an affair.

The methods and techniques described by Team Jorge raise new challenges for big tech platforms, which have for years struggled to prevent nefarious actors spreading falsehoods or breaching the security on their platforms. Evidence of a global private market in disinformation aimed at elections will also ring alarm bells for democracies around the world.

[LFC]

The younger generations is Israel are more likely to be right-wing, extreme authoritarians, much like the people who have persecuted them over the years. Israel as a liberal democracy is doomed. Time to walk away.

Over the past month, tens of thousands of Israelis have come out to protest their new government’s proposed judicial reforms, which could weaken the country’s democracy and separation of powers. The crowds are diverse in age, but unlike popular liberal or democratic protests in many countries, attendees say the audience skews older.

Recent polling backs that surprising observation: A joint poll published by the Israel Democracy Institute last month found that 73 percent of Jewish Israelis between ages 18 and 24 identify as right-wing, compared with only 46 percent of Jewish Israelis over 65. Young Jewish Israelis are showing up to rallies and polling stations for the extremist politicians whose November electoral victory ushered in Israel’s farthest right-wing government ever.

Odeliya Matter, a 29-year-old educator from Beersheba and left-wing activist, says that among her high school-aged students, “the political differences I notice in my students versus in my generation just 10 years ago is stark.”

Pollsters, activists, and politicians struggle to pin down exactly why Israeli youth are so out of step with often left-leaning young people in developed countries around the world. But experts say changing demographics, concerns about peace and security, the success of right-wing parties and politicians in pushing an ethnonationalist narrative through the media, and historical events and policy choices that have further isolated Palestinians all play a part.

“This generation grew up in what most would consider the safest times [for Israelis], they grew up in the post-Intifada years, and yet they grew up the most isolated from their Palestinian neighbors,” said Alon Yakter, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University who studies voting patterns. “There’s so many ways that can impact a young person’s perspective on politics.”

[pnwguy]

Feb 23, 2023 22:28:18 GMT LFC said:

The younger generations is Israel are more likely to be right-wing, extreme authoritarians, much like the people who have persecuted them over the years. Israel as a liberal democracy is doomed. Time to walk away.

Over the past month, tens of thousands of Israelis have come out to protest their new government’s proposed judicial reforms, which could weaken the country’s democracy and separation of powers. The crowds are diverse in age, but unlike popular liberal or democratic protests in many countries, attendees say the audience skews older.

Recent polling backs that surprising observation: A joint poll published by the Israel Democracy Institute last month found that 73 percent of Jewish Israelis between ages 18 and 24 identify as right-wing, compared with only 46 percent of Jewish Israelis over 65. Young Jewish Israelis are showing up to rallies and polling stations for the extremist politicians whose November electoral victory ushered in Israel’s farthest right-wing government ever.

Odeliya Matter, a 29-year-old educator from Beersheba and left-wing activist, says that among her high school-aged students, “the political differences I notice in my students versus in my generation just 10 years ago is stark.”

Pollsters, activists, and politicians struggle to pin down exactly why Israeli youth are so out of step with often left-leaning young people in developed countries around the world. But experts say changing demographics, concerns about peace and security, the success of right-wing parties and politicians in pushing an ethnonationalist narrative through the media, and historical events and policy choices that have further isolated Palestinians all play a part.

“This generation grew up in what most would consider the safest times [for Israelis], they grew up in the post-Intifada years, and yet they grew up the most isolated from their Palestinian neighbors,” said Alon Yakter, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University who studies voting patterns. “There’s so many ways that can impact a young person’s perspective on politics.”

No surprise there.  Israel truly is going through The Great Replacement.  The Ultra-orthodox celebrate huge family sizes, while many liberal Jews are often childless or have minimal offspring.  Sooner or later, the demographics catch up.  And those who can't leave will be surrounded by the most radical -- sort of like the GOP!

[goldenvalley]

Feb 24, 2023 1:08:51 GMT pnwguy said:

Feb 23, 2023 22:28:18 GMT LFC said:

The younger generations is Israel are more likely to be right-wing, extreme authoritarians, much like the people who have persecuted them over the years. Israel as a liberal democracy is doomed. Time to walk away.

No surprise there.  Israel truly is going through The Great Replacement.  The Ultra-orthodox celebrate huge family sizes, while many liberal Jews are often childless or have minimal offspring.  Sooner or later, the demographics catch up.  And those who can't leave will be surrounded by the most radical -- sort of like the GOP!

A friend of mine is a female rabbi who is in Israel right now.  Her Facebook post from yesterday was about how she and other women were at the women's section of the Western Wall intending to pray.  A group of young, probably high school aged women gathered around them to catcall, spit, and shove at my friend and the others who were there to pray.  Yup young women...ultra orthodox judging by their clothing.  

[LFC]

Feb 24, 2023 4:10:51 GMT goldenvalley said:

Yup young women...ultra orthodox judging by their clothing.  

Ultra orthodox of any religion; the "holiest of the holy."