Tag: israel

Netanyahu hails TikTok takeover as Israel’s new ‘weapon’ in information war

Benjamin Netanyahu described the expected purchase of the social media platform TikTok by allies of Israel as the acquisition of a “weapon” that is “most important” to “fight the fight.” And he believes this development “could be extremely consequential.”

The Israeli prime minister was speaking to a group of “pro-Israel influencers” in a meeting after his address at the United Nations General Assembly last Friday were an overwhelming majority of national delegations walked out in apparent protest to what is widely considered a genocidal war he and his nation are inflicting against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

A media release from Netanyahu’s office reported the prime minister spoke with this group of “pro-Israel American influencers” about “challenges in the new era, as well as the public diplomacy efforts and the influence of the social networks on the discourse for and against Israel.”

Asked about how to combat dangers to the Zionist cause due to a potential loss of Evangelical support in the United States, which is also impacted by popular Israel-critics Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, Netanyahu directed his listeners to considering social media as “tools for battle” and then emphasized the expected purchase of TikTok to be “most important” in serving Israel’s interests in this regard.

“What we have to do is we have to secure that part of the base of our support in the United States, that is being challenged systematically… How do we fight back? Our influencers, I think you should also talk to them if you have a chance,” the prime minister said. “And secondly, we’re going to have to use the tools of battle. The weapons change over time… we have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields within which we’re engaged. And the most important ones are on social media.”

Netanyahu then celebrated “the most important purchase that is going on right now” that he identified as being TikTok. “And I hope it goes through because it can be consequential.”

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The Greater Israel Cult & the US Alliance

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was recently asked on Israeli i24 TV whether he supported the idea of a Greater Israel — the biblical land that God purportedly promised to the Jewish people encompassing a major portion of the Middle East — he replied “very much.” 

While the interview went virtually unnoticed in the Western media it attracted wide condemnation throughout the Arab world. Jordan called it “a dangerous and provocative escalation,” Qatar said it was “arrogant and destabilising” and the Arab League declared it was “blatant violation of Arab sovereignty.” 

The Zionist vision of a Greater Israel has remained mostly unspoken by Israel’s leaders because they want to maintain the fiction that Israel’s control over the occupied territories is strictly for security purposes.

But Netanyahu let the cat out of the bag. His comment is a bold assertion that Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and occupation of the West Bank are just the first stages of an expansionist Greater Israel vision.

Far from sitting on the sidelines, the U.S. is a full partner in this project that aligns with their objectives in the region. The idea that Netanyahu has a pliant U.S. President Trump (and Biden before him) wound around his little finger is strictly political theatre and a convenient cover for American ambitions.

The U.S. has always called the shots and, if anything, Israel is a useful proxy to further American economic and strategic interests in the region which includes tacit support for Greater Israel.

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Israeli Knesset Advances Bill To Execute Palestinian Prisoners Who Killed Jews

In yet another development which will certainly complicate current Trump administration efforts to find peace in Gaza, the National Security Committee in the Israeli Knesset is advancing a bill to impose the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners detained for killing Israelis.

Killings which are deemed motivated by “racism or hostility to the public” or aimed at harming the “State of Israel” or seeking to thwart the “revival of the Jewish people” would be a capital offensive, according to the legislation. Interestingly, the wording highlights Jewish citizens of Israel are the priority – and not for example Christian, Muslim, or Druze citizens.

It has unleashed immediate controversy both within and outside of Israel. For starters, some Israeli officials as well as families of Oct.7 victims fear that this puts the remaining hostages in Gaza at immediate risk. Notably, the bill does not apply the opposite direction – that is, it would not apply to Israelis who kill Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s coordinator for negotiations on the captives, Gal Hirsch, has gone on record as vehemently opposing the bill.

“It’s not for nothing that we are asking not to hold this discussion. I completely disagree with your assessment of the situation, Minister [Itamar] Ben Gvir,” he said in a communication protesting the initiative. “Especially when we are engaged in a combined military and diplomatic effort to bring back the hostages, this discussion does not help us.”

An initial Sunday Knesset committee vote was 4-1 in favor, while more of rounds of votes needed for the bill to become law, according to protocol. 

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been leading the charge, resisting calls to postpone the vote due to the precariousness of the hostage situation. 

One Palestinian rights group had this to say:

The Israeli bill was denounced by the Palestinian Commission for Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner Society as an “unprecedented savagery,” warning that it would entrench what they described as “systematic crimes” against detainees through legislation.

Increasingly, there have been shootings and terroristic attacks by Palestinians in places like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, related to ongoing events in Gaza and the West Bank.

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Israel is the main source of instability in the Middle East

Is conflict in the Middle East at an inflection point? It might seem so, given how international outrage over Israel’s lethal conduct in the Gaza Strip has become increasingly intense and widespread in recent weeks.

Several major Western countries that previously had declined to join most other members of the United Nations in formally recognizing a Palestinian state used the opening of the current session of the General Assembly as the occasion to take that step. Popular demonstrations in the West in support of the Palestinians have been as large and conspicuous as ever, and recent polls show a sharp decline in the American public’s support for Israel.

Such responses are the least that can be expected in the face of new lows in barbarous Israeli actions against the residents of the Gaza Strip. An Israeli military assault on Gaza City has added to the rubble to which most of the city had already been reduced. The assault has given remaining inhabitants the choice of suffering and perhaps dying in place or fleeing once again to someplace else in the Strip with still no assurance of safety. The armed attacks and imposed starvation have seen the death toll of Gazans increase to what is now probably several times the officially reported figure of about 65,000.

The international responses, including diplomatic recognition of Palestine by Western governments, fall short of eliciting a constructive Israeli response. The recognition of a Palestinian state has been the target of criticism from some Palestinians who rightly point out that it does nothing to alleviate the immediate misery on the ground. Diplomatic moves and street demonstrations do not speak the only language that Israel appears to understand, which is one of force and compulsion.

The Israeli response to the latest diplomatic moves has been one of defiance and threats to inflict still more depredations on the Palestinians. The Israeli national security minister, right-wing extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, is pushing to make annexation of the West Bank the main Israeli response to Western recognition of Palestine.

Most Israelis, and not just their government or the extremists within it, see international pressure as just more evidence of bias against Israel and of the need for Israel to use force to protect itself, regardless of worldwide outrage. Survey research shows that most Israelis believe there are “no innocents” in Gaza and favor expulsion of residents from the Gaza Strip. An appeal to morality will not get a positive response from a government that has this population as its political base. Only the imposition on Israel of significant costs and consequences would lead it to change its policies.

Although we may not be at an inflection point regarding the Palestinian-Israeli tragedy, the thinking of Arab regimes in the region has reached an inflection point of sorts in recent weeks. The Israeli attack in early September on the territory of Qatar, in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Hamas leaders engaged in Gaza-related negotiations, shocked that thinking.

The attack in Qatar comes amid a fusillade of Israeli armed attacks against other regional states, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran, in addition to the carnage in Palestine. These and other regional states (such as Iraq and Egypt) have been the targets of Israeli attacks — both overt military and clandestine — for many years, but it is the near-simultaneity of some of the attacks over the past month that has added to the shock.

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Israel wants to train ChatGPT to be more pro-Israel

The government of Israel has hired a new conservative-aligned firm, Clock Tower X LLC, to create media for Gen Z audiences in a contract worth $6 million. At least 80 percent of content Clock Tower produces will be “tailored to Gen Z audiences across platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, and other relevant digital and broadcast outlets” with a minimum goal of 50 million impressions per month.

Clock Tower will even deploy “websites and content to deliver GPT framing results on GPT conversations.” In other words, Clock Tower will create new websites to influence how AI GPT models such as ChatGPT, which are trained on vast amounts of data from every corner of the internet, frame topics and respond to them — all on behalf of Israel.

As part of this work, the firm will also use search engine optimization software MarketBrew AI, a predictive AI platform that helps clients adapt to algorithms and promote their work on search engines like Google and Bing, to “improve the visibility and ranking of relevant narratives.”

Clock Tower will integrate its pro-Israel messaging into Salem Media Network properties, a conservative Christian media group that boasts a vast radio network and produces high-profile shows such as the Hugh Hewitt Show, the Larry Elder Show, and the Right View with Lara Trump. In April, the conservative media network announced Donald Trump Jr. and Lara Trump as significant stakeholders in the company. Salem Media Network did not respond to a question clarifying whether it would be compensated by Clock Tower for promoting messages on behalf of Israel, or how these messages would be integrated.

Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, the adviser who hired the controversial microtargeting firm Cambridge Analytica during Trump’s 2016 campaign, is at the center of the Israeli government’s new deal. Clock Tower is led by Parscale — who is also the new chief strategy officer for the Salem Media Group.

In its contract, Clock Tower does not reveal much about what kinds of messaging will be promoted on behalf of Israel. According to its filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Clock Tower was hired to help “execute a nationwide campaign in the United States to combat antisemitism.”

The firm’s point-person is Eran Shayovich, the chief of staff at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to Shayovich’s Linkedin profile, he is leading a campaign called “project 545” which aims to “amplify Israel’s strategic communication and public diplomacy efforts.”

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Jeffrey Epstein Worked to Coordinate Former Israeli Prime Minister’s State-Level Investment Meetings in Mongolia

Epstein planned Ehud Barak’s meeting with the Secretary of the National Security Council of Mongolia.

Jeffrey Epstein’s ability to pull strings at the highest echelons of global power is no longer just rumor—it’s confirmed by a cache of leaked emails from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. These documents expose Epstein—already notorious for his criminal life and intelligence connections—as a behind-the-scenes fixer, using his network and financial heft to help broker a security and technology deal between Israel and Mongolia.

Epstein’s Network Reaches Ulaanbaatar

Epstein’s personal ties to Israeli leadership, including Barak and Ehud Olmert, were already well-known, as were his donations to Israeli causes like Friends of the IDF. Yet, these emails, released by the pro-Palestinian hacking group Handala(possibly tied to Iran), and published via Distributed Denial of Secrets, prove for the first time that Epstein facilitated a state-level deal leading to a formal bilateral security agreement.

The leak includes unpublished photos and documents spanning 2013–2016 with virtually daily correspondence between Barak and Epstein, showing Epstein arranging Barak’s meetings with Mongolia’s top brass.

Orchestrating State Security

In April 2013, only a month after stepping down as Israel’s Defense Minister, Barak landed in Mongolia to meet President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj and key security officials. The trip’s real architect? Not Barak, but Epstein—coordinating logistics, introductions, and the broader strategy behind the scenes. The emails make it clear: Epstein was instrumental in setting up Barak’s meeting with Enkhtuvshin Tsagaandari, Secretary of Mongolia’s National Security Council. At this pivotal exchange, the CEO of Israel Weapon Industries delivered a gift—a Jericho pistol engraved for the occasion—cementing ties and paving the way for deeper cooperation.

Barak’s Official Offer: Spying Tech for Mongolia

The Israeli push didn’t stop at gifts or diplomacy. Ehud Barak submitted an official Israeli memorandum to Terje Rød-Larsen, president of the International Peace Institute, outlining a proposal for advanced spying technology, electronic surveillance, and intelligence support for Mongolia. Tellingly, the letterhead bore Israel’s official emblem above Barak’s name—a detail legally requiring Israeli Minister of the Interior’s approval.

Barak’s memo also promised support in modern agriculture, water management, and medical diagnostics, while Barak himself cut deals with Israeli biotech and mining firms on the side—showcasing how political and private profits were deeply entwined.

Epstein, the Mongolia Advisory Board, and Global Power Brokering

The “advisory team” concept in Mongolia wasn’t organic; it was proposed by Terje Rød-Larsen (president of IPI and prominent Oslo Accords mediator), another figure deep within Epstein and Barak’s network. Barak, Rød-Larsen, and even Lawrence Summers (former Harvard president and U.S. Treasury Secretary) were tapped by Epstein to serve on the “Mongolia Presidential Advisory Board” with each reportedly earning up to $100,000 for their efforts.

Their inaugural meeting—at Davos, naturally—included the Mongolian President, National Security Advisor, and Rød-Larsen, with Epstein joining as “financier”[meeting notes PDF]. Advice flowed on everything from creating a Mongolian sovereign wealth fund to importing Israeli “zero-click” cyber-surveillance capability.

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Britain was wrong to let Jews settle in Palestine and is responsible for decades of ethnic violence including the Gaza war, Labour conference told

Britain should not have let Jews settle in Palestine and is responsible for decades of ethnic violence that followed in the Middle East, the Labour Party conference heard today. 

Dr Victor Kattan claimed that the current bloody conflict in Gaza was ‘made in Britain’ as he campaigned for the UK to apologise and make ‘reparations’ to Palestinian Arabs.

At a fringe event attended by left-wing Labour MPs and peers he said that the period of British rule between 1917 and 1948 before Israel was created had witnessed policies of ‘occupation, repression and partition’.

The Labour politicians, who include Jeremy Corbyn ally John McDonald, are supporting the campaign, ‘Britain owes Palestine’, which demands the UK take responsibility for ‘serial international law violations’ including alleged war crimes committed during what was known as the British Mandate.

It also criticises the UK for the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which set out support for ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’.

Dr Kattan told the event in Liverpool that British control of the Middle East ‘violated the legal standards of the time’, with policies that included ‘large-scale demographic engineering, involving the mass immigration of Jewish persons to Palestine, a country which, when Britain occupied it in 1917, was more than 93 per cent Palestinian Arab’.

He added: ‘When the British government, British armed forces left Palestine, the Jewish population constituted 33 per cent of the total population, having grown from less than 5 per cent of the population when Britain had arrived.

‘Throughout those years Britain denied self-government to the Arab majority, suppressed opposition to Zionism violently and then abandoned the country in the summer of 1948 leaving Palestine in a state of chaos and anarchy.’

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Netanyahu Meets With ‘Pro-Israel Influencers’ in New York, Describes Social Media as a ‘Weapon’ for Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with “pro-Israel influencers” after his speech at the UN General Assembly in New York on Friday, his office said in a statement on Sunday.

Netanyahu’s office said that he spoke with the influencers “about the challenges in the new era, and the public diplomacy efforts and the influence of the social networks on the discourse for and against Israel.”

During the meeting, Netanyahu was asked what should be done about Israel potentially losing support from Evangelical Christians in the US, and he pointed to social media, which he called a “tool of battle,” and cited a plan for TikTok to be put under the control of US companies.

“What we have to do is secure that part of the base of our support in the United States, that is being challenged systematically … How do we fight back? Our influencers, I think you should also talk to them if you have the chance,” Netanyahu said. “And secondly, we’re going to have to use the tools of battle. The weapons change over time … we have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield on which we’re engaged, and the most important ones are on social media.”

The Israeli leader described the TikTok plan as the “most important purchase that is going on.” Under the plan approved by President Trump, one of the companies that will have a major stake in TikTok and control the algorithm is Oracle, which is owned by Larry Ellison, an extremely pro-Israel billionaire and major private donor to the Israeli military.

“TikTok, TikTok, and I hope it goes through because it could be extremely consequential,” Netanyahu said, adding that the other major social media platform he is concerned about is X, formerly Twitter. The Israeli leader described X CEO Elon Musk as a “friend.”

“We have to talk to Elon. He’s not an enemy, he’s a friend. You should talk to him. Now, if we can get those two things, we can get a lot, and I can go on about other things, but that’s not the point right now. We have to fight the fight. Give direction to the Jewish people, and give direction to our non-Jewish friends, or those who could be our friends,” Netanyahu added.

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‘Near Daily’ Israeli Assaults on Lebanon Have Become Non-News for Western Media

The Israeli military unleashed a large wave of air strikes on densely populated towns in South Lebanon on Thursday, September 18—although you’d never know it from the Western corporate media, who have increasingly lost interest in reporting on Israel’s unceasing war on its northern neighbor. This proceeds unabated in spite of a ceasefire, brokered by the United States and France, that ostensibly took hold last November. Prior to Thursday’s strikes, area residents were given an hour to evacuate.

The BBC (9/18/25) was one of the few corporate outlets that managed to find a bit of space for these events, under the headline, “Israeli Air Strikes Hit Southern Lebanon.” The outlet noted that

an Israeli military spokesman said the targets were infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah and in response to the group’s attempts to re-establish activities in the area. He provided no evidence.

The piece also explained that Israel “has carried out air strikes on people and places it says are linked to Hezbollah almost every day, despite a deal that ended the war with the group in November.”

Reuters (9/18/25) managed an even shorter writeup—and took Israel’s word for it in the headline: “Israel Attacks Hezbollah Targets in South Lebanon.”

No casualties were reported in these particular attacks, but the fiery spectacle naturally sent a whole lot of people fleeing in terrorized panic. The fact that such terrorism by the state of Israel transpires “almost every day” is perhaps part of the reason the media have largely relegated it to the realm of non-news.

Another part of the reason might be that outlets are too busy serving as apologists (FAIR.org, 4/11/25, 4/25/25, 6/6/25) for the ongoing US-backed genocide in the nearby Gaza Strip, which Israel launched in October 2023, and which has thus far officially killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, including 20,000 children—although this is likely a grave underestimate.

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UN Declares Genocide in Gaza While 250 US Lawmakers Are in Israel 

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory published a report on September 16 that charged Israeli authorities and security forces with having committed, and continuing to commit, acts of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The 72-page report, replete with 495 footnotes, was compiled by senior independent rights investigators appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. Specifically, the report concludes that Israel is responsible for committing four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely:

  • (i) killing members of the group;
  • (ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
  • (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and
  • (iv) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

This report brings the UN into line with leading human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, Genocide Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem and Oxfam, all of whom have explicitly labeled Israel’s crimes in Gaza genocidal. The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) also recently passed a resolution stating that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide.

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