I'm surprised this isn't a major diplomatic incident between the UK and Israel too, since the Israeli intelligence company was supposedly "closely monitoring how their customers were using the software" or akin to that.
Like, yeah, blame the UAE mostly for this but let's also have a discussion about why this was sold to anyone who would pay with no oversight at all. Western countries need to do better.
The current home secretary, Priti Patel, was forced to resign from her previous (lesser) role as Minister for International Development for secretly (and thus illegally) meeting with Israeli diplomats.
Every British government has been an ally of Israel. You don't turn down a relationship with a country with Israel's military, technical and intelligence capabilities, and worth $5bn in bilateral trade for nothing if you have any sense.
> You don't turn down a relationship with a country with Israel's military, technical and intelligence capabilities, and worth $5bn in bilateral trade
Well, that's certainly one angle.
The other angle is, let's face it, Israel is good at playing the Jewish card and portraying that if you're not pro-Israel you must be some sort of antisemite.
There are all sorts of political ties along those lines, e.g. "Conservative Friends of Israel"[1]
UK bilateral trade with Russia was ~$17 billion in 2021 (i assume that's imports plus exports right?).
Russia was a very close friend twenty years ago, Iraq was a very close ally in the 1980s. I'm sure Israel realises how quickly the west can turn on friends and allies when it suits us and that this is why they spend tens of millions a year wooing US and UK politicians.
Russia became a pariah over night and the moment it becomes politically convenient to diplomatically recognise Israel as an apartheid state the trade won't count for anything (not least because most of it is the direct consequence of billions in annual US subsidies)
Russia's been a pain in the arse continuously. 20 years ago they were up to their eyeballs in the Iranian nuclear programme, carpet bombing Chechnya, blowing up their own apartment blocks and blaming it on terrorists, destabilising Georgia and goodness knows what else. That's all just from memory. But they have a lot of oil and gas so we let it all slide. More fool us.
Most European governments look at the simultaneous invasion of Israel by three Arab states in 1948, and statements made about the aims of that invasion, and think "what would we be prepared to do to defend against such determined, implacable hostility?". They look at what Israel does to defend itself and think, yeah, pretty much we'd do that.
They look at Israel and see a democratic, technologically advanced state with a liberal economy much like their own. They look at the repressive, autocratic extraction economies in the Arab world and recoil in horror.
I'm not making any judgement on this, or whether they're right or wrong, but that's just how many Europeans see the situation.
The sad reality is that we've not really had truly independent foreign policy since WW2. The US military never left our soil, and we've been in lock step with Washington on everything serious since then.
We're a vassal state, there's no Brexit on the special relationship.
We threw away billions in trade with the EU over not really that much, why would not throw away a far smaller sum when it comes to another country that was spying on us?
How much the UK and EU are allies remains to be seen too
>Face it, Corbyn and the Labour Party do have a massive issue with antisemitism
Only if we define it as criticism of Israeli policy.
Otherwise, that's a smear, substituting criticism with antisemitism.
>A smear campaign can only be really effective if there is a solid truth behind it.
Nope, it can be very effective without any truth. Try smearing someone as a pedophile - you think they'll be able to wash it off? Goebbels, for one, advised for complete lies, repeated often.
In fact, a complete huge lie can be even more believable, as people go "would they said something that great, if it wasn't at least a bit true?".
Using a very extreme example: if I got 4 people to call you a pedophile, then people will believe it until you submit proof that you're not.
The problem is that it's impossible to prove the absence of something, so you're forced to push back on me: "Where's your proof that I'm a pedophile", where I can reply with anecdotes or other useless information.
The point is not to "prove" you are a pedophile in that case, the point is to make people associate your name with pedophilia, and to make it unclear if you are or if you aren't. 80% of people will not look further into it.
Pedophilia is probably too extreme of an example and people may be more critical of pedophilia accusations than, say, racism ones.
for what it’s worth, i’m yet to find an individual that was able to concretely identify a single anti-semitic action or statement both in the run up to, and after the november 2019 election.
edit: probably worth mentioning, i read the report of the external investigation (all ~300 pages of it) on antisemitism in the labour party. to call it thin on the ground is somewhat of an understatement.
It's also easy to find "presence of anything" in some members of any large group, including satanism, doesn't mean it defines the group or is a big element of it.
Are you implying that all those Jews worried about anti-semitism in the Labour Party lack basic sense? I'm not sure they're likely to find that a comforting response.
Are you weasel-wording strawmen? Maybe, don't do that?
First, who are "all those Jews"? This is handwaving to make it sound like multitudes.
Second, people worrying about anti-semitism in the Labour party in general, either lack common sense (if we accept your argument that is "this attitude" I wrote about above that is their concern), or conflate anti-semitism (as in Hitler, Nazis, pogroms, and co) with criticism of actions by the state of Israel.
In fact, actual jews in favor of Corbyn and the party have been accused of "anti-semitism" (!) - like the Jewish Voice for Labour (jewish members of the UK Labour Party, because they are nonetheless critical about the situation with Palestine).
This "5x more likely" sounds horrific ... until you look at how it was reached:
"""
According to Labour statistics, by March 2021 there had been 1,450 "actioned complaints" against Labour party members in relation to allegations of antisemitism - equivalent to 0.29 percent of Labour’s membership, which averaged 500,000 between 2015 and 2020, when Corbyn was leader.
By contrast, says JVL, there were at least 35 actioned complaints against Jewish members. This is equivalent to 1.4 percent of Jewish members, who the group estimate to have numbered around 2,500 during the same period.
"""
Having 35 "actioned complaints" against Jewish members does not sound like a purge from the Labour Party, and portraying it as such is pretty misleading. I'm also wondering if there's some careful wording here, since they're comparing a total number of actioned complaints against Jewish members, vs number of actioned complaints specifically relating to allegations of antisemitism. Interesting that one of the two authors of the article is a Conservative (ie, the party Labour is in opposition to)
>Having 35 "actioned complaints" against Jewish members does not sound like a purge from the Labour Party
35 isnt a purge. > 1000 IS a purge. The fact that being an Jewish made it 5x more likely you would be purged simply underscored the fact that it was exclusively a project to purge anti-racists who were critical of Israel.
This point was underscored again when the party hired an ex Israeli intelligence agent.
I have misunderstood you then, I thought you were saying this was an purge designed to target Jewish members of the party, which didn’t seem to be the case to me.
Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously. The issues I have with Israel are because of the actions of its government and absolutely nothing to do with the majority religion there.
If you criticise Israel, you're an anti-semite. We're all scared of being called such, so we let them do whatever the fuck they want.
It's interesting that you find the need to type this out though, as if the UK (and US, and the West) doesn't cultivate many similar ties that absolutely get nowhere near the same level of attention. It's rare to see people with the same level of dislike towards a country like Saudi Arabia or the UAE. With Israel, people viscerally hate it.
The main difference between Israel and worse global players is the wide range of westerners (including self described "liberal" ones) who tolerate or are willing to step up to endorse its vicious racism, its ethnic cleansing and its illegal settlement expansion both with trumped up accusations of antisemitism and whataboutism.
That naturally elicits a bit of a reaction.
By contrast I dont remember anybody calling anybody an Islamophobe because they condemned Mohammed bin Salman's killing of Khashoggi or invasion of Yemen.
There's also an element of what is done in Israel being done in our name, since it was essentially a remnant of European colonialism (a particularly shameful part of our history) and continues thanks to support from our governments.
I can't speak for anyone else; but I feel the same way about any other country which is committing similar crimes against people just for being alive, as I do about Israel.
That includes the US, Russia, China, UAE, SA, Myanmar and whatever other examples you wish.
Why pro-genocide israelis feel (and shout that) they get an inproportionate amount of criticism vs the other dickheads of the world is an exercise I leave to the reader.
>Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously.
This rhetoric is not any different than conservatives arguing Af-Am play the 'race card'. In both cases there's actual bigotry that some people want to sweep under the rug by a mindless counter-accusation.
as implied by "too much" - your comment is truly rhetoric as it cheaply dismisses this claim as "mindless" and makes a poor tribal comparison - African-Americans aren't currently occupying another state.
The comparison is to the rhetoric used to ignore bigotry (see the absurd defence of Corbyn in the comments). The alleged sins of a country are irrelevant to that issue.
Please show me where Corbyn said anything against Jewish people for being jewish? He, like me, is strongly against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the war crimes it commits against its peoples in exercise of that.
Saying so does not make you a bigot or an anti semite. Israel and it's defenders hide behind these kind of statements and they're nonsense. Labour if elected would not have given Israel such an easy ride and they throw a lot of money around -- thus, Corbyn is an anti-semite and labour has 'issues' around Jews, and surprise surprise; the tories got in and are happy to sell them lots of nice missiles and intelligence.
It's bullshit. They just have ethics. I Would feel the exact same way if it was Christians or Hindus or whatever in charge of Israel and behaving like this; where is the defence then? Criticise us and you're anti-christian? Doesn't have the same ring to it does it?
Nearly all of the statements and actions in issue with Corbyn have nothing whatsoever to do with Israel. 99.9999% politicians manage to avoid antisemitic murals and endorsing antisemitic books just fine.
It's not remotely difficult, and I'm sure 99.999999% of Labour Leftists with nigh-identical positions would not be so compromised. Can't understand why the Labour Left had to (politically) die on that hill.
The book was presumably "Imperialism: A Study" - not wholly about Jews, and Corbyn describes the accusation as "mischievous representation".
These are weak examples, basically a degrees-of-separation argument coupled with your own opinion of what is black-and-white anti-Semitic without informed discussion (or even examples since you only provide suggestive anecdotes, not sources). Feel free to demonstrate your "99.9..%" numbers for politicians that are under the same amount of scrutiny.
So the topic you wish to discuss is "rhetoric used to ignore bigotry".
Feel free to demonstrate where this exists in the comment you replied to. I can just as easily decide the more relevant topic is "rhetoric used to ignore ethnic nationalism", which your post could be.
EDIT:
I'd also note the comment you replied to says:
> Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously
your own comment elsewhere (on Noam Chomsky):
> Noted genocide denier (repeatedly) with zero credibility on anything.
Why is dismissive labelling ok in one case, and not another?
The issue isn't if Chomsky's credibility is relevant, but on the credibility swipe itself: If Chomsky can be dismissed on all topics (zero credibility on anything) for alleged genocide denial, why isn't that "rhetoric that ignores X" for whatever X Chomsky might discuss?
I was dismissing Chomsky's testimony on anything, not anything he might say. If he said '2+2=4' that would be true (if also trivial). I regret not being 100% clear in a forum comment.
> Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously
They use it in very specific circumstances that relate to criticizing the idea of Israel being a Jewish state. I can understand that people may innocently criticize this, due to missing the historical context of why Israel was created, but I agree that this form of criticism against Israel should be condemned.
P.S. There are very specific actions by the Israeli government that I do condemn. Notably, not stopping settlement expansion in the West Bank. However most comments against Israel are far more gangue and sensationalist.
That was only very recently codified and was very controversial inside and outside of israel.
> They use it in very specific circumstances
I'm sorry but that's just incorrect, it's been used much more broadly.
for example according to Noam Chomsky:
"Actually, the locus classicus, the best formulation of this, was by an ambassador to the United Nations, Abba Eban, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations.... He advised the American Jewish community that they had two tasks to perform. One task was to show that criticism of the policy, what he called anti-Zionism—that means actually criticisms of the policy of the state of Israel—were anti-Semitism. That's the first task. Second task, if the criticism was made by Jews, their task was to show that it's neurotic self-hatred, needs psychiatric treatment. Then he gave two examples of the latter category. One was I. F. Stone. The other was me. So, we have to be treated for our psychiatric disorders, and non-Jews have to be condemned for anti-Semitism, if they're critical of the state of Israel. That's understandable why Israeli propaganda would take this position. I don’t particularly blame Abba Eban for doing what ambassadors are sometimes supposed to do. But we ought to understand that there is no sensible charge. No sensible charge. There's nothing to respond to. It's not a form of anti-Semitism. It's simply criticism of the criminal actions of a state, period"
> Very recently as in 'in the UN assembly resolution authorizing the creation of Israel' (1947) or the 1985 basic law etc.
You are correct. I'm sorry. I was misremembering the news from when "Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People" [1] was passed in 2018. My bad, I can no longer edit my post though. So apparently "Jewish ethnic homeland in Palestine", "Jewish state" and "Jewish nation-state" mean different things and have different connotations. The latter being the recent and most controversial one.
for people that want to check the resolution referenced is UNGA181.[2]
Turns out the Palestinian opposition to the term is because they see it as giving up on their right of return (given to them by UNGA194 [3] )
I don't often respond to claims like these, but I think it might be necessary to in this case. I am not sure what sources you used to inform those claims, but I will simply say that in both cases both are misleading.
Noam Chomsky is a lot of things, but 'genocide denier' label is at best inaccurate and, more importantly, does not automatically make him wrong on any other issue. I get that character assassination works well, but this is HN, where stuff like that will be called out.
"That was only very recently codified and was very controversial inside and outside of Israel.
Very recently as in 'in the UN assembly resolution authorizing the creation of Israel' (1947) or the 1985 basic law etc."
I think parent is referring to this piece of legislation[1]. I might be wrong, but if not, that would strike me as recent.
The quote in question provides no sources beyond that Chomsky said it (no direct sources or anything). So the question of Chomsky's credibility is important, and well, Chomsky's own record in the Balkans and earlier in Cambodia speaks for itself.
>I think parent is referring to this piece of legislation
I believe you are right, but the particular issue parent's objecting to is not new at all [EDIT: Note that parent clarified his position in a later comment].
I will admit that I don't follow him closely enough to know his stance on either Balkans or Cambodia. If you can share any sources, I would not mind learning a little more.
That said, I accept your argument that credibility is relevant. Not to search very far, if we accept him as some sort of authority on geopolitical matters, is he wrong, say, about US-Iraq relationship? My point is that opinions should not be automatically dismissed or automatically accepted. It should be based on the merits of the argument. And Chomsky can present an interesting argument based on what I heard.
That's fair enough. We can discuss arguments to a large extent divorced from who made them. This is often useful.
However, the quote in question goes a bit further, Chomsky says Eban started a specific strategy of using antisemitism to Eban's own ends, almost directly paraphrasing something Eban allegedly said. I think I'm entitled to ask what's Chomsky's source, and if there isn't any, than it rests on Chomsky's credibility which, well, isn't very much IMHO.
[EDIT:
On the Balkans, you can see Kraut's video on YouTube. This text has similar arguments though:
I followed a chain of links to see if I can pinpoint the origin of the quote, but that only resulted in, as you indicated, in Chomsky's own words[1]. As such, you are right, for that reason his credibility is more relevant since I was not able to verify Eban's words.
Separately, I did some basic googling of Eban quotes and his positions[2] do not seem at odds with the gist of Chomsky's quote though:
"One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all. Anti-Zionism is merely the new anti-Semitism….”
I only started reading the link you provided so it may take a while before I respond.
>his positions[2] do not seem at odds with the gist of Chomsky's quote though
I would like to differ slightly. Chomsky has it that Eban wants to tar criticism of Israeli policy as antisemitic* - which leads to the 'oh well, they just accused Corbyn of antisemitism because of his Israel position' argument you see in the comments.
Eban wants to argue against a specific ideological position which at least is aimed at completely modifying the Israeli state (not 'policy criticism') and he has his argument for it - an argument we can safely say Israel has lost in the West. People may defend Israel, but they usually do not consider their opponent antisemitic per se.
* There's also the 'neurotic self-hatred' part, where Eban supposedly is naming Chomsky specifically, but I think we can safely discard that.
The problem with Israel being "a Jewish state" is that requires the suppression and occasionally ethnic cleansing of its non-Jewish residents in order to prevent them from ever achieving enough numbers or power to make it not Jewish.
It's a fundamental contradiction embedded from the Israeli declaration of independence (which commits to racial and religious equality) onwards: what does it mean for a state, rather than individuals, to be Jewish?
The underlying argument is that it's necessary for the continued survival and security of Jewish people that there be a Jewish state, and unfortunately the continuous attacks on Israel suggest they might be right.
I think you can point out that any state founded on ethno or religious grounds is a bad idea. Although in this case given when it was formed and why that clearly adds a lot of context.
You can certainly state that the right of self-determination doesn't trump the rights of others. So a Jewish state somewhere is a right, but not if there are already people living in that particular somewhere who object.
You can also state that predominantly European migration to a part of the world where there are other people living has been somewhere between a mistake and a disaster and a tragedy, be that America, Australia or Israel.
I think the last part is the issue that causes much of the problems. Many people in Labour party wanted to protect the right of those directly affected by the migration to call it out in their terms.
We wouldn't deny native americans or aborigines using terms like 'racist' to describe what has happened to them. Yet the misuse of the IHRA examples (turning examples into a legal definition) did exactly that. And many people in Labour objected.
I can understand the continuing need for there to always be a place of safety for Jews. Although it's tragic that this is the case, but understandable, not least given the holocaust still being within living memory.
The current direction of Israel can't be it though, there has to be some other way.
Some left-leaning organisations across Europe supporting Palestine is not antisemitism, regardless of what nationalistic Israelis might say. Is there any proof whatsoever for those claims or is it like the Labour party "scandals" that are taken out of proportion as a part of a smear campaign? For instance in France there are multiple left parties, and none of them are antisemitic in any real sense of the word.
>Jean-Luc Melenchon, a far-left politician running for France's presidency next year has suggested that a jihadist's 2012 murder of Jews was part of an elections conspiracy.
What a weak argument — but let’s humor this idiocy. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you are saying that smear campaigns are built exclusively on “solid truth”?
So you think it is impossible for anyone to organize a smear campaign based on lies and/or misrepresentation?
Seems naive to me.
I wonder, are you just trying to add to the “labor is anti-Semitic” smears that Zionists push online? You know the smears they push because they have no answer to the criticism that zionist Israelis are (a) stealing other peoples lands through settlements (b) supporting racist Apartheid laws and (c) supporting a criminal state which regularly oppresses and violates the universally-acknowledged rights of the native population.
I took their meaning to be that successful disinformation includes enough truth to provide some level of plausibility. That doesn’t mean that truth is at the core of the smear, or even that it’s a “whole” truth.
Epstein had many rich and powerful friends. Epstein was a pedophile. Epstein died within an inexcusable lapse in custody. These are all truths. Combine them together into the Q narrative, and now you have a massive conspiracy that is mostly wild speculation but contains some kernels of truth.
When did it become a "massive" issue? It was a few isolated incidents that were handled badly. What has happened exactly please? There's been no reports of 'massive' issues. I think you might exaggerating the actual allegations.
Also very suspicious that some of the biggest advocates for Palestinian rights have suddenly become anti-Semites seemingly overnight.
The conversation has moved from Israel's utterly disgusting treatment of the Palestinians to almost trivial claims of anti-Semitism.
One a systematic and brutal campaign of regression against hundreds of thousands of people, the other a few people got called names.
I always thought it was probably a very successfully Mossad smear campaign akin to Putin's anti-Hilary campaign.
And a lot of the British press helped because they hated Corbyn.
Afaiu, the solid truth was that higher-up admin people of the Parliamentary Labour Party HQ, which is separate from the office of the Leader Of The Opposition, failed to do the investigating, partly due to the fear and hate of Corbyn in the PLP, but then LOTO took the blame (partly cos Corbyn isn't the greatest of communicators). Novara did various detailed videos on the whole saga, including looking at the PLP WhatsApp leaks. https://youtu.be/G02ZZY_KE4Ehttps://youtu.be/ZjNB7fGc1-A etc
This was a book that was widely referenced. Certainly referencing it didn't mean endorsement of Hobson's antisemitism ( a few lines in that book).. like praising the works of many other authors of the time that contain antisemetic references.
Here's the then leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg citing Hobson.
"J.A Hobson was probably the most famour Liberal convert to what was the literally 'new Labour'"
or Gordon Brown
"In Britain, this idea of liberty as empowerment is not a new idea, J A Hobson asked, “is a man free who has not equal opportunity with his fellows of such access to all material and moral means of personal development and work as shall contribute to his own welfare and that of his society?”"
Is the same for all other cases.
This is how smearing works. People take something that happened (that cannot be denied) and then insist this is proof. If the person says nothing they seem guilty, if the person tries to explain and put things into context they seem guilty.
People who write an encouraging and approving forward to a book are endorsing what the book says, duh.
That's very different from a general reference to a phrase that a person said (Brown) or mentioning a person as part of an historic development (Clegg) - the difference between say, an historian mentioning Goebbels, compared to writing an approving forward to a new edition that a book that Goebbels wrote.
Corbyn has a long long history of happening to not notice antisemitism by people he has been encouraging.
>People take something that happened (that cannot be denied) and then insist this is proof.
How dare we look into mere evidence?! Apparently the important thing to some is that the guy is left-wing and that covers for everything.
well that's exactly the trap isn't it? The others have clearly been contextualised and explained many many times, but that's never enough and there's always 'but what about this one..'
Throw enough stuff at the wall and hope something will stick.
And if I put up a list of the times where Corbyn has gone above and beyond to support Jewish communities in the UK, people will undoubtedly put the effort in to dismiss them.
No, you are doing exactly what you are claiming was done, explaining away one thing (which still btw doesn’t work, Blair and brown are both labour too), and saying the others don’t matter because you’ve proved one wrong.
Yet somehow it’s always Corbyn labour that gets “misquoted”. Why is that? The Labour Party has plenty of motivation to smear the conservatives over antisemitism, yet somehow they don’t have the material for it. Why is that?
But whatever, I won’t convince you anyway, you refuse to look at the evidence. The mural one is the best example but you claim it’s a smear too. Yet somehow again it’s corbyn who got messed up in it.
But fine, I understand why the left is antisemitic, just like the Soviet Union was, it would just be nice if you were honest about it. If you blame identity groups for the worlds problems it’s hard to not blame Jews, and it must really frustrating seeing a successful nationalistic nation be successful against all odds.
Did you just call "the left" "antisemitic" and then immediately complained about people who "blame identity groups for the world's problems" in two consecutive statements?
On the mural. Yes I agree that is the clearest example. The mural is clearly antisemetic. Corbyn claims he wasn't paying attention and made the comment about censorship without opening the image.
He has since agreed the mural was antisemetic and that he made a mistake.
That's basically the only scandal that has stood up though, that he said he wasn't paying attention when surfing on Facebook 10 years ago, and people who believe the other scandals insist he was paying attention and was deliberately endorsing a piece of antisemetic art.
And on the 'left' blaming Jews for everything. You are wrong obviously. but also worth noting many of the heros of the left : Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Jesus Christ. Are Jews.
> Labour party antisemitism goes way beyond criticism of isreal, including support for hezbollah and hamas.
corbyn famously laid a wreath on the grave of a hamas fighter[1]. an interpretation - more in line with how corbyn has historically treated war and violence - reads:
> "They insist Jeremy Corbyn was at the service to commemorate the Palestinians who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in 1985"
i'll leave "support for palastine is equivalent to antisemitism" argument to the side here, needless to say i don't think i'm unique in thinking that this isn't the case.
> Jeremy Corbyn faces fury after praising ‘brilliant’ book which claims Jews control world banks
if this is in reference to the hobson book foreword, then, this would be very similar in nature to calling me misogynistic for recommending the 1st edition K&R C book, because it presumes the programmer is a man.
the book in question, Imperialism, is a treatise on how capatilism causes imperialism. which does sound like something corbyn would be interested in. i implore you to read it and tell me how antisemitic it is.
> Corbyn also backed the artist behind the mural clearly depicting evil jews controlling the world like a board game:
look at the damn mural![2] where is the antisemitic message? it's literally called "freedom for humanity". it seems clear to me that this is a complaint on the power the rich have over the rest of us.
every single one of the threads i've ended up going down over years has always been a variation on: corbyn, or the labour party, is decried as antisemitic for something. this "something" is rarely made clear or obvious when it gets media coverage. surface level investigation makes claims of antisemitism look not particularly strong.
in the meantime, i need to learn advanced memory keeping techniques to keep track of conservative government scandals from the last 6 months.
> The excusing away of this behaviour on HN is crazy, it's not just about isreal. Not by a long shot.
if corbyn is antisemitic, then let me be clear: fuck him. it would be at odds though with his otherwise radical socialist and humanitarian track record: views on which he has been remarkably consistent on for the majority of his political career. somehow, even today.
the only thing that seems crazy to me is just how effective the campaign against him was.
The only thing the Israeli lobby attacked him for was not being their kind of racist.
They dont even give a damn about anti semitism. They backed Orban when he put out hook nosed Jew campaign adverts because he backed Israel and they treasure their relationship with anti semitic US evangelicals.
That particular smear campaign wasnt very effective but it was remarkable in its audaciousness - just like the fantastically stupid czech spy smear.
Also unsurprising in view of even more egregious incidents from the past:
Shai Masot, the Israeli embassy official at London, caught on camera in 2017 talking about 'hitlist' of members of parliament, including Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan, a vocal supporter of Palestinian state [0]. And that led to a slap on the wrist.
A comparison of reactions to related incidents involving different parties is revealing [1].
Doesn't the fact that she had to resign point to the opposite conclusion, namely that these governments are distinct entities with sometimes conflicting interests?
The current Cabinet is suffering from a serious lack of talent in my opinion; several political purges related to Brexit has meant the only real qualifying characteristic for some of the highest offices in the land is being a yes-man for Johnson.
Now that you are saying this.. take a look everywhere, it's all like this.. every country turned into the worst versions of themselves, but even the worst of UK its kind of not bad in my opinion, compared to other countries.
At least from an outside view, it's the UK now that is showing a good leadership in the current worldwide crises. While the US, France and Germany are completely lost, especially on how to deal with a "strong-man".
(Meanwhile nobody remembers Cameron or that guy that was a pure puppet of the US in the forced Iraq war, and they were the posh gentleman everyone was expecting)
It points to there being some pressure, probably from the public. But like police officers who get fired only to be rehired the next town over she now has a even more prestigious position in government. So there is no actual accountability here, just theater.
> I'm surprised this isn't a major diplomatic incident between the UK and Israel too
Are you really surprised? I'd be surprised if the UK and its media made a fuss about it. Certainly we won't be making a fuss about it here in the US that's for sure. I'd imagine russia and china wishes they had 1/10th the influence that israel has in the US/UK. Say what you want about israel, but for such a tiny country, it punches far above its weight.
When 11 US diplomats in Uganda turned up with NSO Pegasus Malware on their phones, the US government responded by listing NSO as a covered Entity and forbidding any US company from buying or selling with it without express permission of the USG- Dell can't sell them monitors or laptops without the State Department publishing written, specific permission. Several US congresspersons advocated for even harsher response (Global Magnitsky Sanctions, which would, AIUI, basically cut them off from the dollar and their employees from traveling to the US). The US reserves the right to do that later.
So the US has responded, quite forcefully, to people much lower on the food chain being hacked by Pegasus.
Sure, the US effectively blacklisted NSO, but they did nothing to Israel. Imagine if a Russian business was found to have hacked State Department employees phones. Would being a private company prevent Russia from being blamed, particularly if they had the kind of state connections NSO had?
> Dell can't sell them monitors or laptops without the State Department publishing written, specific permission.
I wonder how this is enforced in practice? I have to assume Israel has retailer shops where anybody can just buy whatever, most likely even Dell laptops and monitors.
I don't know about Russia, but China doesn't let people from other nationalities to occupy positions of power especially in foreign policy, in which they're completely right. This is the main weakness of the USA and UK. They will let foreign born people to raise to power and dictate self servicing policies, many times in detriment to their own population. For example, take Henry Kissinger: a german born person, he spent his whole life influencing American policy to accommodate his views concerning Europe and the rest of the world. It is not a surprise that the Western world is in this situation.
Which UK politician are you referring to? The only one I’m aware of in high office currently who was born abroad is Boris Johnson, who was born in New York - a fact so far down the list of reasons for his unfitness for office that it does not really register.
The idea that this is the “main” problem in the UK is frankly laughable.
Well of course, GP said 'positions of power' rather than 'politician'.
Controversially, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Lebedev has been ennobled and is now qualified to sit in the House of Lords, most definitely a position of power though he has not as yet chosen to appear there as far as I know. It turns out that Unelected Lords are also permitted to be ministers in the cabinet, so...
The UK is quite xenophobic as it is. No need for extra laws to prohibit foreigners to ascend to positions of power. Your peers will take care of that. I'm quite surprised that an UK born citizen of Pakistani heritage is currently the mayor of London. Maybe Labour is less xenophobic that the others.
> I'm quite surprised that an UK born citizen of Pakistani heritage is currently the mayor of London
The only surprise here is that he's Labour, not Tory.
Half of the current Great Offices of State are held by brown people under the Tories, who also had the first Jewish PM, the first (and second, and only) female PMs, and then there's Saj who's been Chancellor and Home Secretary, and I reckon is about as likely as Sunak to be the next PM. They appointed the first female, gay head of the Met Police, and the leader of the party in Scotland was also a gay woman for 8 very recent years.
Some of these people are clearly the worst of British politics (hello Priti Patel!), but the Tories have an excellent record of putting people who aren't straight, white, Christian men into positions of power.
There are so many people in this thread talking nonsense about the UK. The current Tory (right wing) Cabinet (the executive) includes Rishi Sunak as Chancellor, Priti Patel as Home Secretary, Savid Jaavid as Secretary of State for Health, Kwasi Kwartang as Secretary of State for Business, Alok Sharma as COP26 President, Nadim Zahawi as Secretary of State for Education, and Suella Braverman as Attorney General — all of Pakistani, Indian, or African ancestry.
It is quite likely the next PM will be of Pakistani or Indian ancestry (unless it’s a Labour PM; they have a poor record of promoting minorities to the top of Government) It's simply not true that the UK is xenophobic.
The realpolitik of it is that Johnson some weeks ago went to the Saudis hat in hand asking for oil after they've stopped responding to phone calls from POTUS.
Last year:
The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, warned Boris Johnson in a text message that UK-Saudi Arabian relations would be damaged if the British government failed to intervene to “correct” the Premier League’s “wrong” decision not to allow a £300m takeover of Newcastle United last year.
The takeover of the club was of course completed shortly afterwards. As were the weapons sales.
As for the NSO, it is rather likely that the UK government itself is a client. In fact taking all of that into account it isn't unlikely that the UK government is more than just a customer and was already aware of being "hacked". But that's all I'm going to say about that.
the sale has been stalled for more than a year at that point , the league had decided arbitrarily to put a fitness check and delay(not reject) the deal. Roman, usmanov (minority holder ) and Abu Dhabi sovereign fund are current owners of major clubs before Saudi Arabia .
The stalling and later approval has nothing to do with concerns of sportswashing (PL has sold out any morality they had long before then). The block and later approval was mostly because Qatar was pissed .
Qatar owns PSG , hosting 2022 World Cup and most importantly owns lucrative PL broadcast rights in Middle East.
beIN with Saudi government informal support has been streaming matches illegally. Complicating this Qatar for last 4/5 years has been pretty much isolated in Middle East and kicked out of many forums in unrelated diplomatic fights.
In the end Saudi paid 1Billion pounds to Qatar to settle that dispute before Newcastle could be bought.
Sovereign/government influence peddling and involving in sports clubs is nothing new. Real Madrid has benefited a lot over the years , west ham got a brand new stadium for nothing , even in the U.S. favorable policies , tax breaks are used heavily to attract sports teams at city /state level all the time.
Democracy or dictators sports are cheap trick to improve ratings , it has been used at least since gladiators in Rome as a tool.
My intention is not defend Saudi actions just that it is not surprising governments were involved.
I was once goaded into going to a Sunderland away game. I was somewhat surprised to hear them chanting "he s*ts where he wants" to the tune of the theme from the Addams Family.
There's quite a good series on Netflix about the club called "Sunderland 'til I die". The timing was sort of perfect, when it started Sunderland had just been relegated from the Premiership (England's top tier) and I think it was intended to be a series documenting them rebuilding the team and immediately getting promoted back. In reality thought it didn't go like that at all. The team collapsed, their wealthy owner lost interest and stopped supporting them financially, they made a few management blunders and suffered more tragedy that I will not spoil.
I don't support the team, but I still found the series quite fascinating and found myself rooting for them to succeed. I was surprised to see two of my university friends in the show - Sophie (one of the backroom staff who clashed with the management) and another friend who happened to be in the crowd and got an extreme-closeup before/after a goal in one of the match sequences.
> "Like, yeah, blame the UAE mostly for this but let's also have a discussion about why this was sold to anyone who would pay with no oversight at all. Western countries need to do better."
The UK itself is one of the largest weapon exporters in the world, exporting to many countries in the Middle East with dubious human rights track records. The UK government can't possibly know what happens with every single pistol, bullet, missile or drone they sell (if they could, nobody would be buying):
A private Israeli company is exporting weapons to the same countries the UK does, and when those weapons get used inappropriately, you're then "surprised this isn't a major diplomatic incident between the UK and Israel".
By the same account, are you suggesting that there should be a major diplomatic incident between every country in the world and the UK/USA every time they catch terrorists somewhere around the world using either UK/USA built-or-designed firearms?
There wouldn't be any diplomatic relationships left then:
The difference is NSO control the Pegasus servers. They know who is using their tools and who is being targeted. This isn’t the same as untraced weapons.
I'm not challenging your assertion, I'm genuinely looking for backing evidence here. Do you have evidence that NSO knows who is being targeted by the tools they sell?
Could you please point out where exactly in this 69 minute podcast do they talk about NSO knowing who exactly is being targeted at any given moment, and what proof is there to back these claims? Could you perhaps quote the transcript?
This is a 69 minutes podcast episode, I'm not in a position to listen to all of it and try and pick out the relevant details. A lot of links are provided, but again - which of those are relevant here? Skimmed through some of them, and they don't even touch on this specific issue at-all?
As I've mentioned before, I'm not challenging your assertions - I'm looking for credible proof that NSO can tell, at any given moment, which specific people are being targeted by the clients/governments to which NSO is licensing its' software.
According to WhatsApp’s filing, NSO gained “unauthorised access” to its servers by reverse-engineering the messaging app and then evading the company’s security features that prevent manipulation of the company’s call features. One WhatsApp engineer who investigated the hacks said in a sworn statement submitted to the court that in 720 instances, the IP address of a remote server was included in the malicious code used in the attacks. The remote server, the engineer said, was based in Los Angeles and owned by a company whose data centre was used by NSO.
NSO has said in legal filings that it has no insight into how government clients use its hacking tools, and therefore does not know who governments are targeting.
But one expert, John Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab, who has worked with WhatsApp on the case, said NSO’s control of the servers involved in the hack suggests the company would have had logs, including IP addresses, identifying the users who were being targeted.
“Whether or not NSO looks at those logs, who knows? But the fact that it could be done is contrary to what they say,” Scott-Railton said.
In a statement to the Guardian, NSO stood by its earlier remarks. “Our products are used to stop terrorism, curb violent crime, and save lives. NSO Group does not operate the Pegasus software for its clients,” the company said. “Our past statements about our business, and the extent of our interaction with our government intelligence and law enforcement agency customers, are accurate.”
Adding to this, it's relatively trivial to have encrypted traffic transit your servers without the ability to actually view the traffic. This is basic stuff so I suspect you're not going to find the evidence from people who are citing podcasts...
Correct, and when traffic transits your servers you know where that traffic is coming from (i.e. the target). I found your last comment rude considering the podcast I citied is an interview with citizen lab researchers; the people who research Pegasus malware. The podcast website also contains sources that I also linked to above. It’s “basic stuff” to look into what someone posted before making a comment like yours.
How do you identify a target individual purely from source traffic metadata...? Sure, you can identify them if you've totally rooted a target's phone and uploads all the data such that NSO group can read it - my point is that NSO group could offer transit encryption so long as they haven't backdoored whatever client is being used.
The reason I bring that up is that it's precisely the service you might offer if you wanted more plausible deniability. I still don't consider this hugely complex stuff.
> The UK government can't possibly know what happens with every single pistol, bullet, missile or drone they sell
You say that, but UK export law imposes a bunch of conditions, including that you're not knowingly facilitating resale to embargoed countries. And the legality of exports to Saudi Arabia has been litigated - it's legal, but only just.
> "You say that, but UK export law imposes a bunch of conditions, including that you're not knowingly facilitating resale to embargoed countries. And the legality of exports to Saudi Arabia has been litigated - it's legal, but only just."
Both the UK and Israel have export law, complete with conditions and legal frameworks for enforcement. It surely reduces the possibility of weapons ending up in the wrong hands, but it doesn't eliminate it completely. Regardless, it still doesn't imply that the manufacturers themselves or the jurisdictions they are incorporated in should somehow bear blanket responsibility for misuse.
Cyber-weapons and spying are particularly complex from this perspective, because it can be difficult to draw the lines on what constitutes as "misuse". Especially when the operator of the weapon is part of a government (a law-enforcement agency, for example), and when the victim is a citizen of a foreign jurisdiction.
With this out of the way, we're only really left with the "legal, but immoral" argument. I'm not going to argue against that (mainly because this is where things get very subjective and nuanced) - but I will say that the bar for holding an entire government accountable by invocation of "major diplomatic incidents" should be higher than that.
>The UK government can't possibly know what happens with every single pistol, bullet, missile or drone they sell (if they could, nobody would be buying):
Oh, yes they would.
And they do.
Quite fucking happily, too.
> let's also have a discussion about why this was sold to anyone who would pay with no oversight at all.
There will always be cyberweapon brokers. If not NSO, then someone else. And money talks.
Why would there be any oversight? What you need is plausible deniability.
I’d prefer if they started selling Pegasus to absolutely anyone at all. Like, online, for $999 a month or something. Maybe then there will be actual efforts to patch the vulnerabilities that are being exploited for it to work.
Or perhaps the security services we pay so much for could stop hoarding vulnerabilities and start patching them. So as to add to our.. security.
Of course the problem is that these services are geared towards protecting the state, as distinct from the people. It is a distinctly unpleasant legacy of the cold war. We'll learn the hard way before there's a change of mindset.
There's a big difference between an underground group doing it in semi-secrecy, vs a state-sponsored company doing it publicly. With said company somehow not being sued into the ground or said country's action not being taken as an act of war in situations like this.
> I’d prefer if they started selling Pegasus to absolutely anyone at all
The high value of what they offer comes from the scarcity, which result in lower likelihood of it being patched.
NSO isn't the equivalent of NSA. While NSA is part of the US government and actively spied on allied countries with no repercussions, NSO is a privately held company employing ex intelligence. With mandatory service at 18 and the private sector paying between 8 to 10 times more, it's common to find these intelligence boys leaving the service asap and working in different private companies.
Implying Israel has anything to do with NSO or that the government is behind it, coupled with the amount of attention this gets relative to a company like Italian based Hacking Team (which both the FBI and Russian government made business with) is cause for concern. Is this hacker news or culturally biased vent club?
I think the domain cyclonefront is nice for a new forum, don't you? You can be an admin there, grow a short mustache and do quarter jumping-jacks.
These products, just like any offensive weapon, aren't quite as useful for defensive purposes, or when used by someone who doesn't do this stuff 24/7.
The justification that "somebody else would have done it" is morally bankrupt, of course, as shown in Nuremberg or the Eichmann trial. It's also just not true: by definition, the alternative would be worse in some way, or it would have been the first choice from the beginning. For simple products, the margin between the knife you are selling and the next-best choice might indeed be small. For nuclear weapons, the marginal product is 100 % less useful, as far as I can tell: there is no other seller. For tanks, you can probably get some Sowjet era relics if you know the right people in the 'stans, which will be significantly worse than western state-of-the-art but not entirely useless.
I'd say Pegasus is somewhere between the tank and the nuclear bomb on that spectrum, right now. Which might well be the point where export controls are most useful, because they also reduce the need and incentive for others to enter the market as buyers and sellers, respectively.
Export controls don't work? Did I miss the news, North Korea bought an MERV tipped intercontinental ballistic missile from the 'free market'? Do they have thermonuclear warheads?
I am not convinced if we way we treated Iran is justified, but thats a different suvject. And after Ukraine, noone will. Ever give up nukes
Because western countries use the same services to spy on their citizens. Even if they feigned outrage, the potential blowback could topple some people.
Besides, governments also tend not to want to be scrutinized on moral ground for trading war assets of any kind.
Why should I be enraged if government officials were put under surveillance? They made abundantly clear that they are in favor of increased monitoring. Their secret surveillance programs were laid open.
My outrage against dragnet was never about me, personally. I know I am way too unimportant to surveil. It has always been about the next thought leader, who could come from any background, from being nipped in the bud. I'm sure "they" would have loved being able to contain MLK Jr before he even had a chance to have any following
» Why should I be enraged if government officials were put under surveillance?
I am not worried about the officials themselves but the people who talk to them. Once again, the next thought leader, who could be but will never be because of the surveillance and subsequent actions.
They even tried it back in the day and with the modern surveillance we probably would not have heard from him at all. Just the right bribe to deflect the issues and it will never become a large issue in the first place.
It doesn't even have to be malicious, there are people working in these agencies that are trained to follow orders. They believe intrinsically that what they do is necessary for security. No appeal will ever work, just a tight corset of regulation or protections by law that have actual teeth with heavy sanctions against misconduct. Today some agencies just blatantly disregard the most fundamental laws. If you scrap those you don't even need terrorists anymore, you did it all to yourself.
'They believe intrinsically that what they do is necessary for security.'
That's thr rub isn't it - if you startva security agency thst does terrible things, it will hire people that can somehow justify and rationalise those terrible things
Very few people in KGB or whatever thought that they did anything wrong
You have a similar problem with police. If you day to day see instances of crime and you have a lot of contact with criminals, you develop preconceptions towards people. You view gets skewed and you start to see crime everywhere. The same happens to security agencies that deal day to day with the spy game. This is why external observers are necessary. Not primarily to punish people stepping over lines, but to provide support and reasonable boundaries and context. People with a strong sense of duty are especially vulnerable to develop a wrong perspective.
Then there is the other dimension where corporations just help the worst dictators for profit or provide surveillance capability against the population. Almost all major names in tech are guilty here to certain degrees. Some more than others, but there are no morals in business. Especially not with investment mechanisms like ESG or similar constructs to provide wellness to rich investors, but that is another topic.
Indeed, reminds me a lot about Oracle trying to sell predictive policing tech to China, tech that was already beta-tested on US protesters [0] or on the more grey scale end; Nokia facilitating lawful intercept in Russia [1]
Ironically, the fact that it's not playing out as a major dust-up in public will probably only further contribute to conspiratorial thinking in re: the Israeli gov't.
Israel seems to have a relative degree of immunity when it comes to subverting UK pol. Anyone ever see the investigative journalist piece of the Zionist group trying to subvert the UK Labour Party? They had a journalist go undercover for 6 months recording all kinds of things they weren't meant to:
I watched the first 15 minutes of this and what shocked me is how unrevealing it was. If someone recorded me over the course of weeks or months, I would almost certainly say something that would land me in hot water in some sense. This piece of 'investigative journalism' I actually found embarrassing, all this editing to big it up as some major conspiracy when to me, in that 15 mins at least, was at worst run of the mill lobbying. Considering how unsavoury a character Corbyn was, I actually found the subjects incredibly restrained, perhaps part of the JD however.
Is there any particular reason this link is actually worth reading? Is 'Crag Murray' a former high-level politician/intelligence officer with useful information? Do they have a track record of finding genuine and severe issues with government narratives?
Craig is a former ambassador to Uzbekistan, who served in the Foreign Office for many years. He's since dedicated a lot of his time to following and reporting on the Assange case in the UK.
He doesn't hide his opinions, some of which are quite strongly worded, but I don't think that makes him less worthwhile as an observer. I'd say he is less of a fact-finder/whistleblower and more of an analyser/commenter.
I personally find his articles insightful and nuanced.
There are a few thousand kids (and their parents) in Yemen that became all-too-literal "end customers" for American exports of the non-cultural or Apple variety. It's fundamentally the same, except the impact was not metaphorical.
The UK sells weapons. Should they be blamed for anyone who is affected by them? Regardless of your own opinion they would argue no. So they can’t be hypocritical.
UAE on the other hand is a decrepit money laundering people smuggling cesspit and should face the full brunt of Iran/Russia style sanctions.
I can guarantee you that if the UK was supplying weapons to a country that was using them against its own allies, there would be an incident, and at the very least they would stop supplying them. There is no hypcrisy - yet.
These trojans do not run without central C&C, already proven in the past to be run by NSO. Selling a weapon is not travelling into a war zone and firing it off on behalf of who hired you; that's what a mercenary does, under punishment of death.
The UK is where the world's dictators and corrupt politicians hide their money. Does that mean you think that the UK should "face the full brunt of Iran/Russia style sanctions"? Take your double standards elsewhere.
There's nothing to be gained by wringing our hands and kicking up a public fuss, crying to the press about it. That's not how grownups do business. We all know everyone spies on everyone else, it's a given. I'm sure GCHQ spies on Israel and UAE.
For all we know the security services already knew about this and were feeding false info to manipulate the UAE. Heck, the Israelis might have even tipped us off, I'm sure they value their relationship to us much more than with the UAE. I'd give it at least 50/50 Munk School trying to 'help' us just trashed a perfectly good MI6 counterintelligence op. That's the sort of way these things work.
I'm not making any assumptions, I'm saying we just don't know. Those like the poster I'm responding to suggesting this mean this or that for international relations, and we should be responding this way or that way are making assumptions. I'm pointing out those assumptions are unsupported and somewhat naive.
Why would that be surprising? I haven't heard about Yemen being outraged at France for selling weapons to the UAE for example. Western countries can't do better, it's how the world has and always will operate.
Yeah, I agree. The western nations which built their lead through brutal colonialism and presently maintain that lead with neo-colonialism structures where brutal governments (Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE) do the dirty work which they (western countries) ostensibly condemn.
How about this: let’s have the western countries leave the world alone. Let’s have the western countries abandon their profit by misery business models (eg western arms industries which profiteer by instigating conflict and supplying aggressors).
> surprised this isn't a major diplomatic incident
It all depends who the (UK) Government is "friends" with. Let's not forget the infamous Russian Novichok poisoning cases in Salisbury - those naughty Russians! The Saudis execute 81 citizens in a day, and Boris visits the day after to beg for oil and gas - those naughty Saudis!
I'm not surprised it isn't a major diplomatic incident!
“Israel’s intelligence” is like a gang member calling themselves “lil NSA” or some shit. It’s the NSA and globalist interests within the US who don’t like the idea that nations are nations and they don’t control the Earth.
It’s very insulting to people with compensate for a lack of personality or wit with egotism to be told you can’t just “do whatever” when you have a billion dollars.
Again, I think no one is ready for a serious conversation about this. We don’t consider our rich mentally ill, and therefore there can be little else to be said or done.
John Mearsheimer (Chicago professor) & Stephen Walt (Harvard professor) wrote a New York Times bestseller book called the Israel Lobby which delicately discussed in careful details the influence of the Israeli lobby on US politics.
Perhaps the treatment they got for the book is the reason many serious academics and intellectual steer clear of the topic. Which is unfortunate since the pernicious influence of the lobby has arguably grown steadily since they published the book, culminating in the election of Trump and such disastrous consequence for the world like shredding of Obama's Iran nuclear agreement.
This hits the nail on the head with a sledgehammer. It’s not merely difficult for the ideological reasons I outlined but also because of the power structures one deals with discussing it. Ah, the banal bureaucracy of evil.
>since the Israeli intelligence company was supposedly "closely monitoring how their customers were using the software"
If the Israelis were going to veto a country's use of the software, it's reasonable to assume that the country was intelligent enough not to tell them what they were doing with it.
The important thing to realize is that NSO doesn’t just hand over their attack tools completely. If they did, they would just get copied and they wouldn’t be able to charge for them.
NSO maintains control and is semi-actively involved in the exploitation (NSO servers are used and they control this access). This is very different from selling someone a knife that is later used in a murder.
There is a very good Darknet Diaries breakdown of what the NSO group can and cannot do - https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/100/ - and despite their claims otherwise, the evidence strongly points to them being complicit in attacks rather than just being a vendor.
Like, yeah, blame the UAE mostly for this but let's also have a discussion about why this was sold to anyone who would pay with no oversight at all. Western countries need to do better.