Leaked: Israel attempted to obstruct US lawsuit against Pegasus spyware
Press TV – July 25, 2024
Israel has gone to great lengths to obstruct a high-stakes US lawsuit that could potentially expose highly confidential information regarding the regime’s Pegasus spyware, one of the world’s most notorious hacking tools, leaked files suggest.
Israeli officials confiscated documents related to the Pegasus spyware from its manufacturer, NSO Group, in a bid to prevent the company from complying with demands from WhatsApp in a US court to provide information about the intrusive technology, said the British media on Thursday.
These documents indicate that these seizures were part of an unusual legal tactic devised by the Israeli regime to prevent the disclosure of details about Pegasus, which Tel Aviv feared could lead to significant diplomatic and security repercussions for the regime.
Pegasus enables NSO clients to secretly install hidden software on smartphones, allowing them to extract messages and photos, record calls, and activate microphones covertly. NSO’s clients have included both authoritarian regimes and democratic nations, and the technology has been implicated in human rights abuses worldwide.
NSO has sold its spyware – known as Pegasus – to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Hungary and India among others.
The spyware also allows its users to monitor conversations, text messages, photos and location, and even encrypted messaging apps such as Signal and WhatsApp. Pegasus can turn phones into remotely operated listening devices.
Since late 2019, NSO has been embroiled in a lawsuit in the US filed by WhatsApp, alleging that the Israeli firm exploited a vulnerability in the messaging service to target over 1,400 of its users across 20 countries within two weeks. NSO rejects the allegations.
The seizure of files and computers from NSO’s offices in July 2020, kept secret until now by a strict gag order issued by an Israeli court, sheds new light on the close relationship between Israel and NSO, and the shared interests of the privately owned surveillance company and the country’s security establishment.
The removal of files in July 2020 occurred after talks between Israeli officials and NSO about how to respond to WhatsApp’s demands for NSO to disclose internal documents regarding its spyware, prompting questions about potential coordination to withhold certain information from US legal proceedings.
At one point, NSO’s lawyer, Rod Rosenstein, a former US deputy attorney general during the Donald Trump administration, reportedly asked one of Israel’s US attorneys whether the Israeli regime would intervene to assist in the legal dispute with WhatsApp.
Earlier this month, WhatsApp accused NSO of failing to fulfill its responsibilities to provide internal documents as part of the legal discovery process. This process aims to help WhatsApp gather information crucial for its case and reveal unprecedented details about how NSO’s government clients have utilized Pegasus.
Nevertheless, the covert involvement of the Israeli regime has impeded WhatsApp’s efforts to compel NSO to provide crucial information. Recently, WhatsApp’s lawyers informed the US court that NSO has “only produced 17 internal documents of its own.”
Both Israel and NSO anticipated expansive demands from WhatsApp for confidential internal company documents, including lists of its clients.
As the discovery process became imminent in the early part of 2020, NSO considered requesting a “blocking order” from the Israeli regime. This order would prevent NSO from disclosing specific information to WhatsApp. A memo outlining this proposal was shared with Israel’s justice ministry in April of that year.
Tel Aviv’s actions seem to have significantly affected the case. NSO has contended that its ability to engage in the discovery process has been constrained by several legal restrictions in Israel.
Earlier this month, WhatsApp’s lawyers told the court they had not yet received any documents relevant to Pegasus, accusing NSO of a “continued refusal to meaningfully participate in discovery.”
The US government blacklisted the Israeli company in 2021 for its sale of hacking tools to repressive regimes.
What’s behind Israel’s war against UNRWA?
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | July 23, 2024
Targeting a school during a war could be justified as, or at least argued, to have been a mistake. But striking over 120 schools, and killing and wounding thousands of civilians sheltering inside, can only be intentional, with each attack a horrific war crime in its own right.
Between 7 October last year and 18 July, Israel has done precisely that, targeting with total impunity UN infrastructure in the besieged Gaza Strip, including schools and medical centres. According to the estimates of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), at least 561 internally displaced Palestinians sheltering in UNRWA buildings have been killed and 1,768 have been wounded since the start of Israel’s war. Within just ten days between 8 and 18 July, at least six UNRWA schools serving as makeshift shelters for displaced Palestinians were targeted by the Israeli army, resulting in the killing and wounding of hundreds.
Historically, UN-linked organisations have been more or less immune from the impact of wars. The privilege of being neutral outsiders to any conflict allowed those affiliated with such organisations to carry out their duties largely unhindered. The Israeli war on the Palestinians in Gaza, however, is the primary exception among all modern conflicts. According to UN sources, 274 aid workers and over 500 healthcare workers linked to the international organisation have been killed by the Israeli occupation forces.
These figures are consistent with all other statistics produced by the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. Indeed, not a single category of people has been spared: neither doctors nor civil defence workers, mayors or even traffic police, let alone the children, women and elderly.
It was obvious from the very start of the war that Israel wanted to criminalise all Palestinians.
Not only those affiliated with Hamas or other groups, but also the civilian population and any international organisation that came to their aid. Blaming and dehumanising all of Gaza was and remains part of Israel’s strategy that lets its army operate without any restraints, and without even the most minimal moral threshold or respect for international law.
However, the Israeli attacks on all UN institutions, in particular UNRWA, the agency responsible for the welfare of Gaza’s Palestinian refugees, serve a different purpose than that of mere “collective punishment”. Israel does not attempt to mask or justify its attacks on the agency as it did during previous Gaza wars. This time around, the Israeli war was accompanied, from the very beginning, with the outlandish accusation that UNRWA staff had participated in the 7 October cross-border incursion by Hamas and other Palestinian groups.
Without providing any evidence, Tel Aviv launched an international vilification campaign against the UN agency which has, for decades, provided essential educational, medical and humanitarian services to millions of Palestinian refugees, not only in occupied Palestine, but also in refugee camps in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Sadly, and tellingly, some Western, and even non-Western governments, answered the Israeli call to punish UNRWA by withholding badly-needed funds, the urgency of which did not only stem from the direct impact of the Israeli war, but also the acute famine resulting from the war. UNRWA depends almost entirely on such voluntary donations from UN member states.
True, a number of governments eventually resumed their funding of the agency, but such action was only taken when much damage had already been done. Moreover, most, if not all, Western governments have taken no action against Israel for its continued targeting of UNRWA facilities, and thus the killing of hundreds of innocent Palestinians in the process.
This non-committal attitude has emboldened Israel to the extent that, just this week, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) passed the first reading of a bill to designate UNRWA as a “terrorist organisation”. On 18 July, Israeli spokesman David Mencer accused the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, of being a “terrorist sympathiser”.
Israel’s hate for UNRWA, however, stretches back long before the current war.
For years, successive Israeli governments, not least with the aid of the Donald Trump administration in the US, have sought to shut down the agency altogether.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s former advisor on the Middle East, said in January 2018 that it was “important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA.” For him, the dismantlement of the agency meant the eradication of the legitimate Right of Return for Palestinian refugees.
Indeed, the issue is not just about UNRWA, but rather the historic role the agency has played as a reminder of the plight of millions of Palestinian refugees in occupied Palestine, the Middle East and across the world.
UNRWA was established through General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December 1949. The founding of UNRWA came one year after the passing of UN Resolution 194, which granted Palestinian refugees the right to “return to their homes”. Although UNRWA’s mission has turned into a de facto permanent mandate (albeit one that has to be renewed periodically), since Palestinian refugees were not granted their right of return, the role of the agency has remained as critical as it was decades ago.
Since Kushner and others have failed to have UNRWA shut down, the Israeli government has taken advantage of its war on Gaza to try to do so. According to Israeli “logic”, without a UN agency specifically for Palestinian refugees, there must be no more Palestinian refugees, so the issue of their return would lose its main legal platform and would ultimately disappear. This would give Israel the space and leverage to “resolve” the problem of the refugees in any way it sees fit, especially if it has Washington’s full support.
Israel must not be allowed to dismantle UNRWA or to dismiss the generational struggle of Palestinian refugees, which is the core of the Palestinian fight for justice and freedom. The international community must challenge Israel’s vilification of UNRWA and insist on the centrality of the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees. Without it, no real peace is possible.
NATO States Embrace Conscription, Eyeing Future War with Russia
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | July 22, 2024
As NATO escalates its proxy war in Ukraine and inches closer to fighting directly with Russia, the Washington-led bloc is embracing mandatory military service. Many European members of NATO have expanded or reintroduced conscription as part of large-scale preparations for such a war, CNN reports.
Already outpaced in terms of military industrial capacity by Russia, the alliance’s new battleplans will see an attempt to beef up weapons production and form 35-50 brigades of 3,000-7,000 battle ready troops.
Outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has insisted, “Today, we have 500,000 troops on high readiness, combat-ready battlegroups in the eastern part of the Alliance for the first time.” But the bloc is struggling to meet its goals of assembling 300,000 soldiers prepared to be activated within a month and another half a million in six months. There is also a question of whether the bloc can filed a military fit for a protracted war akin to the Ukraine conflict.
Following the end of the Cold War, several European states ceased conscripting their citizens. Although increasing numbers of NATO member countries have resorted to the draconian practice during recent years, especially in the Baltics and Scandinavia. Roughly a third of the NATO alliance practices some form of compulsory military service.
This year, for the first time since it was abolished in 2006, Latvia reimplemented its draft. Male citizens are subject to conscription within a year of turning 18 years old. Additionally, Norway has unveiled a long-term plan to increase its ranks of mandatorily conscripted troops, employees, and reservists by 20,000 as well as double the military budget. In 2015, Oslo became the first NATO government to establish a gender-neutral draft.
Lithuania brought back mandatory military service in 2015, each year drafting 3,500 to 4,000 men between the ages of 18-26 for a nine-month period. Although the Finnish Defense Forces employ only 13,000 people during peacetime, Helsinki claims it has the ability to activate over 900,000 reservists with 280,000 combat-ready troops. Sweden conscripts both men and women, Stockholm drafted 7,000 its citizens and the military expects to conscript 8,000 next year. The Swedes have had conscription since 1901.
Citing the supposed Russian threat to Europe, Robert Hamilton, the head of Eurasia Research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said “It is tragically true that here we are, in 2024, and we are grappling with the questions of how to mobilize millions of people to be thrown into a meatgrinder of a war potentially.” For 30 years, Hamiliton served as a US Army officer. “Meatgrinder” is a term often used by frontline troops in Ukraine, particularly during the battle of Bakhmut where the average life span of such a soldier was only a few hours.
In the United Kingdom, conscription is currently being pushed by Conservative MPs. The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, the annual military spending bill, may include provisions which inter alia will seek to automatically register all eligible men and women for Selective Service, a form of conscripted labor, which could inevitably include military service.
Former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe General Wesley Clark echoed Hamilton’s hawkish sentiments, emphasizing “whether this is a new Cold War or an emerging hot war is unclear.” He added that NATO “must rebuild our defenses,” including with mandatory military drafts.
“I think young people in Europe and the US will come to realize that this generation, like the generation that fought WWII, it didn’t ask to be the ‘Greatest Generation’ but the circumstances thrust that burden on them,” Clark added.
The risk of direct war with Russia is growing by the day amidst the Ukraine proxy war, as the alliance has largely approved NATO missiles to be used for attacks against the Russian mainland. The bloc will soon provide Kiev with F-16s and an explicit green light for the warplanes to carry out direct strikes against Russian territory as well. Without irony, Stoltenberg claimed this should not be viewed by Russia as an escalation.
As NATO considers increasing its nuclear weapons deployments, the US is also planning to deploy previously banned, medium-range, nuclear capable missiles in Germany which has caused Russia to hint it could similarly retaliate. Pointing to the massive US-led buildup for war with China, President Vladimir Putin accused NATO of creating major security threats for Russia in Asia.
NATO set its sights on China four years ago, identifying Beijing as a military threat to European security. China maintains a “no limits” partnership with Russia. “NATO is already ‘moving’ there (to Asia) as if to a permanent place of residence. This, of course, creates a threat to all countries in the region, including the Russian Federation. We are obliged to respond to this and will do it,” Putin vowed earlier this year. That same month, Stoltenberg cited China as a reason the bloc is considering an “adaptation” of its nuclear arsenal.
Gaza refugee camp attacked 63 times by Israel in a week, authorities say
MEMO | July 21, 2024
The Israeli army bombarded the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip 63 times in a week, killing at least 91 people and injuring 251 others, local authorities said on Sunday.
“More than 75% of the victims were admitted to hospitals with burns due to Israel’s use of thermal and chemical weapons,” Gaza’s government media office said in a statement.
The Nuseirat refugee camp is one of the most densely populated camps in Gaza, currently housing 250,000 residents and displaced people.
The media office held Israel and the US administration “fully responsible for the continued massacres against the displaced and civilians.”
It called on the international community, the UN, and international organizations to “pressure the Israeli occupation and the US administration to stop the genocide and halt the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip.”
Ireland – mass-immigration and the Great Reset
By Gavin O’Reilly | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 21, 2024
On Monday morning, Ireland would awake to reports of unrest in the Dublin suburb of Coolock, when after months of peaceful protest by local residents over plans to move upwards of 500 male migrants into a disused paint factory in the working-class neighborhood, tensions would come to a head when Irish riot police cleared the on-site protest camp in a heavy-handed early morning raid. In response, work vehicles intended to convert the site would be set ablaze, leading to scenes reminiscent of the north of Ireland in the late 60s or early 70s.
As the day progressed, the parallels between Coolock and the Ireland of half a century ago would grow. Heavily-militarised police, under the direction of Garda commissioner and former RUC Deputy Constable Drew Harris, would soon arrive in the North Dublin suburb, resulting in scenes akin to Belfast or Derry in 1969. Local residents, including women, children, and the elderly, would be brutalised, a popular video streamer and citizen journalist would be arrested, and a number of elected representatives, who had arrived on the scene in a bid to calm tensions, would be pepper sprayed by police. By the end of the day, 15 people would be arrested and charged, with their names and addresses highly-publicised by the Irish media, an effective warning to others to not protest against the current immigration policies being imposed by Leinster House, which has seen large numbers of male migrants being placed into wildly unsuitable locations such as an inner city office block and childrens primary school, with no prior consultation being held with local communities beforehand.
Indeed, similar scenes would erupt in the small rural village of Newtownmountkennedy in late April, when again, after weeks of peaceful protest by local residents in opposition to plans to house male migrants in a disused hospital in the locality, police would once again carry out a heavy-handed early-morning raid on an on-site protest camp. In the ensuing hours, local residents would again be brutalised, a female journalist would be pepper sprayed, and martial law would effectively be imposed on the sleepy town.
In a grim irony, less than a week later, the southern Irish state would issue a statement condemning the response of the Georgian government to protests against its Transparency of Foreign Influence law, the previous week’s scenes in Newtownmountkennedy being wilfully ignored by Leinster House.
The current tensions surrounding immigration in Ireland began in November 2022, when, using the Russian intervention in Ukraine as a pretext, upwards of 300 migrants were moved into a disused office block in East Wall, a working-class neighbourhood in inner city Dublin. Protests would begin immediately amongst local residents, citing the unsuitability of the location and the lack of consultation with community representatives beforehand. Similar protests would take place at other sites in Dublin and throughout Ireland.
One year later, the tensions regarding immigration policy in Ireland would explode in their most notable manner so far. On the 23rd of November 2023, three children and their teacher were stabbed outside their Gaelscoil (Irish-language school) in central Dublin. With it soon emerging that the attacker was an immigrant previously subject to a deportation order, matters would come to a head. Calls for a protest in Dublin later that night would quickly spread throughout social media, seemingly attracting an opportunistic element who would engage in looting and the burning of vehicles. The Dublin riots would gain worldwide attention, with the focus seemingly more on the damage done to outlets such as McDonald’s and Footlocker, than the attack on the children and their teacher.
In the days following the riots, Security Minister for the southern Irish state, Helen McEntee, announced that facial recognition technology laws would be introduced in response, thus revealing the true intent behind current immigration policy in Ireland.
In addition to the devaluing of labour and the lowering of wages on behalf of industrialists, the mixing of vast amounts of people from different cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds that mass-immigration entails, ultimately leads to tensions. Tensions that, in tight-knit areas such as working-class neighbourhoods and small rural villages, will inevitably spill over.
As a result, the government-corporate alliance is presented with a ready-made pretext to implement solutions that align with their agenda. In this case, the same facial recognition technologies that are outlined in the Great Reset, the initiative launched by the World Economic Forum in 2020, using ‘Covid’ as a pretext, intended to create even further integration between the public and private sector worldwide.
With the issue of migrants arriving into Ireland without proper identification also receiving mainstream media attention, it is likely this is being done with the intention of directing the narrative towards the introduction of mandatory digital ID; which, combined with facial recognition technology, will lay the groundwork for the dystopian digital surveillance state that the Great Reset envisages.
Indeed, upon the recent election of WEF aficionado Keir Starmer as British Prime Minister, Taoiseach Simon Harris announced that it marked a ‘great reset’ in relations between both countries. A deliberate choice of words, indicating that like his predecessor Leo Varadkar, he is also a World Economic Forum ‘Young Global Leader’, fully intending to continue the Davos agenda in Ireland.
Ministers Were Informed Of mRNA Lies During Mandates, Cardiologist Reveals
Dr Aseem Malhotra had a direct line of communication to the Health Secretary
By JJ Starky | The Stark Naked Brief | July 19, 2024
We’ve had another mainstream breakthrough.
Yesterday, Dr. Aseem Malhotra appeared on TalkTV to discuss the UK government’s Covid response in light of Baroness Hallett’s report on the first module of the Covid Inquiry.
Commentators were surprised. Most predicted that the Covid Inquiry chair’s report would echo sentiments seen during proceedings, suggesting that lockdowns, despite all credible evidence, were the only viable solutions for dealing with Covid.
So when Hallett’s team concluded that “the imposition of a lockdown should be a measure of last resort… indeed, there are those who would argue that a lockdown should never be imposed,” it almost seemed strange.
During the interview, much like his January 2023 appearance on the BBC where he pivoted from discussing statins to linking Covid vaccines to cardiovascular issues, Malhotra shifted the focus to vaccines.
He covered a lot of detail in quick succession. He argued that the term “vaccine” used for mRNA products is misleading, as they are better described as gene technologies. He cited peer-reviewed reanalysis of Moderna and Pfizer’s clinical trials, which showed an adverse event rate closer to 1-in-800, a figure that outweighed Covid hospitalisation risk. He also mentioned that Israel saw a 25% increase in cardiac events among people aged 16-39 during the vaccine rollout.
But the standout moment came when Malhotra discussed his involvement in a court case in Finland concerning an entrepreneur who was denied entry to a café because he was unvaccinated.
Malhotra revealed that he witnessed a World Health Organisation (WHO) chief scientist testify under oath that by December 2021, the mRNA vaccine offered zero protection against Covid. He then disclosed that he had texted Sajid Javid, the UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, informing him of this testimony, but Javid effectively ignored it.
Former UK Secretary State for Health and Social Care Sajid Javid
It has been difficult to gauge what certain officials knew at what time. However, now we have an indication that some were categorically made aware that their policies were illogical and at direct odds with the evidence-base.
Press releases show that Javid’s department finally revoked the Covid vaccine mandate for health and social care staff on March 15, 2022, months after Malhotra made contact.
In November 2021, a survey of industry leaders estimated that up to 20,000 carers had already quit or been sacked over mandatory jabs. Given the mandate carried on to March the following year, that could be a vast underestimate.
Malhotra, who once advocated for everyone to receive the vaccines before his father reportedly passed away from them, notably said, “This is the biggest corporate crime committed by the drug the industry.”
TalkTV did not post the interview on YouTube as the platform continues to issue strikes to channels discussing the topic. So here it is in full.
Summary of Hallett’s Report on the Covid Inquiry:
- Ad Hoc Intervention: Epidemiologist Professor Mark Woolhouse described lockdown as an ad hoc intervention with no prior planning, guidelines, or clear expectations.
- Lack of Scrutiny on Consequences: The novelty of the lockdown approach meant there was no time to scrutinise its potential side effects, leading to ill-prepared policies with unknown consequences.
- Significant Economic Impact: The report highlights the 25% drop in GDP between February and April 2020 due to lockdowns, representing a major gap in the UK’s assessment of pandemic risk.
- Missing Topics: The report does not discuss the UK government’s evidence that the Test and Trace system had minimal impact on reducing Covid infections despite its high cost.
- Balancing Factors in Health Emergencies: The report emphasises the need for a balanced approach in health emergencies, considering economic impact, social wellbeing, and effects on education, as advocated by former chief medical officer Sally Davies.
- Exclusion of Certain Testimonies: Testimonies from Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty are notably absent, indicating a potential shift from previously dominant perspectives during the pandemic.
- Real Story of the Report: The report suggests that the UK was not prepared for the “wrong pandemic”, but rather that it resorted to an unprecedented policy without a proper evidence base or risk assessment. It advocates that lockdowns should be a measure of last resort, and perhaps never used at all.
Australia uses ‘illegal surveillance’ against pro-Palestinian student protesters: Activist
Press TV – July 20, 2024
Authorities at a top university in Australia have used illegal surveillance methods against pro-Palestinian demonstrators, who have for several months been protesting against Israel’s atrocities in the Gaza Strip.
Students at the University of Melbourne staged encampment protests and sit-in strikes to force the university to cut ties with weapons manufacturers, divest from Israeli firms, and “end its complicity in the genocide in Gaza,” said protest organizer Dana Alshaer.
Alshaer, one of the main organizers of UniMelb for Palestine, told Turkish news agency Anadolu that along with 20 other students, she is now facing “extremely baseless” allegations of misconduct from the university and the threat of expulsion.
“They targeted five main organizers of UniMelb for Palestine, and they also targeted some prominent students who have been very visibly present during rallies and protests on campus,” said Alshaer.
“In the misconduct allegations,” she said, “the university included CCTV footage and Wi-Fi location tracking as evidence … so there’s been a use of surveillance technologies against students.”
Alshaer said the university clarified in 2016 that “their Wi-Fi tracking cannot and will not be used to identify students.”
“However, what we saw in the misconduct allegations and documents that were sent to us is that Wi-Fi tracking has been used to track students.”
Alshaer also raised concern “over the university’s possible and potential use of facial recognition programs.”
She said the university is using these misconduct allegations as a punishment “for students who defied the university’s ties with weapons manufacturers … and challenged the university’s ongoing complicity in the genocide in Gaza.”
She said that that university “is punishing students for standing up against [Israel’s] genocide” in Gaza.
Alshaer said that after their month-long Gaza solidarity encampment protests, they managed to push the university to disclose in June its links with US weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing and BAE Systems, as well as over $15 million in research partnerships and investments with the US Department of Defense.
Despite being targeted by the university, she said, the students are determined to continue their activities for Palestine.
Pro-Palestine encampment protests that began at Columbia University in the United States in April and spread across campuses nationwide and worldwide, have faced harsh police crackdown and led to hundreds of arrests.
The protesters have been calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies that support the regime’s atrocities in the Gaza Strip.
How western Big Tech giants enable Israel’s occupation
By Kit Klarenberg | The Cradle | July 20, 2024
On 10 July, Hebrew newspaper Maariv reported that 46,000 Israeli businesses have been forced to shut down due to the ongoing Gaza war and its devastating effect on the economy. The outlet referred to Israel as a “country in collapse.”
Regular readers of The Cradle will be well aware of the scale of the occupation state’s economic collapse since the Gaza genocide began. Yet, its effect on the precipitous decline of Tel Aviv’s once-thriving tech sector remains underexplored.
Complicity in occupation infrastructure
In mid-June, mainstream news outlets reported that chip giant Intel was halting expansion of a major factory project in Israel, which was slated to pump an extra $15 billion into the occupation entity’s economy.
Intel is just one tech giant whose fortunes have soured since Palestinian freedom fighters breached Gaza’s concentration camp walls on 7 October 2023.
The same fate has been suffered by many tech companies profiteering from illegal Zionist settlement expansion, which also provide infrastructure and resources used to oppress Palestinians and enforce Tel Aviv’s apartheid.
Multiple consumer-facing western companies that not only profit from illegal Jewish settlement expansion but actively provide core infrastructure and resources used to oppress Palestinians and enforce Tel Aviv’s apartheid could now be subject to lawsuits.
This week, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s continued presence in occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible.” Notably, the court opened the door to “reparations” for any illegal actions carried out by Israel and other entities since 1967.
The ICJ’s landmark judgment means the long-term viability of these tech firms’ operations in the occupied territories is moribund – for fear of legal repercussions, if nothing else.
Fittingly, given Germany is currently in the dock at the ICJ for its support and facilitation of the genocide in Gaza, Munich-headquartered tech conglomerate Siemens is among the culprits.
The firm is “focused on automation and digitalization in the manufacturing industries, intelligent infrastructure for buildings and distributed energy systems, smart mobility solutions for rail transport, and medical technology and digital healthcare services.” Its products are profuse throughout the occupation state and its illegal settlements.
Traffic control systems and traffic lights produced by Siemens can be found in areas of the West Bank where Palestinian residents are forbidden from traveling. In 2014, the company’s Israeli subdivision RS Industries won a tender to provide traffic control systems across the Jerusalem Municipality too – East Jerusalem, designated as the capital of the Palestinian state, was occupied in 1967, and falls within the ICJ’s mandate.
Elsewhere, Siemens provides its DDEMU model cars for the Tel Aviv Jerusalem Fast Train and, in 2018, was awarded a $1 billion contract by the entity-owned Israel Railways to supply 330 electric cars as part of Israel’s electrification project, which includes the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem Fast Train (A1).
A highly controversial project that passes through two areas of the West Bank, including privately owned, occupied Palestinian land, it is intended for exclusive use by Israeli Jews.
Don’t Buy Into Occupation (DBIO) states: “Siemens’ activities are of concern, as they are linked to the provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements.”
However, the company’s activities extend far further. Through its Israeli representative, Orad Group, the company provides equipment and technology to the notorious Israel Prison Service (IPS).
In 2004, the Orad Group provided a Siemens technology-based perimeter security system to Gilboa prison — a detention center specifically designated for Palestinian political prisoners. Siemens also supplies the IPS with a sophisticated fire detection and extinguishing system.
Connecting settlements
US brand Motorola is widely recognized for its innovative smartphone devices. However, DBIO has meticulously documented the involvement of Motorola’s Tel Aviv division in settlement expansion over the past decade.
The tech giant has collaborated closely with Israeli occupation forces, the Ministry of Defense, and Zionist settlement councils across the illegally occupied territories. A prime example of this collaboration is the surveillance system “MotoEagle,” designed to monitor settlers on appropriated land, operate within occupation military bases, and oversee the Gaza concentration camp’s separation wall.
Notably, Motorola-produced radar stations have been installed on illegally appropriated private Palestinian land, restricting Palestinian movement in these areas. Furthermore, Motorola supplies the Ministry of Defense’s Zramim System, a smart card operation utilized at Israeli checkpoints to monitor goods transportation.
Palestinian drivers, merchants, and transport companies are compelled to register their personal information in this system, enabling Tel Aviv to monitor all entry and exit points meticulously.
The company is also a preferred contractor for internal security systems in numerous occupation settlements. The Jordan Valley regional council, encompassing more than 20 settlements in the occupied West Bank, employs multiple Motorola products, including command and control systems and surveillance cameras. Additionally, the Population and Immigration Authority in the settlement of Beitar Illit uses Motorola for its security needs.
In 2022, Motorola Solutions secured a contract to provide security cameras and entrance control resources for the Jerusalem Light Rail’s (JLR) entire Green Line. This route links the Gilo settlement in occupied East Jerusalem with the city center and the Ramat Eshkol, Ma’alot Dafna, and French Hill settlements, facilitating connectivity between settler enclaves and supporting settler movement. Consequently, Motorola has been listed in the UN’s database of firms profiting from illegal settlement expansion.
Powering apartheid
Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE), which split from personal computer and printer provider Hewlett Packard in 2015, is one of the most profitable US corporations. However, it is less well-known that HPE supplies and manages much of the technological infrastructure underpinning the occupation state’s apartheid and settler colonialism.
For example, HPE provides “Itanium” servers and maintenance services to Tel Aviv’s Population and Immigration Authority. This computerized Israel’s checkpoint system while storing vast amounts of information on all Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and non-citizen Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem.
HPE directly contracts with the illegal settler municipalities of Modi’in Ilit and Ariel, two of the largest Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank, providing them with a range of services. Additionally, HPE maintains the central server system for the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), placing the company at the core of Tel Aviv’s use of mass incarceration to suppress Palestinian resistance. A 1994 Human Rights Watch report highlighted this by noting:
“The extraction of confessions under duress, and the acceptance into evidence of such confessions by the military courts, form the backbone of Israel’s military justice system.”
Moreover, HPE is the primary provider of the Basel system, an automated biometric access control system employed at Israeli checkpoints and the Gaza apartheid wall. ID cards distributed under Basel are integral to the systematic discrimination against Palestinians.
The checkpoints, by design, segregate and fragment the Occupied Palestinian Territories and its inhabitants, separating workers from their places of employment, students from their schools, and families from each other through electrified fences, watchtowers, and concrete barriers.
Electronic counter intifada
This system is part of a broader state of siege under which Palestinians have lived for decades, significantly intensified by the sealing off of Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli navy, another HPE customer, relies on the company’s IT infrastructure and support services. The siege severely restricts the movement of goods and people in and out of Palestinian territories, aiming explicitly to crush Palestinian resistance.
In 2006, Dov Weisglass, an adviser to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, explained: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” It was hoped hunger pangs through limited caloric intake might encourage Palestinians to reject Hamas or at least force its fighters to temper their resistance efforts. The starvation of Palestinians has only galvanized their support for Hamas and their yearning for freedom from Israeli occupation.
The occupation state failed to crush the Palestinian resistance via Operation Swords of Iron, an effort so catastrophic that even Israeli media has branded it a “total defeat.”
Following Iran’s successful 14 April retaliatory strikes against Israel, Tel Aviv’s reign of impunity appears to be nearing its long-overdue end. It is only a matter of time before major western tech firms like HPE, which facilitated the oppression of Palestinians, will face consequences for their complicity.
This investigation is the second in a series at The Cradle that examines illegal investments by western corporations in the occupied Palestinian territories and/or that assist Israel in implementing its apartheid system. The first investigation can be found here.
Ministry of Truth: Japan’s Communications Ministry Proposes Disinformation Law
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 19, 2024
Only recently, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an influential Washington think tank, outlined how the US and Japan could bolster their cooperation in “combating misinformation.”
In a report, CSIS noted almost in passing that Japan has in general fallen behind in this activity, but also that the group’s representatives had meetings with officials in Tokyo.
Coincidentally or not, news out of Japan this week says that the country’s Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry is looking at introducing new “anti-disinformation measures.” And, a draft report notes that here, “efforts are not sufficient” while transparency and accountability (ostensibly on the part of internet companies) have not been “adequate.”
That would suggest yet another “Ministry of Truth” and “disinformation law” are in the making somewhere in the world, these taking shape as a draft report details possible measures that social media companies would have to adhere to, going forward.
The report, which notably comes from the Interior Ministry (also in charge of Communications), speaks about the necessity of companies behind social platforms setting up “counter-disinformation systems” themselves, that would deal with what is deemed to be “disinformation” by deleting this content, but also, stepping up “screening of advertisers.”
And once again, time seems to be of the essence, because the report states that the reaction would have to be “prompt.”
The next step is for the draft to become subject to some form of public debate, after which the local press says it will become “official;” and the following step will be making it into law.
The situation reads almost like Japan wasn’t aware it had a “misinformation” problem of a magnitude that requires new and stringent rules, but is now just realizing that, and is almost mimicking the tone and language that’s been present around the topic for years already, in many parts of the world.
Thus, there are some vague and broad “definitions” – the content to be promptly dealt with is that which “contains obvious errors, infringes on the rights of others or is illegal (including disinformation).”
The Japanese plan states that once “a request” comes from a governmental agency, “the operators should make a prompt decision and provide notification as to whether they will delete the information or not.”
What about freedom of expression? The report’s authors seem to think this will do the trick: “The draft also requests that the administrative agency disclose information such as the contents of the request.”
One target is repeat offenders accused of peddling “illegal disinformation,” who will have their content deleted and accounts suspended.
UN’s top court says Israel’s presence in Palestinian territories ‘illegal’
Press TV – July 19, 2024
The United Nations’ top court has ruled that Israel’s presence in the 1967-occupied Palestinian territories is “unlawful” and must end.
On Friday, the International Court of Justice said “Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful”, adding that the regime “is under an obligation” to end it “as rapidly as possible.”
Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East al-Quds, areas Palestinians want for a future independent state, in a 1967 war.
The 83-page advisory opinion read out by court President Nawaf Salam outlined a wide list of policies that it said violated international law, including the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east al-Quds.
“Israel is under obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities and to evacuate all settlers from occupied Palestinian territory,” the court said, adding that the regime must “make reparation for damage caused to all natural and legal persons concerned.”
The ruling urged all states and international organizations, including the United Nations, “not to recognize as legal” the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in occupied Palestinian territory.
According to the opinion, the UN and the Security Council “should consider the precise modalities and further action required to bring to an end as rapidly as possible” to the unlawful presence of Israel in the occupied territory.
In February, a record 52 countries presented arguments at the ICJ, known as the World Court, about the legal ramifications of Israel’s actions in the territories.
This case was initiated by a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution in December 2022, before Israel’s October genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
Erwin van Veen, a senior research fellow at the Clingendael think tank in The Hague, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that if the court rules that Israel’s policies in the West Bank and east al-Quds breach international law, it would “isolate Israel further internationally, at least from a legal point of view.”
He noted that such a ruling would “worsen the case for occupation. It removes any kind of legal, political, philosophical underpinning of the Israeli expansion project.”
The case is separate from another ICJ case filed against Israel by South Africa.
South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel in December 2023 over its war on the Gaza Strip. According to South Africa’s application, Israel’s actions in Gaza were “genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.”
The ICJ’s final ruling on the broader South African case may take months if not years to rule, but the court can order urgent measures while weighing its decision.
In January, the ICJ, whose orders are legally binding but lack direct enforcement mechanisms, issued an interim ruling, ordering the occupying regime to take all measures to prevent genocide in Gaza, but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire.
In May, the court ordered Israel to halt its offensive in Rafah after South Africa asked the ICJ to order a halt to the war in Gaza, and in the refugee-packed city in particular.
While Israel ignored the ruling, the Friday opinion could add political pressure over Israel’s nine-month-old war against Gaza.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 38,848 Palestinians and injured 89,459 more. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.
Odessa Leads Violent Resistance to Mobilization as Poll Shows Ukrainians’ Sympathy for Draft Dodgers
© AFP 2023 / SERGEI SUPINSKY
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 18.07.2024
The southwestern Black Sea port city of Odessa is rapidly becoming the center of resistance to Kiev’s increasingly chaotic efforts to scoop up more souls for the war effort. Meanwhile, new polling and statistics released this week reveal that support for draft dodgers is growing across Ukraine, particularly its western regions.
On the night of July 16 alone, a wave of arson attacks targeting the service and personal vehicles of Odessa’s territorial recruitment center employees left five cars burned to a crisp. Similar incidents were reported in Vinnitsa, Rovno, Dnepropetrovsk, and Kharkov the same night. Two more cars were burned in Odessa the next night, with the weekly total approaching a dozen.
The situation has gotten so bad in some cities that servicemen have reportedly resorted to putting “Not Territorial Recruitment Center” signs on their vehicles to avoid being targeted.
The ‘car-nage’ is no trifling matter for its perpetrators. On Tuesday, authorities in Rovno detained a 22-year-old suspect for the suspected arson of two military vehicles. He now faces up to 10 years in prison.
Arson is just one of the tools in the Ukrainian anti-war underground’s toolbelt. This week, unknown individuals attempted to blow up a territorial recruitment center in the town of Busk, Lvov region. Elsewhere in recent weeks, media have reported a stream of sabotage attacks targeting railway, electricity and other infrastructure, physical attacks on recruiters, and daily attempts by fighting-age men to escape Ukraine by crossing the border into neighboring Hungary, Poland, Romania or Moldova.
Ukrainian authorities have attempted to blame the unrest, including arson attacks on recruiters’ cars, on Russia, claiming suspects are being promised money or other rewards by the FSB via instant messengers.
But statistics and a fresh crop of sociological surveys suggest otherwise, indicating that Ukrainians are not only becoming increasingly tired of the conflict with Russia, but hostile to authorities, especially after the passage in May of a controversial law designed to strengthen mobilization, which obliges all men aged 18-60 to carry military ID with them at all times, allows summons to be served, and does not provide for demobilization. Combined with President Zelensky’s move this spring to lower the recruitment age from 27 to 25, the measures have proven a mental Molotov Cocktail encouraging resistance for Ukraine’s fighting age male population.
Punishments for dodging the draft are stiff. Earlier this month, the Kiev District Court in Kharkov sentenced a man with developmental disabilities to three years in prison for refusing to accept a summons after being deemed fit for service by a medical commission. Other men are grabbed in the streets, stuffed into vans, beaten and detained extrajudicially until they submit to conscription, reports have documented.
Ukrainians also have to worry about astronomical levels of corruption in recruitment offices, where bribe-taking has become the norm, rather than the exception. Shortfalls in recruitment rates resulting from wealthier Ukrainians being let off are inevitably made up by the poorer strata of society.
Western Ukraine Leading the Way in Dodging Draft, Stats Show
Unwillingness to fight has paralyzed much of the country, including –perhaps curiously, its most westernmost, anti-Russian, and pro-European regions.
Last week, Ukrainian media revealed, citing official government data, that enlistment offices had filed reports on over 417,000 draft dodgers since February 2022 (316,100 of them between 2023 and 2024), with western Ukraine lighting up bright red on the map among draft evader numbers despite being far more sparsely populated than the country’s center and east.
The figures show, for example, that while draft dodging in eastern, central and southern areas of the country range from as little as 200 people in the Ukrainian-controlled areas of Kherson, 4,500 in Kharkov and 14,300 in Kiev, in western areas, which include regions like Lvov, Zakarpatye, Ivano-Frankovsk, Rovno and Khmelnitsky, they total some 334,200 men.
In a recent report, Kiev-based journalist-turned Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier Artyom Ilyin said that most of the recruits from western regions of Ukraine he’s serving with are highly demoralized, asking why they should fight for a country that “has given them nothing but a machine gun in their entire lives.”
“Arguments about Putin and Moscow authorities do not work,” the journalist lamented, adding that “rumors” about the Kiev elite’s corrupt activities are rampant among the ranks.
Dodging the Draft Isn’t Shameful, Polling Says
Finally, shock polling this week by the Razumkov Center, generally regarded as one of Ukraine’s most respected public policy think tanks, revealed that a whopping 46% of Ukrainians do not consider it “shameful” to dodge mobilization, with 29.1% saying it is shameful, and 24.8% finding it difficult to answer. Among respondents aged 18-29, 50% said it is not shameful.
The same polling also found that 44% of respondents think the time has come peace talks with Russia, with 35% against the idea, and 21% undecided.
Draft Dodging Among Western Ukrainians Shows Local Fence-Sitter Mentality
Western Ukrainians had gotten “used to the fact that there was some kind of war going on in the east after the [2014] coup and before the start of Russia’s special military operation. The attitude was that ‘it doesn’t concern us, let the Donbass sort it out.’ They thought that the Ukrainian army’s terrorizing of the eastern regions would last forever,” Alexander Dudchak, a Ukrainian politics expert and leading researcher at the Institute of CIS Countries, told Sputnik, commenting on the unexpectedly high draft dodger rates among western Ukrainians.
When it came time to enlist for the current conflict, “they still prefer that the people from those [eastern] regions be sent to the front first,” Dudchak said. Today, the observer noted, the recruiters sent to major eastern and southeastern cities like Kharkov, Nikolayev and Odessa to collect fresh recruits often come from Ivano-Frankovsk, Lvov and other western regions.
As for the rising instances of arson and other acts of sabotage targeting recruiters, the military and infrastructure, Dudchak characterized the phenomenon as a fledgling form of popular resistance and guerilla warfare.
“This is the protest of the local population which in principle does not perceive this government as its own, or this military as their defenders. They act as best they can, using whatever capabilities they have,” he explained.
Ukrainian society today in general is in a state of apathy, and “doesn’t see any point any longer to continue the war,” according to the observer.
“Such tendencies are growing stronger. That’s what the sociological services are talking about, although they may also be preparing the population to accept the inevitable and the possibility of negotiations, and ceding territory. But of course, not under the current regime, not under Zelensky, most likely,” Dudchak summed up.
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Trans agenda is ‘normalization of sadism’ – US author
RT | September 23, 2026
The US Democratic Party has embraced a transgender agenda that amounts to “the normalization of sadism,” author A.J. Rice has said, warning that radical trans policies would return if the party is allowed to regain power.
Speaking to RT’s America First host Scotty Nell Hughes about his new book, ‘The Curse of the Bearded Lady: How the Trans Mafia Whacked American Sanity’, Rice argued that activists have gained significant influence in schools, medicine, and corporate America while people who questioned the agenda have faced pressure to stay silent.
The author described the “trans mafia” as the sprawling network of people and institutions that have helped the movement gain influence. He singled out parts of academia, wealthy backers, and corporations, and stated that providers of transition-related treatment also have a financial incentive to keep young people in their care indefinitely.
Rice argued that the consequences of these policies ultimately fall on children who are being drawn toward gender-affirming medical treatments and on girls who are expected to share locker rooms or compete in sports with biological males.
He noted that while voters rejected the Democrats’ approach to gender in 2024, the party, which has been “captured by madness,” has since only doubled down and is seeking what is effectively “the normalization of sadism.” … Full report
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