Last time I suggested on a similar story that there's a disproportionate number of firms in Israel with an explicit focus on subversion, manipulation, spying and malware, seemingly because a large portion of the Israeli population gain a certain expertise in these fields as part of serving in the IDF and working to suppress Palestinians, I got accused of bias because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.
If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal, firms like BlackCore is unfortunately what Israel is becoming known for around the world.
Regardless of what good things other Israeli companies might be doing, it's clear that the Israeli government doesn't have a problem with these malware / spyware companies.
Totals since 2016
Country Total Spending
China $562,676,323
Japan $504,111,211
Liberia $432,968,270
Saudi Arabia $421,890,448
Marshall Islands $382,012,024
South Korea $363,237,700
Bahamas $293,205,139
United Arab Emirates $269,529,107
Qatar $269,260,794
Israel $215,168,616
So for small countries UAE and Qatar(no surprise here, they just gifted 1 billion airplane to Trump)
This excludes US based groups lobbying for Israeli interests, which does not count under official spending by Israel, so it is not an accurate representation of the lobbying effort in the interests of Israel.
That seems like the categorically correct thing to do, for the same reason that (for example) a domestic Korean-American nonprofit that lobbies for Korean interests doesn’t get counted as foreign money or influence.
(Perhaps it should be! But it should be consistent, whatever it is.)
IDF conscripts astroturf on social media all day, and a lot of people do the same for free on behalf of the concept of Israel
Don’t worry about the deflections and karma flagging censorship as consensus, because its not
Jewish and Jewish Israeli people are raised to be afraid of the entire world, and think losing a perception game will result in their eradication perpetuated by everyone around them. This is due to a 1,000 year history of exactly that, so I can empathize, but not at the expense of fiction. I don’t want anyone to hurt them. I want the corrosive traits in their culture to be checked and go away.
Put all those PhD’s that some people are so proud of into other pursuits.
> ... because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.
> If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal ...
Perhaps, but - talk to someone who's done PR work for startups. Ask them what it would take for an Israeli startup working on, say, home bagel-making machines to get the sort of world-wide media attention that any Israeli creep-tech firm can get - for free - by association with a few nefarious deeds.
You pass everything, submarine design firms, intel labs, the Baha'i temple. Every kind of innovation you want: materials science, microchips, to sanctuary from muslim massacres.
Israeli here - I'll try to write this the least political as I can since I on one hand disagree strongly with the government and on the other my experience has been getting antisemstic (yes, not anti-zionist) comments whenever this gets discussed a lot (and likely downvotes but who cares I've been here 10 years and have more fake points than is important anyway).
Israel has several "cores" of technology. The military stuff is shameful (as well as other stuff). It's not just the NSOs (or less infamously the Wiz's/Palo Altos etc).
There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space. I'll spare you the long list of stuff like Mellanox that drives Nvidias in data centers and leave the googling of medtech to you. Lots of neutral stuff too.
> my experience has been getting antisemstic (yes, not anti-zionist) comments whenever this gets discussed a lot
I appreciate your experience. I have no doubt there's indeed been an increase in such comments. I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.
> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.
That's good to know, as I said in another comment, it may be time for those startups to make themselves heard more, not because they have to, but because it is in their interest if they have any expansion plans going forward, given what a poor PR the Israeli state and firms like NSO, BlackCore etc. give the Israeli tech scene.
> it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism
This is definitely made easier by the fact that the arrogance, the endless lawyering, the shady dealings, the greediness, the constant switching between attacking and playing the victim, they all match to a tee the most known historical antisemitic tropes.
It's amazing how Trump and Bibi manage to embody the absolute worst stereotypes of their respective cultures. There's something almost Jungian about it.
> I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.
Yes, they are trying their hardest with their actions to fuel a new way of antisemitism.
Turns out if you are a religious fundamental colony that occupies territory based on the bible, that gives bad rap to the whole religion.
Except Zionism is not religious. It is a modern secular nationalist ideology rooted in ethnicity, shared ancestry, history, culture, and language. Indeed, socialism dominated Zionism for a long time.
Many if not most Israelis are not religious, and traditionally, religious Jews (especially the Orthodox; an extreme case is Neturei Karta) oppose Zionism and the State of Israel as a secular ersatz, believing that they must wait for the Messiah to restore Israel.
Of course, in the last few decades, a faction of Zionists have commandeered the messianic for political purposes, but this is not the origin.
I never understood this: the Palestinian children whose family and limbs are torn from them for Israeli sport are also Semites. It seems like the ultimate erasure to claim "antisemitic" for only Jews.
Personally, I think you're going through a hard time. An individual and a country are different, but people do rely to some extent on the image of a country when judging an individual. I agree with your logic, so I'll give you an upvote
I didn't downvote you. You're Jewish (I stand side by side with Jewish brothers and sisters against Israel), you've expressed disagreements with the Israeli government. We're likely on a similar page then.
However:
> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.
Besides the point. I truly won't touch anything from that Apartheid, gen0cideal state.
c.f. the boycott of South Africa during Apartheid. Same principle.
> Israeli here - I'll try to write this the least political
We are more than two years into full-on genocide and you hesitate to be political? This position reminds me of many Russians who prefer to "stay out of politics" because there are "two sides" to the conflict and it's an uncomfortable topic for them.
No one has ever called me a kike or Christ killer. No one has ever accused me of controlling the media or banks. No one has spray painted a swastika on my house, or my synagogue for that matter.
My nation, the most powerful in the world, puts a menorah in its halls of government every year for Hanukkah. The legislative and judicial branches have Jewish members at the very top level. The head of government has a Jewish son-in-law.
Even online, I see much more pervasive criticism of my nation than yours.
Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
People have criticisms of Israel. They may be fair or unfair. Address them on the merits and leave the rest of us out it. It has nothing to do with Jews qua Jews.
> Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
Yeah this is so detached from reality I have to ask how you arrived at this conclusion and consider reexamining the way you consume information. Both in my own personal impression and according ADL global index USA's antisemitism is a low. Because "Zionists" have pro-Israel bias they will perceive any one who support Israel positively, and no one support Israel more than USA, so they will likely view USA as positive further lessening negtive views.
There's a lot of offensive security talent, but this has nothing to do with Palestinians. Israeli intelligence is very advanced and is why Israel has been able to eliminate the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran.
Not everything in Israel is about or related to Palestinians. The Palestinian bias only exists in circles where every thought regarding Israel is immediately evoking a Palestinian connotation. In reality, most Israelis never interact with Palestinians.
To suggest that a sector of Israeli startups exists on the experience of people "suppressing Palestinians" is definitely biased, absurd, and is a slippery slope.
> There's a lot of offensive security talent, but this has nothing to do with Palestinians. Israeli intelligence is very advanced and is why Israel has been able to eliminate the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran.
Not everything in Israel is about or related to Palestinians.
I would suggest to you that the focus on Iran is because Iran is perceived as being an obstacle to Israeli hegemony in the region and thus undisputed Israeli rule over Palestinian territory.
Iran also justifies its actions in terms of standing up for Palestinians.
Well that and the fact that Iran is (was) the other peer military adversary in the region, with forces deployed on Israel's border, and with a longstanding declared intent of eradicating Israel.
This could mean anything from a couple of ghettos to all of the modern state of Israel depending on what you think Palestinian territory is or should be.
If you take the approach that all of it is Palestinian territory and the state of Israel shouldn't exist, then yeah, sure? that's different from the assertion that all of the intelligence related businesses in Israel are founded because of direct experience in conflict with the Palestinian people.
Iran is not strictly "an obstacle" to Israeli hegemony. Its ideology since the 1970s clearly states the destruction of Israel as its goal. It clashed with Israel over Iran's desire to set up a Shia vassal state in Lebanon and it killed Jews and Israelis all over the world through terror (e.g. AMIA bombing in Argentina)
The Palestinians are merely a tool for Iran to gain influence, Hezbollah and Shias in Iraq were far more important for them historically
Selling spyware and 0days is a significant industry in Israel [1]. This includes Pegasus [2][3]. Countries around the world pay Israeli companies to hack the phones of politicians, opposition leaders, union leaders, journalists and basically anyone they don't like. This is actually a common structure for intelligence agencies who are often restricted from spying domestically or on citizens. They simply farm that out to the intelligence agencies of other countries or these spyware companies. Israel has become kind of an extrajudicial cheat code. Saudi Arabia has been a big user [4]. All of this is just objective fact.
No one was officially blamed for Stuxnet years ago but it's widely believed that the US and Israel were responsible [5]. And of course we had the pager operation [6]. If anyone else had done the same, they'd be labelled as terrorists and be under economic and diplomatic sanctions.
As for BlackCore, I guess it's part of the wider story of Israel's extensive influence campaign on foreign elections and politicians. We've seen this get really overt. For example, Thomas Massie's primary was the most expensive in history when AIPAC and AIPAC affiliates spent a combined ~$35M. I actually think it's this extreme and overt because Israel has lost the PR fight and are increasingly desperate.
Another less-talked about example was the character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, which was essentiallya Zionist takeover of the Labor Party and, lo and behold, a few years later we're locking up grandmothers indefinitely for holding up signs that say "Palestine Action" [7].
And of course we have the Jeffrey Epstein of it all where it's really obvious that Epstein was an Israeli access agent and likely Ghislaine Maxwell was as well, particularly when you look at the entire history of Robert Maxwell from WW2 to arming Jewish militias pre-1948 and the IDF after that until finally "falling off" his own yacht.
Oh and there are claims that some unidentified hacker breached the FBI's systems in 2023 and accessed files related to Jeffrey Epstein. There are claims that 500TB was destroyed and 400TB of that was recovered [8]. That's so weird.
It's depressing to me how many people support a state that is functionally the Nazi Germany of our times. Like go ahead and find me the functional distinction between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. But also how impervious Western politicians are to public opinion on this issue, which has drastically switched in the last few years. Opposition movements are suppressed with brutal violence.
This is just cringe conspiracy stuff. Selling CNE tooling is a business (I don't know how big you want to call it) all over the world. Israel is not a global headquarters for it.
The Z3 was a German electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse in 1938, and completed in 1941. It was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. [c] Wikipedia
Apart from other mentions, they also did cutting edge research on nuclear power and weapons. Some of the scientists understood how massive an undertaking that was, however the political leadership apparently did not, or the world would look different today.
Most of that stuff was just torture for the sake of cruelty. It lacked the scientific rigor needed to classify it as even remotely close to research, so most of the "data" collected is completely worthless.
Turns out you can't do proper experiments when the subjects are also being starved and worked to death, when you lack a proper control group, or when you interpret all the results from a heavily racist perspective. And that doesn't even touch the completely nonsensical hypotheses yet.
They also committed genocide as well. Surprising that even after Israeli human rights organizations acknowledge it, it still remains stuck in the mind of capitalists to support profit at any cost.
This person is either willfully ignorant, or an actual fascist attempting to blur the line.
This exact line of thought has been used for decades to subvert the actual history of the Nazi party and their co-operation with corporations, undermining of labor unions, assault on socialist groups via their brown shirts, etc.
This is a fascist talking point. It doesn't matter where the user possibly derived it from.
The "National Socialist" party was explicitly anti-socialist. Their talking points explicitly refuted class boundaries, and enforced "cultural" boundaries, to create the scapegoat of the Jews as the primary cause for societal turmoil.
Do not take this user seriously. Do not allow yourself to get into the weeds, they will not take any real discussion seriously. They are acting in bad faith.
Apart from the Socialist roots of the Nazi party (hence the name) and Fascism (Mussolini) , they have practiced a state planned economy which was far closer to Stalin's Soviet Union than to the United States
This doesn't mean the Nazis were not very much anti-communist, but subscribing Nazism to Capitalism is an extremely flat ideology-driven version of history
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” - Jean-Paul Sartre
I don't think you can be authoritarian and socialist. The structures of strict hierarchy necessary to be authoritarian necessarily oppose the egalitarian goals of socialism.
Many, many socialists condemn the Soviets, and even fought against them. Very few socialists believe that forcing the populace at gunpoint to be communist is a good plan.
The libertarian / Randite strand of American hyper-capitalist ideology is ascendant and somewhat hegemonic in North American political education in schools and the like and it defines as "socialist" anything which involves "the government." To the point that we have people complaining in earnest that things Trump is doing that don't fit their Milton Friedman vibes are "socialist."
It deliberately strips the "social" part out of the ideological framing and replaces it with the state.
Which is also helped by the fact that "actual existing socialism" in the USSR etc did the same.
Also doesn't help that there has been effectively no organized socialist political presence in American politics (apart from the DSA pushing on the Democrats left wing, and Sanders I guess). This means that American politics reduces completely to a false "liberal" ("left" somehow) vs "conservative" dichotomy, both labels which don't describe anything about what they are anymore.
I've watched so many Americans get squirrely online when I've tried to draw a line on my own political viewpoint; no, I'm not liberal, I'm a socialist. This breaks their brains. Does not compute. Increasingly unfortunately here in Canada as well, partially as the NDP's unfortunate willingness to prop up Trudeau's Liberals when they were a minority.
I sometimes feel like we just need new, untainted, words.
Anyone can name themselves anything.
Would you say that the Democratic Republic of the Congo is indeed democratic?
I am going to guess not.
'Socialism' was rather popular in the early part of the 20th century and National Socialism was a right wing response to that, hence the marketing name.
It was very much corporatist/pro capitalist in its policies and suppressed anything remotely socialist within its borders.
Interesting question. Trotsky argued that the Nazis were essentially a middle-class phenomena, the forces of capital and labour being weakened to naught by the first world war; once the Nazis achieved power, they had to decide between them, that choice being made on the night of the long knives and the liquidation of the brownshirts.
National Socialists were capitalists.. You known that right? Not everything with socialsts in the name begets communism, they served Industry and Capital to the fullest and sought to crush any leftist cause.
Hitler explicitly adopted socialist & anti-capitalist rhetoric early on had heavy state control of industry and price controls in place.
Political extremist always pander to control the people who will listen to them, selling lies at worst or at best hope that depends on a lack of understanding of human behavior and economics to follow things to their natural conclusions. Nazis, Socialists, Marxists, and Communists are all authoritarian extremist who share the same values.
Remilk is an Israeli food-tech startup using yeasts to produce milk proteins. Frankly I find your comment rather odd, why should a startup be more loud because other people are biased? Diplomacy is the job of the state. We have innovative index on which Israel does well and large number of unicorn per capita.
> why should a startup be more loud because other people are biased? Diplomacy is the job of the state.
I agree with you that it is the job of the state to do diplomacy, I would argue that the Israeli state has done an extremely poor job at that, so it may be left to some of its greener industry to pick up the slack, unfortunately.
Not because they 'have to' but because they would want to if they want to expand abroad and not get overshadowed by the bad PR the Israeli state is so good at putting out.
I disagree with you that 'other people are biased'.
One of the reasons Israeli soft power is so weak at the moment is precisely because its diplomats always insist everyone is just simply biased against Israel, often invoking some thousands year old hatred of its people etc. rather than for one second introspecting on the fact that the actions of the state may indeed have something to do with that perceived bias.
It should indeed be the job of Israeli diplomats to work and promote Israel in the best light possible
> I got accused of bias because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.
Meddling with foreign affairs is a well established practice, and that's just life.
Israeli do that, North Koreans do that, Russians do that, Americans do that (think former CIA/FBI people, think Palantir etc).
Highlighting that specific nation (Israel) for those practices while ignoring all other positive contributions (dumb example since we're on HN: Graviton processors came from Annapurna labs, an israeli company, and they gave the definitive push for ARM in the datacenter by proving it's effectively feasible and cost-effective) is borderline antisemitic.
So yeah, you got called out and rightfully so (and you should really review your biases).
Russians do not do that. It is contrary to our culture.
There was a lord (knyaz) in old times who even warned enemies that he is going to attack them. Of course it is not as advantageous as a covert approach. But it is very Russian.
When you hear otherwise it is those other entities targeting you, that's all.
Russia’s involvement with foreign assets is pretty well-documented. Maybe not on a hysterical level where someone believes Russian government stole elections in USA, but they definitely meddled and continue to meddle in affairs of neighbouring countries and EU, both through information campaigns and via direct actions and influence.
Talking about stuff from early Middle Ages (князи), it has zero relevance to modern culture. Russia is anything but isolationist as it should be clear since 2014/2022.
Games three-letter agencies play are the same everywhere and have zero relation to the culture. 2016 meddling did happen of course. It was also negligible and led to a huge overreaction, extremely similar to the US meddling in Russian elections in 1996 where Clinton admin indirectly prevented Nemtsov from running by supporting unpopular Yeltsin (and NGOs did a ton of "work" which barely affected anything, the main reason Yeltsin won was Filatov running the campaign, oversized spending and collusion with the media aka Xerox affair, and the "admin resource" he had).
False trichotomy
4. Small amount of people make sure to look and echo everything that paint Israel in bad light and this work, we know this work because this entire post is about a company (small amount of people) influencing New York and Scotland votes.
Seeing as billions upon billions of dollars goes into Israel's lobbying operations (including countless more from non-affiliated but pro-Israeli groups), that must be the least successful industry ever to be outclassed by a small number of random guys online.
In addition to this malware, which comes from an Israeli company and is used for the purpose of subverting democratic elections in foreign countries (we don't really know who mandated these interventions, but the target, John Swinney and fellow ministers, have been vocal in their criticism of the Israeli government's actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and have imposed a form of sanctions on the Israel Defense Forces by withholding state grants to arms firms that supply the IDF and freezing support for exports to Israel), they have also infiltrated some countries like the UK and US with very powerful pro-Israel lobbies acting behind the curtain by directly contacting prominent politicians.
In the UK, the Israeli company Elbit Systems produces arms for Israel through its British subsidiary, which holds major Ministry of Defence contracts including the Watchkeeper drone programme (worth over £800 million) and the Jupiter training system (around £130 million) – sources: UK Companies House and MoD contract notices. People protesting for Palestinians at Elbit sites have been arrested: between 2020 and June 2024, over 140 arrests were made at more than 50 actions by Palestine Action, but police and court records show that no terrorism charges were filed, and the High Court rejected a legal challenge against policing of these protests in May 2024. Two main lobbies cover both major parties in the UK: Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel.
In the US, a similar two‑party structure exists but with far greater financial power. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its super PAC spent over $4.5 million in the 2023–2024 election cycle, mostly to defeat progressive Democrats critical of Israel, including successfully spending $14.5 million to unseat Congressman Jamaal Bowman (source: Federal Election Commission filings). The Democratic Majority for Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition mirror the UK's Labour and Conservative lobby groups, while the US provides Israel with roughly $3.8 billion in annual military aid – a sharp contrast to the UK's limited sanctions on the IDF. Unlike the UK, no US protester has been arrested under terrorism laws for actions against arms companies supplying Israel.
In practice, Israel and Russia do similar things:
they affect or subvert foreign elections by manipulating information and social media, and they directly influence politics via foundations, think tanks, and by cultivating politicians and influencers. For Russia, this includes organisations like the Russian House in Washington and sympathetic think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation – though the Heritage Foundation is American, Russian state media and proxies have actively courted its positions.
Russia has also influenced figures like Tucker Carlson, who repeatedly echoes Kremlin talking points, and JD Vance, who has opposed military aid to Ukraine; no public evidence proves formal recruitment, but both have amplified narratives favourable to Moscow and JD Vance made a powerful endorsement of Orban, a corrupted pro-russian statesman, in the past election in Hungary.
I confused BlackCore with Black Cube, a different Israeli private oppo research and dirty tricks group of former intelligence agents. They gained attention for their dirty campaigns against Harvey Weinstein's accusers, NSOs critics and Hungarian opposition.
If you all would shut your hateful traps for a year or so, we might be able to have a productive discussion about what a horror show the Israeli government has become. But we can’t because you all have to pop up out of gopher holes thinking we are antisemitic too and the whole process starts over again because this sort of useful idiot provides cover to the defenders of these war crimes.
Yes, actually. The Israeli state is not synonymous with Judaism, so let's not promote the classic "All Jewish bankers are greedy and evil" antisemitic trope.
Blackrock and Blackstone are of course evil in the same ways as all other major investment firms, but if you believe the Jewish identity of some of their founders has anything to do with that or if they have anything to do with the Palestinian genocide you better provide proof.
I predict that this will be flagged very soon. I would love for HN to publish some data on likes/flags, even anonymous IDs with some infos like account age and number of posts. Sure someome will argue things here get flagged cause they are political, but I don't buy that.
We've had discussions about this sort of stuff before.
As an Israeli (note the article exposing them is Israeli too) I was not aware until I saw this and I definitely intend to protest/organize about this (though to be fair I've been protesting about other stuff in the past and the climate here sucks).
> Are you saying that this isn't political? It's literally about politics.
Sure it's about politics, but it's also about tech. The intersection of politics and tech is a fascinating area, of great interest to many folks on HN, and probably within HN's charter.
I think that merely touching on politics should not be grounds for flagging a submission, even when the specifics are highly controversial (as in this case).
I do not disagree that there is a political aspect to this article. Todays news on Fable and Mythos are political too. HN has plenty of political articles, yet some are more flagged than others.
I claim there might be a pattern of supression. Are arguing against my main point that it would be good to have more transparency so I can support or refute my claim?
It’s sort of a classic in any place where more than a couple of people gather to talk: “political” as a pejorative doesn’t mean “about politics”, it means “I don’t like the direction this is heading”. The obvious example is the American Right telling athletes to “stick to sports” but then howling and crying when an athlete gets blowback for uttering some loony right wing view.
Do you want to count how many times words like nazi, genocide, terrorists appears in comments section about Anthropic vs here? Do you see the difference?
"Lecornu said the French government had asked Israel for explanations of BlackCore's actions, and also for help in trying to find out who may have been behind the smear campaign."
Here in Scotland it seems the desinfo campaign targeted mostly the SNP and Swinney. I guess it's hard to know how effective it was but his party lost 6 seats in last month's elections.
I'm surprised that they dare to target NYC. I think NSO Group restricted Pegasus so that no US adversary would be retained as a client and the US would not be targeted.
I am an Israeli and though I dislike this certain brand of companies and would never work in one, I am not sure this is strictly bad.
I assume these were hired by a local candidate (unless someone can think who has a deep interest in French municipal elections)
Currently the only actors who use fake social accounts for election manipulation are the Russians, Chinese, Iran and Qatar.
The west is completely powerless in either fighting back, regulating social networks or coming up with a technological solution.
As democracies are being undermined by foreign influence, from Brexit, to the US elections, I'd rather local parties would have access to these tools than the alternative, and that would be only done using private companies.
Of course the better alternative is getting rid of fake accounts and making social media into a unicorn and bunnies hate-free zone, don't think we are headed there though
> unless someone can think who has a deep interest in French municipal elections
The State of Israel? They are paranoid about their international standing. (Really, just paranoid in general, to an absurd and pathological degree, though for understandable reasons.)
That's doubtful, I don't think Israel has the resources to spend huge sums of money to invest in manipulating French municipal elections.. That's absurd
You guessed wrong. As far as I know, there's no such lobby, and I find your suggestion of its existence to be antisemitic. But the pro Israel lobby is quite open and public. Aipac's spending, for example, is public knowledge, and you can look it up for yourself.
Ahh... I see some cracks in the mirror, but the posts were tidied away. So, please dear people, the EU is a happy little family, and we're all friends. There are no burning cars or discontent here. Move along. We're all frieds! ;)
Another entry in the 'Black' villain line, along with BlackStone, BlackRock, BlackWater etc ... really makes you think the world is run by a thinly veiled cult of evil comic style villains.
I'm pretty sure religious fundamentalists from all beliefs would love to get rid of Eurovision song contest. Excluding Israeli citizens from it hurts their moderates more than it hurts the hardliners.
Ask Donald Epstein how they chose locations for Miss Universe during cold war times. They'd never exclude the countries they wanted to ideologically reform.
It's disturbing to think that there are people getting paid huge amounts of money by governments, using taxpayer money to f around with politics of other countries... Meanwhile I've been trying to raise a $100K seed round for my startup which I've been working on for 14 years during nights and weekends... and I never even made it the interview phase of a tech incubator. WTF is wrong with people?
Is the USA finally doing something about foreign lobbyists here? Trump is like the ultimate tool here for foreigners to gain influence, no matter the country. Yuri explained this already in the 1980s (!!!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9apDnRRSOCk (it's the KGB view, so biased too, of course, but if you extend it, then also connect it to Epstein, you have basically undermined democracy effectively; a shame Yuri is dead, he would have had a field day with "analysing" Putin).
Last time I suggested on a similar story that there's a disproportionate number of firms in Israel with an explicit focus on subversion, manipulation, spying and malware, seemingly because a large portion of the Israeli population gain a certain expertise in these fields as part of serving in the IDF and working to suppress Palestinians, I got accused of bias because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.
If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal, firms like BlackCore is unfortunately what Israel is becoming known for around the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
Regardless of what good things other Israeli companies might be doing, it's clear that the Israeli government doesn't have a problem with these malware / spyware companies.
They actively export it. See Pegasus
There are dozens of firms around the world, including several in the US, doing exactly the same thing.
Which government are you comparing to?
Any other small country?
You rarely read about Finland spying on other nations, or trying to influence their politics.
There is the AIPAC, I challenge you to find anything similar from any other country.
From https://www.opensecrets.org/
Totals since 2016 Country Total Spending China $562,676,323 Japan $504,111,211 Liberia $432,968,270 Saudi Arabia $421,890,448 Marshall Islands $382,012,024 South Korea $363,237,700 Bahamas $293,205,139 United Arab Emirates $269,529,107 Qatar $269,260,794 Israel $215,168,616
So for small countries UAE and Qatar(no surprise here, they just gifted 1 billion airplane to Trump)
This excludes US based groups lobbying for Israeli interests, which does not count under official spending by Israel, so it is not an accurate representation of the lobbying effort in the interests of Israel.
That seems like the categorically correct thing to do, for the same reason that (for example) a domestic Korean-American nonprofit that lobbies for Korean interests doesn’t get counted as foreign money or influence.
(Perhaps it should be! But it should be consistent, whatever it is.)
IDF conscripts astroturf on social media all day, and a lot of people do the same for free on behalf of the concept of Israel
Don’t worry about the deflections and karma flagging censorship as consensus, because its not
Jewish and Jewish Israeli people are raised to be afraid of the entire world, and think losing a perception game will result in their eradication perpetuated by everyone around them. This is due to a 1,000 year history of exactly that, so I can empathize, but not at the expense of fiction. I don’t want anyone to hurt them. I want the corrosive traits in their culture to be checked and go away.
Put all those PhD’s that some people are so proud of into other pursuits.
there's not much controversy that would pull media attention in green tech or medical research
> ... because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.
> If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal ...
Perhaps, but - talk to someone who's done PR work for startups. Ask them what it would take for an Israeli startup working on, say, home bagel-making machines to get the sort of world-wide media attention that any Israeli creep-tech firm can get - for free - by association with a few nefarious deeds.
Just take a car drive into Haifa. That tells you all you need to know about just how much innovation is happening in Israel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE4JOn54rWA
You pass everything, submarine design firms, intel labs, the Baha'i temple. Every kind of innovation you want: materials science, microchips, to sanctuary from muslim massacres.
"sanctuary from muslim massacres" I hope you at least get paid to support genocide. Doing it for free would somehow be worse.
yeah as if anyone is actually gonna do that...
Israeli here - I'll try to write this the least political as I can since I on one hand disagree strongly with the government and on the other my experience has been getting antisemstic (yes, not anti-zionist) comments whenever this gets discussed a lot (and likely downvotes but who cares I've been here 10 years and have more fake points than is important anyway).
Israel has several "cores" of technology. The military stuff is shameful (as well as other stuff). It's not just the NSOs (or less infamously the Wiz's/Palo Altos etc).
There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space. I'll spare you the long list of stuff like Mellanox that drives Nvidias in data centers and leave the googling of medtech to you. Lots of neutral stuff too.
> my experience has been getting antisemstic (yes, not anti-zionist) comments whenever this gets discussed a lot
I appreciate your experience. I have no doubt there's indeed been an increase in such comments. I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.
> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.
That's good to know, as I said in another comment, it may be time for those startups to make themselves heard more, not because they have to, but because it is in their interest if they have any expansion plans going forward, given what a poor PR the Israeli state and firms like NSO, BlackCore etc. give the Israeli tech scene.
> it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism
This is definitely made easier by the fact that the arrogance, the endless lawyering, the shady dealings, the greediness, the constant switching between attacking and playing the victim, they all match to a tee the most known historical antisemitic tropes.
It's amazing how Trump and Bibi manage to embody the absolute worst stereotypes of their respective cultures. There's something almost Jungian about it.
> I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.
Yes, they are trying their hardest with their actions to fuel a new way of antisemitism.
Turns out if you are a religious fundamental colony that occupies territory based on the bible, that gives bad rap to the whole religion.
Except Zionism is not religious. It is a modern secular nationalist ideology rooted in ethnicity, shared ancestry, history, culture, and language. Indeed, socialism dominated Zionism for a long time.
Many if not most Israelis are not religious, and traditionally, religious Jews (especially the Orthodox; an extreme case is Neturei Karta) oppose Zionism and the State of Israel as a secular ersatz, believing that they must wait for the Messiah to restore Israel.
Of course, in the last few decades, a faction of Zionists have commandeered the messianic for political purposes, but this is not the origin.
I never understood this: the Palestinian children whose family and limbs are torn from them for Israeli sport are also Semites. It seems like the ultimate erasure to claim "antisemitic" for only Jews.
What is shameful about the "military stuff"? Isn't that's what is protecting you from your neighbors and their patron?
Personally, I think you're going through a hard time. An individual and a country are different, but people do rely to some extent on the image of a country when judging an individual. I agree with your logic, so I'll give you an upvote
I didn't downvote you. You're Jewish (I stand side by side with Jewish brothers and sisters against Israel), you've expressed disagreements with the Israeli government. We're likely on a similar page then.
However:
> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.
Besides the point. I truly won't touch anything from that Apartheid, gen0cideal state.
c.f. the boycott of South Africa during Apartheid. Same principle.
Your PM Netanyahu is a disaster. Your religious hardliners seem to love him.
Even someone neutral to sympathetic can’t help but look on in disgust at your PM and his supporters.
Edit: The point being that it tarnishes everything that Israel does, and makes fault-finding way too easy.
Let's not pin it all on Netanyuhu, he is a good representation of his society.
As is Trump for Americans.
Touche
It is an indisputable fact that when polled, most Israelis openly support genocide.
> Israeli here - I'll try to write this the least political
We are more than two years into full-on genocide and you hesitate to be political? This position reminds me of many Russians who prefer to "stay out of politics" because there are "two sides" to the conflict and it's an uncomfortable topic for them.
No one has ever called me a kike or Christ killer. No one has ever accused me of controlling the media or banks. No one has spray painted a swastika on my house, or my synagogue for that matter.
My nation, the most powerful in the world, puts a menorah in its halls of government every year for Hanukkah. The legislative and judicial branches have Jewish members at the very top level. The head of government has a Jewish son-in-law.
Even online, I see much more pervasive criticism of my nation than yours.
Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
People have criticisms of Israel. They may be fair or unfair. Address them on the merits and leave the rest of us out it. It has nothing to do with Jews qua Jews.
> My nation, the most powerful in the world,
USA?
> Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
Yeah this is so detached from reality I have to ask how you arrived at this conclusion and consider reexamining the way you consume information. Both in my own personal impression and according ADL global index USA's antisemitism is a low. Because "Zionists" have pro-Israel bias they will perceive any one who support Israel positively, and no one support Israel more than USA, so they will likely view USA as positive further lessening negtive views.
There's a lot of offensive security talent, but this has nothing to do with Palestinians. Israeli intelligence is very advanced and is why Israel has been able to eliminate the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran.
Not everything in Israel is about or related to Palestinians. The Palestinian bias only exists in circles where every thought regarding Israel is immediately evoking a Palestinian connotation. In reality, most Israelis never interact with Palestinians.
To suggest that a sector of Israeli startups exists on the experience of people "suppressing Palestinians" is definitely biased, absurd, and is a slippery slope.
> There's a lot of offensive security talent, but this has nothing to do with Palestinians. Israeli intelligence is very advanced and is why Israel has been able to eliminate the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran. Not everything in Israel is about or related to Palestinians.
I would suggest to you that the focus on Iran is because Iran is perceived as being an obstacle to Israeli hegemony in the region and thus undisputed Israeli rule over Palestinian territory.
Iran also justifies its actions in terms of standing up for Palestinians.
So yes, it's very much related.
Well that and the fact that Iran is (was) the other peer military adversary in the region, with forces deployed on Israel's border, and with a longstanding declared intent of eradicating Israel.
> over Palestinian territory
This could mean anything from a couple of ghettos to all of the modern state of Israel depending on what you think Palestinian territory is or should be.
If you take the approach that all of it is Palestinian territory and the state of Israel shouldn't exist, then yeah, sure? that's different from the assertion that all of the intelligence related businesses in Israel are founded because of direct experience in conflict with the Palestinian people.
> If you take the approach that all of it is Palestinian territory and the state of Israel shouldn't exist, then yeah, sure?
You know there's such a thing as internationally recognized Palestinian territory occupied by Israel, right?
Start with that, instead of deploying the 'do you want Israel to not exist' deflection tactic.
Iran is not strictly "an obstacle" to Israeli hegemony. Its ideology since the 1970s clearly states the destruction of Israel as its goal. It clashed with Israel over Iran's desire to set up a Shia vassal state in Lebanon and it killed Jews and Israelis all over the world through terror (e.g. AMIA bombing in Argentina)
The Palestinians are merely a tool for Iran to gain influence, Hezbollah and Shias in Iraq were far more important for them historically
Everything is israel is and always will be related to palestinians in some sense because it's being done on their land
Selling spyware and 0days is a significant industry in Israel [1]. This includes Pegasus [2][3]. Countries around the world pay Israeli companies to hack the phones of politicians, opposition leaders, union leaders, journalists and basically anyone they don't like. This is actually a common structure for intelligence agencies who are often restricted from spying domestically or on citizens. They simply farm that out to the intelligence agencies of other countries or these spyware companies. Israel has become kind of an extrajudicial cheat code. Saudi Arabia has been a big user [4]. All of this is just objective fact.
No one was officially blamed for Stuxnet years ago but it's widely believed that the US and Israel were responsible [5]. And of course we had the pager operation [6]. If anyone else had done the same, they'd be labelled as terrorists and be under economic and diplomatic sanctions.
As for BlackCore, I guess it's part of the wider story of Israel's extensive influence campaign on foreign elections and politicians. We've seen this get really overt. For example, Thomas Massie's primary was the most expensive in history when AIPAC and AIPAC affiliates spent a combined ~$35M. I actually think it's this extreme and overt because Israel has lost the PR fight and are increasingly desperate.
Another less-talked about example was the character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, which was essentiallya Zionist takeover of the Labor Party and, lo and behold, a few years later we're locking up grandmothers indefinitely for holding up signs that say "Palestine Action" [7].
And of course we have the Jeffrey Epstein of it all where it's really obvious that Epstein was an Israeli access agent and likely Ghislaine Maxwell was as well, particularly when you look at the entire history of Robert Maxwell from WW2 to arming Jewish militias pre-1948 and the IDF after that until finally "falling off" his own yacht.
Oh and there are claims that some unidentified hacker breached the FBI's systems in 2023 and accessed files related to Jeffrey Epstein. There are claims that 500TB was destroyed and 400TB of that was recovered [8]. That's so weird.
It's depressing to me how many people support a state that is functionally the Nazi Germany of our times. Like go ahead and find me the functional distinction between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. But also how impervious Western politicians are to public opinion on this issue, which has drastically switched in the last few years. Opposition movements are suppressed with brutal violence.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfOgm1IcBd0
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/8/what-you-need-to-kno...
[4]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/07/the-...
[5]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-12633240
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...
[7]: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250807-uk-pensioner-...
[8]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47184683
This is just cringe conspiracy stuff. Selling CNE tooling is a business (I don't know how big you want to call it) all over the world. Israel is not a global headquarters for it.
The Nazis did a ton of cutting edge research too.
Did they? Like, which exactly?
Rockets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
He later worked at NASA.
Don't say that he's hypocritical
Say rather that he's apolitical
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun
This is fantastic. This is what I'm going to say next time I work on military tech.
It's from the old Tom Lehrer song, "Wernher von Braun."
I've never seen someone take it as a suggestion before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
The Z3 was a German electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse in 1938, and completed in 1941. It was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. [c] Wikipedia
Apart from other mentions, they also did cutting edge research on nuclear power and weapons. Some of the scientists understood how massive an undertaking that was, however the political leadership apparently did not, or the world would look different today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation
Hypothermia research, sleep deprivation research, etc. really cruel stuff.
Most of that stuff was just torture for the sake of cruelty. It lacked the scientific rigor needed to classify it as even remotely close to research, so most of the "data" collected is completely worthless.
Turns out you can't do proper experiments when the subjects are also being starved and worked to death, when you lack a proper control group, or when you interpret all the results from a heavily racist perspective. And that doesn't even touch the completely nonsensical hypotheses yet.
Cant believe people like you get to vote
They also committed genocide as well. Surprising that even after Israeli human rights organizations acknowledge it, it still remains stuck in the mind of capitalists to support profit at any cost.
What has national socialism got to do with capitalists?
This person is either willfully ignorant, or an actual fascist attempting to blur the line.
This exact line of thought has been used for decades to subvert the actual history of the Nazi party and their co-operation with corporations, undermining of labor unions, assault on socialist groups via their brown shirts, etc.
This is a fascist talking point. It doesn't matter where the user possibly derived it from.
The "National Socialist" party was explicitly anti-socialist. Their talking points explicitly refuted class boundaries, and enforced "cultural" boundaries, to create the scapegoat of the Jews as the primary cause for societal turmoil.
Do not take this user seriously. Do not allow yourself to get into the weeds, they will not take any real discussion seriously. They are acting in bad faith.
Apart from the Socialist roots of the Nazi party (hence the name) and Fascism (Mussolini) , they have practiced a state planned economy which was far closer to Stalin's Soviet Union than to the United States
This doesn't mean the Nazis were not very much anti-communist, but subscribing Nazism to Capitalism is an extremely flat ideology-driven version of history
That is a lot of assumptions and personal attacks based on a question that you haven't answered.
The soviets also actively clamped down on unions, were they not socialists either?
Edit: I'll let someone else make the point for me:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4kg34a/comme...
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” - Jean-Paul Sartre
Are you calling me an anti Semite? Or am I missing the point you are making entirely?
I don't think you can be authoritarian and socialist. The structures of strict hierarchy necessary to be authoritarian necessarily oppose the egalitarian goals of socialism.
Many, many socialists condemn the Soviets, and even fought against them. Very few socialists believe that forcing the populace at gunpoint to be communist is a good plan.
The libertarian / Randite strand of American hyper-capitalist ideology is ascendant and somewhat hegemonic in North American political education in schools and the like and it defines as "socialist" anything which involves "the government." To the point that we have people complaining in earnest that things Trump is doing that don't fit their Milton Friedman vibes are "socialist."
It deliberately strips the "social" part out of the ideological framing and replaces it with the state.
Which is also helped by the fact that "actual existing socialism" in the USSR etc did the same.
Also doesn't help that there has been effectively no organized socialist political presence in American politics (apart from the DSA pushing on the Democrats left wing, and Sanders I guess). This means that American politics reduces completely to a false "liberal" ("left" somehow) vs "conservative" dichotomy, both labels which don't describe anything about what they are anymore.
I've watched so many Americans get squirrely online when I've tried to draw a line on my own political viewpoint; no, I'm not liberal, I'm a socialist. This breaks their brains. Does not compute. Increasingly unfortunately here in Canada as well, partially as the NDP's unfortunate willingness to prop up Trudeau's Liberals when they were a minority.
I sometimes feel like we just need new, untainted, words.
Anyone can name themselves anything. Would you say that the Democratic Republic of the Congo is indeed democratic? I am going to guess not.
'Socialism' was rather popular in the early part of the 20th century and National Socialism was a right wing response to that, hence the marketing name.
It was very much corporatist/pro capitalist in its policies and suppressed anything remotely socialist within its borders.
But I suspect you knew that.
Interesting question. Trotsky argued that the Nazis were essentially a middle-class phenomena, the forces of capital and labour being weakened to naught by the first world war; once the Nazis achieved power, they had to decide between them, that choice being made on the night of the long knives and the liquidation of the brownshirts.
National Socialists were capitalists.. You known that right? Not everything with socialsts in the name begets communism, they served Industry and Capital to the fullest and sought to crush any leftist cause.
https://jacobin.com/2022/08/nazi-germany-national-socialism-...
Hitler explicitly adopted socialist & anti-capitalist rhetoric early on had heavy state control of industry and price controls in place.
Political extremist always pander to control the people who will listen to them, selling lies at worst or at best hope that depends on a lack of understanding of human behavior and economics to follow things to their natural conclusions. Nazis, Socialists, Marxists, and Communists are all authoritarian extremist who share the same values.
Remilk is an Israeli food-tech startup using yeasts to produce milk proteins. Frankly I find your comment rather odd, why should a startup be more loud because other people are biased? Diplomacy is the job of the state. We have innovative index on which Israel does well and large number of unicorn per capita.
> why should a startup be more loud because other people are biased? Diplomacy is the job of the state.
I agree with you that it is the job of the state to do diplomacy, I would argue that the Israeli state has done an extremely poor job at that, so it may be left to some of its greener industry to pick up the slack, unfortunately.
Not because they 'have to' but because they would want to if they want to expand abroad and not get overshadowed by the bad PR the Israeli state is so good at putting out.
I disagree with you that 'other people are biased'.
One of the reasons Israeli soft power is so weak at the moment is precisely because its diplomats always insist everyone is just simply biased against Israel, often invoking some thousands year old hatred of its people etc. rather than for one second introspecting on the fact that the actions of the state may indeed have something to do with that perceived bias.
It should indeed be the job of Israeli diplomats to work and promote Israel in the best light possible
"working to suppress Palestinians" isn't exactly a neutral observation, I'm not surprised you got accused of bias.
I think it's pretty objective. It's honestly possibly even a bit of a pro Israel framing given how passive and soft it is.
> I got accused of bias because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.
Meddling with foreign affairs is a well established practice, and that's just life.
Israeli do that, North Koreans do that, Russians do that, Americans do that (think former CIA/FBI people, think Palantir etc).
Highlighting that specific nation (Israel) for those practices while ignoring all other positive contributions (dumb example since we're on HN: Graviton processors came from Annapurna labs, an israeli company, and they gave the definitive push for ARM in the datacenter by proving it's effectively feasible and cost-effective) is borderline antisemitic.
So yeah, you got called out and rightfully so (and you should really review your biases).
Are North Korea and Russia "allies" of the US?
Maybe US OFAC has missed one particular state
Is the UK a US ally? Is Japan?
If you only focus on one country for some strange reason that you can't explain, people are going to notice. That shouldn't surprise you.
Does the UK or Japan engage in election meddling in the US?
Russians do not do that. It is contrary to our culture.
There was a lord (knyaz) in old times who even warned enemies that he is going to attack them. Of course it is not as advantageous as a covert approach. But it is very Russian.
When you hear otherwise it is those other entities targeting you, that's all.
Russia’s involvement with foreign assets is pretty well-documented. Maybe not on a hysterical level where someone believes Russian government stole elections in USA, but they definitely meddled and continue to meddle in affairs of neighbouring countries and EU, both through information campaigns and via direct actions and influence.
Talking about stuff from early Middle Ages (князи), it has zero relevance to modern culture. Russia is anything but isolationist as it should be clear since 2014/2022.
Games three-letter agencies play are the same everywhere and have zero relation to the culture. 2016 meddling did happen of course. It was also negligible and led to a huge overreaction, extremely similar to the US meddling in Russian elections in 1996 where Clinton admin indirectly prevented Nemtsov from running by supporting unpopular Yeltsin (and NGOs did a ton of "work" which barely affected anything, the main reason Yeltsin won was Filatov running the campaign, oversized spending and collusion with the media aka Xerox affair, and the "admin resource" he had).
There are three options:
1. Israel is doing this in an outsized way compared to everyone else
2. Israel is extremely poor at doing it because it keeps getting caught
3. All the reporting is controlled by the antisemitic media conglomerates ruled by a shadowy council funded by Qatari money
I expect you to deny 1, 2 is an impossibility to you, 3 is the most likely I'd hear even though it's highly reminiscent of something...
Looking forward to option 4. I hope it's something more original than shouting "blood libel!".
False trichotomy 4. Small amount of people make sure to look and echo everything that paint Israel in bad light and this work, we know this work because this entire post is about a company (small amount of people) influencing New York and Scotland votes.
Also it is entirely possible all 1+2+4 hold
That's just option 3.
Seeing as billions upon billions of dollars goes into Israel's lobbying operations (including countless more from non-affiliated but pro-Israeli groups), that must be the least successful industry ever to be outclassed by a small number of random guys online.
Some personal questions for you then,
Where do you live?
What colour is your skin?
Thank you.
In addition to this malware, which comes from an Israeli company and is used for the purpose of subverting democratic elections in foreign countries (we don't really know who mandated these interventions, but the target, John Swinney and fellow ministers, have been vocal in their criticism of the Israeli government's actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and have imposed a form of sanctions on the Israel Defense Forces by withholding state grants to arms firms that supply the IDF and freezing support for exports to Israel), they have also infiltrated some countries like the UK and US with very powerful pro-Israel lobbies acting behind the curtain by directly contacting prominent politicians.
In the UK, the Israeli company Elbit Systems produces arms for Israel through its British subsidiary, which holds major Ministry of Defence contracts including the Watchkeeper drone programme (worth over £800 million) and the Jupiter training system (around £130 million) – sources: UK Companies House and MoD contract notices. People protesting for Palestinians at Elbit sites have been arrested: between 2020 and June 2024, over 140 arrests were made at more than 50 actions by Palestine Action, but police and court records show that no terrorism charges were filed, and the High Court rejected a legal challenge against policing of these protests in May 2024. Two main lobbies cover both major parties in the UK: Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel.
In the US, a similar two‑party structure exists but with far greater financial power. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its super PAC spent over $4.5 million in the 2023–2024 election cycle, mostly to defeat progressive Democrats critical of Israel, including successfully spending $14.5 million to unseat Congressman Jamaal Bowman (source: Federal Election Commission filings). The Democratic Majority for Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition mirror the UK's Labour and Conservative lobby groups, while the US provides Israel with roughly $3.8 billion in annual military aid – a sharp contrast to the UK's limited sanctions on the IDF. Unlike the UK, no US protester has been arrested under terrorism laws for actions against arms companies supplying Israel.
In practice, Israel and Russia do similar things: they affect or subvert foreign elections by manipulating information and social media, and they directly influence politics via foundations, think tanks, and by cultivating politicians and influencers. For Russia, this includes organisations like the Russian House in Washington and sympathetic think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation – though the Heritage Foundation is American, Russian state media and proxies have actively courted its positions.
Russia has also influenced figures like Tucker Carlson, who repeatedly echoes Kremlin talking points, and JD Vance, who has opposed military aid to Ukraine; no public evidence proves formal recruitment, but both have amplified narratives favourable to Moscow and JD Vance made a powerful endorsement of Orban, a corrupted pro-russian statesman, in the past election in Hungary.
I confused BlackCore with Black Cube, a different Israeli private oppo research and dirty tricks group of former intelligence agents. They gained attention for their dirty campaigns against Harvey Weinstein's accusers, NSOs critics and Hungarian opposition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Cube
Not to be confused with Blackrock or Blackstone, both large American investment companies with their own shady operations.
Large American investment companies that were also both founded by Jewish people. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, though.
Oh, get in the bin. Conflating Israeli-sanctioned malevolence with "Jewish people" is incredibly unhelpful to the discussion.
If you all would shut your hateful traps for a year or so, we might be able to have a productive discussion about what a horror show the Israeli government has become. But we can’t because you all have to pop up out of gopher holes thinking we are antisemitic too and the whole process starts over again because this sort of useful idiot provides cover to the defenders of these war crimes.
> I'm sure it's just a coincidence, though.
Yes, actually. The Israeli state is not synonymous with Judaism, so let's not promote the classic "All Jewish bankers are greedy and evil" antisemitic trope.
Blackrock and Blackstone are of course evil in the same ways as all other major investment firms, but if you believe the Jewish identity of some of their founders has anything to do with that or if they have anything to do with the Palestinian genocide you better provide proof.
I predict that this will be flagged very soon. I would love for HN to publish some data on likes/flags, even anonymous IDs with some infos like account age and number of posts. Sure someome will argue things here get flagged cause they are political, but I don't buy that.
We've had discussions about this sort of stuff before.
As an Israeli (note the article exposing them is Israeli too) I was not aware until I saw this and I definitely intend to protest/organize about this (though to be fair I've been protesting about other stuff in the past and the climate here sucks).
>Sure someome will argue things here get flagged cause they are political, but I don't buy that.
Are you saying that this isn't political? It's literally about politics. The comments section will be predictable and it will be flagged for that.
Do you disagree?
> Are you saying that this isn't political? It's literally about politics.
Sure it's about politics, but it's also about tech. The intersection of politics and tech is a fascinating area, of great interest to many folks on HN, and probably within HN's charter.
I think that merely touching on politics should not be grounds for flagging a submission, even when the specifics are highly controversial (as in this case).
>Sure it's about politics, but it's also about tech.
Can you point me how was the tech used in this article about *tech* and politics. I didn't see anything.
Ctrl-F "digital"
I do not disagree that there is a political aspect to this article. Todays news on Fable and Mythos are political too. HN has plenty of political articles, yet some are more flagged than others.
I claim there might be a pattern of supression. Are arguing against my main point that it would be good to have more transparency so I can support or refute my claim?
It’s sort of a classic in any place where more than a couple of people gather to talk: “political” as a pejorative doesn’t mean “about politics”, it means “I don’t like the direction this is heading”. The obvious example is the American Right telling athletes to “stick to sports” but then howling and crying when an athlete gets blowback for uttering some loony right wing view.
The purpose is support enterprises which have investment in genocide, the free speech nature of this website was always questionable at best.
>I claim there might be a pattern of supression.
Do you want to count how many times words like nazi, genocide, terrorists appears in comments section about Anthropic vs here? Do you see the difference?
But I am going to point to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Blackcore isn't a startup. It was already covered everywhere in the news. So there is no need to post yet again.
UK‘s censorship and surveillance is also political.
Do they get flagged?
"Lecornu said the French government had asked Israel for explanations of BlackCore's actions, and also for help in trying to find out who may have been behind the smear campaign."
This is a very well executed bit of diplomacy.
Nonsense, it'll end up with merely some public head scratching and shrugs, and a "gee whiz monsieur, it sure is a mystery to us too".
Interesting that whatever they wanted to do backfired in NYC.
Here in Scotland it seems the desinfo campaign targeted mostly the SNP and Swinney. I guess it's hard to know how effective it was but his party lost 6 seats in last month's elections.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/26188090.john-swinney-ta...
I'm surprised that they dare to target NYC. I think NSO Group restricted Pegasus so that no US adversary would be retained as a client and the US would not be targeted.
Brazilians up to their usual tricks!
Is this the same company that Slovenia was asking the EU for help with regarding the company's meddling in the election process?
As an Israeli this is shameful though I find it nowhere (company registry, news sites etc) locally so I wonder how they figured it out.
If anyone is from here and is up for protesting this hit me up at username @ gmail
(leaving any other politics I disagree with aside)
I am an Israeli and though I dislike this certain brand of companies and would never work in one, I am not sure this is strictly bad.
I assume these were hired by a local candidate (unless someone can think who has a deep interest in French municipal elections)
Currently the only actors who use fake social accounts for election manipulation are the Russians, Chinese, Iran and Qatar.
The west is completely powerless in either fighting back, regulating social networks or coming up with a technological solution.
As democracies are being undermined by foreign influence, from Brexit, to the US elections, I'd rather local parties would have access to these tools than the alternative, and that would be only done using private companies.
Of course the better alternative is getting rid of fake accounts and making social media into a unicorn and bunnies hate-free zone, don't think we are headed there though
> unless someone can think who has a deep interest in French municipal elections
The State of Israel? They are paranoid about their international standing. (Really, just paranoid in general, to an absurd and pathological degree, though for understandable reasons.)
That's doubtful, I don't think Israel has the resources to spend huge sums of money to invest in manipulating French municipal elections.. That's absurd
Israel just buys the political support in the open instead.
Let me guess, the wealthy Jews control the economy and the media?
You guessed wrong. As far as I know, there's no such lobby, and I find your suggestion of its existence to be antisemitic. But the pro Israel lobby is quite open and public. Aipac's spending, for example, is public knowledge, and you can look it up for yourself.
Repeating true statements in a sarcastic manner doesn’t suddenly make them untrue statements.
I believe you are referring to Jewish citizens of the USA that are free to support whatever political candidate they see fit?
… and if you’re against Israeli firms against meddling in our elections, you’re somehow accused of antisemitism
I would love to hear from someone knowledgeable - is that bad for the company or good?
Ahh... I see some cracks in the mirror, but the posts were tidied away. So, please dear people, the EU is a happy little family, and we're all friends. There are no burning cars or discontent here. Move along. We're all frieds! ;)
Article is very light on details
Lol. Just use reddit. No need for creating new platforms
Another entry in the 'Black' villain line, along with BlackStone, BlackRock, BlackWater etc ... really makes you think the world is run by a thinly veiled cult of evil comic style villains.
Also Black Cube: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Cube
There are 2 billion people who pray to Black Stone... I will let you decide if it's evil or not.
Muslims are the most peaceful people on earth and islam is literally the most peaceful religion. The penalty for apostasy is death.
Black, like Leon Black of Epstein fame
A shocker!
The same Israeli BlackCore that masqueraded as a humanitarian fund for Gaza and stole the money?
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2026-0...
Lowest of the low.
What a surprise..
The israeli ambassador in France should already have been kicked out a while ago for a myriad of reasons, I'm ashamed my country is so spineless.
Europeans couldn't even get Israel out of a silly pop song contest, so it seems a bit hopeless to expect any actual political action.
I'm pretty sure religious fundamentalists from all beliefs would love to get rid of Eurovision song contest. Excluding Israeli citizens from it hurts their moderates more than it hurts the hardliners.
Ask Donald Epstein how they chose locations for Miss Universe during cold war times. They'd never exclude the countries they wanted to ideologically reform.
It's disturbing to think that there are people getting paid huge amounts of money by governments, using taxpayer money to f around with politics of other countries... Meanwhile I've been trying to raise a $100K seed round for my startup which I've been working on for 14 years during nights and weekends... and I never even made it the interview phase of a tech incubator. WTF is wrong with people?
Is the USA finally doing something about foreign lobbyists here? Trump is like the ultimate tool here for foreigners to gain influence, no matter the country. Yuri explained this already in the 1980s (!!!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9apDnRRSOCk (it's the KGB view, so biased too, of course, but if you extend it, then also connect it to Epstein, you have basically undermined democracy effectively; a shame Yuri is dead, he would have had a field day with "analysing" Putin).
Nope, the war in Iran is testament to that.
Nope, foreign lobbyists in the guise of AIPAC spent record amounts to primary Thomas Massie.
BlackCore? Yeah, those are these Russians meddling in elective all over the Europe and the USA.