Israeli firm BlackCore suspected of meddling in New York and Scotland votes
reuters.comAsk Donald Epstein how they chose locations for Miss Universe during cold war times. They'd never exclude the countries they wanted to ideologically reform.
Nah, it hurts their public image and thus hardliners. Like similar actions against South Africa did.
Why else are they even trying to be in Eurovision and UEFA in the first place
This is a very well executed bit of diplomacy.
Interesting that whatever they wanted to do backfired in NYC.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/26188090.john-swinney-ta...
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2026-0...
Lowest of the low.
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 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
How can you then turn around and try to mask it as "citizens supporting their political goals"?
Clear communication points released from headquarters to all the media minions, social media platforms, election influencing channels, and on and on.
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.)
I had an issue with the idea that a nation in the Middle East is somehow interested in municipal elections in Europe as it somehow will advance its security interests... that's kinda way out there
This (delusional, paranoid, insane) attitude is central to the national ideology, and the #1 reason why the country is so messed up.
Because of it, they see any politician anywhere expressing any criticism of them whatsoever as an existential threat, someone who could turn into the next Hitler and genocide them all. That's why they just increased their PR budget to over $700 million.
Sorry to inform you but the idea that every generation breeds someone that will try to destroy the Jewish people is firm in Jewish religion (and with merit). That is repeated in every Passover. It is also based on quite firm historical grounds though.
> that every Gentile anywhere in the world is at risk, if exposed to the right trigger, of waking up tomorrow wanting to start another Holocaust
That's your interpretation, as for someone that is versed in the local language and culture, I think it is wrong
> Here in the US, I see Zionists make similar arguments constantly ("Israel is the only country where Jews can be safe", "antisemitism is part of the European DNA", etc.). This (delusional, paranoid, insane) attitude is central to the national ideology, and the #1 reason why the country is so messed up.
Like it or not, but Zionism has said that European antisemitism is pathological and will end in disaster for the Jewish people. That might be regarded as paranoid in 1932, but zionist jews were largely saved while other less paranoid Jews were completely exterminated in an actual real genocide.
The message which you characterize as paranoid is quite easy for Israelis to understand as most of the country is descendent to refugees from genocide, ethnic cleansing or both
> That's why they just increased their PR budget to over $700 billion.
Sounds like a lot. In any case, I don't see how any of this explains Israel's obsession with municipal elections in France. But I guess it's a difference in axioms. Once you believe Israelis are insane, then you don't need to rationalize your own beliefs, even though they lack any logical ground
Million, not billion, sorry for the typo.
---
Yes, the paranoia is for understandable historical reasons. It didn't come out of nowhere, I get that. Most paranoid people are paranoid due to real traumatic experiences that happened to them. But none of that makes it any less harmful or destructive. At worst, it becomes an endless cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy.
(Israel is hardly the only example of an entire society going down this dark path. E.g. Germany: horrible traumatic experience of losing WWI -> paranoia, "we must have been betrayed" -> "the Jews did it" -> Nazism, the Holocaust.)
Hasbara, is all I have to say.
But then, remembering bernays, i am happy they are incompetent. The day they reach competency with the toolset that is yet in infancy, i will regret not having tried to control who is running this. On the other hand, you just can't risk doing this. It will lose your control eventually. And without being a conspiracy theorists, it won't be long until more pips (people in power) will notice the ease of influence- and propaganda (in bernays understanding, the one who rebranded it as public relations), through these tools.
Luckily, i've never been in a knife fight. Though i've heard, that with an unskilled fighter, you have pretty bad chances of not getting hurt. But a skilled one is a death sentence. Of course i don't want to be attacked by a knife. And i don't want to take some other unskilled street gangster and train him. Of course, some people get humbled if introduced to power. But many corrupt. And those hungry for power, are rarely those, who should have it. This could be an hour long discussion. But just look around the people you know well. Maybe yourself in certain situations or relationships. Every humans has the potential.
So what i think w
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It was meant as a western foothold in the middle east, which is clearly the case now. In a despicable manner, Germany now is aiding and abetting the atrocities committed by the colony of Israel, as if two wrongs make a right.
When in 1948 the UN formulated its partition plan (i.e. the proposal to expropriate the Palestinians of half of their land to give it to the Jewish immigrants), the land that the proposal assigned to the Jewish state had a 45% Palestinian population, which the newborn state immediately proceeded to ethnically cleanse. Besides, Israel never formally accepted the borders of the partition plan and immediately set to conquer new territory (plan Dalet).
That's the thing about "anti-Zionism", it attempts to do the impossible—to go back in time and change the past. This is what makes it the domain of unreasonable individuals and thus, thankfully, rather rare on HN compared to places like Reddit.
All the rest, about Israel existence today, is irrelevant. We can recognize the mistakes of the past to at least understand how we got to this point and what's the best and correct way forward. It's not about reverting history but at least knowing it.
It is disingenuous to pretend that you merely care about learning from the past when it is only one specific country’s past you supposedly wish to learn from.
> We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly. Let the owners of the immoveable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back. (Theodore Herzl, 12 June 1895)
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.
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.
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.
In general, I think (or at least hope) your experience is the more common one. But fwiw I do have a Jewish friend who was personally cussed at and threatened by his own coworker explicitly for being Jewish (well, and probably because they were from Florida if I'm being honest, but there aren't as many slurs for that). The guy who did it was fired (whole thing was recorded iirc), nobody sided with him, he was clearly off his rocker in some way - but it doesn't take much to get shaken up - it sticks with you. And my friend was understandably, shaken up.
I know that because I used to live in Seattle, and unfortunately I had a really scary experience of being threatened (he yelled "I'm going to kill you b****") and chased down by a homeless man for nothing other than being a woman on the same street as him. So I saw my own perspective shift when it happened first hand. I was no longer excited about living downtown in a big city after that experience.
So what I'm saying is, neither me nor my friend took the experience and made it a defining thing. He still lives where he does, didn't blame the community or anything. And I'm back to taking public transit, talking to strangers on the sidewalk, and all the other stuff that comes with spending time downtown in a big city. But this time the city is Charlotte, my home city. It's probably not any safer than Seattle (maybe worse), but experiences shape perception, and I've always had really good experiences on Charlotte, including with homeless people. I could say it's because Charlotte has more police presence lately, or because there's not visible tent camps or open drug usage. But deep down, I know, crazy people are always gonna be out there, and the most trivial thing can make you a target.
So I really get the pull by people who have experienced victimization like that to talk about it. You feel kinda crazy if you don't, because you are surrounded by people who say it never happens because they've never seen it. That was such a big part I think of the Floyd protests - a lot of white people lived in a bubble and didn't know how pervasive overly violent interactions with the police can be (though the ironic part is that a lot of white people still don't realize that they can also be targeted by police with just as much malice). Most American black people already knew first or second-hand that police brutality was real and not uncommon - but until it was undeniable on video, it was treated by others as if it never happened.
So there's some honest middle ground somewhere, but the extremists are the one who have the most to gain from convincing people to believe otherwise.
"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." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515906
"Large American investment companies that were also both founded by Jewish people. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, though" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48516750
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.
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.
At least according to this study, almost all Israelis are monsters who openly support genocide.
Sorry to repeat what the other commenter said but it seems you had missed the point.
Not saying I agree with any of it, but I find the parallels illuminating. If anyone wonders why there's more anti-semitism now, s/he can perhaps compare it with how all Muslims are condemned as being members of a barbaric sect after any terrorist attack (yes, even attacks where the perpretator doesn't claim to be doing it for Allah).
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.
https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/mister-gotcha-...
To be clear, the job of the ordinary citizen in this situation is not to opt out. I criticise China often and yet my phone has Chinese chips. Would you have me shut up about China?. And so it is with Israel.
The job of the ordinary citizen is to do what they reasonably can to protest the gen0cidal, N'azi behaviour of its current administration with the support of a significant percentage of its populous.
Given how the troubles have turned a significant number of the population into blood-thirsty land thieves, the country should be de-N'azified like they did to Germany after WW2.
You're welcome.
/S
But yeah, there is indeed some irony in the term "antisemitism" in the context you describe
(More broadly, "they're semites too" is the "Elon Musk is African American" of I/P discourse. You can recognize extraordinary human tragedy without re-using race science.)
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
He later worked at NASA.
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
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.
Hypothermia research, sleep deprivation research, etc. really cruel stuff.
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.
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.
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)
(Perhaps it should be! But it should be consistent, whatever it is.)
Agreed. Any lobbying that centers on the interests of a foreign country should IMO count as foreign lobbying, I have no problem in including Korean-Americans, Kenyan-Americans etc. in that too.
Put another way: it seems very risky to allow the federal government to determine the propriety of political speech just because it happens to concern two (or more countries) at once.
An egregious, non-controversial example of things going poorly is NYC Mayor Adams and Turkey. He basically accepted bribes and favors from the Turkish government and their proxies for specific actions.
A “doing it right” example that wouldn’t have been controversial until recently is Denmark. They mostly focus on direct diplomatic policy lobbying, and leverage consultants to promote mostly tourism. Their affiliations are known and registered. Now they hire K-Street lobbyists to influence policy objectives re: Greenland, etc.
The difference is that when the papers found out about Adams being a crook… that didn’t turn into accusations of racism and fomenting sectarian hatred. In the AIPAC example, there will be a both a legitimate visceral response from Americans and astroturf from lots of prominent people.
I think there's a much more parsimonious explanation for this: the average American doesn't know that much about Turkey, know very many Turkish people, etc.
In contrast, the average American has been steeped in I/P and related proxy conflict news for their entire adult life. That, combined with the fact that the US has a large Jewish population means that there's a degree of salience to accusations around AIPAC that wouldn't exist if the equivalent Turkish-American political lobby entity[1] was caught bribing politicians.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Coalition_of_America
I was adjacent to state level politics for a long time. The German, Korean and French economic development organizations would come around every now and again with promotional events coordinated with their embassy to promote partnerships and business opportunities. Sometimes they had lobbyists focused on general relationship building, more often for specific issues.
The Israeli ground game is different. American PACs affiliated with or specifically “not affiliated with, but always talking about” Israeli interests show up at every level of government - a good friend is a town board member of a big suburban town and they call on him, and he refuses the contributions so will likely get primaried.
The real difference is information awareness. There is a CRM somewhere the ground guys have access to, and relationships are cultivated and used. My buddy is being targeted becuase there’s a good chance he’ll be in the state legislature someday. There’s a pipeline to get targeted American politicians to tour Israel for whatever reason. When critical attention is focused on this stuff, the reaction is fast and painful for the media outlet or political actor.
The only thing close to this is China, who does similar stuff with a different playbook. They’ve been caught embedding agents of one sort or another in California and New York governments at a high level, as well as places like Florida or within government contractors with lower level people.
Note that we’ve purged the FBI counterintelligence division, so the brazenness of the “bad” stuff will get worse - nobody is watching.
(I also think this backfires spectacularly: there are now plenty of politicians running for office in the US on an explicitly "no AIPAC money received" line. That line clearly has pull with voters!)
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).
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.
What does that have to do with Israel?
It's not. And my larger point is that when someone hyper focuses and targets for grouping and prejudice a group of otherwise ordinary people, they shouldn't be surprised when they are called out for it.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Feel free to clarify.
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.
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.
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!".
Also it is entirely possible all 1+2+4 hold
> 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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: this is excessive and abusive: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... HN is no place for conducting religious battle. Please do no more of this here.
(And yes, in case that is wondering, this applies equally regardless of which religion and who is doing it.)
Where do you live?
What colour is your skin?
Thank you.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe I have a wrong read on the situation between Iran and Israel. But my impression is that Israel is more concerned with Iran as a general threat, moreso than they are concerned that Iran will intervene on behalf of Palestinians, current Palestinian territory, or Hamas.
If Iran didn't get involved directly after ~2 years of open warfare and inarguably genocide-shaped atrocities carried out on civilians, what are they waiting for? Meanwhile Netanyahu has been talking about the danger of Iran developing nuclear weapons for decades now.
Keep in mind I was responding to a post about an assertion that there are so many military startups in Israel because so many Israelis, in their IDF service, have hands-on experience fighting against and oppressing Palestinians. I responded to a post that seemed reductive and misleading in support of that perspective.
Iran has never attacked Israel unless attacked first. As for their 'proxies' they only really exist because Israel has invaded Lebanon long before Hezbollah existed and its creation was spearheaded primarily by Lebanon's local population as a response to the invasion, with Iranian support.
Iran supports these local 'proxies' because it sees itself as a leader of the Shia and more broadly as a leader of the Muslim world and the Palestinian cause as being the responsibility of every Muslim nation (incl theirs) to get involved with.
Israel is indeed concerned with Iran as a threat, but only because they see the other governments in the region as willing to overlook the Palestinian cause, in exchange for economic links with Israel.
In that sense Iran is very much connected to the Palestinians, this assertion that Iran is just super irrational and wants to see Israel go down because they want to laugh watching it or something is nothing more than cheap Israeli propaganda.
Of course Iran is not just looking for the Palestinians out of altruism, they want a leadership position in the Muslim world and this is their way of gaining legitimacy, but the reason why Israel sees them as a threat is very much because of Iran's interest in the Palestinians.
Iran was involved in attacks against Israel and Israeli towns in the 1980s and 1990s by their mercenaries in Hezbollah and direct IRGC presence in Lebanon. This happened even when Israel supported Iran during the Iraq-Iran war, so this is strictly not true
Other incidents were the Iranian bombings of the Israeli embassy in Argentine or the Jewish center there, and attempts on the London and Bangkok embassies
Furthermore financing of Hamas during the 1990s suicide campaign with the direct goal of derailing the peace process.
This is part of a long line of Iranian aggressive actions that have led them to being isolated and in a string of wars that greatly destroyed their already diminished economic power
Except Israel invaded Lebanon before that. It also engaged in assassinations, espionage, terror and sabotage before that. In fact Israelis engaged in those even before the state of Israel was officially pronounced.
I'm not saying the Iranians or Lebanese etc. never play dirty, but this portrayal of them as just irrational and aggressive for no reason whatsoever against their peace loving Israeli neighbors is just dishonest.
For one, neither the Iranians, nor the Lebanese are occupying foreign territory. The same cannot be said for the Israelis.
Israelis will say they invaded Lebanon in the 70s/80s because of the PLO, (no Hezbollah yet) however the PLO was itself a consequence of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
In conclusion; there's a fairly simple way to disarm the Iranians and strip them and their proxies of any perceived legitimacy they may hold with anyone; stop occupying Palestine.
The PLO was not an inevitable force of nature, it was an organization that consisted of human beings, making conscious decisions.
The British took Palestine from the Ottomans and handed it to the state of Israel. Maybe morally it's an occupation, but if so then the USA is occupying Hawaii.
That is moving the goal posts, as these are not instances of attacking Iran, it's hard to claim Iran never attacked Israel first when it is either financing attacks against Israel or participating in them for the last 45+ years
> Israelis will say they invaded Lebanon in the 70s/80s because of the PLO, (no Hezbollah yet) however the PLO was itself a consequence of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
Back when the PLO was founded there was no "foreign territory occupied by Israel", only internationally recognized Israeli borders and Gaza/West Bank which were under Egyptian/Jordanian occupation. Two countries that refused to create an independent Palestinian state
The Palestinians are merely a tool for Iran to gain influence, Hezbollah and Shias in Iraq were far more important for them historically
you say that as if israel doesn't have the exact same ideology against iran (it does)
What are the parallels in Israeli society for Iranian school systems morning chants of "Death to Israel" and a public countdown clock to the destruction of Israel?
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-...
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.
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.
Could be, because within the lifetime of their parents and grandparents, Israel had to fight multiple wars to avoid extinction and just before that came the Holocaust.
> think losing a perception game will result in their eradication perpetuated by everyone around them.
Which is not totally unrealistic. Countries depend on their relationships with other neighbors and Israel in particular has relied on their relationship to the Western world.
It's sad they have had an extremist government for quite some time now.
Independent of who is in the right there, they are losing the media war.
Honestly, I like that nobody's getting fired anymore. I like that consensus has shifted on consensus-driven forums until the IDF conscripts wake up. Generations of that and nobody's opinion actually changed, people independently perceived the same things and speaking was merely suppressed by private sector and communities. Partially by our own governments too.
Now the behavior of Israeli administrations and some settlers is all so indefensible that people can sort their thoughts out about things together, publicly.
Even the astroturfing is disingenuous, people are saying the exact same points that Jewish Israeli protesters are saying towards their own government in Israel. But the fear of non-Jewish people flipping on them is even greater, so when we say the same things its paraded around as something that it isn't.
Just get US out of it.
Israel should never have been created in the first place. Generally when people invade other's land and start ethnically cleansing it, they will come under attack from people practicing self-defense. In other words, 100% of hostility created from Israel is self-inflicted.
Actually it goes way further. It seems that a large part of Jewish religion and culture is centered on the idea of being persecuted. A quick list goes from the Egyptian slavery, to the attack by the Amalekites, to the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple, to Haman's plot to exterminate Jews in Persia... and we're still at the book of Esther, 5th century BCE. The list goes on and on. Each of these is commemorated in a religious or civil ceremony: Passover, Purim, Hanukkah, etc.
This is to say, Judaism is built around grievance. And grievance in turn, if kept unchecked, is dangerous because it can justify unethical behaviours that are seen as reparatory.
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. The comments section will be predictable and it will be flagged for that.
Do you disagree?
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?
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.
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).
Can you point me how was the tech used in this article about *tech* and politics. I didn't see anything.
Do they get flagged?
HN has plenty of unflagged political topics.
Most countries only allow citizens to vote. By your logic, they should let anyone vote, because what's the difference between a citizen and a foreigner when it comes to elections?
Yet we're never told that explicitly and it's never framed as the abusive relationship that it is.
Makes you really wonder who the press works for.
Literally DARVO.
is a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, such as abusers, narcissists, or sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior. Research indicates that it is a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers.
Actually, maybe I'm not that surprised. Using Jews as a scapegoat has been a pretty common tactic in older Russian disinformation too.
Maybe you don't mean it that way, but if you are going to choose to use the word, you don't get to deny how it has historically been used.