Things to Keep an Eye On
Google protests and firings, Christopher Steele jumps the shark, Tony Blinken sees no evil, and the vote tomorrow in the House
The rogue Israeli government has escalated the situation again in the Middle East by trying to go another round after Iran’s retaliation, and the Biden administration won’t do what’s necessary to rein them in because Democrats in general have coalitions rather than principles.
Ben Gvir’s People
The deranged Minister of National Security in Netanyahu’s coalition has called for executing Palestinian prisoners and is warning that further arrests of professors who dissent from the ethnic cleansing in Gaza will continue.
The Biden administration has gotten up the gumption to sanction some of his friends. There are so many sticks they could use, like threatening not to veto a Palestinian statehood vote at the UN. But they’re telegraphing that’s still off the table. Meanwhile, Netanyahu, whose only way out is through a regional war, has refused to speak with PM Sunak.
Big Tech’s Complicity in Ethnic Cleansing
In the past, the way to get ahead is to never treat Israel as if they could do any wrong. Now that Israel is doing an ethnic cleansing, all of that is a risk. Google employees have been protesting the company’s contract with the Israeli government. If employees can pressure the company to end a contract with the U.S. government, but the company won’t allow the same with the Israelis, it shows Israel has more clout in the U.S. than our own government.
An advocacy group for the Google workers says:
This evening, Google indiscriminately fired over two dozen workers, including those among us who did not directly participate in yesterday’s historic, bicoastal 10-hour sit-in protests. This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers. In the three years that we have been organizing against Project Nimbus, we have yet to hear from a single executive about our concerns. Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor. These firings were clearly retaliatory.
We know who was responsible for the Project Nimbus deal, it was Joshua Marcuse, who has been involved in Young Professionals in Foreign Policy and the Defense Innovation Board.
Meanwhile, the reporting on Lavender shows that data in the Meta/Facebook ecosystem has been used in AI targeting for the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. Facebook was always the most Israeli platform, with strong reasons to suspect WhatsApp has a backdoor, to say nothing of the Pegasus exploit. Here is the relevant portion from this good post from Paul Bigger:
Providing this data as input for Lavender undermines their claim that WhatsApp is a private messaging app. It is beyond obscene and makes Meta complicit in Israel's killings of "pre-crime" targets and their families, in violation of International Humanitarian Law and Meta's publicly stated commitment to human rights. No social network should be providing this sort of information about its users to countries engaging in "pre-crime".
It's important to note that already Meta is taking extensive part in the Israeli-led and US-backed genocide, including significant and well-reported suppression of content supporting Palestinian freedom, as well a new anti-"anti-zionist" policy that is used to shut down dissent of Israel's crimes [4].
Why is Meta doing this? Why is Meta so happy to share metadata about group membership with Israel – a run-around the idea of a "private" social network – and to be complicit in the genocide?
Let's look at their leadership, in particular the three most senior leaders who have close ties to Israel.
Their Chief Information Security Officer, Guy Rosen, is their most senior policy decision maker. He is Israeli, lives in Tel Aviv [5], and was in the Israeli military in Unit 8200. Unit 8200 is the Israeli NSA and is the department that built and runs Lavender. Insiders tell me that Rosen is the person most associated with the anti-"anti-zionism"[4] policies, and is also responsible for the suppression of Palestinian content.
When Israel runs the main political communications tools, and the companies themselves enjoy enormous lobbying clout, it raises the question of whether, when it comes to the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, whether the American people, either through their representatives or not, are even able to have a say in the matter.
This Was Israel’s Plan
An interesting perspective from the Carnegie Middle East Center:
Those complaining that Israel had no “day after” plan for Gaza have presumably read and heard all this. But what was understood last fall and early spring as a lack of Israeli planning for the day after missed the point. This was the plan for the day after. It just did not include any provisions for Gazans. Governance, social services, and public security (as opposed to Israeli security) were not Israel’s problems and would have to be provided by others—subject to Israeli oversight and approval.
The incentives of Israeli politics are such that to make any provision for Gazans is to invite shrieks of betrayal from the likes of Ben-Gvir and his settler allies.
No Rapes to See Here, Sez Tony Blinken!
A special State Department panel recommended months ago that Secretary of State Antony Blinken disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid after reviewing allegations that they committed serious human rights abuses.
But Blinken has failed to act on the proposal in the face of growing international criticism of the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza, according to current and former State Department officials.
The incidents under review mostly took place in the West Bank and occurred before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. They include reports of extrajudicial killings by the Israeli Border Police; an incident in which a battalion gagged, handcuffed and left an elderly Palestinian American man for dead; and an allegation that interrogators tortured and raped a teenager who had been accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.
Recommendations for action against Israeli units were sent to Blinken in December, according to one person familiar with the memo. “They’ve been sitting in his briefcase since then,” another official said.
There Are a Bunch of Enormously Consequential Votes Coming
James Bamford in The Nation on the coming FISA vote in the Senate:
Nor is there any protection for journalist/source or attorney/client/witness eavesdropping and storage, Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee warned recently. “The documented abuses under FISA should provoke outrage from anyone who values the Fourth Amendment Rights of American citizens,” he said. “From warrantless searches targeting journalists, political commentators, and campaign donors to monitoring sitting members of Congress, these actions reveal a blatant disregard for individual liberties. Upholding the Fourth Amendment isn’t optional—it’s a duty.” Both Durbin and Lee were among a bipartisan group of senators who sponsored the SAFE Act—a modified warrant requirement for US person queries conducted under Section 702.
On Monday, the House settled a number of procedural issues clearing the way for the controversial bill to be sent to the Senate for a vote—minus a warrant requirement. “This bill represents one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history,” warned Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I will do everything in my power to stop it from passing in the Senate.”
But the big show looks like it will be in the House tomorrow.