Iâm open to correction on this but my possibly erroneous understanding is she found out in adulthood that she was Jewish by birth (Judaism is passed down through the mother) and then went stone mad onto it.
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Yeah these fuckers that marry into it or decide to embrace it seem to think they have to be extra cuntish,like theyâre trying to prove something
From Haaretz.
The comments in the last two paragraphs are hilarious.
Israel Secretly Targeted American Lawmakers With Gaza War Influence Campaign
In an attempt to sway global public opinion on the war in Gaza, fake accounts and sites spread pro-Israel and Islamophobic content. The operation was orchestrated by Israelâs Diaspora Affairs Ministry and run by a political campaigning firm
The Israeli government is behind a large-scale influence campaign primarily aimed at Black lawmakers and young progressives in the United States and Canada. The operation, whose existence was first reported by Haaretz in March, was launched after the start of the war in Gaza and was intended to sway certain segments of public opinion on Israelâs conduct.
The influence campaign made extensive use of fake websites and social media to promote content that is pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim content, as well as disinformation about antisemitism on American campuses, according to an investigation by the Fake Reporter organization, published today.
The operation was run by an Israeli company that specializes in political campaigns. According to sources and information obtained by Haaretz, the operation was commissioned by Israelâs Diaspora Affairs Ministry but carried out by a different party, for fear that its exposure could entangle Israel in a crisis. Among the candidates for the job was the organization Voices of Israel, which received half of its original funding from the Israeli government. Asked for a response to this article, Voices of Israel denied that it was related to the influence campaign exposed.
Voices of Israel is a public benefit company that was founded as an initiative by the Strategic Affairs Ministry and Public Diplomacy Ministry and is better known by its original name, Solomonâs Sling. The company, which is not subject to Israelâs freedom of information law, was established to shape awareness in the digital and media arenas, and fight the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and antisemitic discourse by enlisting pro-Israel activists and organizations in Israelâs public diplomacy efforts.
In 2018, the company changed its name to Concert and in 2022, the name was changed again to Voices of Israel. The companyâs website states that âVoices of Israel has a joint venture agreement with the State of Israel led by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and combat antisemitismâ and that its fundamental goals are âto enhance the image of Israel in the global arena and combat delegitimization and new antisemitism worldwide, using tools of public diplomacy.â Since the start of the war, Voices of Israel has resumed operating as part of various initiatives involving the Diaspora Affairs Ministry, headed by Minister Amichai Chikli.
The Diaspora Affairs Ministry denied involvement in the influence operation that has been revealed, but a source in the ministry confirmed that, generally, the ministry funds official campaigns as well as unofficial ones.
- Israeli influence operation targets U.S. lawmakers on Hamas-UNRWA
- Israel bought mass online influence system to counter antisemitism, Hamas atrocity denial
Various Israeli officials say that the war in Gaza has exposed a âgrave failureâ in Israelâs hasbara, or public diplomacy. Despite the massive investment in different PR enterprises over the years, Israel hasnât been able to effectively cope with the flood of pro-Palestinian messages on social media, which have included denials of the October 7 attacks and the sexual violence that were part of them. Israel lacked the necessary digital assets to contend with what it called âthe pro-Palestinian poison [propaganda] machineâ and to adequately publicize Hamas atrocities and defend the war in Gaza.
Therefore, a decision was made to acquire digital assets, including avatars â technologically advanced fake online accounts with a relatively high level of sophistication that closely resemble a real person. When the Public Diplomacy Ministry was shuttered at an early point in the war, the Diaspora Affairs Ministry became the key player and held several meetings with individuals and organizations active in the field.
An organization in Israel then acquired a system for waging an online influence campaign, and the decision was made to finance official public diplomacy campaigns and support various voluntary initiatives. The parties decided to launch a campaign (or more than one) that would not be officially attributed to the Israeli government. Three months after reporting the campaignâs existence, Haaretz has learned that it was commissioned by the Israeli government. Additional operations of this type may be running online right now.
Arab slave traders
The campaign began with the establishment of three fake ânews sitesâ that copied reports from official media sources. These sites had associated Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, which amassed tens of thousands of followers. Meanwhile, the people running the operation used hundreds of avatars to aggressively promote purported articles that served the Israeli narrative, including reports about the sexual assaults by Hamas and about alleged ties between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and Hamas. The articles were mainly directed at the online accounts of Black lawmakers in the U.S., particularly Democrats.
Open gallery view
600+ avatars focused on UNRWA ties to Hamas
The follow-up report by Fake Reporter now being published shows the full extent of the Israeli influence operation, which pivoted into "a large-scale, well-coordinated effort to attack and smear groups that are typically pro-Palestinian. These groups include citizens of Western countries (mainly the U.S. and Canada) of Islamic origins, using deeply Islamophobic and anti-immigrant content.
At the end of April, the ânews sitesâ mentioned above began promoting a site called the Good Samaritan, which mapped and ranked American universities according to the amount of alleged antisemitic incidents on their campuses and whether it was safe for Jews to study there. An examination of the siteâs code showed that it included unique features from the sites that were previously revealed.
A network analysis found four other websites that used the same IP and promoted content designed for certain audiences. One was the United Citizens for Canada site, which had multiple social media accounts and disseminated heavily Islamophobic material, including claims that Muslim immigrants were a threat to Canada and demanding a sharia state. Another was the Arab Slave Trade site, which was copied almost entirely from Wikipedia and was aimed at Black Americans, trying to repeat the message that the Arabs had been slave traders in Africa. Yet another site was called Serenity Now, which branded itself as anarchist and anti-establishment, sought to convince young Americans to oppose the creation of a Palestinian state because âstates are manmade structuresâ and a Palestinian state âwould hurt the goals of the progressive movement.â
Facebook removed accounts connected to these fake sites a few weeks ago. Last week, Meta and OpenAI confirmed the existence of the influence operation and ascribed it to the Israeli company Stoic. According to information obtained by Haaretz, the company has several software systems that allow the profiling of target audiences and creation of adapted content for them, as well as an influence platform called Maâacher that enables the mass creation of fictitious online accounts and their simultaneous activation on several social networks.
Fake Reporter also found a direct link between the influence operation and the Israeli company. Evidently, the creators of the fakes sites accidentally included in the original code mentions of a GitHub account connected to an executive with Stoic and a Stoic code for the mass creation of fake accounts. Stoic is known as a company that specializes in political technologies, audience mapping, information analysis and management of volunteers and digital campaigns. Most of its activity is abroad.
The report by OpenAI that uncovered the activity by Stoic dealt with exploitation of the companyâs ChatGPT AI platform for the creation of unattributed content for influence campaigns. In addition to the Israeli operation, activity directed at Indiaâs government was also identified. It was the first report by the AI corporation dealing with disinformation created using its systems, despite several similar cases in the past two years: As previously reported by Haaretz, the group Team Jorge made wide use of AI to create disinformation campaigns in support of Israel, while the Russian Doppelganger campaign and another influence operation have made use of similar tools.
Stoic declined repeated requests for comment.
âItâs just a tragedy that the State of Israel only discovered the Internet on October 7,â said an intelligence source who was present at meetings about the issue of public diplomacy at the very beginning of the war. âHundreds of millions of shekels were spent on hasbara, four different ministries were established, but in the end, subcontractors had to be paid very quickly to get a lot of digital content up very fast. Itâs not surprising that one of them was caught in the end.â
Three sources from the field of public diplomacy and influence campaigns say that the exposure of the campaigns has hurt Israel and impacted its ability to respond to the array of un-organic online forces being employed against the Israeli narrative. âItâs a shame that Facebook and OpenAI are going after Western campaigns that are not an influence operation, but a factual campaign meant to persuade people and answer dangerous lies,â said one of them.
Anatomy of a fake story: How anti-immigration candidates spread false information to boost their profile
Far-right activists have become adept at shaping false narratives around asylum seekers and crime so that they quickly go viral
Tweet and screengrab from video by Fergus Power
Sat Jun 1 2024 - 05:50
Just before 8pm on Tuesday of last week, Fergus Power, a local election candidate for South Dublin, posted a shaky 68-second video online showing a group of young schoolchildren walking beside a garda near the Grand Canal.
âGardaĂ have to escort Irish schoolchildren past the tent city brought to us courtesy of the criminals in Government Buildings,â Power posted on X, formerly Twitter, in reference to the groups of tents set up by asylum seekers along the canal in recent weeks.
âOur people are being forced down very dark & sinister road & it will not end well for each & every traitor to our nation,â he continued.
The tweet had all the ingredients needed to go viral in the anti-immigrant online ecosystem. There were warnings of an apparent threat to the safety of small children, criticism of Government âtraitorsâ and dark allusions to potential future violence.
READ MORE
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One of the first people to repost it was David Atherton (177,000 followers), a journalist with the European Conservative website. Many others soon followed suit, both in Ireland and abroad. These included right-wing podcaster Mark Attwood (63,000 followers), Carla OâConnor, an adult film actor turned anti-immigration activist, and Matt Braynard, a former staffer on Donald Trumpâs presidential campaign (143,000 followers).
The claim received another significant signal boost when UK far-right activist Tommy Robinson (530,000 followers) repeated it. âClearly they know what these men are like in those tents!â he said.
At the same time, the claim spread widely on Facebook, particularly in the many groups set up to oppose asylum seeker accommodation in towns and villages around the country.
After a few days, Powerâs original post had racked up almost 180,000 views on X alone. The only problem was, it was false. The presence of the Garda with the children had nothing to do with the encampment.
GardaĂ have been escorting large groups of schoolchildren through the city centre long before the arrival of the asylum seekersâ tents. The purpose was to keep the children together and ensure they do not stray on to the road.
[ Immigration is the top issue getting votersâ attention ahead of elections ]
âOur Community Policing Unit in Pearse Street regularly engage with local schools and will continue to assist with their activities â in this instance, we walked with almost 100 young pupils on a school trip across the city, as there were a lot of major junctions and crossings on the route,â a Garda spokesperson said.
Sources in two schools in the city centre confirmed this is a regular occurrence and is not related to asylum seekers.
âItâs the speed with which this stuff spreads. Thatâs the real problem,â said Supt Liam Geraghty, who heads the Garda Press Office. GardaĂ will often try to correct false information, such as the story about the children on the canal, he added.
Supt Liam Geraghty, Garda Press Office. Photograph: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie
âBut in a few short hours it gets widespread traction, which makes it very difficult to try to counteract or combat. Itâs very difficult to get a more accurate version of events out there.â
We should call what we are seeing what it is. We are witnessing a campaign of far-right terrorism in this State
â Paul Murphy TD, People Before Profit
This is far from the first time that Power has shared false information targeting foreign nationals which has gone viral. âMajor Incident Celbridgeâ, Power posted in February, before claiming he was âhearing reportsâ that a seven-year-old girl was âallegedly raped by three Roma men on the grounds of this hotelâ and calling for his supporters to gather for a demonstration.
Nothing of the sort was reported, gardaĂ said. They were investigating a report that a child had been allegedly physically assaulted by someone known to them. There was no sexual element to the incident, gardaĂ said.
Nevertheless, a large group of protesters turned up outside the Celbridge Manor hotel, which was being used to accommodate asylum seekers. Angry demonstrators shouted âpaedophiles outâ. Some called for the building to be burned down.
Missiles were also thrown at gardaĂ deployed to protect the hotel and its residents.
Last January, Power posted that a foreign national had allegedly been âcaught with a handgun in Dublin cityâ. In fact, gardaĂ had arrested a drunk man with a toy gun.
Power, who did not respond to a request for comment, is one of a number of far-right activists who have become adept at shaping false narratives around asylum seekers and crime so that they quickly go viral. âHe is regarded as one of the main disseminators of false information around immigration in the country,â said a garda responsible for monitoring elements of the far right.
âIf there is a false claim gaining traction, thereâs a very good chance he will have been one of the first to share it.â
[ Snapshot poll decoded: Concerns over housing and immigration crowd out other issues ]
Power, who lives in Ballybrack, is running as an independent candidate to represent the Killiney-Shankhill area in upcoming local elections. On candidate documents, he lists his occupation as âcarerâ.
He is regarded by gardaĂ as one of the key online instigators in the Dublin riots last November. Following the knife attack on several young schoolchildren on Parnell Square earlier that day, he falsely claimed online that one of the victims had âallegedlyâ died.
âThis better get people off their arses & out on the streets,â he posted just before 3pm that day.
In February, People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy, while speaking under DĂĄil privilege, said people such as Power are âquick to the sceneâ if a property is rumoured to be earmarked as asylum seeker accommodation.
âA few days later, it is burned down. We should call what we are seeing what it is. We are witnessing a campaign of far-right terrorism in this State,â Murphy said.
Paul Murphy TD, People Before Profit. Photograph: Gareth Chaney/Collins
Powerâs activities are not confined to the internet. Last month, he was arrested by gardaĂ while holding a sign that said âIrish Lives Matterâ outside a cafe after refusing to vacate the area under public order legislation. In September, he videoed himself with a group of people preparing a mock gallows, with photos of elected representatives attached, which was later used in a protest outside the DĂĄil.
Earlier this month, French officials warned their Irish counterparts that Russian operatives had extended their disinformation network into Ireland, including by exploiting social divisions around contentious issues such as immigration.
However, the vast majority of inaccurate information about immigrants to this country is home-grown and disseminated by Irish people such as Power. Others, such as Derek Blighe and Philip Dwyer, also frequently spread false or misleading information.
Philip Dwyer. Photograph: Collins Dublin
Many of these figures are running in the local or European elections next month, in which they hope to capitalise on growing concerns about levels of immigration.
There are people deliberately sitting there waiting to produce these sources of information to discredit legitimate sources of information
â Supt Liam Geraghty, Garda Press Office
Last June, in a post viewed more than 20,000 times Blighe, claimed it was â100 per cent confirmedâ that there was an attempted abduction by a âforeign manâ of a young girl in Kenmare, Co Kerry.
In response, the Garda said it had received a report of a âsuspicious approachâ to a child but that the report did not conform to the events outlined by Blighe, who is running in the European elections and is currently polling at 4 per cent.
Derek Blighe. Screengrab: From Youtube
Earlier this year, Dwyer, a self-described citizen journalist who is also running in the European elections, was one of the main far-right figures involved in spreading the falsehood that a disused pub in Ringsend, Dublin, was to be used to house asylum seekers.
This was despite the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DRHE) confirming the property was being used as emergency accommodation for homeless families. The building was gutted in an arson attack.
There is a general pattern to much of this false information. An anti-immigration account will post about a foreign man harming or threatening an Irish woman or child. The post will often feature terms such as âhearing reports ofâ or âpeople are sayingâ, while offering no concrete evidence.
On Telegram, a link to the post will be shared on far-right channels where members are instructed to repost it from their publicly facing profiles.
In many cases, after the post goes viral, it will emerge that the details are grossly exaggerated, distorted or entirely fictional.
This was the case in Finglas last year when anti-immigrant groups claimed a woman had been raped and beaten by two foreign men, leading to angry protests outside Finglas Garda station.
[ Taoiseach condemns âidioticâ attack on Tallaght building earmarked for asylum seekers ]
GardaĂ later said they were following a definite line of inquiry in relation to an alleged assault on a woman. The suspect, sources confirmed, was a white Irish man.
âThere are people deliberately sitting there waiting to produce these sources of information to discredit legitimate sources of information,â said Supt Geraghty.
He cites claims following the Dublin riots that the Army was on the streets or claims that the riot police from the PSNI were deployed against anti-immigration protesters in Newtownmountkennedy. âThis is something that is physically and legally impossible. Yet people see it and believe it.â
Just like Irish people, immigrants sometimes commit crimes, including serious crimes. But, according to Supt Geraghty, figures show there is no significant increase in âcriminal activity or public order issuesâ when a large number of asylum seekers move into an area.
What is increasing, he said, are crimes involving arson attacks on international protection accommodation, assaults on asylum seekers and attacks on elected officials. âIn some cases itâs the people who claim there is a big crime increase who are actually causing the crime increase.â
The false claims often give a specific location that is then shared into local Facebook or WhatsApp groups as fact, creating a hyperlocal sense of fear and apprehension around something that didnât happen
â Mark Malone, Hope and Courage Collective
In some cases, anti-immigration figures will manipulate footage to give a distorted impression. In January, far-right activist Michael OâKeeffe posted part of an RTĂ News clip, claiming it shows a âforeignerâ saying âthe Irish joke too much and that needs to changeâ.
OâKeeffe had mischaracterised the womanâs comments and removed the first few seconds of the clip, which make it clear she is specifically talking about instances where she has been racially abused. His post, which remains online, has been viewed over 1.6 million times.
âThe first aim is to create fear, anger and disgust,â said Mark Malone, research lead at Hope and Courage Collective, an organisation which campaigns against bigotry.
âThey will post these claims to Twitter for example and ask people to share urgently. The false claims often give a specific location that is then shared into local Facebook or WhatsApp groups as fact, creating a hyperlocal sense of fear and apprehension around something that didnât happen. Invariably, the false claims seek to blame âmigrantsâ or people seeking asylum.â
There is nothing organic about how these posts spread, said Malone. âIn Telegram groups, the Irish far-right are very open about their desire to keep pushing anti-migrant and white supremacist narratives. False claims and deliberate misinformation is a key means of trying to do that.â
After building up peopleâs rage online, activists seek to create a target group to blame, âthe next step to asking people out on to the streets in their own town and communityâ, Malone said. âWe have seen this play out time and time again, usually instigated by a handful of prominent far-right influencers.â
In spreading false information, candidates running on an anti-immigration platform are adopting the Trump playbook, which treats the truth as an elastic concept, said Dr Eileen Culloty, a disinformation expert with the Institute for Future Media Democracy and Society at DCU.
Dr Eileen Culloty, DCU school of communications
And, although it is supercharged by social media, âspreading rumours⌠that a foreigner or outsider has attacked someone, especially a child, has a very long historyâ, she said.
Whatâs more concerning, she said, âis weâre seeing a shift from online extremist rhetoric moving into offline violence, such as arson attacks and attacks on politicians. In that sense, the problem is definitely getting worse.â
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Hard to believe that a pro-Trump propaganda entity would be involved in massive money laundering.
By Matt Stieb, Intelligencer staff writer
One of the strangest stories in media over the past decade is the Epoch Times, a formerly free newspaper distributed on the streets of New York that focuses on conspiracist, right-wing takes and reports that are extremely critical of the Chinese Communist Party. Founded in 2000, it effectively functions as a propaganda wing of Falun Gong, the religious movement headquartered upstate that is also behind Shen Yun, the anti-communist show with the inescapable subway ads. During the Trump years, the Epoch Times successfully expanded its operation on YouTube and Facebook, reaching millions of Americans with clickbait and misinformation. According to the Justice Department, it also functioned as a massive money-laundering scheme for one of its executives.
On Monday, federal prosecutors in New York charged the Epoch Timesâ chief financial officer, Bill Guan, with bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering for allegedly moving at least $67 million in illegally obtained funds to bank accounts in the media outletâs name. According to the indictment, Guan was in charge of something (rather suspiciously) called the âMake Money Onlineâ team, in which Guan and underlings âused cryptocurrency to knowingly purchase tens of millions of dollars in crime proceeds.â The alleged scheme was fairly simple, relying on prepaid debit cards, which are a common method in crypto laundering. The Make Money Online team, based abroad, would allegedly purchase âproceeds of fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefitsâ loaded onto prepaid cards. The team then allegedly traded them for cryptocurrency at 70 to 80 percent of the cardsâ actual value. After making the deal, the Feds claim that those funds would then be transferred into bank accounts associated with the Epoch Times as well as into Guanâs personal bank accounts.
It appears that the Make Money Online team lived up to its name. The Feds say that at the same time that Guan allegedly concocted the money-laundering scheme, the Epoch Timesâ annual revenue shot up 410 percent, from $15 million to around $62 million. Its bankers naturally had questions, but Guan said that the windfall came from donations, per the indictment. (Unfortunately for him, he also wrote to a congressional office in 2022, stating that donations are âan insignificant portion of the overall revenueâ of the Epoch Times.) Guan has entered a not guilty plea, and prosecutors note that the âcharges do not relate to the Media Companyâs newsgathering activities.â
Rachel Maddow did a big feature on the Epoch Times back in 2019.
Twitter has become even better lately. Big Mike has been going a while pal.
Also do you really think i actually believe anything i post here?
If thereâs a clever subtlety at play here, it is really quite difficult to discern
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