US and Israel Quit Gaza Ceasefire Talks in Doha as Palestinians Starve to Death

Hamas’s long-standing position is that it’s willing to release all remaining captives in exchange for a permanent ceasefire. But Israel has rejected this, and there’s no sign the Trump administration is willing to put pressure on Israel to change its position.

Steve Witkoff blamed the collapse of negotiations on Hamas while Hamas said it was caught off guard and wanted to continue talks

by Dave DeCamp | July 24, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/07/24/us-and-israel-quit-gaza-ceasefire-talks-in-doha-as-palestinians-starve-to-death/

The US and Israel have withdrawn negotiators from Gaza ceasefire talks in Doha, Qatar, dashing hopes for a breakthrough as the humanitarian situation in Gaza is as bad as ever, and Palestinians are starving to death due to the US-backed Israeli blockade.

Israel announced it was bringing its negotiators home after Hamas presented its latest counter-proposal. The Israeli announcement was quickly followed up by a statement from US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Both the US and Israel are blaming Hamas for the collapse of the negotiations. However, Israel has maintained a hardline position throughout the talks and made clear that it would agree only to a temporary ceasefire since Israeli officials announced a plan to build a concentration camp in southern Gaza during the truce. One of Hamas’s conditions has been for a stronger guarantee that an initial 60-day ceasefire would lead to a permanent one.

“We have decided to bring our team home from Doha for consultations after the latest response from Hamas, which clearly shows a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire in Gaza. While the mediators have made a great effort, Hamas does not appear to be coordinated or acting in good faith,” Witkoff said in a post on X.

“We will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home and try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza. It is a shame that Hamas has acted in this selfish way. We are resolute in seeking an end to this conflict and a permanent peace in Gaza,” he added.

It’s unclear what sort of “alternative options” the US and Israel may be considering, but the collapse in negotiations comes as the Israeli military has launched a ground offensive in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, an area where Israelis believe many of the remaining captives may be held.

In response to Witkoff’s statement, Hamas said that it has been flexible and that it was “committed to reaching an agreement that halts the aggression and ends the suffering of our people in the Gaza Strip.” Hamas said it presented its “final response” in consultations with other Palestinian factions and mediators.

“We are surprised by the negative statements of US envoy Steve Witkoff regarding the Movement’s stance, especially when the mediators have expressed their welcome and satisfaction with this constructive and positive position, which opens the door to reaching a comprehensive agreement,” Hamas said.

“The Movement reiterates its commitment to continuing negotiations and engaging in them to help overcome obstacles and reach a permanent ceasefire agreement,” the group added.

According to Axios, Hamas had asked for more Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for Israeli captives, including 2,000 Palestinians who have been abducted in Gaza since October 7, 2023, instead of the 1,200 the US and Israel proposed. The two sides have also been at odds over the amount of territory Israel will occupy, as Israel is refusing to withdraw its forces back to the positions it held during the short-lived ceasefire deal that was signed in January 2025.

July 28, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Chinese hackers gain access to US oversight of nuclear weapons in widespread Microsoft hack: report

The tech giant blamed a vulnerability in its SharePoint document software

Anthony Cuthbertson,Rhian Lubin, Wednesday 23 July 2025, https://www.the-independent.com/tech/security/china-hack-nuclear-microsoft-sharepoint-b2795333.html

Chinese hackers gained access to the U.S. government agency that oversees nuclear weapons in a widespread Microsoft hack.

Microsoft issued an alert Tuesday warning that hackers affiliated with the Chinese government have been exploiting cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the company’s SharePoint software.

Tens of thousands of servers hosting the software, which is used for sharing and managing documents, were said to be at risk as a result.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for maintaining the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, was breached in the attacks on July 18, Bloomberg first reported.

The agency is responsible for providing the Navy with nuclear reactors for submarines and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the U.S. and overseas. No sensitive or classified information has leaked in the cyber attack, according to Bloomberg.

“On Friday, July 18th, the exploitation of a Microsoft SharePoint zero-day vulnerability began affecting the Department of Energy,” an agency spokesman said in a statement to the outlet. “The department was minimally impacted due to its widespread use of the Microsoft M365 cloud and very capable cybersecurity systems. A very small number of systems were impacted. All impacted systems are being restored.”

Security firm Eye Security said that 400 organizations and agencies globally were impacted, including national governments in Europe and the Middle East.

Microsoft linked the attack to two main groups, Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon, and flagged that another China-based group, Storm-2603, had also targeted its systems.

The Education Department, Florida’s Department of Revenue and the Rhode Island General Assembly were also breached in the attack, according to Bloomberg.

Eye Security warned that the breaches could allow hackers to impersonate users or services by stealing cryptographic keys — alphabetical codes or sequences of characters — even after software updates. Users should take further steps to protect their information, the firm said.

Microsoft said in a message to customers that it has since released “new comprehensive security updates” to deal with the incident.

But security researchers warned that the full extent of the breach and its consequences are yet to be fully revealed.

“This is a critical vulnerability with wide reaching implications,” Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec, who previously trained U.S. military cyber protection teams, told The Independent.

“It enables unauthenticated remote code execution on SharePoint servers, which are a core part of enterprise infrastructure. It is already being actively exploited at scale, and it only took 72 hours from the time a proof of concept was demonstrated for attackers to begin mass exploitation campaigns.

“What makes it even more severe is the way it exposes cryptographic secrets, effectively allowing attackers to convert any authenticated SharePoint request into remote code execution. That is a dangerous capability to put into the hands of threat actors.” 

Microsoft said it had “high confidence” that firms who do not install the new security updates could be targeted by the groups.

The tech firm said the attackers had been uploading malicious scripts which are then “enabling the theft of the key material” by hackers.

In a statement, the company added: “Investigations into other actors also using these exploits are still ongoing.”

Additional reporting from agencies.

July 27, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, incidents, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s Ukraine Plan: Power Play or Exit Strategy?

Beneath the rhetoric lies a fundamental truth: America is disengaging. Not with a decisive withdrawal, but through a form of diplomatic sleight-of-hand. By recasting its role from arsenal to arms dealer (insisting NATO nations pay “a hundred percent” for U.S.-made weapons) the United States transforms the principle of collective defense into a commercial transaction.

Uncover the hidden logic behind Trump’s delayed weapons aid, NATO rifts, and realpolitik tactics reshaping U.S. foreign policy and Ukraine’s fate.

Post-Liberal Dispatch, Jul 24, 2025, This piece was written by guest contributor Sérgio Horta Soares and has been reviewed and edited by Paulo Aguiar, founder of Post-Liberal Dispatch.

In geopolitics, there are no saints, only actors grappling for advantage, cloaking raw interests in the language of freedom, democracy, and humanitarian concern.

The recent choreography surrounding former U.S. President Donald Trump’s ostensible reentry into the Ukraine conflict lays bare the mechanics of power as they actually function: not through moral imperatives, but through calculated ambiguity, resource preservation, and the exploitation of time.

What masquerades as renewed support for Ukraine is, in substance, a meticulously engineered performance, designed not to rescue Kyiv, but to extricate Washington. Trump’s pronouncements of “billions” in arms, and his threats of tariffs against nations buying Russian oil, are not expressions of strategic commitment; they are instruments of political theater, signals issued to multiple audiences with competing agendas, none of whom are meant to receive a clear message.

To understand this gambit, one must first understand the war’s trajectory. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Western countries (led by the United States) have supplied billions in weapons, economic assistance, and intelligence to Ukraine in an effort to repel Russian advances and prevent the collapse of the post–Cold War European security order.

Initially, this support was framed in terms of values: defending sovereignty, democracy, and international law. But as the war dragged on into its third year, cracks emerged in the Western coalition (rising costs, strained defense stockpiles, and growing domestic opposition to what many now view as an open-ended commitment).

Beneath the rhetoric lies a fundamental truth: America is disengaging. Not with a decisive withdrawal, but through a form of diplomatic sleight-of-hand. By recasting its role from arsenal to arms dealer (insisting NATO nations pay “a hundred percent” for U.S.-made weapons) the United States transforms the principle of collective defense into a commercial transaction.

NATO, once a bastion of mutual obligation, is being refashioned into a procurement agency. The nations of Europe are no longer being asked to fight beside the U.S.; they are being asked to shop.

That this approach incites confusion and resentment among allies is the point. Strategic ambiguity, long a hallmark of Trump’s foreign policy, is not a flaw but a deliberate tactic. By maintaining a posture of conditional engagement, the U.S. preserves its leverage, avoids definitive entanglement, and keeps both adversaries and allies on edge. This calculated vagueness allows for plausible deniability and quick reversals. It ensures that commitments can be revoked, blame can be shifted, and outcomes can be rebranded.

What emerges is not policy, but posture, a stance of strength unmoored from obligation. The imposition of delayed tariffs and the promise of weapons that will not arrive in time to affect the current Russian offensive are not strategic errors; they are expressions of strategic intent. They buy time; not for Ukraine, but for Russia.

Intelligence suggests that Russian commanders believe they can achieve key battlefield objectives within weeks, before weather and logistics slow their operations. Trump’s 50-day deadline for triggering sanctions likely falls outside of that window. This is not coincidence; it is complicity, veiled beneath performative deterrence.

Ukraine, under siege and starved of arms, is left to decipher whether the promised aid is a lifeline or a leash. Meanwhile, Washington hedges its bets, calibrating its involvement to extract maximum geopolitical return with minimum exposure.

The material realities further erode any illusion of robust support. Western arsenals are depleted. Since 2022, the U.S. and its NATO allies have shipped tens of thousands of artillery shells, air defense systems, and armored vehicles to Ukraine. Yet the West’s military-industrial base is still operating on peacetime rhythms, struggling to keep pace with the demands of high-intensity warfare. Arms production in the U.S. and Europe cannot meet short-term demand, and weapons systems, such as Germany’s promised Patriots, are delayed by months.

These constraints reveal a widening gap between political intent and logistical feasibility. Without urgent expansion of industrial capacity, Western efforts risk falling behind Russia’s war economy, rendering even well-publicized support strategies operationally irrelevant

The fragmentation of NATO in response to the Trump plan is less an aberration than a revelation.

France and Italy reject participation outright, prioritizing domestic industry and fiscal restraint. Hungary abstains on ideological grounds, and the Czech Republic prefers alternative aid mechanisms. Even those nations nominally listed as partners (Finland, Denmark, Sweden) were reportedly blindsided by the announcement. This is improvisation, and it exposes the brittle scaffolding of transatlantic unity, where each state calculates its own interests and distances itself from burdens it cannot (or will not) carry.

Within this fractured landscape, Ukraine is not a partner but a bargaining chip, leveraged between competing powers with conflicting priorities. Trump’s ultimate objective is not Ukrainian victory but………………………………………………..(Subscribers only) https://postliberaldispatch.substack.com/p/trumps-ukraine-plan-power-play-or?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=4747899&post_id=169097642&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

July 27, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

US congresswoman labels Zelensky ‘dictator’

23 Jul, 2025 , https://www.rt.com/news/621871-us-congresswoman-zelensky-dictator/

Marjorie Taylor Greene has urged Washington to stop backing the Ukrainian leader, accusing him of refusing peace and clinging to power

US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has labeled Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky “a dictator” and called for his removal, citing mass anti-corruption protests across Ukraine and accusing him of blocking peace efforts.

Her comments came after Zelensky signed a controversial bill into law that places the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) under the authority of the prosecutor general.

Critics argue that the legislation effectively strips the bodies of their independence. The law has sparked protests across Ukraine, with around 2,000 people rallying in Kiev and additional demonstrations reported in Lviv, Odessa, and Poltava.

“Good for the Ukrainian people! Throw him out of office!” Greene wrote Wednesday on X, sharing footage from the protests. “And America must STOP funding and sending weapons!!!”

Greene, a longtime critic of US aid to Kiev, made similar comments last week while introducing an amendment to block further assistance. “Zelensky is a dictator, who, by the way, stopped elections in his country because of this war,” she told the House.

“He’s jailed journalists, he’s canceled his election, controlled state media, and persecuted Christians. The American people should not be forced to continue to pay for another foreign war.”

Her statements come amid mounting speculation over Zelensky’s political future. Journalist Seymour Hersh has reported that US officials are considering replacing him, possibly with former top general Valery Zaluzhny.

Senator Tommy Tuberville also called Zelensky a “dictator” last month, accusing him of trying to drag NATO into the conflict with Russia. Tuberville claimed that Zelensky refuses to hold elections because “he knew if he had an election, he’d get voted out.”

Zelensky’s five-year presidential term expired in 2024, but he has refused to hold a new election, citing martial law, which has been extended every 90 days since 2022.

US President Donald Trump has also questioned Zelensky’s legitimacy, calling him “a dictator without elections” in February.

Russian officials have repeatedly brought up the issue of Zelensky’s legitimacy, arguing that any agreements signed by him or his administration could be legally challenged by future leaders of Ukraine.

July 27, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste exposure in childhood associated with higher cancer incidence

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Jul 17 2025, https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250717/Nuclear-waste-exposure-in-childhood-associated-with-higher-cancer-incidence.aspx

Living near Coldwater Creek-a Missouri River tributary north of St. Louis that was polluted by nuclear waste from the development of the first atomic bomb-in childhood in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s was associated with an elevated risk of cancer, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The researchers say the findings corroborate health concerns long held by community members.

The study will be published July 16 in JAMA Network Open. It coincides with Congress having passed an expanded version of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) as part of the Trump tax bill, through which Americans, including Coldwater Creek residents, can receive compensation for medical bills associated with radiation exposure.

Most studies of radiation exposure have focused on bomb survivors who have had very high levels of exposure; far less is known about the health impacts of lower levels of radiation exposure.

Nuclear waste exposure in childhood associated with higher cancer incidence

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Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthJul 17 2025

Most studies of radiation exposure have focused on bomb survivors who have had very high levels of exposure; far less is known about the health impacts of lower levels of radiation exposure.

For this study, the researchers used a subsample of 4,209 participants from the St. Louis Baby Tooth – Later Life Health Study (SLBT), a cohort composed of many individuals who lived near Coldwater Creek as children and who donated their baby teeth beginning in 1958 to measure exposure to radiation from atmospheric nuclear testing. The participants, who lived in the Greater St. Louis area between 1958 and 1972, self-reported incidences of cancer, allowing the researchers to calculate cancer risk in accordance with childhood residence proximity to Coldwater Creek.

The findings showed a dose-response effect-those living nearest to the creek had a higher risk for most cancers than those living farther away. There were 1,009 individuals (24% of the study population) who reported having cancer. Of those, the proportion was higher for those living near the creek-30% lived less than one kilometer away, 28% between one and five kilometers away, 25% between five and 20 kilometers away, and 24% 20 kilometers or more away).

The researchers estimated that those living more than 20 kilometers away from the creek had a 24% risk of any type of cancer. Compared to this group, among those who lived less than one kilometer away from the creek, the risk of developing any type of cancer was 44% higher; solid cancers (cancers that form a mass, as opposed to blood cancers), 52% higher; radiosensitive cancers (thyroid, breast, leukemia, and basal cell), 85% higher; and non-radiosensitive cancers (all except thyroid, breast, leukemia, and basal cell), 41% higher. The risk went down among those who lived between one and 5 kilometers away from the creek, and then down a little more among those who lived 5-20 kilometers away, but was still slightly higher than those living more than 20 kilometers away.

“Our research indicates that the communities around North St. Louis appear to have had excess cancer from exposure to the contaminated Coldwater Creek,” said corresponding author Marc Weisskopf, Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor of Environmental Epidemiology and Physiology.

These findings may have broader implications-as countries think about increasing nuclear power and developing more nuclear weapons, the waste from these entities could have huge impacts on people’s health, even at these lower levels of exposure.”

Marc Weisskopf, Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor, Environmental Epidemiology and Physiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Other Harvard Chan School authors included Michael Leung, Ian Tang, Joyce Lin, Lorelei Mucci, Justin Farmer, and Kaleigh McAlaine.

Source:

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Journal reference:

Leung, M., et al. (2025) Cancer Incidence and Childhood Residence Near the Coldwater Creek Radioactive Waste Site. JAMA Network Open.

July 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

Origins of Israel’s nuclear ambiguity lie in a secret deal forged between Richard Nixon and Golda Meir – podcast

July 24, 2025, https://theconversation.com/origins-of-israels-nuclear-ambiguity-lie-in-a-secret-deal-forged-between-richard-nixon-and-golda-meir-podcast-261789

Israel has never officially confirmed or denied having nuclear weapons and has never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Instead, even as evidence has emerged about its nuclear capabilities, Israel has maintained a policy of nuclear ambiguity.

The origins of this opacity lie in a secret deal forged in a one-on-one meeting between Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, and the US president, Richard Nixon, at the White House in September 1969.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Avner Cohen, professor of non-proliferation studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterrey in the US, about that 1969 deal and why it has endured for more than 50 years. Cohen is the author of Israel and the Bomb, considered the definitive work on Israel’s nuclear programme, and has been interrogated by the Israeli state for his research.

Cohen tells us that the understanding between Meir and Nixon meant the US accepted Israel as a special kind of nuclear weapon state. In turn, Israel committed to restraint, not to test nuclear weapons, and not to be the first to introduce them to the region. Neither side has confirmed the existence of a deal, and there are only hints at it in the historical record. Cohen explains:

Once you realise that there is actually a deal, it explains a great deal of the situation. Why the US [is] looking the other way, why the issue is determined to be removed from the diplomatic agenda, and why many other countries, especially in the west, prefer not to see the Israeli nuclear issue.

Listen to the conversation with Avner Cohen on The Conversation Weekly podcast.

July 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, Israel, USA | Leave a comment

Dell’s complicity in Israel’s genocide

Omar Zahzah The Electronic Intifada 22 July 2025. https://electronicintifada.net/content/dells-complicity-israels-genocide/50824

In January 2023, Dell Technologies Inc, an American multinational, won a tender from the Israeli defense ministry to provide servers and related services to the Israeli military, other security bodies and the ministry itself.

The deal was valued at over $150 million.

Corporate watchdog WhoProfits.org reported on the tender and revealed that Dell subsidiaries like VMware and EMC Israel Advanced Information Technologies, along with Dell staff, provided technology and training to the Israeli military and partnered in occupation-linked initiatives such as the National Cyber Park in the Naqab, which Israel established after “a government decision to promote national capabilities in the cyber space as part of a concept of combined work between government, academia, industry and the military.”

However, internal documents obtained by The Electronic Intifada suggest Dell is more closely entwined with the Israeli military than previously known, particularly by supplying technology for Israel’s artificial intelligence (AI) -assisted genocide in Gaza.

Dell’s ties to Israel stretch back two decades: In 2006, it won a tender to provide 50,000 computers to the Israeli army and another to supply portable computers to the government.

In 2016, Dell rebranded to Dell Technologies after merging with software firm EMC Corporation, enabling greater focus on emerging cloud technologies.

Dell also absorbed EMC’s extensive Israeli presence – it had been active there since 1996, establishing its first research and development center in Ramat Gan in 2006.

In 2011, after acquiring several Israeli start-ups, the R&D center was rebranded “a center of excellence.”

“Deeply committed”

Michael Dell, founder and CEO of the company that bears his name, told the Dell Future Ready Conference in May 2016 that Dell is “deeply committed to Israel.”

“We want to be here, we want to be a partner in the incredible innovation that occurs here.”

He also met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, now wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, at the conference.

In January 2024, months into Israel’s Gaza genocide, Dell shared a photo of himself and Israeli President Isaac Herzog – whose words blaming “an entire nation” in Gaza for 7 October would be cited later that month in the International Court of Justice ruling ordering Israel to cease all genocidal acts in Gaza.

“It’s an honor to stand with @Isaac_Herzog and Israel,” Dell wrote.

As such, the company’s practice of technologically fortifying Israel’s oppressive policies is not exactly a secret. Still, scrutiny tends to focus primarily on how the company bolsters military occupation.

Nearly two years into the Gaza genocide, Google, Amazon and Microsoft have borne the brunt of criticism for their participation in Project Nimbus and Azure – tech projects which provide AI and cloud services that power the Israeli military’s surveillance of Palestinians and potentially help generate kill-lists.

“Mass assassination factory”

A November 2023 report by +972 Magazine and Local Call revealed that the Israeli military was using “The Gospel,” an AI program that generates infrastructure targets, including private residences, for the Israeli military to strike. One source described it as enabling “a mass assassination factory.”

In April 2024, a partner report found that the Israeli army was using another artificial intelligence program, “Lavender,” to generate kill- lists.

Lavender notoriously has a 10 percent margin of error. This is compounded by criteria the Israeli military gives the program to automate the identification of potential targets so broad, the kill lists are essentially arbitrary.

Another automated program, “Where’s Daddy,” allows the Israeli military to track Palestinians with the express purpose of carrying out bombings once the individual has gone home.

Mass casualties are guaranteed by these AI-assisted operations.

With such blatantly murderous applications, it is no surprise that there is growing protest against Big Tech’s role in Israel’s genocide.

A bombshell report from Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, exposes how Israel’s “forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and big tech – providing boundless supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability – while investors and private and public institutions profit freely.”

The report spells out the direct responsibility that corporate entities hold not to engage in potential violations of human rights nor undertake any endeavors that undermine the Palestinian right to self-determination. Corporate entities and executives found to be in violation can potentially be subjected to domestic and international legal action.

“AI is one of today’s weapons of mass destruction and Google is a willing war profiteer,” Mohammad Khatami, Zelda Montes, and Katie Sim, three Google employees fired for taking part in mass civil disobedience against Project Nimbus in April 2024, wrote in The Nation.

“Systems like The Gospel and Lavender are made possible through the kind of cloud computing infrastructure that companies like Google, [Amazon Web Services,] and Intel provide.”

Now, it seems that Dell is also implicated in this process.

Internal documents shared with The Electronic Intifada reveal that Dell technology is supporting a host of Israeli military operations, including AI used to monitor and target Palestinians. These materials show that Dell hardware is used when running Lavender and The Gospel to automate targeting decisions and minimize human oversight, increasing the speed of military assaults.

Israel’s notorious cyberwarfare force Unit 8200, uses Dell’s AI-powered Pro-Rugged 13 laptops for intelligence gathering, surveillance and military operations.

Dell also provides laptops and servers that enable Israeli AI company AnyVision’s facial recognition systems – which facilitate mass surveillance of Palestinians at checkpoints and other sites.

Paper thin

The technology that Dell provides to AnyVision, as well as to CISCO Israel (laptops, edge servers, VMware, networking solutions) and Cognyte Technologies Israel Ltd. (laptops, servers, networking solutions) all facilitate mass surveillance of Palestinians.

CISCO provides communication infrastructure for surveillance, enabling real-time monitoring of civilian populations and military activities. Cognyte Technologies Ltd. uses Dell tech for cyber-intelligence systems that track people in Gaza and the West Bank.

The documents also reveal that beneficiaries of Dell technologies include the Israeli army’s Golani Brigade – implicated in the murder of 15 paramedics and emergency workers in Rafah in April, the naval unit Flotilla 13 and the Israeli air force.

Elbit Systems Land & C41 – the Israeli arms manufacturer’s military communications technology arm – also reportedly receives laptops, servers and networking solutions from Dell Technologies.

When contacted for comment, Dell initially sent the following statement:

“Dell is committed to the highest standards and complying with local laws and regulations where we do business. Please refer to our Human Rights policy, provided below.”

That policy stipulates how: “Dell respects the human rights of all people as reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

It goes on to say that the company “will not be complicit in human rights violations, and we hold our suppliers and other business partners to this same standard.”

Finally, the policy asserts that the company complies with “local laws and regulations wherever we do business. If local law conflicts with the principles in this policy, within the bounds of local laws we seek ways to honor the principles of internationally recognized human rights and influence progress towards the highest standards.” 

Then, bizarrely, the company, which uses Outlook for communications, apparently tried to recall the statement it sent this journalist (but since the message had already been opened, its contents were still available.)

Shortly after notification of the recall attempt, a final message from Dell’s media team was received, asking to “please hold on this statement. We may have an updated one for you.”

This “updated” statement has not come as of time of writing.

Dell’s close association with a state charged with genocide at the International Court of Justice surely undermines the company’s effort to portray itself as an ethical company.

Dell’s website boasts that it was recognized in 2025 as “One of the World’s Most Ethical Companies” for the 13th time by the for-profit Ethisphere Institute.

In May 2024, Dell even announced a partnership with governments around the world to address ethical concerns regarding AI.

But these gestures are paper-thin: Ethisphere charges for company ratings, and other recipients of the “Most Ethical Companies” title have included US weapons manufacturer Leidos and Elbit Systems America, a subsidiary of Israel’s Elbit systems.

Dell’s track record is distinctive, though not in the way it wants to be perceived:

By providing the technologies that power Israel’s racialized surveillance and killing machine from AI programs, Dell belongs right next to Google, Amazon, Intel and Microsoft as a corporate profiteer of occupation, apartheid and the first live-streamed genocide in history.

Omar Zahzah’s book, Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle will be published by The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press on 16 September, 2025.

July 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Fusion energy start-up claims to have cracked alchemy.

A fusion energy start-up claims to have solved the millennia-old challenge
of how to turn other metals into gold. Chrysopoeia, commonly known as
alchemy, has been pursued by civilisations as far back as ancient Egypt.
Now San Francisco-based Marathon Fusion, a start-up focused on using
nuclear fusion to generate power, has said the same process could be used
to produce gold from mercury.

In an academic paper published last week,
Marathon proposes that neutrons released in fusion reactions could be used
to produce gold through a process known as nuclear transmutation.

FT 22nd July 2025, https://www.ft.com/content/06f91e0d-3007-40bd-b785-86fef4890809

July 25, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology, USA | Leave a comment

Trump has backed himself into a corner on Ukraine

The chances of President Putin backing down without any concessions from Ukraine or from their European sponsors are so low as to be almost non-existent.

the additional military support that the US is now offering to Ukraine, paid for by European NATO allies, won’t be sufficient to tip the military balance in Ukraine’s favour…………….. the military facts on the ground are that Russia continues to gain ground…………………. fifty days favours Russia more than Ukraine, militarily.

He now has fifty days to reach agreement on Ukrainian neutrality

Ian Proud, Jul 17, 2025, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/trump-has-backed-himself-into-a-corner?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=168542067&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

One year after he undertook to end the Ukraine war in one day, and just past six months into his Presidency, Donald Trump has kicked the peace can down the road by fifty days. The ultimatum to President Putin to make peace or face sanctions has practically no chance to changing Russian aims in Ukraine. Backed into a corner, Trump may finally be forced to address Russia’s underlying concerns.

In televised remarks on 14 July during his meeting with NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, President Trump said, ‘if we don’t have a [peace] deal in fifty days, we’re going to be doing very severe tariffs, tariffs at about a hundred percent, you’d call them secondary tariffs.’

As he was in 2017, Trump also now finds himself hemmed in by beltway politics and unable to deliver a reset in US-Russia relations that he instinctively seems to want.

The Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 would put in place so-called secondary sanctions on Russia by imposing stiff tariffs of up to 500% against countries such as China and India that inter alia import Russian energy. US lawmakers want to strong arm Trump into forcing President Putin to back down in Ukraine via the back door. But there is a yawn-inducing sense of déjà vu here.

The 2017 Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, signed into law on 2 August 2017, had no impact on Russian policy towards Ukraine, but led to a huge collapse in US-Russia relations. This was illustrated most clearly by the decision to cut US diplomatic staffing in Russia by 755 personnel, meaning among other things, that today it is practically impossible for a Russian citizen to apply for a US visa inside of Russia itself; the US Embassy simply doesn’t have enough staff.

To avoid a repeat of 2017, Trump now appears to be buying himself fifty days in DC to reach peace in Ukraine before he is forced by the Senate to impose secondary sanctions on Russia. The 14 July announcement was therefore about domestic US politics more than about foreign policy.

But what Trump has in fact done is to set a clear ultimatum on Russia to reach a peace deal with Ukraine, with no clear commitment to meeting Russia’s specific demands, the key demand being Ukraine’s neutrality and revocation of its NATO aspiration.

As an ultimatum, this won’t work, because the additional military support that the US is now offering to Ukraine, paid for by European NATO allies, won’t be sufficient to tip the military balance in Ukraine’s favour.

Additional Patriot missiles and interceptors may well reduce the overall impact of Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian cities. But the military facts on the ground are that Russia continues to gain ground. At several points along the front line, around Pokrovsk, and Kupiansk, towards Konstiantynivka and Siversk, there have been significant recent Russian gains, by the slow attritional standards of this war.

As reported by the Guardian in the UK, even some Ukrainian politicians and bloggers have come out to say that fifty days will simply allow Russia to occupy further Ukrainian land. The most interesting point about that report is the revelation that a British mainstream media outlet is reporting oppositionist views from Ukraine, rather than the narrative from Zelensky’s propaganda machine.

So, fifty days favours Russia more than Ukraine, militarily.

And the so-called secondary tariffs are only secondary to Russia. To countries like China they would be actual tariffs, taxing Chinese goods and those from other affected countries at an additional 100% on top of exist rates.

Yet, when the US last hiked tariffs on China at a rate of 145%, Trump was quickly forced to back down as China simply increased their tariffs against US goods by a proportionate rate. If Trump believes that China would not do so again, then I’m afraid he is deluded.

Even in the (frankly) unlikely event that China did not respond to ‘secondary’ tariffs in kind, it is far from clear how President Xi Jinping would force President Putin to change his war aims in Ukraine, without himself appearing to lose face in China, which would be politically damaging to him.

Which brings us back to Trump’s ultimatum. One commentator remarked that he has managed to ‘back himself into a corner in the Oval Office’, which is not an easy thing to do. The chances of President Putin backing down without any concessions from Ukraine or from their European sponsors are so low as to be almost non-existent.

Donald Trump, who appears largely to have sub-contracted resolving the Ukraine war to Marco Rubio and Keith Kellogg (where has Steve Witkoff disappeared to?), may now be forced to invest more personal time to bringing the war to an end.

Yes, he has engaged directly with President Putin in talks which is to be welcomed, in a diplomacy-starved war. But his real problem is his inability to encourage Ukraine and its European sponsors to address Russia’s underlying concerns about the war.

The most significant concern is, and has always been, about the need for Ukraine to adopt neutrality and revoke its aspiration to NATO membership. There has been absolutely no sign of compromise on this key underlying concern in Kyiv, Brussels, Berlin or London.

Offering Ukraine more weapons, however well-intended, will simply encourage Zelensky, Mark Rutte, Ursula von der Leyen, Friedrich Merz and Keir Starmer, in their view that Ukraine’s NATO aspirations remain alive and well. And, unfortunately, Russia will not silence its guns until, at the very least, a deal on Ukrainian neutrality is reached.

That leaves Trump with only one place to go. He must now invest personal time into urging Ukraine and Europe to accept neutrality for Ukraine as part of a ceasefire deal and longer-term peace process. If he doesn’t, the politics of Washington DC may force him to impose tariffs on China in a way which will, more than anyone else, hurt American people, and hurt his reputation.

July 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

Trump axes nuclear waste oversight panel

By Francisco “A.J.” Camacho | 07/21/2025, https://www.eenews.net/articles/trump-axes-nuclear-waste-oversight-panel/

The move comes at a time when Republicans and Democrats alike are pursuing a nuclear expansion, with Presiden Donald Trump aiming to quadruple nuclear power capacity by 2050.

President Donald Trump dismissed all but one of the members of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, diminishing oversight over the country’s long-term spent nuclear fuel storage program.

“On Wednesday, the White House sent emails to seven Board members — Drs. Richelle Allen-King, Miles Greiner, Silvia Jurisson, Nathan Siu, Seth Tuler, Scott Tyler, Brian Woods — dismissing them from the Board, effective July 16, 2025,” Christopher Burk, the board’s director of external affairs, said in an email. “As a result, Dr. Peter Swift, Board Chair, is the sole member of the Board. The NWTRB staff and funding have remained in place.”

The move came at a time when Republicans and Democrats alike are pursuing a nuclear expansion, with Trump aiming to quadruple nuclear power capacity by 2050. It also comes amid a major shakeup at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with administration officials directing the agency to apply minimal scrutiny in reviewing reactors backed by the departments of Energy or Defense and the firing of Christopher Hanson, a Democratic commissioner and former NRC chair under former President Joe Biden.

July 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

US Nuclear Industry Revival on the Horizon

In late May, President Trump issued four separate Executive Orders (EOs)
with respect to growing the nuclear power industry in the US. As the
implementation of these orders begins, several Washington focused
publications have written about one emerging consequence of these EOs—the
likely termination of NRC oversight with respect to approval of new nuclear
reactor designs.

This major responsibility is being moved to the Pentagon
and the Department of Energy. One administration official referred to the
NRC’s prospective role in reactor approval as akin to a rubber stamp. The
implied criticism here being that the NRC was much too slow in approving
new reactor designs and are an obstacle to the President’s goal of
dramatically increasing nuclear power in the US. So, in effect, they got
FEMA’d. This raises the question whether we are effectively deregulating
commercial nuclear energy technologies, assuming, of course, that the
prospective review processes of the Pentagon and DoE are less rigorous than
the NRC’s.

Oil Price 21st July 2025, https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/US-Nuclear-Industry-Revival-on-the-Horizon.html

July 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Trump axes nuclear waste oversight panel

The move comes at a time when Republicans and Democrats alike are pursuing a nuclear expansion, with Presiden Donald Trump aiming to quadruple nuclear power capacity by 2050.

By: Francisco “A.J.” Camacho | 07/21/2025

ENERGYWIRE | President Donald Trump dismissed all but one of the members of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, diminishing oversight over the country’s long-term spent nuclear fuel storage program.

Energy Wire 21st July 2025, https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2025/07/21/nuclear-waste-oversight-panel-finally-gets-the-ax-under-trump-00463505

…

July 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

MAGA Going to Israel for Propaganda Training

The Israeli government is paying to have 16 MAGA social media influencers, with millions of followers, brought to Israel to learn how to stop American youth from turning against Tel Aviv over Gaza, writes Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/07/20/maga-going-to-israel-for-propaganda-training/

The Israel foreign ministry will spend $86,000 to finance a tour of Israel for 16 Americans to get them to use their vast online influence to craft more positive images of a nation openly engaged in genocide.

The effort is being made as Israel reacts to a significant turn in public opinion against it, especially by Western youth. Tel Aviv realizes its usual methods of propaganda — and apparently its own inhouse troll army — are no longer working as they once did.

The daily Haaretz reported:

“Foreign Ministry officials say the tour delivers significant media, advocacy, and diplomatic benefits – and represents a strategic shift, as traditional outreach is no longer sufficient to shape public opinion. They aim to leverage the massive followings of young social media influencers to bolster Israel’s standing in the U.S.”

The Americans, whose names have not been divulged, belong to the MAGA and America First movements, the newspaper said. They are all younger than 30 and each have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, a vast, target-rich environment for propaganda. Israel intends to bring more than 500 “influencer delegations” to Israel this year, the ministry said.

It is paying an organization called Israel365 to organize the first American tour because it is in a “unique position to convey a pro-Israel stance that aligns entirely with the MAGA and America First agenda.”

Israel365’s website says the group “stands unapologetically for the Jewish people’s God-given right to the entire Land of Israel,” calls the two-state solution a “delusion,” and says it’s defending “Western civilization against threats from both Progressive Left extremism and global jihad.”

Israeli officials justified the no-bid contract with the organization because of its “experience and know-how in creating awareness, engagement, and mobilization of Christian audiences regarding their support for the Jewish people and the State of Israel,” Haaretz reported.

Ministry officials told the newspaper that “while older Republicans and American conservatives still hold pro-Israel views, positive perspectives towards Israel are falling across all younger age groups.”

News of the tour comes after the U.S. national teachers union voted to ditch the Zionist curriculum of the Ant-Defamation League, which was influencing young American minds.

Western youth, including conservatives, have become increasingly aware of the history of Israel’s expulsion of Palestinian people from their land and of Israel’s stated genocidal intent and actions in Gaza today. It is a wave of understanding Israel needs to contain.

A ministry source said: “We’re working with influencers, sometimes with delegations of influencers. Their networks have huge followings, and their messages are more effective than if they came directly from the ministry.”

Haaretz reported:

“The strategy appears to be paying off. During the 12-day conflict last month with Iran, Israeli digital messaging garnered roughly 1.8 billion online views, boosted in part by social media influencers with millions of followers. The Foreign Ministry has set a goal of bringing 550 influencer delegations to Israel by the end of 2025 to continue this outreach.”

The Foreign Ministry chose Israel365 because “with the rise of the America First movement and MAGA in American politics, it’s essential for Israel that the movement adopt a pro-Israel position.” A Foreign Ministry document said Israel365 “has the ability to smoothly link the spiritual/biblical and geopolitical aspects of support for Israel.”

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.

July 23, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment

Trump threatens to bomb Iran again if it builds new nuclear plants.

US president claims it would take ‘years’ to bring sites at Fordow, Natanz
and Isfahan back into service. In a post on his Truth Social site sent from
his golf club near Washington, he claimed all three of Tehran’s nuclear
sites had been destroyed after the US dropped 14 30,000lb GBU-57 “bunker
buster” bombs on them. “It would take years to bring them back into
service and, if Iran wanted to do so, they would be much better off
starting anew, in three different locations, prior to those sites being
obliterated, should they decide to do so,” he said before ending with his
trademark signoff. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Telegraph 19th July 2025. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/07/19/trump-threatens-to-bomb-iran-again-if-it-builds-new-nuclear/

July 23, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA | Leave a comment

Rotten Apple: Dozens of Former Israeli Spies Hired by Silicon Valley Giant

July 18th, 2025, Alan Macleod

Apple has made headlines in recent weeks for touting its commitment to privacy and human rights, rolling out tools to limit surveillance and spyware. But behind the corporate messaging lies a much darker reality.

The company has quietly brought in dozens of veterans from Unit 8200, Israel’s shadowy military intelligence unit known for blackmail, mass surveillance, and targeted killings.

Many of these hires took place as Israel escalated its war on Gaza, and as CEO Tim Cook publicly expressed support for Israel while disciplining employees for pro-Palestinian expressions. Apple’s deepening ties to Israel’s most controversial intelligence raise uncomfortable questions, not only about the company’s political loyalties, but also about how it handles vast troves of personal user data.

A MintPress News investigation has identified dozens of Unit 8200 operatives now working at Apple. The company’s hiring spree coincides with growing scrutiny of its ties to the Israeli government, including its policy of matching employee donations to groups such as Friends of the IDF and the Jewish National Fund, both of which play a role in the displacement of the Palestinian people. The intense pro-Israel bias at the corporation has led many former and current employees to speak out.

This investigation is part of a series examining the close collaboration between Unit 8200 and Western tech and media companies. Previous investigations examined the links between Unit 8200 and social media giants like TikTok, Facebook and Google, and how former Unit 8200 spies are now responsible for writing much of America’s news about Israel/Palestine, holding top jobs at outlets like CNN and Axios.

A Few (Dozen) Bad Apples

Israel’s international reputation has taken a severe hit amid multiple spying scandals and ongoing attacks against its neighbors. During this same period, Apple has ramped up its recruitment of former Israeli intelligence personnel.

The Silicon Valley giant has hired dozens of former agents from the controversial Israeli intelligence outfit, Unit 8200, raising questions about the corporation’s political direction.

Nir Shkedi is among the most prominent examples. From 2008 to 2015, he served as a commander and Chief of Learning at Unit 8200, leading a team of approximately 120 operatives who developed new artificial intelligence tools to perform rapid data analysis.

Unit 8200 is at the forefront of this technology, and is known to have used AI to auto-generate kill lists of tens of thousands of Gazans, including children. These tools helped the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) bypass what it called human targeting, “bottlenecks,” and strike huge numbers of Palestinians.

Shkedi has been a physical design engineer at Apple’s Bay Area campus since 2022.

Noa Goor is another senior Unit 8200 figure turned Apple employee. From 2015 to 2020, Goor rose to become a project manager and head of cybersecurity and big data development team at Unit 8200, where she, in her own words, “invent[ed] creative technological solutions for high priority intelligence goals” and “manag[ed] two strategically important cyber projects” for the IDF.

One of the most important cyber projects Unit 8200 has launched in recent times is the September pager attack on Lebanon, an act that injured thousands of civilians and was widely condemned as an act of international terrorism, including by former CIA Director Leon Panetta. While Goor was not personally involved in that operation, Unit 8200 has spearheaded similarly nefarious actions for decades.

In 2022, Goor was hired by Apple as a system-on-chip design engineer.

Eli Yazovitsky, meanwhile, was directly recruited from Unit 8200. In 2015, he left a high-powered nine-year career as a manager in the military unit to join Apple, where he rose to become an engineering manager. He has since moved on to tech giant Qualcomm.

Unit 8200 is Israel’s most elite—and most controversial—military intelligence unit. It serves as the backbone of both Israel’s burgeoning tech sector and its repressive surveillance apparatus. The unit has developed cutting-edge technology like facial recognition and voice-to-text software to surveil, repress, and target Palestinians.

The vast amounts of data gathered on the Palestinian population, including their medical history, sex lives, and search histories, have been used for coercion and extortion. If a certain individual needed to travel across checkpoints for crucial medical treatment, permission could be suspended until they complied. Information about extramarital affairs or sexual orientation, especially homosexuality, is exploited as blackmail material. One former Unit 8200 agent recalled that he was instructed during his training to memorize different Arabic words for “gay” so that he could listen out for them in intercepted conversations.

Internationally, Unit 8200 may be best known for its “former” agents who created the notorious Pegasus software, used by repressive governments around the world to spy on tens of thousands of prominent figures, including royals, heads of state, activists, and journalists.

Among them was Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated by Saudi operatives in Türkiye in 2018.

While military service is mandatory for Jewish Israelis, few end up in Unit 8200 by accident. Described as “Israel’s Harvard,” parents spend fortunes on STEM-based extracurricular lessons for their children in the hopes that they will be selected to join the IDF’s most elite and selective unit. Those chosen are rewarded with lucrative careers in the tech industry upon completion of their service.

Given Unit 8200’s documented history of violence, espionage, and surveillance, both domestically and internationally, it is worth asking whether tech giants should be hiring its alumni in such large numbers.

Shkedi, Goor, and Yazovitsky are the most high-profile examples, but they are from alone. A closer look reveals that dozens of other Unit 8200 veterans have also secured key roles at Apple.

Engineering and Hardware Design:

Natanel Nissan, formerly head of data analysis at Unit 8200, joined Apple’s Tel Aviv office in 2022. Ofek Har-Even, a longtime officer and manager in the unit, has been a design verification engineer at Apple since 2022. Gal Sharon, a former intelligence systems operator and data analyst, has also worked as a physical design engineer since that same year.

Mayan Hochler and Shai Buzgalo, both former Unit 8200 analysts and instructors, hold roles in physical design and validation engineering, respectively.

Software and Cybersecurity:

Ofer Tlusty, who served nearly six years in Unit 8200 as a security and intelligence analyst, has worked as a software engineer at Apple since 2021. Ofek Rafaeli, who served between 2012 and 2016 and rose to project manager during Israel’s 2016 assault on Gaza, became a software engineer at Apple in 2023.

Guy Levy, a former intelligence analyst, now also works as a software engineer.

AI, Machine Learning, and Validation:

Avital Kleiman, a six-year veteran of Unit 8200, is now a machine learning algorithm engineer at Apple. Niv Lev Ari, currently a validation engineer, notes in his LinkedIn profile that he received a letter of commendation from Unit 8200 commander Aviv Kochavi for his work in the unit.

Other Technical Roles:

Shahar Moshe, who worked as an intelligence specialist at Unit 8200 from 2012 to 2015, is now a design verification engineer. Gil Avniel, who spent over five years in the unit, currently serves as a network engineer.

An Apple Rots From the Core

The growing number of former Israeli intelligence operatives working at Apple does not seem to concern the company’s senior management. CEO Tim Cook is known to hold strongly pro-Israel views and has spearheaded the Silicon Valley giant’s collaboration with the Israeli state.

Apple has acquired several Israeli tech firms and now operates three centers in the country, employing around 2,000 people. In 2014, Cook invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the company headquarters in Cupertino, CA, where, in front of the cameras, the two openly embraced. The following year, Cook accepted an invitation from President Reuven Rivlin to visit Israel. “It is a great privilege to host you and your team here,” Rivlin said, “Even for me, as one who prefers to write with a pen and paper, it is clear what a great miracle you have created when I look at my staff, and my grandchildren.”

Effusive praise for the Apple CEO has also come in the form of honors from pro-Israel organizations. In 2018, the Anti-Defamation League presented Cook with its inaugural Courage Against Hate Award at its Never Is Now Summit on anti-Semitism and Hate, where the organization described him as a “visionary leader in the business community.”

In the wake of the October 7, 2023, attacks, Cook sent out a company-wide email expressing his solidarity with Israel. “Like so many of you, I am devastated by the horrific attacks in Israel and the tragic reports coming out of the region,” he wrote, My heart goes out to the victims, those who have lost loved ones, and all of the innocent people who are suffering as a result of this violence.”

Yet, according to Apples4Ceasefire—a group of former and current employees opposing Israeli actions in Gaza—he has yet to say anything publicly about the mass devastation caused by the Israeli response to October 7.

Indeed, the Silicon Valley corporation has a policy of matching employee donations to groups such as Friends of the IDF, which raises money to buy equipment for IDF soldiers, and the Jewish National Fund, an organization that participates in the theft and destruction of Palestinian land.

Under Cook’s leadership, Apple employees have been disciplined or even fired for wearing pins, bracelets, or keffiyehs in support of the Palestinian people. Nevertheless, groups such as Apples4Ceasefire continue to speak out about what they describe as Apple’s complicity in genocide.

The Unit 8200 Tech Takeover

To be fair, Apple is far from the only tech or media company to hire large numbers of former Unit 8200 operatives. A 2022 MintPress exposé revealed hundreds of Israeli intelligence veterans working at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Perhaps the most notable of these is Emi Palmor, a former Israeli justice ministry official who sits on Facebook’s 21-person Oversight Board. Described by Mark Zuckerberg as his platform’s “supreme court,” the board ultimately decides what content is allowed or removed from the world’s largest social network. Facebook has worked closely with the Israeli government to censor or deplatform Palestinian content and accounts.

Even TikTok, often seen as a more open platform, has been hiring former Israeli spies to help manage its operations, according to a November investigation by MintPress. Reut Medalion, for example, served as a Unit 8200 intelligence commander and led its cybersecurity operations team.

In December 2023, during the peak of Israel’s attack on Gaza, Medalion moved to New York City to accept a job as global incident manager for TikTok’s trust and safety division. Considering the events going on in the world at the time, it’s worth asking what sorts of “global incidents” she was brought in to manage.

After MintPress exposed Medalion’s past to a worldwide audience, she deleted her entire digital footprint from the internet.

Former Israeli intelligence operatives have also found their way into American newsrooms, shaping coverage of the Middle East. A recent MintPress investigation uncovered a network of former Unit 8200 operatives working in some of the most influential newsrooms in the United States.

Among them is Axios correspondent Barak Ravid, whose Middle Eastern coverage won him the prestigious White House Press Correspondents’ Award. Until at least 2023, Ravid was a member of Unit 8200. CNN has also hired at least two former agents to produce their news coverage, one of whom, Tal Heinrich, now serves as the official spokesperson for Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Given this pattern, Silicon Valley’s partiality towards Israel should not come as no surprise. From tech giants like Google and Amazon to social media powerhouses like TikTok and Facebook, the field is filled with former Israeli spies. Apple is no exception, having hired dozens, if not more, Unit 8200 operatives to run its platforms and shape the company.

This investigation does not claim that the Israeli state is deliberately infiltrating Silicon Valley. However, what it does unquestionably suggest is that the outlook and general biases of these entities are strongly pro-Israel. What does it say about Silicon Valley’s culture that individuals with well-documented ties to a controversial foreign spy agency are considered ideal hires?

It is unthinkable that former intelligence agents of Hezbollah, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, or Russia’s FSB or GRU would be hired en masse, and trusted with our most sensitive data. Yet, when it comes to Israel (or U.S. surveillance agencies), the answer is different. Many of these employees are not even “former” agents, and are directly recruited from Unit 8200 while still in active service, despite Israeli law explicitly prohibiting the group’s members from identifying themselves or divulging their alliances.

Thus, in this light, it appears that those like Apples4Ceasefire struggling to end the company’s double standards are fighting an uphill battle.

July 22, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

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