The Young Turks - Israel's Information War

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Ami Ayalon, former head of Shin Bet: “If we shall not end the occupation, we shall not have security, and if we shall not end this occupation, we shall not have democracy.” Investigative journalist Lee Fang joins to discuss his report showing expansive government effort to shape US discourse around Gaza war. Pod Save America hosts say young and minority voters aren't paying attention to politics. " HOST: Ana Kasparian (@anakasparian), Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Watchlist https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Let's go! Live from the Polymarket Studio in L.A., Jank Ugar Anna Kisparian, Young Turks with you guys. So we are going to have some startling news about how we could, first of all, former head of shin bet, which you're going to hear from in a second explaining exactly what we should do in Israel. And I think he's 100% right. We'll get to that. Unfortunately, terrible news about how Israel decided to do propaganda

inside America to shut down protests of Israel. Stunning success, unfortunately. Republican on Republican crime and a little bit of Democratic on Democratic crime. So the news as we have it these days. So let's get started. Anna. Well, let's actually begin with the former head of Shinbet, he had a sit-down interview with Kristian al-Mampore. And honestly, some of her sit-down interviews over this past year have been fantastic. This is a good example of one of them. We are losing our identity as people, as Jews, and as human beings. When you send your people, your youngster, to kill, and many of them will die there, when you tell them

that there is no political goal to this war, immediately what happened. The goal, the war becomes the end and not the mean. This is Netanyahu again in this conversation about moving from the first, second, and now the third stage in Gaza. The third step will be the creation of a new security regime in the Gaza Strip. The removal of Israel's responsibility for day-to-day life there and the creation of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel. What do you think that means?

Do you think that means carving out a whole piece of god? Oh, okay. This is what it means. Wow, harsh criticism for Benjamin Netanyahu and the current government of Israel. And that's coming from the former head of Shinbet. His name is Ami Ayelon, and he's got a lot more to say. But before we get to more of this incredible interview, Jank, I gotta say, I have a lot of respect for Israelis who are willing to sit

down and share a perspective that, you know, based on polling, the majority of Israelis do not agree with. So what I love about Jewish culture is that you're supposed to question authority. You're supposed to question the rabbi. It's not like a lot of other religions where you sit there and they lecture at you. You're supposed to shut up and learn it and not question it, right? So democracy is kind of built into Jewish culture in a lot of ways. And so part of what I love about what this brother is saying is we're going to lose our own sense of identity. And look, the politics of the moment being what it is, I'm not allowed to say it because I'm not from that identity, okay? They say, who the hell are you to say, we're going to lose

our identity? But this is what I think. This man speaks for me. And so, and by the way, if it's going to bother you that I agree 100% with the former head of Shin Bet, okay, then it bothers you, okay? But this, everything he's saying is exactly what I think. I think that the occupation and the war is not only disastrous for the Palestinians, but as an existential threat for the Israelis, both in terms of security and their actual identity. And they're in a beautiful culture that this war and the occupation is eroding. Well, one of the concerns that Ami Ayalon has is not only that the Israeli population

will lose the moral high ground and their identity, but more importantly, how in the short term, Benjamin Netanyahu's political ambitions is going to drive Israel into a broader regional war. Take a look. Given that there might be something big breaking out against Lebanon, I mean, look, this is what one of the most respected military analysts in Israel, Amos Haral of Harat, says. Nasrallah, who is obviously the head of Hezbollah, apparently suspects that Israel is headed for a general war and is preparing his organization for that possibility. And then what happens? We shall have war.

And then? We shall have more. And after that? And we shall have more war. And we shall stop. And later we shall have more war. What should we learn after the 7th of October? Which was probably the most horrible moment in our history.

We should learn, first of all, that we shall not have security as long as we shall not end occupation. This is what Hamas told us. And we shall not have democracy as long as we shall not end the occupation. I can't emphasize enough how important it was to hear that specific message from the former head of Shinbet and an Israeli. Because oftentimes, Jank, when we talk about October 7th, obviously we've condemned it in the strongest terms, the atrocities were absolutely disgusting. But you also want to explain how things got to that point.

And so when you talk about the occupation and how that leads to these flare-ups and violence, people try to smear you as someone who's trying to make excuses for the violence. No, no, it's not an excuse for the violence. It's an explanation for why the violence happened in order to prevent it from happening in the future. And essentially, that is what he's saying in that message in that part of the interview. So guys, this is really important because it's not just about Israel. We've seen it in every context, including in America. The warmongers always painted as good versus evil, and that if you even understand

quote unquote evil, the other side, whatever it might happen to be, and whether it's actually evil or not, that if you try to understand them, that you're part of the evil, and then we have to attack you and we have to shut you down and that you are against the forces of good. So this is the kind of simplistic, honestly moronic way that warhawks think. And so the reality is no, sometimes war is bad for you. I mean come on, we have to explain it in like super simple terms. And by bad for you, we don't mean just bad for the people that you're killing.

We mean bad for that country. Did the Iraq war help us here in America? No, the war mongers, the same war mongers, both in America and Israel told us, oh, it's going to be great, they're going to be greeted as liberated, they literally said that. They're gonna throw roses at her feet. The lunatic said that it was gonna cost almost nothing. They all said these things and what did it do? All it got was us more grief, more killing from our side, more killing of their side.

And so they're lying to you to perpetuate a war that only helps those particular political people. But it always hurts your own country as well. And by the way, it's of course true on the other side too, where the radicals on the Palestinian side will say, Oh, the only answer is war and not diplomacy. There are cooler heads on both sides, but you have to actually choose them. So here he makes the point that 75% of Israelis are actually against that in the Yahoo. That's true, I've seen the polling, but are they against the actual war? Are they against the occupation?

And the answer is not exactly. But that's why his voice is so important for people to speak out and say, we need to save and to protect Israel, let alone what we do to the Palestinians or starting this disastrous war in Lebanon, which I'll come back. so critical of the Israeli population, the civilians, because I remember what Americans were like after 9-11. And I remember how voices against the war in Iraq, especially, were few and far between. They were criticized. Literal careers were destroyed because public opinion in America was so pro-war at that time because everyone was scared. Everyone was worried that we had all of these scary radical, you know, Muslims in other countries looking to destroy us,

looking to do terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. And so public opinion was, again, very much in favor of military action in the Middle East. And, you know, I understand how that human emotion of fear can lead you in a bad direction. But at the same time, those few voices that we're talking about here, including the gentlemen we're hearing from, they're important because eventually more and more Israelis who agree with him are going to feel comfortable coming out and speaking out against the methods the Israeli government has been using against the Palestinian people, the occupation, and how it has not yielded good results for Israel, certainly not for the Palestinians, but even if you don't care about the Palestinians

at all, if all you care about is the safety of Israelis, doing an occupation on Palestinians or on Palestinian territory is not going to keep Israelis safe, as we've already seen. So when I was 100% against Iraq war, remember that at the time, it was an incredibly unpopular opinion in media and politics in the country, the country was split. But even then, 70% of Americans want to go to war with Iraq because they thought that Saddam Hussein had attacked us on 9-11, which is of course untrue, and I knew that. But was I on America? Did I hate America for trying to keep us out of the Iraq war? Now, by the way, a lot of people at the time did say that. They said, oh, you're on American. I remember.

And now, by the way, almost all of those people have come back around and are now saying, well, you were right. And it was terrible for America. Because a lot of, they were almost all right wingers. And almost all those right wingers in the population, not in medium politics, have come back around and said, sorry, totally wrong. It was terrible for America. And you were trying to help. And in this case, when you say, hey, I think this is bad for Israel, they go anti-Semite. Okay, all right. Well, it's stupid and it's unproductive. And it's exactly what happened before. And yes, we agree with the former head of Shenbet because we do want what's best for Israel as well as the Palestinians. And that's not hard to understand, but there are forces at play here that want to drive towards more war.

So they want absoluteism on all sides, which is not the correct answer. Finally, it gets us to Lebanon. If we go into this, we, see, if we go, if Israel goes in the war with Lebanon, they'll make a thousand excuses. Oh, they, just like Iraq. Iraq didn't attack us on 9-11. Do you know why they haven't hit, Hezbollah? I haven't started a massive war with Hezbole yet. And Hezbollah hasn't started a massive war with them.

There's rockets back and forth, but not massive. Why? Because Hezbollah didn't do October 7th. Hamas did. Right. Al-Qaeda did 9-11, not Iraq. But, hey, Hezbollah, whatever, they're kind of allied, the kind of goddamn Muslims. They also hate the occupation.

And you could say, oh, well, they were also firing missiles, and I got a lot of grievances and it's war is always the right answer. I forgot the question, but war's the answer, then you'll say, okay, yes, my tribe is right. Let's go kill them all. Okay, but what's going to happen is a massive war, then America's going to have to fund it, and we're gonna have to partially fight it, and the American citizens are going to start getting more and more pissed. Because you, because these days, the establishment does not control media anymore. Or public opinions.

Yeah, and well, media drives public opinion. That's true, yes. Before they lied to the American people and told him that Saddam had attacked us. But when he hadn't, that's why 70% believed he had attacked us and believed in going indirect. Now the Joe Scarbrose and everyone in mainstream media is still like, oh, Israel's the greatest. They had no choice, they had to bomb, bomb, bomb, kill, kill, kill, kill, they had no choice, no choice. Okay, that's your propaganda. I'm used to it my whole life, but now you can't contain social media.

So people are seeing the actual reality and they say, oh, Hamas uses human shields. And then you see the Israelis put a nearly naked Palestinian man on top of their car using him as a human shield. Well, they're about to talk about that in the next clip. And I thought what he had to say about that loss of moral high ground was important. Let's take a look. You saw the justified horror that was unleashed over the weekend when a picture of a wounded Palestinian tied to the the hood of one of your military vehicles was driven out of the Janine area and the Palestinians accused your forces of using them as a human shield. The Israeli military then shortly thereafter

said those forces violated orders and standard operating procedures. They'll be investigated. Do you feel they're losing their morality, their humanity? Not they. We are losing. We are losing our identity as people, as Jews. And as human beings. I think what he says there is powerful. And what the media is unable to stop, something that they were able to stop maybe previously, is the images and the videos that are going viral online on these social media platforms. They are unable to maintain the floodgates.

The floodgates have burst open, and anyone who's paying attention sees videos like the one that was just talked about in that clip, Jank, where you have a wounded Palestinian strapped onto the hood of that vehicle and just driven allegedly to the hospital. I don't know what ended up happening with that individual, but that's just one example. Hind is the person, the child who haunts me in my nightmares, a little eight year old who died alone in a car after all of her relatives who were in the vehicle with her were killed by Israeli Shelling later, days after her, you know, the emergency workers were able to get to her, they found that she was dead also by Israeli shelling.

And that kind of stuff stays with people. It has an impact on the way they perceive the Israeli government, certainly. But for people who have difficulty differentiating and people who don't really want to be understanding about the fear that Israeli civilians might be feeling right now after October 7th, they're going to have ideas of who Israelis are. And is that, is that right? Is that fair to them? Is that what they want?

Yeah. So there's two different things here, guys. First, there's world reaction versus U.S. reaction, and it's partly, it's not partly, it's almost completely because of media. So in the old days, people would see Israeli atrocities in other parts of the world because of Al Jazeera and some other BBC and other places that reported it. But here in America, we would never see it because if you said, you know, showed almost anything that was, yes, it's like I remember the controversy when Israel did a bombing and a little

Palestinian boy who had been killed and he watched them. up on shore and that that made it on to American media and it was a giant controversy because they're like, how dare you show something that does not show Israel in a positive light? Like what an outrage. I mean, that's what, no one questioned its veracity. They were just like, you just shouldn't show it. So now things are different, even look, one of our members wrote in next TYT reporter said

credit to CNN for having this guy on in the first place. Before this genocide, they would have never had someone like that on, not in a million years. I think that that is actually true. So what's happened is the rest of the world used to see all the crimes, the war crimes, et cetera, of Israel, and they see the obvious brutality of the occupation. But here in America, we got this gauze, you know, filter, if you will, you know, to use Instagram words here, lingo. And with, oh, Israel's gorgeous and beautiful, the ghost god, terrorist Muslims, you know how they had it coming, they had it coming, right? But now even we're seeing it, one, because of social media, two, because,

social media is then influencing the CNN's of the world to let Christiana Amunpore do a real interview, to let Jeremy Diamond do great reporting from inside the Gaza Strip. And now we're all seeing it with our own eyes and going, this is madness. How does this help anyone? And it becomes more obvious that it doesn't help Israel either. But Israel being in the middle of the conflict are even more blinded. Yeah. Okay?

And again, I use my ethnic background as an example. If you have a Kurdish terrorist that does a bombing in Turkey, and then you expect the Turkish people to be unbiased, you're nuts. They're not going to be unbiased. They're going to be in a blind rage. And as friends and allies, we should help them out of that blind rage instead of funding that blind rage, which is not going to help them. We go into Lebanon, we as in Israel and America, and this world gets turned upside down. Because there is no end to that war. And the entire world, if you think that Israel has problems now, the world will despise Israel.

And it doesn't matter if you think that's the most unfair thing in the world and the goddamn Muslims had it coming and to Bezbollah. And the occupation is the greatest thing in the world that it should continue forever. It doesn't matter what you think. The world will absolutely hate Israel. And this guy, former head of Shimbat, is saying, what are we doing? Why do we want the world to hate us? Why do we want to be in perpetual and endless war? Why don't we do the safe haven that we asked for and that we try to build as Zionists?

The guy's a Zionist and he's trying to protect Zionism. He's like, you do not protect Zionism and you do not protect Israel if you do endless wars that are going to end in disaster for us. He's absolutely right. Well, I want to continue the discussion about the way the media and influence campaigns pertaining to Israel work here in the United States. There was some wonderful reporting recently by a friend of the show, Lee Fong, and we're going to have him on the show to talk about his reporting, and you don't want to miss it. It's an incredibly important story. We'll get into that and more when we come back from the break.

All right back on TYT, Jank Anna with you. John Fox, and it burns when I blank, blank, blank, thank you for gifting a membership. Corker 47, thank you for gifting five, the instructor, thank you for becoming members through the join button below on YouTube and mail pourers. the contribution through t-y-t.com slash team. You guys are the best team there is. I appreciate you all, Anna. All right.

Well, we've got a story involving another influence campaign here in the United States and the people behind it. So let's discuss. New documents reviewed by reporters Lee Fong and Jack Paulson over at The Guardian indicate that Israel has relaunched and funded a sprawling propaganda campaign meant to control political discourse and criticism here in the United States toward Israel. Now Israel used to call this program Kela Shlomo but is now known as voices of Israel. It includes 80 different programs that are meant to be done in concert.

So concert is usually something that is used to refer to this propaganda campaign. The campaign is mainly targeted at the United States and Europe and in the past voices This has spearheaded efforts to pass American laws penalizing Americans who take part in the BDS movement or other nonviolent means of protesting Israel's occupation of Palestinians. From October through May, Israel has spent about $8.6 million on this effort to, quote, reframe the public debate in favor of Israel. And as Eli Clifton, a senior advisor at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Spacecraft, Statecraft put it, apologies, quote, there's a fixation on policing American discourse on the U.S. Israel relationship, even college campus discourse from Israel, going all the way up to Prime Minister Netanyahu. One struggles to find a parallel in terms of a foreign country's influence over American political debate. Now, there are various groups that have worked with this effort, including something known as the Institute for the Study of Global,

anti-Semitism and luckily here to discuss this story with us is one of the reporters who broke it. Lee Fong, independent journalist, please subscribe to him over at Substack. Lee, thank you for joining us. Hey, thank you so much for having me. It's our pleasure. So let's actually start off with the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism. You know, bulk of your reporting on the story focused on them and what they've managed to accomplish. So tell us more about this organization and what they've managed to do.

Well, this is a think tank based in New York. It was originally housed by Yale University, but it was ousted by Yale in 2011 because it lacked academic rigor that many administrators and other academics noted that it was more focused on pro-Israel activism rather than producing genuine scholarly reports. But this is a group that has been very close to the Israeli government. There are documents that were obtained by Israeli journalists back in 2020 that showed that as much as 80% of their budget came from the strategic ministry of the Israeli government. And they've coordinated with this shell company tied to that former ministry, known as Concert or Keller Shlomo. Now it's known as Voices of Israel.

It's gone through several rebrands. But this think tank produces reports at lobbies members of Congress. It produced a report last year and lobbied members of Congress, many of whom referenced this report during that infamous December hearing with Claudine Gay and other university presidents when House Republican lawmakers were claiming that because of the influence of Qatar and other Persian Gulf countries, that was the reason that there was allegedly rising anti-Semitism. or hate on elite college campuses. Later in April of this year, ISGAP, their leadership took credit for that that infamous hearing claiming that, you know, they played a big role in

terms of ousting Claudian Gay from Harvard University. They've gone on to meet with congressional leaders calling for increased investigations of universities, of pro-Palestinian activist groups on college campuses. And last year, year, Seema Vaknan Gil, this is the former chief military censor of the Israeli government, of the Israeli military, pardon me, someone who has worked in Israeli intelligence

her entire career, she became managing director of ISGAP. And as our story goes through, the leadership of ISGAP has continued to report on their continued active activities to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, all throughout this entire process. So, you know, our story It combines government documents, some that are just seeing the light of date right now, but also just these public hearings, you know, just as the United States has public hearings about what our military is doing, what our intelligence community is doing at times. The Israeli government has some open hearings where they have broadcasts their strategy in terms of shaping US discourse and US public policy, and we use that in our piece.

So Lee, I want to come back to the false charges of anti-Semitism, which are meant to disguise shutting down critique of Israel in America. First, I want to talk about think tanks in general. The mainstream media uses think tanks for so-called scholarly opinion nonstop. I mean, this is a concept that goes back all the way to Lewis Powell, writing his infamous Powell memo in 1971, where he says we should create fake think tanks, where we tell people in Washington how to think, but it's actually in favor of corporations, right? And so now corporations have used that, and now foreign countries are using that.

Qatar, Saudi Arabia, et cetera, have also funded think tanks. So I think there's an argument to be made that no one in media should ever trust any think tank, let alone quote them as if they know what the hell they're talking about, let alone one that is funded by a foreign nation. What do you think about that in general? Well, I think in general we need better disclosure. Oftentimes, this is the great trick that any special interest group uses. You mentioned foreign governments, of course, any domestic interest, big pharma, big oil, you know, you name it. Any interest group that is seeking favor from public opinion, from public policy, a preferred strategy is to conceal their lobbying interests through an institute or a foundation that has an academic appearance.

And so, you know, a think tank, a 501C3 or C4 that doesn't disclose its donors is the preferred vehicle. So yes, I've done dozens of stories on the think tank industry, as it were, revealing the donors, revealing the strategies. But no matter how much it's scrutinized and disclosed through the press, this is something that the media falls for over and over again. Yeah, you're right about that. I mean, they literally cite think tanks as if they're authoritative, credible sources that should be trusted without any bias or conflict of interest. And you know, when it comes to the organization we were just talking about, the institute for the study of global anti-Semitism, you know, you also focus on how 80% of its funding as of 2018 came from the Israeli government. They're putting together reports, which they then go lobby to members of Congress with. Members of Congress, like Elise Stefanik, take the report and they use it to, you know, carry out these hearings of university professors. And it all appears, right, to the public, as if this was an effort that started with members of Congress who really wanted to get to the bottom of anti-Semitism on college campuses.

In reality, this is the effort of a foreign government meant to shut down any criticism of the Israeli government. Am I understanding that correctly or am I getting something wrong here? That's part of it. And, you know, this ties to a lobbying campaign that's going on in Congress and in state capital. and other legislatures all throughout the U.S. and all throughout the West right now, that this gap and other groups in the kind of orbit of the Israeli government are promoting. And that is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. They have a definition of anti-Semitism that includes harsh criticism of the Israeli government. And what's happening right now is that all of these

organizations, or at least many of these organizations, are pressing to, pressing law to enact new bills, new legislation that conflate and then code the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism into U.S. law, meaning that if you engage in certain harsh forms of criticism of Israel, you are getting a hate crime sentencing enhancement, potentially more prison time, or what was passed in the House of Representatives last month, that the Department of Education can view certain forms of criticism of Israel as a, civil rights violation and then funding can be revoked from universities or there could be you know official civil rights investigations you know you can criticize any government in the world you can criticize our government and the First Amendment protects you but they're

hoping to the shepherd this through and make an exemption for Israel it's crazy so in Israeli exception to the First Amendment for the United States yeah that's going to play really well I bet that doesn't drive hatred towards Israel at all I mean what a great idea. Jerry Nadler, who's a bit of a legendary Jewish American politician, said, don't do this. This is a bad idea. And so there's at least some sane people in Washington saying, no, I don't think we should make it illegal to criticize Israel. That is so dumb. So, okay, but I want to go to the false charges of anti-Semitism because I think that that is the most effective thing they have all the way up until today, right?

Which is, and the reason is that there are, there is real anti-Semitism. So it's easy to find, right? So like if you wanted to find Islamophobia, oh my God, there's mountains and mountains of Islamophobia and if the Saudi government was like, okay, find it two or three instances or 30 instances, and now let's pretend this is the biggest problem and that no one in America is ever allowed to criticize Saudi Arabia and if they do it on a college campus, make sure you have them arrested, I would imagine that we would be massively outraged. Now, you've broken the story. That is what Israel did. And it was callous,

and it was coordinated to use false charges of anti-Semitism to make sure no one could criticize Israel. And in fact, students, American students, would be arrested, arrested for criticizing Israel. So I'm sure that after your report in the Guardian backed up by reporting in Israeli papers and the New York Times, et cetera, that's it, right? There's congressional investigations, This is outraged and they're going to let all those, and all the media outlets are apologizing for the smears of all those protesters, etc. Has that happened? Look, I can't, I don't have a crystal ball here, but I've covered foreign influence campaigns for a very long time, looking at foreign influence from Saudi Arabia, from Morocco, from China,

from many different countries from Saudi Arabia. You know, it was my reporting that led to one the largest civil penalties in federal election commission history on a Chinese billionaire funneling foreign money into our politics. You know, this is something I've covered for a very long time. I've also watched and observed the enforcement of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. This is a law we've had since the 1930s that polices foreign influence and foreign lobbying. We've seen since 2016 an increase in enforcement of this law. You know, Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign manager, of course, went to prison over his conspiracy to evade the Foreign Agent Registration Act. We're seeing a lot of enforcement of this law, but not against Israel.

You know, all the groups to mention in my piece, you know, if you read my piece, it looks at ISGAP, it looks at another group called Cyberwell, it looks at another organization, the National Black Empowerment Council, others that are previous and current partners to this show. shell company tied to the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. It was a very aggressive minister in the Lukud government, a close ally to Netanyahu's spearheading all of this, who's kind of the strategist behind a lot of these measures. We documented the money, much of the money at least. You know, we don't have the full picture of what's happening, but we've shown it in the piece.

We showed the kind of intent, you know, many of these groups going to Israel or at least appearing on Zoom saying that yes, we're working with these ministries. Yes, we're documenting these students. We're passing this legislation. We're doing these activities. But, you know, so far, no clear sign that there's going to be any far enforcement. You know, you mentioned Cyberwell, and I want to go to an excerpt from your piece because this raised alarm bells for me, especially given what the state of media is, given the fact that a lot of journalists are now kind of striking out on their own and they're doing

independent work, which requires them to rely on some of these social media platforms to either market themselves or even carry their content. So you write another group, Cyberwell, a pro-Israel anti-disinformation group led by former Israeli military intelligence and voices officials has established itself as an official trusted partner to TikTok and meta helping both social platforms screen and edit content. A recent Cyberwell report called for Meta to suppress the popular slogan from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. And so I was wondering if you could elaborate on that portion of your reporting a little more. Does that

mean that these companies literally have representatives from these groups that are tied to the Israeli government working to censor content creators or people who post on these platforms? Well, look, I'll tell you what I do know. No, I was one of the Twitter files reporters. I went to Twitter HQ in December 22 and looked at an exclusive look at a lot of those files. I reported a series of my own stories about the influence of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and shaping a lot of the content moderation policies. But another story that I think received a little bit less attention that overlaps a little bit with this is that Twitter, like many of the other social media platforms, invited NGOs to help, you know,

for any of these social media companies, they're dealing with billions of pieces of content. You know, they can either do it algorithmically, which has its own problems, or invite these outside groups, including these NGOs, to help them moderate content to screen and delete and flag certain forms of content. And perhaps for a business reason or liability reason, what have you, they have a long pattern and practice of inviting NGOs, many of whom have their own political agenda, have their own interests. So, you know, I reported on certain NGOs that were funded by the pharmaceutical industry that were helping Twitter moderate and delete. and censor content during the pandemic. I've reported on many other defense contractors and other government-funded NGOs that have done similarly and provided documentation showing how these NGOs have shaped the content that we can read on Instagram on TikTok and on Twitter X now. Cyberwell is just another example of this. This is a group led

by the officials from Israeli intelligence agencies and from this kind of strategic organization concert that's the focus of my piece that are again presenting and discussing this with Israeli lawmakers and putting it out in their own reports saying, look, we're shaping the coverage that people can read. We're shaping the content moderation policies relating to the Gaza war, relating to the ways that people criticize Israel. And of course, again, there is hate. There is anti-Semitism on these social platforms. But time and time again, we're seeing benign and, you know, regular criticism of the Israeli government

or criticism of the Israeli military's conduct during the war being conflated with anti-Semitism and used as, and that used as a justification for removing content. Yeah, there's two different problems there. And I noticed on TikTok that, and I know a thing or two about algorithms, that if you put hashtag Israel, hashtag Gaza, hashtag free Palestine, anything along those lines, that video is going to get no views. So I get around the system by not using any of those hashtags. So, but it's obvious TikTok is suppressing the content. And now that you have seen your reporting, it's that complicated. Why? The Israeli government is telling them to suppress the content. And they're obeying. So this is madness, total utter madness. And Lee, just quick question on this and I want to go to the bigger question.

Have you seen, like we talk about in the think type context, oh, the Saudis do it, Qatar does it, all corporations do it. This is not just Israel, right? In the context of the social media outlets, though, do you see meta and TikTok and others going, oh, yes, please, Muslim government's come and regulate our platform. And if anything is slightly anti-Muslim, just take it off. I have not seen that, but you know, historically, these issues are a little bit murky because we don't have the full picture. You know, I did a story showing last year and going off some older information that Saudi Arabia had actually planted their intelligence officials and bribed officials at Twitter, but they weren't going after the American domestic debate. They were looking for anonymous Saudi Twitter accounts who are criticizing the Saudi leadership. And they were hoping to unmask these Twitter accounts so they could arrest these people domestically in Saudi Arabia.

So, you know, many governments are involved in social media. It's a big focus in terms of how do you control information, how do you control a population, how do you shape public policy? But I haven't seen any evidence so far, and of course, anything is possible of any Middle Eastern or Arab government influencing or shaping the Gaza War content debate in a way. that cyber well are some of these other organizations that I mentioned in the piece. Yeah, because some countries are more considered more legitimate in America than other countries. So if Israel says, I'm going to regulate your platform, apparently the platforms go, of course, sir, right away, sir, take out anti-Semitism, which is some of it Israel, and some of it is totally made up, just so you shut up about Israel and it's war crimes. So that leads to the major question. Look, we talked about in the context of the companies you manufacture doubt.

Oil companies, cigarette companies obviously invented this. So did you see in your reporting any documents from these propaganda outlets in Israel, funded by Israel, that says, hey guys, don't do fake charges of anti-Semitism because like there's real anti-Semites out there like Nick Fuentes and arguably Candice Owens, certainly Kanye West, et cetera, and save your ammo for that because this, you know, we want to combat anti-Semitism, but don't do it about Israel critics that are not anti-Semitic? Or was it, yeah, do it about all of them, so they shut up about Israel. Because the whole point of this is to protect Israel. No, you know, for this piece, I took over two months working on this piece.

You know, I listened to so many different Knesset hearings that have them translated and looked at strategy documents from the Israeli government. Let me just share one anecdote. Well, before I can share that anecdote, let me just say, no, since October 7th, This has been very focused on saying any critics of the Israeli government, of the Israeli military, of the Israeli policies in terms of the Palestinians, is motivated by anti-Semitism. You know, I think there was one witness that I saw during one hearing who said that, you know, it's not helpful for us because, you know, they were having American activists come and basically testify and talk about strategy. One person who was affiliated with the U.S. coming and saying, you know, it's not helpful for the pro-eastern. Israel cause that so many ministers and lawmakers in the Israeli government keep saying

there are no innocent Palestinians killed them all or, you know, let's turn Gaza into a parking lot. That doesn't help us. Please stop saying that. That was one exception. Another exception that I think was very interesting in looking at these documents and hearings, there was a left-leaning Israeli NGO, Betsalam, which, you know, full disclosure I've met with. And, you know, when I've traveled to Israel, Palestine, you know, they've taken me on a tour of the occupied territories. But Betzalam came and testifying, testified at one of these Knesset hearings and said, look, there are reports of Israeli citizens traveling abroad. And when they try to book into hotels and, you know, just engage as tourists, people will see that they're Jewish or

that they're Israeli and they're canceling their bookings. You know, that's something that are our government needs to focus on not just censoring or pushing back on critics of the government. And the ministers just ignored them and said, no, no, no. What we need to focus on is college campuses in the U.S., passing these laws in the U.S., you know, promoting the war. Wow. They just have, they just kind of dismissed this one critic who actually brought up a very interesting form of anti-Semitism. So don't address actual anti-Semitism, address fake anti-semitism for purposes of Israeli propaganda. Amazing.

And by the way, the information war. Yeah, and that's why I mentioned manufacturing doubt, because all you have to do is manufacture, well, is it a genocide or is it not a genocide? Oh, you're saying you're an anti-Semite for saying it. So now I've made everybody nervous. Am I going to be smeared? Am I going to be, am I going to lose my job? Is there going to be negative consequences? Now all of a sudden, I have doubt as to whether I should say things that are true, not hateful, but true, right?

Yeah, and that's the whole point. It's meant to sow fear and intimidation. And, you know, what you just brought up, Lee, about how Israelis traveling abroad or getting their bookings canceled. Like there was literally a story about that out of Japan today. Israeli tourists was going to Japan, had a hotel booked. The, I guess the people running the hotel realized it was an Israeli person, they decided to cancel and literally told this person, it's because of Israeli war crimes, you can't be doing that. I mean, this is just a regular person, right?

And that's just such an interesting. dynamic because that's clearly, you know, hateful, bigoted, the type of behavior that these, you know, there's, there are ministries within the Israeli government that are supposed to protect Jews globally that are, that are supposed to push back against bigotry and any type of collective punishment, you know, blaming Palestinians globally for the actions of Hamas or blaming Jews globally for the actions of the Israeli government, you know, that's a form of bigotry. But instead of focusing on actual bigotry, on, on, on the concerns around anti-Semitism, these institutes, these foundations, these kind of strategic

advocacy groups are zeroed in on controlling discourse around criticism of the Israeli government and the Israeli military. Yeah, because they're not trying to solve for protecting Jews. They're trying to solve for protecting the right wing government of Israel. And that is a very, very different mission than actually protecting against anti-Semitism. And I want everybody to understand, look, we explained corporations. do it and other countries also do this. But yes, in America, Israel does have more power. Is it because the quote unquote Jews have more powerful or run the world or any of that

nonsense? No. You see Jewish Americans standing up against this all the time. But does APEC have disproportionate power as the NRA does, as Big Pharma does, et cetera? Obviously. Denying that is denying reality. And by the way, also part of this plot. No. spending $100 million doesn't affect anyone. In fact, if you say that, you're an anti-Semite, because our job is to confuse you about what anti-Semitism is so that you protect Israeli war crimes. Yeah, Lee, thank you so much for being generous with your time, and thank you for your excellent reporting, excellent reporting at the Intercept, now you're independent, and I just

want to encourage everyone in our audience to follow you and subscribe on your substack. Thank you again, and I hope you'll come back soon. Thanks for having me, take care. Thank you. All right, everyone, we're going to take a brief break. When we come back, we've got more news for you, including a fascinating conversation about why young people are not supporting Biden, this time around for the general election. Conversation took place with former Obama aides and Joe Scarborough this morning.

We're gonna show you some of the highlights and discuss. We'll be right back. All right, back on Young Turks, Jank Anna and Ralph Moss with you guys. Ralph just became an American hero by hitting the join button below the video on YouTube. And just finish up a comment that somebody was making that I read during the social break. They got their student loans taken care of and that person really is not a fan of Joe Biden. But brother, if he delivers for you, and that was a $24,000 difference in your case,

that's probably worth a vote. So just ask politicians deliver for you, and if they do, you should reward them. Maybe he didn't deliver for everyone else, but he did deliver for you. That's my two cents. All right, Anna. Well, let's talk a little bit about this fascinating conversation that took place on Morning Joe this morning, having to do with young people and why they no longer support Biden to the extent they did in 2020. I think the biggest divide in politics right now is between people who are paying close attention to politics and people who are not.

And so if you look at polls of voters who say that they're following the race closely, getting their news from TV, getting their news from newspapers, Joe Biden has a huge lead with those voters. And that's true within the Democratic Party as well. I think where he's struggling is among younger voters, black voters, Latino voters, white voters, people who just aren't paying as close attention to politics who aren't tuned in. That was ex-Obama aide, John Favreau, who's also the host of the Pod Save America podcast. He was speaking to Joe Scarborough this morning about why young Americans who really did rally in support of Joe Biden in 2020 have really soured on Biden this time around and don't appear to want to vote for him. Now, what you've already heard in my opinion was kind of condescending, but it's about to get even more condescending because Favro went on to. argue that in order to win back those voters, the Democratic Party needs to do basically nothing for them. I mean, at least that's what I got from this exchange. He says that,

you know, you just need to simply remind young people about all the wonderful things that Joe Biden has accomplished for them. Let's hear make the argument and then we'll discuss. When you get people to think about how this election actually matters to their own lives, then you see a lot of these voters, and by the way, they're voters who like cast their ballots for Joe Biden in 2020, and it's just become cynical since. So it's easier to get those voters back than to get people who've never voted before to actually vote. So when you actually talk about the stakes of the election, you talk about what Joe Biden's done, what he's going to do, you start seeing a lot of these voters move.

So the argument is, well, you know, you just have to remind them about some of the positive changes that young people experienced under the Biden administration versus the Trump administration. And I think maybe that argument would make sense absent the big issue that young people are fired up about right now on the Democratic side, of course, and that's the ongoing war in Gaza. And they've been saying over and over and over again that that issue makes everything else pale in comparison. What's frustrating to me, Jank, is it just feels like no one in the Democratic Party is paying

attention to that. Or they know that that's the case, but they don't want it to be the case, so they just dismiss it. Yeah, so there's so many things here. So one is that and later one of them said that we just have to re-educate young people on the Israel issue. Oh, well, if you put us in camps, maybe that'll make us change our minds. And by the way, it's the, look, maybe he said it in a way that he didn't mean it, but he

did say something akin to that and it was terrible, it sounded terrible. And so I'm trying to be kind here, these guys are not bad guys, they're not, you know, that we just disagree. And so, but their number one problem, Anna, is that they think, well, okay, they're not paying attention, and once the election comes closer, then all of a sudden they'll pay attention, and then we'll be able to re-educate them, and then they will vote for Biden. No, brother. But there's a number of things that are wrong with that.

But the biggest missing link that they do not understand is that, no, as things get closer to the election, It's not like those young people that are not watching Morning Joe and reading the Washington Post are going to all of a sudden turn around and go, wait, the election is here. Let me pick up a copy of the Washington Post. And I got to find out what Scarborough and Mika are saying about it. They're not watching or reading mainstream news. You're not going to be able to re-educate them. Yeah, and by the way, re-educate them. It's the assumption that young voters in this country are just like, do-do-do-do-do, like totally.

oblivious, not paying attention to politics, that might have been true when I was growing up, when I was in college. I remember when I was in college, no one, none of my peers were really paying attention to politics. That all changed, especially after the election of Donald Trump. Young people are more informed and more politically engaged than I've ever experienced in my lifetime. And so it's already condescending and honestly insulting to just assume that young people are ignorant of what's going on. Yeah, so that gets to the second gigantic problem in their logic, which is, well, if young people knew how benevolent Israel was, they would obviously change their position and say, oh yeah, I think killing 37,000 people,

15,000 innocent children was a great idea. Well, thank you for re-educating me, mainstream media. Well, golly gee, I now see their error in my waist. No, young people have more information, not less information. They are more correct as to what is actually happening on the ground than the propaganda that is, so they think in their mind, because they're from the old world, right? Well, if you read the Washington Post and you are smart and educated and you have the correct position. If you don't, you are imbecile and a fool and a young person who's not paying attention. No, no, no, no. They saw the videos in Gaza.

They see that Gaza's leveled. So you can do all the propaganda you want on morning show about how wonderful and angelic the Israeli government is and the Israeli defense forces are. They're not gonna buy it because it ain't true. So what I'm seeing here is enormous frustration from the establishment saying, why won't they listen to our propaganda anymore? We used to control them completely with our propaganda and now the propaganda isn't working. But don't worry, when it gets close to the election, they're all going to magically tune in to the old channels of propaganda and we're going to be able to convince them that Joe Biden is an angel.

And by the way, there's a different way to win the election, but that ain't it. That ain't it. Yeah, and look, I just want to say, I acknowledge that there have been some policies that the Biden administration has accomplished that are good policies, ending junk fees, canceling, you know, some student loan debt, doing a revamp of the student loan repayment program so people aren't crushed by their student loan debt. Like, these are good policies, and we have given Biden credit for that. But I also need the, you know, Democratic consultants and Biden's aides and all of the people who are making comments similar to what you're hearing on Joe Scarborough show to understand that all of those issues, for some, not all Democratic voters, certainly, and certainly not for all young Democratic voters. Those issues end up paling in comparison when you see that brutal war in Gaza and you understand that Biden is literally willing to risk his reelection in order to continue in. the far right wing government of Israel continue sending tens of billions of dollars to Israel so they can buy more weapons and more bombs to drop on Palestinian civilians. That stuff makes everything else Biden did pale in comparison for voters like me.

And I also need people to understand this because I think there's a portion of the audience that gets really frustrated with me because they still, you know, they buy into the lesser of two evils thing. And if that's the way you see this election, that's totally fine. But what I'm currently living through in real time is what my ancestors went through in Armenia at the hands of the Turks, okay, when the Armenian genocide happened. I have to live through that by watching what happened to my ancestors and the Armenian people in real time.

And then the Democratic establishment expects me to turn around and vote for Biden because he's the lesser of two evils. What he's carrying out right now, or at least enabling Israel to carry out, is one of the most evil things I have ever witnessed in my lifetime. Yeah, it's hard to make the case that the other guy is too evil when you're funding a genocide. That's a super hard case to make. Now, again, if we were on cable news, they would tell us, shish, we're in the middle of re-education here. Okay, let's take out the word re. Let's assume that that was a mistake, okay? Just talking about education versus our plan, which is action.

Okay, so their plan is, don't worry, in October, we'll educate all these young idiots and show them how great Biden has been, including on Gaza. Good luck, okay. And by the way, we'll go on social. We won't just do it morning Joe. They, we're wisen up. We'll do Joe Biden's doing social media now. He's on TikTok while trying to ban TikTok.

You think that's going to work? You think the people on the kids on TikTok and all the people on there, they never heard the Joe Biden's trying to ban TikTok, and that they're just going to be like, oh, Joe Biden, what a cool guy. I can't wait to vote for him. I hear he's on TikTok right before he ends the entire app. Yeah, I did a video saying hashtag go ban yourself. So it doesn't mean that I like Trump.

It means it is monumentally stupid to pretend that you're cool and hit with young people by going on TikTok while you signed a law banning it. So dumb. No, I'm sorry, I'm not properly educated. I'm not properly educated. So our idea is why don't you try taking some action? Like so today somebody wrote in, one of our members wrote in about how their student loan was taking care of $24,000 difference in their life. Gigantic difference and I told them vote for Biden.

Now the thing is if somebody helps you in your life, then that he's earned your vote. But they did 10% of the student debt instead of 100% classic Democrat, right? Okay, you say, well, that was complicated, though, Supreme Court, blah, blah, blah. Okay, why don't you legalize marijuana? It's such, it's an easy one. It has no downside, well, everybody in the country agrees, young people would be excited about it, et cetera.

No way, man, say no to drugs, yeah, this is the 1980s. Like, I mean, if you're gonna be a moron, you're not gonna take any action to help people, and then hope to educate them later on the microscopic things you did do. No, it's not gonna work, it's a stupid, it's like, There's a thousand things you could do. And of course, number one on that list is, oh, I think Israel misunderstood me. I said end the war in Gaza, and you didn't hear me right, apparently.

I'm the president of the United States of America. We're not sending any more money to Israel. Yeah, that's the other thing. And by the way, on that alone, if that's all you did, Joe Biden would win the election. Guaranteed. I would change course on Biden for sure. I mean, look, to me, it's so embarrassing to have our leader, state, that Israel invading Rafa is the red line.

And then Israel invades Rafa and Biden does nothing about it. You have Benjamin Nanyahu whining about Biden withholding weapons, pausing a weapon shipment. Wow. Whining and crying about it. And then you have Anthony Blinken, Joe Biden, like in a panic. Oh my God. Why, we don't know why he would say that. No, we would never do such a thing.

Like, it's embarrassing. Pathetic. I want a strong leader, that is what I want. I want a strong leader that gives me confidence that he's going to protect the country and that he's not going to be dragged around by a foreign government, okay? Because he's supposed to represent us, not the foreign government. We elected him, okay? We didn't elect Netanyahu, we didn't elect the Lakud party in Israel.

We elected these politicians specifically to represent our best interests as American citizens. Yeah. And that is not what we're getting from Biden. And young people have been saying that over and over again. So spare me these conversations on cable news where they act dumb as if they can't figure out the young people these days and what's going on in their minds. They're very vocal about what they want. It's just that the Democratic Party and the Biden administration is unwilling to listen to them.

Yeah, you took the words right out of my mouth, Anna, because what I was going to finish the thought with is, look, guys, it's not just that it's that policy is deeply unpopular with the young voters and it's cost Biden 30 points, 30 points among young voters. That's the whole election, okay? But it's also because he looks so weak. Think about how easy this action would be, okay? And how much of a difference it would make. Remember, Net Yahoo is enormously unpopular.

75% of Israelis don't want Netanyahu, the world despises Netanyahu, and Netanyahu is very unpopular here in America, okay? And he is like loathed by American youth. If the next time Netanyahu comes out and slaps Biden across the face publicly, which he does every other week. And I mentioned one example, but he's done it at least half a dozen times, right? The next time he does it, if Biden comes on and says, what did you say?

You're saying, I got to apologize to you. No, brother, you got this situation wrong. We gave you $20 billion. You didn't give us $20 billion. No, I'm stopping all the payments and all the bombs until you get rid of this Netanyahu clown. because he's destroying Israel and Gaza. And I won't stand it. I love Israel too much to let this monster destroy them.

Okay? Now, you didn't say anything. Like even people who love Israel will go, yeah, hey, thank you, finally, right? Some of them might be mad, et cetera. But what are you worried about? Let's be honest. The only thing you're worried about is APEC. But they will never, ever, ever, ever have that honest conversation on television, ever, right?

So then, okay, if you're going to lie to people, nobody's going to believe you. Nobody's going to get reeducated by you. But put an Apex side. If all Joe Biden did was what I just suggested, everybody would love him because he was so strong. There's almost no downside because everybody already hates Netanyahu. And he would regain the popular vote. And you know how Republicans and Trump would react? Since they're all funded by APEC, they would come out and go, how dare you define Netanyahu?

We should be a Netanyahu servant. It's perfect. Then you grab the moral high ground. But Joe Biden doesn't want to win the election. He doesn't want to take a single action that would help him win the election. Instead, he wants Pots Save America and Morning Joe to save him by doing enough education of the dumb youth so that they'll be forced to vote for Joe. By shaming voters, by shaming young people who have not bought into Biden because of this war in Gaza. That's what it's really about.

Anyway, I do want to give Tommy Veter. Vitor. Vitor. Vitor credit because he's the only one who brought up. up the war in Gaza, and he was accurate in stating that that's one of the main issues that young people are concerned about. Everyone else was either pretending to be dumb about it or is legitimately dumb about it. And Tommy didn't say that he should end the war in Gaza or he should do a single thing about it. He just said, that's why he's unpopular. So he's at least on the right path. He's not detached from reality. But the rest of them, they're just

wishing upon a dream. I mean, it's Democratic Copium 101. Oh, right before the election, They'll see how great Joe Biden and Israel is, and then they'll all turn around after we've educated them. They'll start reading the New York Times, and we'll get them to vote for us. Okay, good. And we'll tell them how terrible Trump is, because they don't know. They don't know how terrible Trump is. That's your genius plan? Well, good luck with that plan, because you're definitely going to lose.

And then we're all going to be stuck with Trump because of you. All right. We'll be right back with more. I don't know about you, but I'm going to go to bed. Thank you.