[News] Israeli embassy used fake Facebook profiles to spy on students
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Oct 30 12:40:34 EDT 2018
https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-embassy-used-fake-facebook-profiles-spy-students/25841
Israeli embassy used fake Facebook profiles to spy on students
Asa Winstanley <https://electronicintifada.net/people/asa-winstanley>
and Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> -
30 October 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------
An Israeli embassy officer spied on student supporters of Palestinian
rights, undercover video released exclusively by The Electronic Intifada
shows.
Julia Reifkind wrote reports on boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)
activists, which were then sent back to intelligence agencies in Israel.
Her superior at the embassy did this via a classified server designated
“Cables” which, Reifkind emphasized, “I don’t have access to because I’m
an American.”
The undercover footage also suggests that Reifkind was engaging in
deception when she suggested that Palestinian students were behind an
anti-Semitic incident on campus the previous year.
The footage is the latest leaked excerpt from from Al Jazeera’s censored
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/al-jazeera-denies-qatari-emir-censored-israel-lobby-film>
film /The Lobby – USA/ <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/lobby-usa>,
which The Electronic Intifada has viewed in full.
In January 2015, painted swastikas were found on a Jewish frat house at
the University of California, Davis
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/university-california-davis>.
Reifkind was then president of the student group Aggies for Israel, and
had yet to be directly employed by the embassy.
Contrary to what she told journalists at the time, in the leaked Al
Jazeera footage, Reifkind admits that the racist graffiti had almost
certainly not been done by pro-BDS students, but was likely the work of
white supremacists from off campus.
Defaming Palestinian rights
The effort to falsely implicate Palestine solidarity activists in the
2015 incident is particularly disturbing in light of the massacre of 11
Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday.
The gunman arrested after that attack is Robert Bowers, a white
supremacist with a history
<https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/27/us/synagogue-attack-suspect-robert-bowers-profile/index.html>
of conspiratorial and virulently anti-Semitic social media postings.
Yet since the attack, leading Israel lobby figures have
<https://twitter.com/simonerzim/status/1056504354444902400> continued
<https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1056531116163776512> to defame
<https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1056877764593270785> supporters
of Palestinian rights as linked to the Pittsburgh massacre, and push for
further crackdowns against them.
Meanwhile, members of Israel’s ruling Likud Party have engaged
<https://twitter.com/elivalley/status/1056653183861383170> in
apologetics and damage control
<https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/10/28/members-of-netanyahus-likud-blame-victims-of-pittsburgh-pogrom-and-echo-the-killers-rhetoric/>
for the American far-right that nurtures the kind of anti-Jewish hate
that Bowers expressed.
Talking points used by the party cast blame for the massacre on a
“left-wing Jewish group that promoted immigration to the US and worked
against Trump” and echoed the gunman’s own anti-Semitic rhetoric.
Days before the 2015 graffiti incident at UC Davis, the student senate
had voted in favor
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/uc-davis-passes-divestment-resolution-five-other-campaigns-launched>
of boycotting Israel – a major victory for the BDS movement.
Reifkind had already been accusing the student movement of
anti-Semitism, and reacted to the graffiti by drawing media attention.
She and other pro-Israel activists strongly implied in the press that
Palestinian and other pro-BDS students had been behind the swastikas –
without evidence.
“Random white supremacist”
Reifkind complained that university administrators had refused to blame
the swastikas on campus Palestine solidarity activists.
The /Jewish Journal/ reported at the time
<http://jewishjournal.com/news/nation/154873/> that Reifkind had
“expressed disappointment that school leaders have not drawn a more
direct and public ‘connection between the divestment resolution itself
and anti-Semitism.’”
AEPi, the Jewish fraternity on whose house the swastikas were found,
also blamed the incident on Palestine solidarity activism.
“On campuses throughout North America and Europe, AEPi brothers have
been leading the Jewish community and leading the student movement to
defend Israel,” the fraternity’s executive director said
<http://jewishjournal.com/news/nation/154873/>. “Because of that
leadership, in the last few months alone, our brothers have been the
targets of anti-Semitic attacks at a dozen universities,” including – he
claimed – UC Davis.
On its Facebook page, Reifkind’s group Aggies for Israel posted a photo
<https://www.facebook.com/aggiesforisrael/photos/a.778140655598205/779361648809439/?type=3&theater>
of the graffiti. The group stated that “AEPi was clearly targeted” due
to its “strong track record of championing pro-Israel causes,” including
campaigning against the divestment vote at UC Davis.
Aggies for Israel alerted media outlets including /BuzzFeed/ by tagging
them in comments.
But in the footage, viewable above, Reifkind admits to Al Jazeera’s
undercover reporter “Tony” that “we don’t even know” who did the graffiti.
“We just think it was like some random white supremacist type people who
just came, did it and left. We don’t think it was students,” she states.
Marcelle Obeid <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/marcelle-obeid> was
then president of the campus group Students For Justice in Palestine
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/students-justice-palestine> at UC
Davis.
In the Al Jazeera film – though not in the leaked excerpts – she
explains that Reifkind’s false allegations were “hugely damaging” to the
group at the very moment they had won a victory for BDS
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/uc-davis-passes-divestment-resolution-five-other-campaigns-launched>.
Obeid reacts to the undercover footage of Reifkind admitting the
graffiti was likely the work of a “random white supremacist” by saying:
“That’s very surprising, because it was very clear from their behavior
towards us and their attitudes towards us that we had done some heinous
crime towards them and we deserved to pay for it.”
Islamophobia
The backlash that Reifkind and other anti-Palestinian activists drove
was part of a general atmosphere of Islamophobic coverage of the
divestment resolution.
Fox News, for example, claimed
<http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/02/03/anti-israel-activists-shout-allahu-akbar-jewish-students-university-california-davis>
that pro-Israel students had been shouted down and “heckled” during the
Student Senate vote.
The national media attention on the California campus peaked with former
TV star Roseanne Barr tweeting
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/uc-davis-has-no-comment-roseanne-barrs-call-sectarian-violence-campus>:
“I hope all the Jews leave UC Davis” and “then it gets nuked!”
In reality, as video from the night
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBO6xZtG6WY> demonstrates, Reifkind was
respectfully given ample time to speak at the debate
<https://www.facebook.com/aggiesforisrael/posts/778159445596326>, where
she harangued students as being part of a “campus plagued by anti-Semitism.”
She was not heckled or interrupted even as she denounced the BDS
movement as “anti-Semitic and hate-promoting.” She and her group then
staged a walkout as a way to attract press attention, as they expected
to heavily lose the vote.
At the time, in January 2015, Reifkind was a student and campus
pro-Israel activist not yet employed by the Israeli embassy in Washington.
But in the clip, she admits to “Tony,” Al Jazeera’s undercover reporter,
that as president of Aggies for Israel she had been in touch with the
Israeli consulate in San Francisco.
Immediately after she graduated in 2016, her on-campus efforts for
Israel paid off, and she was offered a job at the Israeli embassy in
Washington. She spoke to “Tony” soon after, in September.
Her official title seen in a business card in the clip was “director of
community affairs.” But as she explains to “Tony” in the film, her role
mainly entailed “monitoring BDS things and reporting it back” to
agencies in Israel.
“Report back” to Israel
Neither Reifkind nor the Israeli embassy in Washington replied to Al
Jazeera’s request for comment, and she left her role at the embassy in
October 2017.
In the clip above, Reifkind describes her role as “mainly gathering
intel, reporting back to Israel. That’s a lot of what I do. To report
back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.”
The strategic affairs ministry
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ministry-strategic-affairs> is
Israel’s semi-covert agency dedicated to fighting a global war on the
BDS movement, often utilizing “black-ops.”
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-using-black-ops-against-bds-says-veteran-analyst>
It is run by a high-ranking
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/meet-spies-injecting-israeli-propaganda-your-news-feed>
military intelligence officer, Sima Vaknin-Gil
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/sima-vaknin-gil>, and staffed
mostly from the ranks of Israel’s various spy agencies. The names of its
operatives are mostly classified.
In the clip above, Reifkind describes to “Tony” how she monitors the
activities of Students for Justice in Palestine, using several fake
Facebook accounts.
“I follow all the SJP accounts,” she explains. “I have some fake names.
My name is Jay Bernard or something. It just sounds like an old white
guy, which was the plan. I join all these groups.”
The “intel” she got from such activities was then fed into the
classified “Cables” server via her boss at the embassy.
The surveillance seems to have been effective.
SJP president Marcelle Obeid explains in another part of the film that
“every single event that I put on, you would have these pro-Israel
groups coming out – before our guests even got there – with their
cameras videotaping.”
“That behind-the-scenes way”
Reifkind, as the president of Aggies for Israel, received assistance
from the Israeli consulate in 2015. In the same manner, she, as part of
her role at the Washington embassy, gave pro-Israel groups all over the
US “our support, in that behind-the-scenes way.”
This arms-length approach through front organizations is key to how
Israel operates in the West.
In 2016, the Israeli embassy in London warned
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israelis-seek-uncover-governments-secret-war-against-bds>
in a cable that the strategic affairs ministry was “operating” British
Jewish organizations behind the embassy’s back in a way that could put
them in violation of UK law.
It later emerged – from an Al Jazeera film about the Israel lobby in the
UK broadcast last year
<https://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/thelobby/> – that the embassy
was attempting to “take down
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/secret-video-reveals-israeli-plot-take-down-uk-minister>”
a British minister deemed critical of Israel.
The embassy agent, Shai Masot
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/shai-masot>, was also working
through proxies to set up a fake pro-Israel youth organization
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-running-campaign-against-jeremy-corbyn>
within the main opposition Labour Party.
In the US, Reifkind was also active with the powerful lobby group AIPAC
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/apiac> while she was on campus. In
another part of the censored film she explains to “Tony” that “When
you’re lobbying on behalf of AIPAC, you never say you’re AIPAC, you say,
‘I am a pro-Israel student from UC Davis.’”
The undercover footage of Reifkind explaining her activities shows how
Israel – with total impunity – spies on and disrupts US citizens
involved in lawful advocacy for Palestine.
A key Israeli front organization spying on US students is the Israel on
Campus Coalition
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israel-campus-coalition>, as The
Electronic Intifada revealed in its reporting
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/censored-film-names-adam-milstein-canary-mission-funder/25356>
on a previously leaked clip of /The Lobby – USA/.
The film indicates that the Israel on Campus Coalition is connected to
the anonymous blacklisting site The Canary Mission
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/canary-mission> on behalf of
multimillionaire pro-Israel financier and convicted tax evader Adam
Millstein <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/adam-milstein>.
In undercover footage yet to be leaked, the Israel on Campus Coalition
admits
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/censored-film-names-adam-milstein-canary-mission-funder/25356>
to coordinating its covert spying and sabotage campaigns with Israel’s
strategic affairs ministry. Like other groups profiled in the film it
did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.
Al Jazeera’s film raises questions about the nature of Israel’s network
of front organizations in the US and to what extent they may be
violating the law in acting as undeclared agents for a foreign state.
As Reifkind sums up to Tony in the clip above, “I can’t say anything
negative about Bibi [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] or the
government because I definitely work for them. Not directly. I’m just a
normal American.”
--
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