Social media
Tweet quoting Webbe on Gaza goes viral
Tens of thousands of shares on post quoting one of UK’s most consistent MPs on Israel’s Gaza genocide
A tweet quoting Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe’s pithy analysis of Gaza has gone viral after it was shared by UK-based, pro-Gaza investigative journalist Sulaiman Ahmed.
Webbe tweeted on 7 Feb:
Israel does not want peace. They want Gaza.
They want to slaughter Palestinians, drive them into the Sinai Egyptian desert and eradicate Palestine.
Yet, our political leaders still refuse to call for an immediate ceasefire.— Claudia Webbe MP (@ClaudiaWebbe) February 7, 2024
Ahmed’s post a couple of weeks later quoting her first sentence was shared thirty-six thousand times and ‘liked’ eighty-two thousand times:
Claudia Webbe is one of the UK’s most consistently solid and outspoken MPs in solidarity with Palestinians and against Israel’s war crimes – at a time when most MPs are either silent or actively endorsing the war criminals – and is routinely foully abused by racists and supporters of genocide for it. She sits as an independent MP and shames the leadership of both main political parties, both of whom are eagerly complicit in Israel’s genocide, refuse to condemn the Israeli regime’s contempt for humanity international law and have avidly propagated discredited Israeli atrocity propaganda used to justify Israel’s slaughter.
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The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power – review
Caty Borum‘s The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power considers how comedy intersects with activism and drives social change. Borum’s accessible text draws from case studies and personal experience to demonstrate how comedy can successfully challenge norms, amplify marginalised voices and foster dialogue on issues from racism to climate change, writes Christine Sweeney.
Can you teach comedy? Can a sense of humour, charisma, delivery, stage presence and timing be learned? Comedy programmes popping up in universities across the world would say, “Yes, yes it can”. If the question is, “can you teach comedy as a tool for social change and civic power?”, Caty Borum has an entire book which aims to provide an answer.
The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power by Caty Borum explores the intersection of comedy and social activism, delving into the question of whether comedy can be taught and used as a tool for social change. Borum discusses the role of creativity, cultural power, and participatory media in driving social change and how postmillennial social-justice organisations collaborate with comedians. Serving as a follow-up to Borum’s work co-written with Lauren Feldman in 2020, A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice, this new book is a how-to manual with case studies on integrating comedy into social justice efforts.
[The] book is a how-to manual with case studies on integrating comedy into social justice efforts.
Borum reflects on her own comedy career, drawing from experiences working with sitcom legend Norman Lear on get-out-the-vote campaigns in the late ’90s and early 2000s like Declare Yourself. While these campaigns engaged young people and demonstrated the power of comedic efforts, Borum notes that the impact on electoral outcomes was limited. Though 2004 saw the largest turnout (nearly 50 per cent) of voters aged between 18 and 24, that demographic still accounted for just 17 per cent of the total voter population, and Bush beat his democratic rival John Kerry to secure a second term.
Although mobilising the public through comedy for direct political action may be too great an ask, Borum emphasises comedy’s narrative power in shaping public understanding and influencing cultural attitudes. The book explores the evolution of comedy in the participatory media age, especially its increased visibility during the pandemic and its role in challenging societal norms. The rise of independently produced content on social media has challenged the authority of networks and studios, boosting the democratisation and creative agency of comedy “content”. Though Borum acknowledges the benefits of social media for amplifying marginalised creators, she falls short of critically examining its impact on mental health, the spread of misinformation and biased algorithms. Despite this, she underscores comedy’s potential as a cultural intervention empowered by the participatory networked media age.
Positive deviance, according to Borum, is the quiet power of comedy that journalism lacks.
The book discusses the comedic response to political events, particularly the rise of Donald Trump, positioning comedy as a force for social change by offering fresh ways of undermining the status quo. According to Borum, comedians say what journalists cannot, thinking of Michelle Wolf, who at the 2018 White House Correspondents dinner pointed out the mutually beneficial cycle of journalists covering then-President Trump’s near-constant news feed. Positive deviance, according to Borum, is the quiet power of comedy that journalism lacks.
Comedy also serves as a creative space for marginalised voices, providing an alternative narrative and critique that traditional journalism may lack. Borum highlights the importance of optimism in comedy. Comedy provides a space for an alternate reality, for example the TV series Schitt’s Creek portrays a world where the LGBTQ community is fully accepted. In this sense, optimism can be a survival tactic. As Borum suggests,
[C]omedy as a force for social justice breaks down social barriers and opens space to discuss taboo topics; persuades because it is entertaining and makes us feel activating emotions of hope and optimism; serves as a mechanism for traditionally marginalized people to assert and celebrate cultural citizenship through media representation; acts as both social critique and civic imagination to envision a better world; and builds resilience to help power continued struggle against oppression.
Borum provides an in-depth, well-researched review of cultural entertainment activists, tracking the power of the entertainment industry to affect how people feel. “Pioneering cultural entertainment activists pushed for ‘mainstreaming’ oppressed people – including and normalizing their lives and lived experiences in entertainment.”
The book is something of a documented workshop, drawing from the experiences and insights of leaders across social justice activism and comedy to emphasise the power of media.
The book is something of a documented workshop, drawing from the experiences and insights of leaders across social justice activism and comedy to emphasise the power of media. Its instructive aspect lies in Borum’s description of running comedy workshops and writers’ rooms, offering a practical guide for both comedians and social activists. These collaborative spaces aim to translate key messages into comedy routines through storytelling, making complex issues more accessible. The author uses climate change and the opioid epidemic as examples, demonstrating how comedy can humanise and mobilise audiences to address pressing challenges.
Borum examines a case study of youth political activist group Hip Hop Caucus which aims to communicate a basic awareness of climate change to Black, Indigenous, and other People of Colour, who are the most affected by, and yet contribute the least to, climate change in the US (and globally). Even if this comedy work may not reach the oil companies responsible for the brunt of climate change, it serves to educate and mobilise audiences. In this sense, the messaging of the book goes, culture is important because it is the mechanism by which we relate to each other. Although it’s hard to demonstrate the material impact of comedy and the entertainment industry overall on political dynamics, communicating the mechanisms translating individual experiences in collective narrative storytelling to foster understanding and support is convincing.
Culture is important because it is the mechanism by which we relate to each other.
The Revolution Will Be Hilarious emphasises the power of comedy as a force for social justice and provides practical insights into its integration with activism. She effectively shows how collaboration between the two has the power to start meaningful conversations around racism, climate change, economic disenfranchisement, addiction and more. Borum’s work serves as a valuable guide for media and communication theorists, entertainment industry professionals, social activists, and comedians, showcasing the potential of collaboration between comedy and activism in sparking meaningful conversations on various societal issues.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image Credit: Paul Craft on Shutterstock.
Israel supporters shamelessly smear Bushnell with ‘dead jews’ claim. It’s an outright lie
US serviceman whose self-immolation resonated around the world did not say ‘Palestine will be free when all the jews are dead’, as multiple pro-Israel accounts have claimed
Supporters of apartheid Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinian civilians have begun spreading a claim that Aaron Bushnell, the US serviceman who died this week after setting himself on fire outside Israel’s embassy in Washington, posted a comment to his Reddit account that ‘Palestine will be free when all the jews [sic] are dead’.
The image has been touted by accounts well known for dismissive and often racist commentary about Palestinians as a means of trying to justify Israel’s war crimes. ‘Comedy’ writer Lee Kern was one of the most prominent:
Kern not only propagated the fake claim but described the whole of Palestine as a ‘racist hate movement’
Kern described the whole of Palestine, not just a resistance group, as a ‘suicide death cult’
Writer Kern’s 2021 comment appears to have been deleted but was commented on as early as 2021 and he does not appear to have made a denial to the many times it has been thrown at him
A careful examination of Bushnell’s Reddit account by fact-checker Snopes, over a wider period than the two months ago that the image shows – including using a service that records deleted posts – showed that no such post had ever been made by Bushnell and the image is completely fake. A reverse image search also revealed no other instances before the image began to be circulated by propagandists.
Bushnell’s shocking protest has focused even greater attention on Israel’s slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children. The attempt by supporters of the slaughter to divert from his aim in his terrible protest by posting an outright lie about him after his death is shameful and entirely unsurprising.
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NYT ‘journalist’ who co-wrote ‘Hamas rape’ piece is IDF propagandist with ‘no journalism experience’
Anat Schwartz found to have liked racist and violent posts about Palestinians
Image: Wikipedia
A huge scandal has broken out in the US after the New York Times (NYT), one of the United States’ leading newspapers, was found to have run a major front-page story smearing Palestinian resistance fighters as using ‘systematic’ use of sexual violence co-written by an Israeli film-maker with no journalism background who served as a in Israeli military intelligence – and had ‘liked’ social media posts featuring racism and violence toward Palestinians.
Anat Schwartz co-wrote the already-discredited article titled ‘Screams without words’, which made lurid, unevidenced claims about rape and mutilation by Palestinians during the 7 October raid – claims that have already been furiously denied by the family of the victim who took up around a third of the piece, who further claimed that the authors had misled them about the purpose of their article and never mentioned supposed the rape of their daughter, which they say did not take place and for which there is no evidence.
Scrutiny of Schwartz’s record revealed shocking facts about her background and that of her second co-author, who is her nephew by marriage:
Quick bio I found: pic.twitter.com/WWMZqRh1py
— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
Now let's get to her co-author, who also didn't write beforehand Oct 2023… pic.twitter.com/x9gkZwIlv7
— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
It is her nephew!
This is a post from her husband. pic.twitter.com/Sgtz4B6wlL— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
Lead author Jeffrey Gettelman fares little better under scrutiny:
He admitted to it. pic.twitter.com/zibbbEby31
— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
Schwartz, for her part, Schwartz reportedly ‘liked’ a post that talked about turning Gaza ‘into a slaughterhouse’ including the summary execution of prisoners and ‘violat[ing] any norm’:
Schwartz also ‘liked’ a post about the quickly-debunked ’40 beheaded babies’ claim – and the woman who took the photo of the ‘woman in the black dress’ that the article claimed falsely had been raped, said that the NYT’s authors had told her they needed to speak to her because it was ‘important for Israeli advocacy’, not for accurate journalism:
Lead author Gettelman said it was ‘not his job to gather evidence’ for the claims his article made:
Mondoweiss reported that Schwartz had served in Israeli military intelligence. The NYT has ‘launched an investigation’ and the paper’s staff are said to be split, with many outraged at the abandonment of journalistic standards.
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Scottish Green Minister Brands Lee Anderson and Conservative Right ‘School Bullies Who Love Punching Down’
A Co-Leader of the Scottish Green Party, serving in the Scottish Government, has hit out at Conservative “school bullies” who “can't see a marginalised, vulnerable minority without instinctively wanting to punch down”.
Patrick Harvie MSP – the first openly bisexual leader of a UK political party – made the comments to Byline Times in a meeting of UK Green Party leaders in London on Monday.
It came after Lee Anderson lost the Conservative whip over the weekend for his claims that Islamists had "got control" of London through its Muslim Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Responding, Harvie said: “Clearly for some on the right, it feels as though they haven't emotionally moved on from being school bullies, and they can't see a marginalised, vulnerable minority without instinctively wanting to punch down.
“There are others who simply see this as an opportunistic agenda: to try and divide people against one another and as a way to court controversy [or] shallow popularity.”
Harvie alleged that there is a double standard about how politicians and the press treat antisemitism and Islamophobia.
“It doesn't take a genius to imagine how they would respond if somebody on another part of the political spectrum had talked about Jewish people as having some sort of conspiratorial influence," he told Byline Times.
"That would be immediately condemned as antisemitism, and rightly so… Islamophobia needs to be acknowledged and then condemned in the same way,."
He named individuals like Anderson and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, alongside ex-Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick and quickly ousted Prime Minister Liz Truss as showing “ just how extreme they’re willing to go”.
All of them have courted the hard-right over the past year, some with an eye to securing the leadership of the party. Liz Truss spoke at a pro-Trump conference in the US last week, staying silent while former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon praised English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson as a hero.
Braverman has made similar comments to Anderson in claiming that Islamists now run the country, though she did not name an individual as being responsible as Anderson did with Sadiq Khan.
Jenrick has been accused of deliberately inflaming tensions after claiming immigration threatens to “cannibalise” the compassion of the British public.
Harvie told Byline Times that "we've got a much bigger problem than just political parties" and that there also needs to be a "proper discussion in the UK about media regulation".
Asked what that might look like, the Glasgow MSP said it could involve a “fit and proper person test” to ensure that those who owned UK media outlets were responsible individuals.
“We’ve seen pretty blatant examples of explicit, far-right rhetoric from the likes of GB News for example. [Take] the fact that Ofcom are failing to regulate the promotion of outright conspiracy theories, and lies… as though freedom of speech is about the freedom to tell lies.
“Freedom of speech is precious and that's why we can't allow it to be subverted and to suddenly have the freedom to denigrate minorities of vulnerable people. So, we've got a much bigger problem than just political parties."
The same applies to social media firms, which he said had been “taken over by toxic forces” – referring to Elon Musk’s takeover of X (formerly Twitter).
Last August, a man was arrested and charged after using homophobic rhetoric when challenging him. Harvie told Byline Times: “[Social media hate is] not just something about people's worries, it spills over into real life.
“We've seen the case of Brianna Ghey for example – a court judgement found transphobia was one of the motivating factors... Trolling people on social media [is not] just a laugh. It [creates] real world harm, and that's going to continue to get worse if we don't get to grips with the problem.”
Asked if he feels safe as a politician in Scotland, amid mounting fears over the attacks on political representatives, he added: “Relatively. I question that more than I used to.”
Harvie spoke at the event to promote the Greens ahead of this year's general election, in which his colleagues in England are hoping to increase their number of seats, from one to three or four.
Do you have a story that needs highlighting? Get in touch by emailing josiah@bylinetimes.com
Unite’s Graham slammed for silence over Gaza
GS silence and ongoing ban on Unite banners at Gaza demos infuriates officials and members as Unite Scotland passes ceasefire motion
A search of Sharon Graham’s Twitter account reveals no mention of anything related to Gaza
Unite members and officials are infuriated by union general secretary Sharon Graham’s continued silence over Gaza, with even previously ardent supporters demanding to know why she is completely absent from the fight for peace and justice for Palestinians.
Skwawkbox has previously reported an effective ban by the Unite management on the participation of the union’s officers, and the use of official union banners and paraphernalia, in marches and rallies. This ban appears to be ongoing. The ban is matched by a complete lack of comment from Graham on her social media or other appearances on the issue of Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians, even after the International Court of Justice put Israel formally on trial for genocide and ordered the state to protect Palestinian lives, an order the regime has flouted.
Unite members are now demanding to know whose side Ms Graham is on, as in the example shown above. But even formerly entrenched supporters have lost patience, such as the activist behind this account – who has previously attacked Skwawkbox for scrutinising and exposing the general secretaries actions and alleged actions:
Original tweet and video here.
But the criticism is widespread, as the representative examples below demonstrate:
Where's your support for Palestine #GazaGenocide
— #EnoughisEnough #FreePalestine #FreeJulianAssange (@carolehope2) February 6, 2024
I too am a member of Unite but not for much longer @UniteSharon @unitetheunion I am appalled at your lack of Solidarity with the other unions and Palestine
— Jezzabeau C. #GazaGenocide (@JezzabeauC) February 3, 2024
@UniteSharon not one post on her feed about palestine in recent days. Disgusting.
— Traderboy (@Aminthegreat4) February 13, 2024
I too am a member of Unite but not for much longer @UniteSharon @unitetheunion I am appalled at your lack of Solidarity with the other unions and Palestine
— Jezzabeau C. #GazaGenocide (@JezzabeauC) February 3, 2024
Your silence on Palestine goes against Unite policy.
— Mike (@Fleabag2016) January 23, 2024
Unite’s democratically-decided policy is to support the international ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ movement against Israel’s oppression, apartheid and illegal occupation. Yet members in Ireland have been forced to demonstrate against Unite’s use of Israeli-linked firms, entire regional groups have condemned the lack of support and solidarity for Palestinians, and members have accused Graham of using proxies to ban pro-Palestine events on union premises and even to try to cancel a solidarity event organised by union officials at Labour’s 2023 conference.
And while other unions have been clear in their solidarity with Palestinians facing the genocidal assault of the occupying Israeli regime, Unite – at least at an organisational level – appears determined to say nothing that will upset Keir Starmer’s Zionist apple cart.
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Panicked by Feinstein, Starmer and Lammy issue near-IDENTICAL Gaza statements
Candidacy of Jewish left-winger in Starmer’s seat prompts pair to issue statements trying to con pro-Palestinian voters – but they don’t even bother to tweak the wording significantly
Keir Starmer is rattled – and reportedly ‘raging’ – at the announcement that left-wing Jewish heavyweight Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC MP who fought apartheid under Mandela, is going to contest Starmer’s Holborn and St Pancras constituency at the next parliamentary election. Rightly so: Feinstein’s substance, integrity and principle cast a cold light on Starmer’s lack.
But the incompetence and arrogance of the Labour right can’t help showing through. Clearly someone among Starmer’s advisers has decided it’d be a good idea to finally issue a statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza to try to mollify the huge numbers of voters who are outraged at Starmer’s sabotage of earlier parliamentary motions calling for one and his support for Israel’s ‘right’ to commit war crimes.
So he and Lammy duly issued statements – or, to be more precise, one statement with hardly any modification and with most of the relevant portions identical, word for word, including the final sentence:
Nobody’s buying what this pair are selling
Shoddiness, incompetence, panic, or just the basic inability in that essential Establishment skill of faking sincerity – whatever the mix, Starmer and his acolytes are just not very good. That may be fly in an interview with media giving them the usual easy ride, but it won’t fool voters furious at their complicity in Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, in Gaza.
Instead, it just shows how scared Labour is of a challenge by someone of substance, even in seats where they held a big majority last time round.
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Jewish former S African MP Feinstein will stand against Starmer in Holborn St Pancras
OCISA selects candidate to fight for ‘Labour leader’s seat at next parliamentary election
Andrew Feinstein speaking at the ‘Stop Starmer’ initiative in London’s Conway Hall last year
The OCISA group formed with the aim of ousting so-called ‘Labour leader’ Keir Starmer has selected Corruption Watch UK director Andrew Feinstein, a Jewish former South African MP and adviser to Nelson Mandela, to stand against Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras in the next general election. Feinstein now lives in the seat.
Feinstein. the son of Holocaust survivors, has a long record of substance and principle that stands in stark contrast to his ‘broken every promise’ opponent, who is known as a ‘long-time servant of the security state’ and became known as the ‘kid starver’ after breaking promises to end the hated ‘universal credit’ benefit system and saying he would not end Tory benefit cuts that have put hundreds of thousands of children into poverty and hunger.
Feinstein has also consistently stood against Israel’s apartheid and genocide in Gaza, arguing that the same tactics his ANC party in South Africa used to bring down apartheid there must be used against Israel and pointing his social media followers to information about Israel’s slaughter of innocents. Starmer, in contrast, has said Israel has the ‘right’ even to impose the blockade on Gaza that is causing horrific starvation and disease.
Despite Labour’s significant majority in previous elections in the seat, the candidacy of someone with such substance and track record must be seen as a threat to Starmer’s position, particularly in a seat where one in six voters are Muslims and even more so in the light of South Africa’s leading role in the fight against the Gaza genocide – and soon against the UK’s complicity. The campaign is likely to be supported by large numbers of people from the constituency and around the UK, who are outraged at Starmer’s complicity in genocide and his abetting of the Tories’ assault on our rights and freedoms in the UK.
Starmer and his team are said to be ‘raging’ at the news and deeply concerned:
Those who wish to donate to Feinstein’s campaign fund can do so here.
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Facts For Peace: The Billionaire-Backed Campaign Attacking the Palestinian Cause
A week after Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel, the social media page Facts For Peace was created with the message, “Get the facts on Hamas, Israel, and peace in the region.”
A few days later, the page began advertising its content. “Here is Hamas’ Founding Charter in Their Own Words,” one sponsored post reads alongside video clips of Hamas leaders speaking and snapshots of the document. The page has spent more than $945,000 on Facebook ads since the war began nearly four months ago, and according to POLITICO, was the single largest pro-Israel advertiser between November 2 and December 1, spending over $450,000 on Meta ads. The ads have mainly reached male-identifying Facebook users under the age of 35 in California, Texas, New York, and Florida.
Labeled as a media/news company on Facebook, now Meta, the page’s posts and its supporters appear less concerned with accurate reporting and more involved in shaping public opinion.
In November, news website Semafor reported real-estate billionaire Barry Sternlicht launched Facts For Peace and sought $1 million in donations each from some of the world’s wealthiest individuals. “This is just one of several behind-the-scenes efforts by business tycoons — many, though not all of them Jewish — to support Israel since the attack by Hamas,” Samafor reported.
“Public opinion will surely shift as scenes, real or fabricated by Hamas, of civilian Palestinian suffering will surely erode [Israel’s] current empathy in the world community,” Sternlicht wrote in an email, seen by Semafor, soliciting contributions from Wall Street, Hollywood, and tech moguls. “We must get ahead of the narrative.”
The main objective of the “Facts for Peace” media campaign is to blame Palestinian deaths & suffering on Hamas instead of on their occupier, Apartheid Israel. pic.twitter.com/TaEy7ZNcGJ
— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) November 13, 2023
Sternlicht wrote that he’s aiming to raise $50 million from the recipients and secure a matching donation from an unnamed Jewish charity. With the funds, Facts For Peace seeks to “define Hamas to the American people as a terrorist organization” and “not just the enemy of Israel but of the United States.”
According to Bloomberg and Forbes data, the recipients have a combined net worth of almost $500 billion and include media tycoon David Geffen, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, Apollo CEO Marc Rowan, investors Michael Milke, Nelson Peltz, and Bill Ackman, and tech tycoons Eric Schmidt and Michael Dell. Facts For Peace did not respond to MintPress News inquiries about its campaign objectives.
Paying for Propaganda
Following its debut ad on the Hamas charter, Facts For Peace has gone on to publish hundreds of sponsored posts, with some conflating support for Palestine with support for Hamas or calling for the destruction of Israel. Only one ad was taken down since Facts For Peace’s launch for violating the platform’s advertising standards by not adding a paid for by disclaimer.
One ad, which hasn’t been active since Jan. 22, 2024, depicts a pro-Palestine march with participants chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
“Does this sound like peace and freedom? No,” the ad reads, followed by stating the protest ballad is a call for “genocide.” The ad then tells the viewer this slogan is sung at nearly every pro-Palestine rally and immediately jumps into saying, “Hamas wants to destroy and take over the entire area where Israelis and Palestinians live.”
The ad then ends with, “Anyone who says these words…is calling for a world without Israel.”
In another advertised video, a man approaches pedestrians in New York City, asking them to sign “a quick petition to help Hamas free Palestine.” He then reads off the petition’s“terms and conditions,” which include, “You agree that every Jew, Christian, and non-Muslim in the world must be slaughtered,” “You believe Iran should use Palestinians as puppets to spread radical jihad and destroy the west,” and “You want a terrorist group that beheads babies and rapes girls to replace the only democracy in the Middle East.”
A similar video shows a man approaching pedestrians in Washington, D.C., asking them to sign the same petition. In this video, the “terms and conditions” outlined include agreeing “Hamas should keep enforcing anti-West values like murdering gay Palestinians,” and “You want Hamas to win the war so they can spread their death cult to the U.S. and massacre all non-Muslims.”
As a reminder, those demonstrating in support of Palestine are generally not siding with Hamas, and using the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” isn’t genocidal but rather expressing freedom from oppression across the historical land of Palestine.
While pro-Palestine activists have been condemned for this phrase, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not receive similar backlash when he called to take over the “area from the river to the sea.”
“Every area that we evacuate, we receive terrible terror against us. It happened in South Lebanon, in Gaza, and also in Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank], which we did it,” Netanyahu said earlier this month. “And therefore, I clarify that in any other arrangement, in the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea.”
Another now-inactive ad encourages viewers to take a quiz to determine “Who do you really support in the Middle East Conflict?” The ad then directs to a Facts For Peace online quiz asking questions related to democracy, human rights, and equality. If you answer positively, your results say, “your views are more in line with Israel’s.”
“It seems that Facts for Peace is another transparent effort to wrap up genocide propaganda in lies and push the public conversation in counterproductive directions,” rapper and activist Lowkey said.
Currently, the page is running two ads on Instagram. On January 28, Facts For Peace launched an ad with the caption, “The International Court of Justice [ICJ] just confirmed Israel’s right to self-defense.” In this video, Facts For Peace said because the ICJ didn’t call for an immediate ceasefire “establishes Israel’s military actions are a defensive response to the Oct 7 attacks.”
The page is also running an ad featuring a video interview with Abbey Onn, an American-Israeli who had five members of her family kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. The video was produced by Middle East Intel, yet the only record of this organization is a black-and-white webpage containing only its name in large font. Another website, Israel Palestine Chronicles, features the same design as Middle East Intel but links to accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube as well as noting that it is paid for by Facts For Peace LLC. These websites mirror Facts For Peace’s own website, which also dons a black-and-white theme and links to its social media pages.
Facts For Peace’s mission falls in line with the United States’ vast Israel lobby. American journalist and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Norman Solomon, explained the lobby’s current tactics since Israel’s war began.
“The Israel lobby extends far beyond literal lobbyists on Capitol Hill,” Solomon told MintPress.
Israel-can-do-no-wrong defenders have been in ongoing damage-control mode since October, and part of that effort is focused on smearing principled supporters of human rights like Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush.”
Facts For Peace appears part of these damage-control efforts with its own media blitz. “The lobby’s influence is inclusive of, and perhaps mainly composed of, ferocious media offensives – now denying that Israel is engaged in the mass murder of civilians in Gaza and slandering the movement that demands an immediate and permanent ceasefire,” Solomon said.
Despite Facts For Peace’s continuous ad expenditure, Solomon doubts, however, that the campaign can make a real impact on public opinion, telling MintPress:
Its website is rudimentary and appears to be going through the motions. Not major players in the manipulative game of smearing people who advocate for human rights of Palestinian people.”
Who is behind Facts for Peace?
Facts For Peace’s website offers little transparency beyond giving a contact email address and social media links and stating it’s paid for by Facts For Peace LLC. Yet who manages the campaign isn’t listed. Facts For Peace was incorporated in New York on September 15, 2022, and was originally called Fulfill the Promise LLC. It changed its name to Change the Narrative Coalition LLC on October 13 before finally landing on Facts For Peace on October 16.
According to Semafor, Facts For Peace hired Josh Vlasto, a former aide to U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer and ex-New York governor Andrew Cuomo, to advise it. The number listed on Facts For Peace’s Meta Ad Library account is the same one for Vlasto’s public relations firm, Bamberger & Vlasto. The firm is run by Vlasto and Richard Bamberger, both former Cuomo aides who reportedly assisted Cuomo in his smear attempts against former aide Lindsey Boylan, who accused Cuomo of sexual harassment.
MintPress could not reach Vlasto’s firm for comment. However, Vlasto has already shared Facts For Peace’s content on his X profile. According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Facts for Peace, Israel Palestine Chronicles, and Bamberger & Vlasto, websites all share the same IP addresses, suggesting they are hosted on the same server.
Semafor also reported that Sternlicht discussed Facts For Peace with CNN owner David Zaslav and that Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel agreed to coordinate the endeavor. However, neither Saslav nor Emanuel responded to MintPress inquiries on their involvement.
Facts For Peace’s known head, Sternlicht, has previously funded Birthright, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) through his foundation and according to the foundation’s 2022 tax filing, available on ProPublic’s Nonprofit Explorer database, it gave $20,000 to the American Jewish Committee’s “to support [its] pro-Israel media campaign.”
Barry Sternlicht, the individual heading Israel’s $50 million propaganda campaign, Facts for Peace, has previously funded Birthright, the ADL, and one of Israel’s national institutions, the UJIA.
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) November 13, 2023
Lowkey stressed Sternlicht’s funding ventures should be cause for concern, telling MintPress that:
Sternlicht has a history of funding projects aimed at radicalizing young people and converting them to settler-colonists. Birthright offers free trips to occupied Palestine and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights to young Jews around the world.”
The ADL notoriously spied on thousands of Arab students and pro-Palestine and anti-apartheid activists, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and even sold that information to South African intelligence agents in the 1980s.
Another notable person linked to Facts For Peace is ex-Google CEO Schmidt, who co-founded the Israeli tech company Team8 in 2015 with Nadav Zafrir, former head of Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200, which is infamous for surveilling Palestinians. Schmidt has met with Netanyahu over the years, and during their last meeting in Sept. 2023, Schmidt agreed to join Netanyahu’s advisory forum on artificial intelligence.
Project Nimbus is the final phase of Google’s integration into the Israeli military.
Ten years ago, Google head Eric Schmidt held an intimate press conference with Israeli PM Netanyahu; not long after, Schmidt founded a tech hub with the former head of Israeli intelligence. pic.twitter.com/byLghBcBt0
— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) November 8, 2022
According to a MintPress investigation, at least 99 former agents of Unit 8200 are currently employed in significant roles at Google, including as Head of Strategy.
Other Facts For Peace’s email recipients have also expressed support for Israel as of late. Wall Street executives Ackman and Rowan criticized universities’ handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations — calling to withhold their donations.
Facts For Peace’s ads are often stuffed with prominent voices like comedian Mikey Greenblatt, actors Nathaniel Buzolic and Zach Sage Fox, and Mosab Hassan Yousef, a Palestinian who worked undercover for the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service and has strongly opposed calls for a ceasefire.
Despite this Rolodex of high-profile support, netizens have questioned the campaign and its agenda in a Reddit forum.
One user responded:
answer: It’s a Zionist propaganda group manufactured to try and counter, belittle, and discredit the organic anti Zionist sentiments on social media.
Edit: their increased presence is fueled by monetary investments by pro Zionist individuals and groups that dislike the fact that younger individuals are anti Zionist.
Jewish ≠ Zionist
Jewish ≠ Israeli
Anti Zionist ≠ Anti Semitic
Public opinion polls indicate that support for Israel is waning, with a November 2023 Reuters/Ipsos survey noting that around 68% of respondents in the U.S. agreed with the statement that “Israel should call a ceasefire and try to negotiate.” And with Israel charging forward with its unrelenting war on Gaza — killing more than 26,000 Palestinians so far in the assault — amid growing international pressure, sponsored social media ads may not be enough to return Israeli favor in the world’s eyes.
Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News
Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist for MintPress News covering Palestine, Israel, and Syria. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The New Arab and Gulf News.
The post Facts For Peace: The Billionaire-Backed Campaign Attacking the Palestinian Cause appeared first on MintPress News.