Spying
New ‘Lab’ MP Egan married to former 8200 Unit Israeli ‘spy’ recruiter
Right-wing MP’s partner spoke of his ‘great experience’ on pro-Israel propaganda programme, to which he recruited former spies from unit that marks its headsets for every Palestinian it kills
New right-wing Labour MP Damien Egan is married to a former IDF soldier who recruited former members of the IDF’s ‘Unit 8200’ spy unit to the ‘Excel’ propaganda programme run by the ultra-Zionist ‘Birthright Israel’ group (BI).
In a 2017 Facebook post, BI boasted of Felberbaum’s ‘important role’ in recruiting ex-8200 supervisors for ‘Excel’ interns, which Felberbaum said was ‘a great experience for me’, before talking of the ‘technological world I come from’. The article does not say that Felberbaum was a Unit 8200 member during his service, although his role recruiting former members raises the question:
Unit 8200 is the IDF’s ‘cyber-spy’ unit. Whistleblowers from the unit have revealed that members sometimes wear ‘X’s on their headsets to mark assassinations their information has facilitated – and that it targeted Palestinians for extortion and blackmail to further the government’s aims.
‘Excel’ is BI’s vehicle for taking US Jews on trips to Israel to reinforce their commitment to the occupying regime. In 2006, BI’s director of marketing said that:
[Israel] should be an integral part of every Jew’s identity
and criticised left-wing Jews who used the programme’s funding to go to help in Palestine, whom he said were weeded out if their ‘hidden agenda’ identified before going:
It is taking advantage of the Jewish money that sends people to Israel, exploiting this money to promote an agenda which is not the agenda of the people who funded Taglit
Felberbaum is not the only connection between Unit 8200 and Keir Starmer’s Labour. Starmer employs former member Assaf Kaplan as his ‘Social Listening and Organising Manager’, believed to be involved in monitoring members’ and others’ ‘online conversations’ about the party – and potentially finding information that can be used to expel anyone at odds with the regime. Kaplan removed mentions of the unit from his online profiles. He was also a ‘Facebook friend’ of disgraced Israeli embassy employee Shai Masot, who was sent home from the UK after being exposed organising campaigns against MPs Israel considered troublesome.
Egan himself is a member of the right-wing so-called ‘Jewish Labour Movement’. Unit 8200 has reportedly targeted gay Palestinians for blackmail and coercion.
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Exclusive: Streeting uses NHS privatisation announcement to tout IDF-linked health firm
Health privatisation enthusiast ‘Labour’ health spokesman namechecks Israeli military-linked firm as glowing example of private involvement in NHS – and visited firm in Israel on LFI-paid junket
Image by ‘The Agitator‘
As the death toll of Israel’s genocide in Gaza climbed above 30,000 this week according to observers EuroMed Monitor, Wes Streeting used an Israeli private health data company as his shining example of successful ‘entrepreneurialism’ – ie privatisation – in the NHS as ‘a source close to Mr Streeting’ briefed the media about his plans to ‘throw open the doors’ of the NHS to more private corporate provision if Labour gets into government.
The ‘source’ told the i:
Labour will encourage the spread of new technologies so private sector “innovators” have a clearer route to get their product into the NHS…
The best example on the tech side of ‘opening the door to entrepreneurs’ is where you’ve got a company or innovator of a product which works really well on the NHS. There’s an example of some at home kidney tests made by Healthy.io which were first sold into the NHS in 2021
But the link – and the Labour trolling of those outraged by the Gaza slaughter – goes much further. Healthy.io is owned and run by Yonatan Adiri, former Chief Technology Officer for the whole of Israel and an adviser to then-Israeli PM Shimon Peres. Adiri’s interests are not limited to private healthcare tech. His published works include Terror in the Court: Counter-Terrorism and Judicial Power in the Israeli Case Study and Counter Terror Warfare: The Judicial Front (2008), written for the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (2005).
Adiri’s interest in ‘counter-terror’ did not end in 2008. Just two months ago, shortly after the Hamas kibbutz raid, Adiri spoke to Bloomberg Technology ‘The importance of Intelligence in Israel-Hamas war’, comparing Hamas to ISIS and talking of the use of technology by intelligence services to defeat the Palestinian resistance organisation:
Skwawkbox did not find details of any involvement with Israeli spytech unit ‘Unite 8200’ – the cyberspy unit whose members reportedly paint an ‘X’ on their headsets for each Palestinian they help kill – in Adiri’s IDF service, but according to his bio page as a speaker for hire on allamericanspeakers.com, he remains a reserve captain in the ‘international operational negotiations unit’ and has acted as moderator at discussions held by the Israeli-government-sponsored Institute for National Security Studies on the use of drones and other technology for ‘national security’:
According to one article, Adiri acted for the IDF in negotiating a prisoner swap with Lebanese militia group Hezbollah.
Adiri also acted as senior national security ‘policy consultant’ for the Reut Institute, a right-wing Israeli think tank that now plays a key role in Israel’s attempts to counter the peaceful pro-Palestinian ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ movement.
And while Adiri may not have been a member of Unit 8200, he is – since at least March 2023 – an ‘industry mentor’ for the ‘LEAP’ initiative:
The LEAP website says that:
Leap was created in partnership with 8200bio, an organization of 8200 alumni working to promote the Israeli healthtech ecosystem. The program does strive to bring exceptional 8200 alumni into the healthtech domain, but the program is open to entrepreneurs of any background, according to the criteria described above.
Like its partner 8200 Impact, 8200bio is run by former members of what 8200 Impact calls the ‘elite IDF Signal Intelligence and Cybersecurity unit’. Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted in 2020 that:
Nor did Wes Streeting simply pull the name Healthy.io out of a hat without knowing the company’s links. In May 2022, according to right-wing pressure group Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), Streeting visited Israel on LFI’s dime – and LFI said ahead of the trip that:
Streeting will also visit Healthy.io, a tech provider for the NHS and Boots.
Right-wing libel-merchant and ‘dauphin of phone hacking‘ Lee Harpin, writing for Jewish News rather than the Jewish Chronicle that he cost so much money in damages for smearing left-wingers, confirmed that the visit went ahead. Streeting told the NHS Confederation last spring that he had been ‘blown away’ by his trip.
Keir Starmer employs a Unit 8200 alumnus, Assaf Kaplan, to monitor members’ social media.
Wes Streeting has come out as an avid NHS privatiser – which will surprise no one who has been watching. That he chose to garnish his promise to ‘throw open the doors’ of the NHS to more private profit-taking by touting an Israeli – and Israeli military-linked – firm during Israel’s war crimes, mass slaughter of women, children, medics and teachers and the bombing of hospitals and schools, in Gaza makes the betrayal even worse.
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