by Kit Klarenberg
Part 4 - ‘Hateful Rhetoric’
Yet, CyberWell’s pressing desire to disassociate itself from Israel’s security and intelligence apparatus is undoubtedly motivated by a fear the outfit could go the way of Act.IL if its true nature was exposed and well-known. Markedly, both Argyle and CyberWell executives and Adam and Gila Milstein refused to respond to further requests for comment from Fang and Poulson on their relationship and shared funding with Keshet David.
Yet, CyberWell’s Israeli government origins hide in plain sight. In February 2021, Tel Aviv’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs produced a report, “The Hate Factor: policy outline for combating antisemitism online”. Little noticed at the time, among its proposed strategies, was the exploitation of artificial intelligence – CyberWell’s USP – to root out and neutralize users on social media platforms posting and sharing content critical of Israel. It is no coincidence that CyberWell launched months later.
Yet, CyberWell’s Israeli government origins hide in plain sight. In February 2021, Tel Aviv’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs produced a report, “The Hate Factor: policy outline for combating antisemitism online”. Little noticed at the time, among its proposed strategies, was the exploitation of artificial intelligence – CyberWell’s USP – to root out and neutralize users on social media platforms posting and sharing content critical of Israel. It is no coincidence that CyberWell launched months later.
“Our reporting forensically demonstrates that the IHRA advocacy nonprofit CyberWell is a spin out of Israel’s most controversial anti-BDS intelligence collection effort, Keshet David, which further used Argyle Consulting Group as its public face,” Poulson tells MintPress News.
The corporate shell game continues, with Keshet being the intel collection arm of the primary propaganda effort of the Israeli government, Voices of Israel. That CyberWell scrubbed its intelligence ties from its website after we exposed how the non-profit was born out of this network speaks volumes.
It is vitally incumbent for Palestine solidarity activists to mount pressure on CyberWell and demand answers to the questions that its executives now stonewall. They – and, of course, the spectral actors lurking behind them – clearly have grand plans. On July 3, CyberWell circulated a dubious study on alleged antisemitic posting related to that month’s UK general election. Content critical of now-Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s avowed Zionism was specifically cited. An accompanying press release declared:
As elections are being held this year in a number of countries including the UK, France, and the US, CyberWell anticipates that antisemitic conspiracies, accusations, and hateful rhetoric will continue to rise online and in the real world. Unfortunately, one of the few things that opposing parties and sides have agreed on throughout history is the use of antisemitic tropes to blame the other for perceived failures and harms.
We can expect similar “studies” to circulate in the wake of every election and political incident in the years to come unless CyberWell’s Israeli intelligence-run operations are brought to a rapid – and wholly deserved – halt.
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