A report by MintPress News pins former Israeli Unit 8200 agents working for top notch US media outlets feeding American public with Israeli propaganda.
A recent report by MintPress News published on Wednesday revealed that a number of American prominent journalists are former Israeli spies of the notorious Israeli Unit 8200.
In his report, senior staff writer for MintPress News, Alan MacLeod, exposes several journalists working for renowned media outlets in the United States like Axios, CNN, and the New York Times.
Among them is celebrated Axios journalist Barak Ravid who, according to the report, went out of his way “to manufacture Western support for his country’s actions”, during the one-year-old genocide carried out by Israel on the besieged Gaza Strip.
According to the report, Ravid, who won in April the prominent White House Press Correspondents’ Award, “is a former analyst with Israeli spying agency Unit 8200, and as recently as last year, was still a reservist with the Israeli Defense Forces group.”
The report claims that Ravid’s stories “consisted of simply printing anonymous White House or Israeli government sources, making them look good, and distancing President Biden from the horrors of the Israeli attack on Palestine.”
Another misleading story described how “frustrated” Biden was becoming with Netanyahu and the Israeli government.
🧵A new MintPress News investigation reveals that a number of the most influential journalists in the United States were previously operatives of Israeli spying agency, Unit 8200. pic.twitter.com/RFe4RA99ew
— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) October 16, 2024
“Ravid’s function has been to manufacture consent for the government among elite liberal audiences who read Axios, allowing them to continue to believe that the U.S. is an honest broker for peace in West Asia rather than a key enabler of Israel,” the report read.
The alleged differences between the US administration and the Israeli government throughout the Gaza genocide did not stop Washington from being extremely generous with Tel Aviv on the political and financial level, the report said.
“Thus, no matter how questionable these Axios reports are, they serve a vital role for Washington, allowing the Biden administration to distance itself from what international bodies have labeled a genocide,” the report added.
MacLeod also stated in his report that Ravid is not timid in demonstrating his public contempt of the Palestinians.
A post he retweeted in September read: “That’s the PaliNazi way…they pocket concessions without giving anything in return and then use those concessions as the baseline for the next round of negotiations. PaliNazis don’t know how to tell the truth.”
Other Israeli Mouthpieces
The report pins several other journalists who formerly belonged to the notorious Israeli Unit 8200 and currently work for renowned American media outlets.
Shachar Peled is one of those. Her professional career includes three years working “as an officer in Unit 8200, leading a team of analysts in surveillance, intelligence and cyberwarfare,” and served “as a technology analyst for the Israeli intelligence service, Shin Bet”, according to the report.
Barak Ravid. pic.twitter.com/vFROH91gq2
— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) October 16, 2024
Peled was hired as a producer and writer by CNN in 2017, preparing “segments for Fareed Zakaria and Christiane Amanpour’s shows” and was later hired by Google as a senior media specialist.
Another name that pops up with three years of experience as an agent in Unit 8200 is Tal Heinrich.
Heinrich worked as the field and news desk producer for CNN’s Jerusalem Bureau between 2014 and 2017, “where she was one of the principal journalists shaping America’s understanding of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza that killed more than 2,000 people and left hundreds of thousands displaced,” the report said.
According to MintPress News report, Heinrich later left CNN and is now the official spokesperson of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The report revealed that CNN continues until this day in its policy of hiring “Israeli state figures.”
Tamar Michaelis is one of those. Michaelis currently works for the American network “producing much of its Israel/Palestine content,” despite “having previously served as an official IDF spokesperson”.
According to the report, New York Times’ Anat Schwartz is another example of a journalist with ties to Israel.
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Schwartz is an “ex-Israeli Air Force Intelligence officer with zero journalistic experience,” the report stated.
She is the co-writer of what was described by MacLeod as the “infamous and now discredited” ‘Screams Without Words’ expose, which alleged that the fighters of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas “systematically sexually violated Israelis on October 7.”
The report goes on to reveal that social media outlets the likes of Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok employ many of the former Unit 8200 agents.
US Mainstream Media Bias
MintPress News report states that employing former Unit 8200 “to produce American news should be as unthinkable as employing Hamas or Hezbollah fighters as reporters.”
According to the report the mere fact that these spies “are entrusted with informing the American public about their country’s ongoing offensives against Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran and Syria,” presents numerous questions regarding the “credibility and biases of our media.”
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“And as the propaganda war wages, the lines between journalist and fighter blur. The fact that many of the top journalists supplying us with news about Israel/Palestine are literally former Israeli intelligence agents only underlines this,” the report read.
The report indicates that “Unit 8200 is Israel’s largest and perhaps most controversial spying organization.”
“It has been responsible for many high-profile espionage and terror operations, including the recent pager attack that injured thousands of Lebanese civilians,” it added.
It is also responsible for constructing “an artificial intelligence-powered kill list for Gaza, suggesting tens of thousands of individuals (including women and children) for assassination. This software was the primary targeting mechanism the IDF used in the early months of its attack on the densely populated strip.”
(The Palestine Chronicle)
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