https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang

Regardless of what good things other Israeli companies might be doing, it's clear that the Israeli government doesn't have a problem with these malware / spyware companies.

there's not much controversy that would pull media attention in green tech or medical research

Israeli here - I'll try to write this the least political as I can since I on one hand disagree strongly with the government and on the other my experience has been getting antisemstic (yes, not anti-zionist) comments whenever this gets discussed a lot (and likely downvotes but who cares I've been here 10 years and have more fake points than is important anyway).

Israel has several "cores" of technology. The military stuff is shameful (as well as other stuff). It's not just the NSOs (or less infamously the Wiz's/Palo Altos etc).

There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space. I'll spare you the long list of stuff like Mellanox that drives Nvidias in data centers and leave the googling of medtech to you. Lots of neutral stuff too.

There's a lot of offensive security talent, but this has nothing to do with Palestinians. Israeli intelligence is very advanced and is why Israel has been able to eliminate the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran.

Not everything in Israel is about or related to Palestinians. The Palestinian bias only exists in circles where every thought regarding Israel is immediately evoking a Palestinian connotation. In reality, most Israelis never interact with Palestinians.

To suggest that a sector of Israeli startups exists on the experience of people "suppressing Palestinians" is definitely biased, absurd, and is a slippery slope.

> ... because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.

> If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal ...

Perhaps, but - talk to someone who's done PR work for startups. Ask them what it would take for an Israeli startup working on, say, home bagel-making machines to get the sort of world-wide media attention that any Israeli creep-tech firm can get - for free - by association with a few nefarious deeds.

IDF conscripts astroturf on social media all day, and a lot of people do the same for free on behalf of the concept of Israel

Don’t worry about the deflections and karma flagging censorship as consensus, because its not

Jewish and Jewish Israeli people are raised to be afraid of the entire world, and think losing a perception game will result in their eradication perpetuated by everyone around them. This is due to a 1,000 year history of exactly that, so I can empathize, but not at the expense of fiction. I don’t want anyone to hurt them. I want the corrosive traits in their culture to be checked and go away.

Put all those PhD’s that some people are so proud of into other pursuits.

The Nazis did a ton of cutting edge research too.

Selling spyware and 0days is a significant industry in Israel [1]. This includes Pegasus [2][3]. Countries around the world pay Israeli companies to hack the phones of politicians, opposition leaders, union leaders, journalists and basically anyone they don't like. This is actually a common structure for intelligence agencies who are often restricted from spying domestically or on citizens. They simply farm that out to the intelligence agencies of other countries or these spyware companies. Israel has become kind of an extrajudicial cheat code. Saudi Arabia has been a big user [4]. All of this is just objective fact.

No one was officially blamed for Stuxnet years ago but it's widely believed that the US and Israel were responsible [5]. And of course we had the pager operation [6]. If anyone else had done the same, they'd be labelled as terrorists and be under economic and diplomatic sanctions.

As for BlackCore, I guess it's part of the wider story of Israel's extensive influence campaign on foreign elections and politicians. We've seen this get really overt. For example, Thomas Massie's primary was the most expensive in history when AIPAC and AIPAC affiliates spent a combined ~$35M. I actually think it's this extreme and overt because Israel has lost the PR fight and are increasingly desperate.

Another less-talked about example was the character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, which was essentiallya Zionist takeover of the Labor Party and, lo and behold, a few years later we're locking up grandmothers indefinitely for holding up signs that say "Palestine Action" [7].

And of course we have the Jeffrey Epstein of it all where it's really obvious that Epstein was an Israeli access agent and likely Ghislaine Maxwell was as well, particularly when you look at the entire history of Robert Maxwell from WW2 to arming Jewish militias pre-1948 and the IDF after that until finally "falling off" his own yacht.

Oh and there are claims that some unidentified hacker breached the FBI's systems in 2023 and accessed files related to Jeffrey Epstein. There are claims that 500TB was destroyed and 400TB of that was recovered [8]. That's so weird.

It's depressing to me how many people support a state that is functionally the Nazi Germany of our times. Like go ahead and find me the functional distinction between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. But also how impervious Western politicians are to public opinion on this issue, which has drastically switched in the last few years. Opposition movements are suppressed with brutal violence.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfOgm1IcBd0

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)

[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/8/what-you-need-to-kno...

[4]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/07/the-...

[5]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-12633240

[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...

[7]: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250807-uk-pensioner-...

[8]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47184683

Remilk is an Israeli food-tech startup using yeasts to produce milk proteins. Frankly I find your comment rather odd, why should a startup be more loud because other people are biased? Diplomacy is the job of the state. We have innovative index on which Israel does well and large number of unicorn per capita.

"working to suppress Palestinians" isn't exactly a neutral observation, I'm not surprised you got accused of bias.

> I got accused of bias because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.

Meddling with foreign affairs is a well established practice, and that's just life.

Israeli do that, North Koreans do that, Russians do that, Americans do that (think former CIA/FBI people, think Palantir etc).

Highlighting that specific nation (Israel) for those practices while ignoring all other positive contributions (dumb example since we're on HN: Graviton processors came from Annapurna labs, an israeli company, and they gave the definitive push for ARM in the datacenter by proving it's effectively feasible and cost-effective) is borderline antisemitic.

So yeah, you got called out and rightfully so (and you should really review your biases).

Some personal questions for you then,

Where do you live?

What colour is your skin?

Thank you.

In addition to this malware, which comes from an Israeli company and is used for the purpose of subverting democratic elections in foreign countries (we don't really know who mandated these interventions, but the target, John Swinney and fellow ministers, have been vocal in their criticism of the Israeli government's actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and have imposed a form of sanctions on the Israel Defense Forces by withholding state grants to arms firms that supply the IDF and freezing support for exports to Israel), they have also infiltrated some countries like the UK and US with very powerful pro-Israel lobbies acting behind the curtain by directly contacting prominent politicians.

In the UK, the Israeli company Elbit Systems produces arms for Israel through its British subsidiary, which holds major Ministry of Defence contracts including the Watchkeeper drone programme (worth over £800 million) and the Jupiter training system (around £130 million) – sources: UK Companies House and MoD contract notices. People protesting for Palestinians at Elbit sites have been arrested: between 2020 and June 2024, over 140 arrests were made at more than 50 actions by Palestine Action, but police and court records show that no terrorism charges were filed, and the High Court rejected a legal challenge against policing of these protests in May 2024. Two main lobbies cover both major parties in the UK: Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel.

In the US, a similar two‑party structure exists but with far greater financial power. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its super PAC spent over $4.5 million in the 2023–2024 election cycle, mostly to defeat progressive Democrats critical of Israel, including successfully spending $14.5 million to unseat Congressman Jamaal Bowman (source: Federal Election Commission filings). The Democratic Majority for Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition mirror the UK's Labour and Conservative lobby groups, while the US provides Israel with roughly $3.8 billion in annual military aid – a sharp contrast to the UK's limited sanctions on the IDF. Unlike the UK, no US protester has been arrested under terrorism laws for actions against arms companies supplying Israel.

In practice, Israel and Russia do similar things: they affect or subvert foreign elections by manipulating information and social media, and they directly influence politics via foundations, think tanks, and by cultivating politicians and influencers. For Russia, this includes organisations like the Russian House in Washington and sympathetic think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation – though the Heritage Foundation is American, Russian state media and proxies have actively courted its positions.

Russia has also influenced figures like Tucker Carlson, who repeatedly echoes Kremlin talking points, and JD Vance, who has opposed military aid to Ukraine; no public evidence proves formal recruitment, but both have amplified narratives favourable to Moscow and JD Vance made a powerful endorsement of Orban, a corrupted pro-russian statesman, in the past election in Hungary.

Not to be confused with Blackrock or Blackstone, both large American investment companies with their own shady operations.

We've had discussions about this sort of stuff before.

As an Israeli (note the article exposing them is Israeli too) I was not aware until I saw this and I definitely intend to protest/organize about this (though to be fair I've been protesting about other stuff in the past and the climate here sucks).

>Sure someome will argue things here get flagged cause they are political, but I don't buy that.

Are you saying that this isn't political? It's literally about politics. The comments section will be predictable and it will be flagged for that.

Do you disagree?

Nonsense, it'll end up with merely some public head scratching and shrugs, and a "gee whiz monsieur, it sure is a mystery to us too".

Interesting that whatever they wanted to do backfired in NYC.

Also Black Cube: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Cube

Black, like Leon Black of Epstein fame

There are 2 billion people who pray to Black Stone... I will let you decide if it's evil or not.

Europeans couldn't even get Israel out of a silly pop song contest, so it seems a bit hopeless to expect any actual political action.

Nope, the war in Iran is testament to that.

Nope, foreign lobbyists in the guise of AIPAC spent record amounts to primary Thomas Massie.

I am an Israeli and though I dislike this certain brand of companies and would never work in one, I am not sure this is strictly bad.

I assume these were hired by a local candidate (unless someone can think who has a deep interest in French municipal elections)

Currently the only actors who use fake social accounts for election manipulation are the Russians, Chinese, Iran and Qatar.

The west is completely powerless in either fighting back, regulating social networks or coming up with a technological solution.

As democracies are being undermined by foreign influence, from Brexit, to the US elections, I'd rather local parties would have access to these tools than the alternative, and that would be only done using private companies.

Of course the better alternative is getting rid of fake accounts and making social media into a unicorn and bunnies hate-free zone, don't think we are headed there though