{"id":243224,"date":"2021-09-26T07:19:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-26T07:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=243224"},"modified":"2021-09-27T06:28:29","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T06:28:29","slug":"biden-spokesperson-jen-psaki-worked-for-israeli-spy-firm-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=243224","title":{"rendered":"Biden spokesperson Jen Psaki worked for Israeli spy firm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ali Abunimah \u2013 Electronic Intifada March 25, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n

President Joe Biden\u2019s press secretary Jen Psaki worked for an Israeli firm accused of involvement in surveillance of Palestinians under Israeli military occupation.<\/p>\n

Psaki\u2019s public financial disclosures show that she earned at least $5,000 as a \u201ccrisis communications consultant\u201d for AnyVision<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The disclosure forms for executive branch officials can be requested<\/a> from the White House. Psaki\u2019s disclosure obtained by The Electronic Intifada is included below this article.<\/p>\n

The exact date of the work is not specified, but it occurred between the time Psaki left the Obama administration in 2017 and her new role in the Biden White House.<\/p>\n

Psaki has operated a communications firm called Evergreen Consulting since a month after President Barack Obama left office.<\/p>\n

This covers the period when AnyVision faced a public relations crisis over its alleged complicity in Israel\u2019s abuses of Palestinian rights.<\/p>\n

In 2019, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz<\/em> reported<\/a> that AnyVision\u2019s facial recognition technology was being secretly used by Israel\u2019s occupation army \u201cto monitor West Bank Palestinians at checkpoints on the way into Israel \u2013 while using a network of cameras deep inside the West Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n

AnyVision\u2019s president, Amir Kain, was former head of the Israeli defense ministry\u2019s security department, and one of its advisers, Tamir Pardo, is a former head of the Mossad spying and assassination agency, according to Haaretz<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In other words, AnyVision was reportedly an integral part of what Israel\u2019s leading human rights group B\u2019Tselem recently described<\/a> as an \u201capartheid regime\u201d established to perpetuate \u201cthe supremacy of one group \u2013 Jews \u2013 over another \u2013 Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Haaretz<\/em>, the firm\u2019s co-founder Eylon Etshtein asserted without apparent irony that his company is \u201cvery sensitive\u201d to racial and gender bias and only sells to \u201cdemocratic countries with proper governments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Microsoft divestment<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A subsequent report<\/a> by Olivia Solon for NBC News stated that AnyVision \u201cpowers a secret military surveillance project throughout the West Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPalestinians living in the West Bank do not have Israeli citizenship or voting rights but are subject to movement restrictions and surveillance by the Israeli government,\u201d NBC noted.<\/p>\n

The network also reported that when it approached AnyVision\u2019s Etshtein for comment, \u201cHe disputed that the West Bank was \u2018occupied\u2019 and questioned the motivation of the NBC News inquiry, suggesting the reporter must have been funded by a Palestinian activist group.\u201d<\/p>\n

Etshtein also apparently threatened to sue the network.<\/p>\n

Solon\u2019s report focused attention on how American tech giant Microsoft had invested $74 million in AnyVision.<\/p>\n

That spurred the #DropAnyVision<\/a> campaign by human rights and Palestine solidarity activists calling on Microsoft to divest from the spy firm.<\/p>\n

The campaign \u2013 spearheaded by Jewish Voice for Peace \u2013 was successful.<\/p>\n

Microsoft announced a year ago<\/a> that it was withdrawing from involvement with AnyVision, after it commissioned an investigation<\/a> led by former US attorney general Eric Holder.<\/p>\n

Microsoft said that Holder\u2019s investigation could not substantiate the accusations about AnyVision\u2019s secret involvement in surveillance of Palestinians.<\/p>\n

But Microsoft said<\/a> it was divesting anyway since holding a minority share in a firm selling \u201csensitive technologies\u201d including facial recognition would not allow for the \u201clevel of oversight or control that Microsoft exercises over the use of its own technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMicrosoft\u2019s decision to dump AnyVision is a huge blow to this deeply complicit Israeli company and a success for an impressive BDS campaign,\u201d Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights, said at the time.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Biden\u2019s press secretary Jen Psaki worked for an Israeli firm accused of involvement in the surveillance of Palestinians under Israeli military occupation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":230310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Inside_the_White_House_and_Washingtons_Beltway","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=243224"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243251,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243224\/revisions\/243251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/230310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=243224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=243224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=243224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}