FiveFilters.org

Media activism: for reading: / @mochidigi

[Rania Khalek @RaniaKhalek]

The Breakthrough News Instagram account was deactivated this afternoon with zero explanation.

We have over half a million followers.

Was this a mistake or censorship of an independent progressive media outlet?

Please tell @Meta @instagram to reinstate our account ASAP

@BTnewsroom

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

Israel is tanking globally!

Across the 36 countries, a median of 67% of adults have an unfavorable view of Israel, while 25% have a favorable view.

In Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, around half of adults or more say they have a very unfavorable view of the country.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Two years of lying about bombing hospitals in Gaza – supposedly to target "Hamas control and command centres" underneath – has really paid off.

Now Israel bombs Lebanon's hospitals and doesn't even need to pretend there's a military rationale.

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

The IDF has been accused of horrific war crimes in Gaza by the UN Human Rights Council & Amnesty International.

It is just common sense that those involved in war crimes should be held to account.

[Matt Kennard @kennardmatt]

I’m glad there is outrage in MSM about Piker and Uygur being banned from UK

But where were they when top independent journalist Asa Winstanley had his home raided - and devices seized - by UK police in October 2024?

Not a word about it has ever appeared in a UK paper. Crazy

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This shows that Germany obviously still doesn't get it: their "historical responsibility" isn't to support Israel even as they commit genocide.

When the lesson of Nazism is obviously a universal one about justice, they instead think it's a blood debt to a particular people.

Which is, when you think about it, the Nazi way of looking at it: hierarchizing peoples and assigning collective responsibility - or collective impunity - on that basis.

[Matt Kennard @kennardmatt]

This is Emily Thornberry when she was Corbyn’s shadow foreign secretary

The UK Labour Party is completely and totally captured by the Israel lobby

Maybe more than any other political party in Britain

[Sangita Myska @SangitaMyska]

It’s begun: The Great Rewriting of History by the politicians, journalists, media commentators who stayed quiet over Gaza to keep climbing the greasy pole - while a handful of us who spoke-up were smeared, abused, or fired.

As @Hamza_a96 says, don’t let them do it:

[Cenk Uygur @cenkuygur]

I've been talking to a lot of press since I got banned from the UK. Media has been trained to believe the feelings of people who are pro-genocide are more important than lives of 23,000 Palestinian children. Their deaths are a minor problem, offending Zionists is a huge problem!

[Tech For Palestine @tech4palestine]

Announcing our final speaker! We are happy to announce Greta is joining us in Brussels. She will share the stage with our founder Paul Biggar to talk about media bias.

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

I have the deepest respect for the German people. I spent both winters and summers there growing up, and have tremendous admiration for the country.

But its foreign policy has been nothing short of an embarrassing disaster as of late.

From its support for the genocide in Gaza, ostensibly to "make up" for its conduct of another genocide (!?!), to its handling of the Iran file, to its recent direct and blatant attack and undermining of international law and the UN Charter.

As a result, I am not surprised in the least that Germany lost its bid for a UNSC elected seat, despite being the second-largest financial contributor to the UN and for its leadership role negotiating the Pact of the Future.

In fact, it is justice that Germany lost.

Hopefully, it will prompt some serious rethinking in Berlin. The world will be better off if Germany goes back to the country it was in 2003, when it rightfully stood up for international law and opposed the invasion of Iraq.

https://t.co/sjvNWWAhZg

[Adam Johnson @adamjohnsonCHI]

very funny these guys never demand the “extremists” be banned prior to their attending. They could easily seek assurances from organizers but mysteriously they never do. Instead they’re just perpetually shocked and outraged that racists attended the pro genocide rally.

[Media Lens @medialens]

Nobody bullshits quite as badly as Starmer.

[Aaron Maté @aaronjmate]

Sorry Prince Charles. When the UK calls itself “His Majesty’s Government”, they’re referring to Benjamin Netanyahu:

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

The Guardian regurgitates British state propaganda by accusing a UK "influencer" of spreading "Iranian regime messaging". On a visit to Iran, Bushra Shaikh reported the effects of US-Israeli air strikes, including one on a girls' school that killed some 170 Iranians, mainly children.

That used to be called journalism – stuff the Guardian and BBC claim to do. The Guardian amplifies calls for Shaikh to be investigated for "sanctions violations".

The Guardian sees a particularly sinister agenda in Shaikh's posts because:

* They "appeared timed to coincide with critical events in Iran, including the intensification of the conflict, ceasefire talks and nationwide protests in January" – that is, her posts were topical and newsworthy.

* They showed a “highly calculated pattern of social media manipulation” – that is, she was good at promoting her posts.

* They attracted "disproportionately high engagement” – that is, lots of people were interested to read her posts.

* They "offer followers unmediated, at times citizen journalist-style access to a war zone" – that is, she didn't have to submit her reports to Guardian editors so they could edit out information that might embarrass western leaders.

Shaikh herself is reported as being "aligned with anti-imperialist, anti-colonial frameworks” – that is, she doesn't simply regurgitate British state propaganda, like the UK corporate media.

This Guardian hit-job isn't about getting to the truth. It's the paper desperately trying to protect its traditional information monopoly for "liberal-left" audiences, and thereby remain useful for the security services.

[FiveFilters.org @fivefilters]

@adamjohnsonCHI @akildisi https://t.co/da4yjwujov

Archived here for posterity: https://t.co/hw9vf6FbI5

[FiveFilters.org @fivefilters]

@adamjohnsonCHI @akildisi I'm seeing this too on Amazon Germany (.de) - you have to choose the English language option to see it. Also on Amazon Italy (.it), France (.fr), Spain (.es). Happens on some other books too with Genocide in the title, but not all.

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

It’s wild how Meta - a company going all-in on AI - somehow missed the memo on how AI can generate images and videos that renders “take a selfie of yourself” verifications utterly useless

So now Instagram accounts hacked at scale. 2FA also fully bypassed - by Meta’s own design

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

The UK is getting crazier and crazier in its defense of Israel. Now they’re canceling the visas of mainstream normie political pundits for criticizing the state of Israel, and investigating people for antisemitic hate crimes when they denounce Zionists who aren’t even Jewish.

American progressive commentator Cenk Uygur and his nephew Hasan Piker have both been denied visas by the British government, saying they were blocked from entering the country because of their criticism of Israel.

“I’ve been banned from the UK,” Uygur said in a tweet. “I tried to get on a flight to London to attend SXSW London and give a speech at Oxford. I’ve been banned for criticizing Israel. Are we free anymore? This is oppression of Western citizens by our own governments on behalf of a different country!”

“the uk has revoked my visa as well. all at the behest of israel,” said Piker in a repost of his uncle’s statement. “the west is betraying ‘liberal values’ for a genocidal fascist foreign government. soon we will all become israel.”

This is a significant escalation from London, because neither Uygur nor Piker could reasonably be described as politically extremist in any way. They’re essentially just Bernie Sanders progressives who sit well within the mainstream US political Overton window; I personally don’t follow either of them because they are both far too aligned with the Democratic Party for my liking.

This move is yet another win for the UK’s extremely powerful Israel lobby. Two weeks ago the Jewish Chronicle ran a story titled “Social media influencer Hasan Piker must be banned from Britain, say Jewish leaders,” subtitled “Online agitator who said Zionists were like ‘Nazis’ and refused to condemn Hamas poses a threat to British Jews.”

So the pressure campaign appears to have paid off.

This comes as the Metropolitan Police launch an investigation into an incident in which actress Helen Mirren was called an “evil Zionist bitch” by a man on the street last year, saying in a statement that “We are aware of a video circulating online, showing a man and a woman being subjected to antisemitic verbal abuse in Tower Hill.”

To be clear, Helen Mirren is not Jewish, so she can’t have been a victim of “antisemitic verbal abuse”. She is however an avowed supporter of the state of Israel, which makes her a Zionist.

In a 2023 interview with Israeli media, Mirren stirred up controversy with her remarks on her 1967 visit to the Zionist ethnostate, saying, “I saw Arabs being thrown out of their houses in Jerusalem. But it was just the extraordinary magical energy of a country just beginning to put its roots in the ground. It was an amazing time to be here.”

This just says so much about the true nature of the artificially manufactured panic around “antisemitism” in the west. That a woman who is not Jewish can be framed by law enforcement as the victim of an antisemitic hate crime because someone criticized her support for Israel is an admission that this has always been about protecting the interests of the Zionist state, rather than protecting Jews.

Jewishness or Judaism never entered into the equation here; a person who isn’t Jewish was criticized for supporting a genocidal apartheid state, and nothing more. Yet the person who uttered that criticism is now under investigation for antisemitic abuse, because in the eyes of British law enforcement, “antisemitic abuse” just means criticizing the state of Israel.

Western governments will tell you that it is antisemitic to equate all Jews with the state of Israel, and then in their very next breath they will tell you that anti-Zionism is anti-semitism. These two statements are completely contradictory; they cannot both be true. If it’s wrong to equate all Jews with the state of Israel, then it’s wrong to equate criticism of the pro-Israel political ideology with a hateful attack against all Jews.

But that’s how insane the west’s support for Israel is making everything. They’ve got everyone performing impossible mental gymnastics and feats of Orwellian doublethink in order to reconcile the official narrative with reality.

[Oxford Union @OxfordUnion]

A statement from the President, Arwa Elrayess: