On July 10, it was announced that social media giant Meta would broaden the scope of its censorship and suppression of content related to the Gaza genocide. Under the new policy, Facebook and Instagram posts containing “derogatory or threatening references to ‘Zionists’ in cases where the term is used to refer to Jews or Israelis” will be proscribed. Unsurprisingly, a welter of Zionist lobby organizations – many of which aggressively lobbied Meta to adopt these changes – cheered the move. Emboldened, the same entities are now calling for all social media platforms to follow suit.
The Times of Israel noted that “nearly 150 advocacy groups and experts provided input that led to Meta’s policy update.” This prominently included Tel Aviv-based CyberWell, mundanely described by the outlet as “a nonprofit that has been documenting the swell of online antisemitism and Holocaust denial since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.” These malign activities have had a devastating impact on what Western audiences see and hear about the Gaza genocide on their social media feeds.
In January, CyberWell published an extensive report on how it was seeking to censor many prominent X accounts that expressed doubts about the official narrative of October 7, including the widely disseminated, proven-to-be-false libel that Hamas fighters beheaded dozens of infants. Users in the firing line included popular anonymous Zei Squirrel, Al Jazeera, The Grayzone chief Max Blumenthal, and famous rapper Lowkey, of MintPress News. CyberWell claimed such legitimate skepticism was comparable to Holocaust denial.
The impact of these lobbying efforts isn’t clear, although almost simultaneously, Zei Squirrel was abruptly suspended from X without warning or explanation, sparking widespread outrage. It was only due to relentless backlash that the account was reinstated. More recently, CyberWell submitted formal guidance to Meta on censoring the Palestine solidarity phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which Zionists falsely claim is a clarion call for the genocide of Jews.
That intervention is part of a broader effort by the firm to force the social network to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) highly controversial working definition of antisemitism. This definition, which has been condemned by many sources – including academic David Feldman, who helped draft it – for falsely conflating criticism of the Zionist entity and antisemitism, is a major inspiration for CyberWell. So, too, it seems is a sinister Israeli government psychological warfare blitzkrieg, concerned with “mass consciousness activities” in the U.S. and Europe.
On June 24, independent journalists Lee Fang and Jack Poulson reported that CyberWell was one component of this insidious effort to shape and spread pro-Israeli narratives across the Western world, known as Voices of Israel. In response to the exposé, CyberWell repudiated any affiliation with the long-running, Israeli-funded hasbara operation or receiving government funding “from any country.” As we shall see, though, there are unambiguous grounds to doubt these denials.
It is vital to clarify the political, ideological, and financial forces guiding CyberWell’s operations and the malign interests that its censorship activities serve. The non-profit is now a “trusted partner” of Meta, TikTok, and X, ostensibly assisting these major social networks to combat “disinformation.” In reality, this grants a shadowy private firm with open links to Israel’s intelligence apparatus and evident ambitions to take its censorship crusade global, unrestrained power to prevent the reality of Israel’s genocide from emerging publicly.
‘NOTHING WRONG’
In response to the exposures of Fang and Poulson, CyberWell – which had hitherto operated with a reasonable degree of transparency – went scurrying underground. Many sections of its website were pruned of incriminating information or deleted outright. This included a highly illuminating section on the individuals running and advising the outfit. Now, visitors to CyberWell’s website are offered no indication of who or what is behind the initiative, which promises to deliver “more data, less hate” by tackling “antisemitism” online using artificial intelligence.
In a comment released to Fang and Poulson, CyberWell claimed they were “forced to remove the ‘Our Team’ page for safety reasons” due to the pair’s reporting “generating false and misleading information.” The statement further alleged: “Following the publication of your story, our analysts were attacked and identified by name on X. Users shared your article and our employees’ names with a wider network and we became concerned for our staff’s safety.”
A review of the now-purged resumes of CyberWell’s founders and staff points to a somewhat different rationale. Many members of the non-profit’s “dynamic team” of “academics, retired generals, intelligence alumni and innovative tech professionals” have extensive Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) backgrounds and Israeli government ties. U.S.-born founder Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor emigrated to Tel Aviv as a teenager and volunteered to serve in the IOF as a “lone soldier.” She then entered the intelligence sphere via Israeli firm Argyle Consulting, which provides private spying services to international companies and “other entities.”
She served under Zohar Gorgel, “a decorated IDF intelligence officer with over a decade of experience in various cyber and technology roles.” Together, they struck upon the idea of “driving enforcement and improvement of community standards and hate speech policies across the digital landscape to fight against online antisemitism,” so they launched CyberWell, “encouraged by colleagues and mentors.” Elsewhere, the organization employs Yonathan Hezroni, “a former analyst and analyst team leader” in the IOF’s military intelligence research department.
Dina Porat, chief historian of the Zionist entity-funded Yad Vashem, who heavily influenced the IHRA working definition, is named as a CyberWell advisor. So too is Major General Amos Yadlin, a 40-year high-ranking IDF veteran who once led the IDF’s spying wing and was previously defense attaché to the U.S.. Alongside them is Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, a longtime IDF spokesperson. His position raises grave questions about the non-profit’s denials of any connection to Voices of Israel.
Israeli corporate records list Lerner as a shareholder and director of Keshet David. As Voices of Israel chair and founder Micah Lakin Avni explained in a December 2018 Times of Israel interview, Keshet David—initially called Israel Cyber Shield—is the research and intelligence arm of his Israeli government-funded organization, then known as Concert. It was headed by Yossi Kuperwasser, former Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs director general and lead IDF military intelligence researcher.
Israel Cyber Shield attracted significant public controversy in May of that year after it was revealed to have compiled and circulated a “dirty dossier” on prominent BDS activist Linda Sarsour in a bid to discredit her and encourage universities and other organizations not to feature her as a speaker. As Avni acknowledged in his interview, creating a hostile environment for Palestine solidarity activists and events was precisely the unit’s founding purpose:
If a person puts up a post, a public post on Facebook, and says I’m a big supporter of this or that anti-Israel organization, not only that but I’m organizing a demonstration on my campus tomorrow – if they put that public post out for the whole world to know, that’s public information, so there’s nothing wrong with being aware of that post and making sure that the Jewish students on their campus are aware of it…Concert funds Keshet David and we get all the information.”
‘TIGHTLY KNIT’
CyberWell’s deep and cohering – if well-concealed – ties to Voices of Israel and the Israeli government don’t end there. The non-profit’s 2022 annual report lists its Chief Financial Officer as Sagi Balasha, the very first CEO of Voices of Israel when the operation was still named Concert. He took up the post after leaving the influential Zionist lobby group, the Israeli-American Council (IAC), right around the time IAC donated thousands of dollars to Keshet David under its former name, Israel Cyber Shield.
Fast forward to 2021, CyberWell was founded under the title Global Antisemitism Research Center (Global ARC). Almost immediately, the wholly unknown non-profit received a $30,000 joint donation alongside Keshet David from Merona Leadership Foundation, which is run by Gila Milstein, the wife of wealthy CyberWell board member Adam Milstein, who cofounded IAC in 2007 under the express direction of Israel’s then-consul general in Los Angeles, Ehud Danoch.
From 2018 onwards, former Israeli police officer Eran Vasker has served as chief executive of Keshet David. Simultaneously, he led Argyle Consulting, the private spying firm where Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor and Zohar Gorgel met, and founded CyberWell. Cohen Montemayor admitted in a podcast interview in January this year that while at the company, she “provided analysis” to Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the same agency that founded Voices of Israel. CyberWell audit committee member Arik Becker is an Argyle alumni.
As Fang and Poulson write, “In other words, the chief executive of CyberWell and two of its board members previously worked at the same private intelligence spin-off from Voices of Israel, a director of the spin-off is an advisor to CyberWell, and the CEO of Voices became the CFO of CyberWell.” As Poulson tells MintPress News:
These groups are so tightly knit you can arrive at the same conclusion ten different ways. These efforts are for sure all an evolution of Israel’s longrunning anti-BDS program.”
To make this mephitic web even murkier and more incestuous, CyberWell partnered with the notorious Act.IL, which is closely associated with IAC and the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs. The latter leads Zionist entity anti-BDS efforts globally. CyberWell’s 2022 annual report noted that the non-profit “served as the data provider to Act.IL’s community for their end of year call to action on the state of online antisemitism.”
In a bitter twist, it was in 2022 that Act.IL ceased operations. Having secretly for years corralled Zionist activists to target boycotts, justify Israeli oppression and slaughter, and harass human rights groups and Palestine solidarity activists online under the bogus aegis of organic and spontaneous response. The platform abruptly shuttered without much in the way of explanation. This may have been triggered by the crusading work of Canadian academic Michael Bueckert, who amply exposed Act.IL as an Israeli government propaganda connivance from day one.
‘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.
“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.
Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.