“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”

— George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

On the surface, two protest movements look completely unrelated.

In Tel Aviv, thousands fill Kaplan Street weekly, blocking traffic and demanding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s resignation. They wave Israeli flags. They speak of saving democracy from within.

In American cities, anti-Zionist demonstrators march through Jewish neighborhoods chanting for intifada and waving Hezbollah flags. They gather outside synagogues during community events, block highways, and run mass rallies coordinated nationwide.

The participants would seem to share nothing in common. The Israeli protesters are mostly secular left-of-center citizens who believe they’re defending Israel’s democracy from authoritarianism. The American protesters are mostly left-of-center young people who believe they’re defending oppressed people. They march under different flags, chant different slogans, and do not see each other as allies.

Yet unbeknownst to them, they are funded, organized, and amplified by the same network.

Different puppets, but same string.

I’ll prove this with evidence from NGO annual reports, IRS 990 filings, US House Judiciary Committee findings, published foundation grant databases, and the work of Jennica Pounds who has publicly indexed 913,000 nonprofits and 1.3 million grants, to prove this claim. The pattern is hiding in public view — visible if you trace the money, invisible if you don’t.

This piece traces the money.

For the broader pattern of how US-based NGOs and government agencies have historically funded political destabilization operations around the world, see Aiding and Abetting.

What follows here narrows the lens to one specific symmetry that has come into much sharper focus in the year since: the same network that funds the anti-Israel movement across the West also funds the anti-government movement inside Israel.

Two protest movements. One funding apparatus. Two battlefields in the same war.

A parallelogram.

Why this matters now#

In May 2026 (one week before the writing of this piece), the Netanyahu government coalition filed a bill to dissolve the Knesset, making elections likely in September.

The same protest infrastructure that has been operational since January 2023 — three years of weekly demonstrations, professionally-produced ad campaigns, mass mobilizations, IDF reservist refusal organizing — is reactivating right now for the coming election. The same NGOs are running the same playbook. The same foundations are sending the same checks.

The protests in Israel that you’ll see in your timeline over the next four months are not what they appear to be on the surface. They are mostly organic in their participation but engineered in their infrastructure.

Both can be true. They are.

The Israeli Battlefield#

The Kaplan Street protest movement began in January 2023, organized by Standing Together, an NGO primarily funded by the New Israel Fund (NIF). NIF’s 2025 annual budget was $28.5 million. NIF’s donor base grew from roughly 14,000 to over 21,000 donors after October 7 — a surge of new money flowing into anti-government infrastructure during the war.

NIF has distributed over $300 million to more than 900 organizations across two decades. The major donors funneling money into NIF include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, and the Tides Center. These are the world’s most powerful anti-Israel organizations that we know of.

NIF’s grantee list reads as a roster of activist organizations driving anti-government, anti-Zionist, and anti-IDF activity. To list some:

• Adalah — promoter of anti-Israel UN resolutions and ICC investigations.
• Mada al-Carmel — supporter of the BDS movement and advocate for ending Israel’s identification as a Jewish state.
• Human Rights Defenders Fund — promoter of the apartheid framing.
• Mousawwa Center — advocating to change the Israeli flag, national anthem, and repeal the Law of Return.
• Yesh Din — legal defense of terrorist organizations and denial of the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
• Association for Civil Rights in Israel — co-funded by Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations for international anti-Israel advocacy.
• Movement for Quality Government in Israel — funded by US State Department for a “Civic Activism Training” program in Jerusalem schools to train kids on protesting, whistleblowing, and civic activism.

Blue and White Future#

A second organization driving the movement is Blue and White Future (BWF). BWF runs the headquarters for the coalition of activist groups rallying the population against the Netanyahu government — physical office space, paid staff, PR coordination, the operational machine behind the protests.

BWF has raised over $40 million. According to House Judiciary findings, the money was funnelled from USAID through Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors to Jewish Communal Fund to Middle East Peace Dialogue Network — a trace made visible in US spending data and IRS 990 records. The corresponding Israeli-side records, filed by Blue and White Future with the Israeli Registrar of Nonprofits and analyzed in 2025 by Israel Hayom, confirm that PEF Israel Endowment Funds and Middle East Peace Dialogue Network were the largest foreign-sourced donors to BWF.

With this money, they’ve hired a high-end PR firm to run nationwide ad campaigns demonizing the prime minister on billboards, banners, YouTube ads, and social media.

But the headline number revealed by the July 17, 2025 House Judiciary Committee memorandum is staggering: PEF Israel Endowment Funds provided over $884 million to groups involved in anti-democracy protests in Israel. The Jewish Communal Fund, another US intermediary, provided over $42.8 million directly to the anti-Netanyahu protest headquarters and the protests’ two main funders.

Note: Don’t let the names of these organizations fool you into thinking their objectives are pro-Jewish or pro-Israel — that’s their trick.

Under the Biden administration, more than $900 million flowed into the Israeli anti-government movement.

“The Biden-Harris Administration funneled U.S. taxpayer money to certain Israeli entities with the effect of attempting to undermine Israel’s democratically elected government… In 2023, Israel experienced widespread protests over the government’s plan to reform the country’s judicial system… Media reports later revealed that these protests were funded in part by U.S. grant money that had been funneled through various American and Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to groups directing the protests.”

— United States House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committee, March 26, 2025

These are findings of the United States Congress, based on 380 documents obtained through formal investigation, naming specific NGOs, specific amounts, and specific flows. The investigation is ongoing.

Brothers in Arms#

A third operation worth naming explicitly is Brothers in Arms (Achim Laneshek), founded in January 2023 by reserve Lieutenant-Colonel Ron Scherf. Brothers in Arms is the IDF-reservist arm of the protest movement.

In the months before October 7, 2023, Brothers in Arms ran a campaign to convince tens of thousands of IDF reservists to refuse to serve when called up, as a protest tactic against the government. The campaign succeeded enough to materially weaken IDF readiness. Less than two months before Hamas attacked Israel and murdered 1,200 people, IDF Brigadier General Ari Singer publicly warned the country:

“Protest leaders are conducting a propaganda and influence operation to topple the government, and appear willing to sacrifice the army’s reputation to do it. It’s called psychological operations, or psyops, and it’s being carried out brilliantly by those leading the protests. It’s like they read the 101 manual on subversion. The army doesn’t appear to recognize what’s happening, which is why it hasn’t adequately confronted the threat.”

Brothers in Arms has raised approximately $53 million since its 2023 founding, with the majority foreign-sourced — per its own filings with the Israeli Registrar of Nonprofits. Additional foreign funding flowed to its protest-period operations indirectly through Blue and White Future, which routed donations via PEF Israel Endowment Funds and the Middle East Peace Dialogue Network (MEPDN). Reported donors include Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and Leslie Wexner, founder of the Wexner Foundation.

Weakening one of the strongest militaries in the world is expensive work.

In December 2025, Defense Minister Israel Katz blocked the promotion of a senior IDF reserves officer specifically because of his involvement with Brothers in Arms. The Israeli government is now actively confronting the operation that helped sabotage its military readiness.

The Wexner Foundation, on the other hand, has its own story.

The Wexner-Epstein-Barak bridge#

It was initially revealed that in 2008, Jeffrey Epstein sent a $46 million donation to a Wexner-affiliated charitable fund. Then in December 2025, leaked emails from Epstein’s inbox spanning 2005 to 2008 revealed Epstein had operated as the de facto CFO of both the Wexner family office and the Wexner Foundation, making decisions on taxes, lines of credit, large fund transfers, and politically sensitive grants.

The man whose other business was running underage girls to people in positions of power, whose origin story remains unaccounted for, and whose institutional protection over decades remains unexplained, was also directing financial machinery that funded operations against Israel’s democracy and military.

The Wexner Foundation also paid former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak $2.3 million “for 2 reports, 1 wasn’t finished.” That payment was made while Barak was simultaneously meeting with Epstein dozens of times and traveling on his private plane.

Barak — the highest-profile public face of the anti-government movement, public instigator of protests and “civil disobedience,” and private instigator of what he himself has described as a coup against an elected government — is the touchpoint between the Wexner-Epstein financial machine and the Israeli protest movement on the ground.

His February 2025 statement to Army Radio:

“30,000 citizens need to camp outside the Knesset in tents for three weeks, day and night, until the country shuts down and Netanyahu realizes that his time is up.”

In February 2026, after the US Department of Justice released over 3 million pages of Epstein documents, Netanyahu himself publicly named the Epstein-Barak connection: “His unusual close relationship with Ehud Barak doesn’t suggest Epstein worked for Israel. It proves the opposite.” For the past 3.5 years Ehud Barak has shown himself to be an agent of chaos working to destabilize Israel’s democratic system.

In a separate response, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir banned Israeli government employees from participating in any Wexner Foundation leadership programs. One lawmaker, agreeing with the decision, wrote that the foundation was part of Israel’s “shadow regime” and “a long arm of the deep state.”

A criminal complaint has been filed seeking a police probe into the Barak-Wexner Foundation relationship. As of publication, the investigation is open.

The Knesset Response#

In February 2025, Israel’s Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved a bill to impose an 80% tax on foreign-government donations to Israeli nonprofits. In December 2025 a further bill was introduced to restrict NGOs receiving more than approximately $30,900 from a foreign political entity.

The Western Front#

On October 8, 2023 — while Hamas terrorists were still actively hunting civilians inside Israel — the anti-Israel movement began activating on US university campuses, spreading within weeks to cities across the Western world.

The participants are mostly young Americans. The organizers are not.

The campus movement is run by a network of NGOs that serve as its organizational and financial infrastructure. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is fiscally sponsored by WESPAC (Westchester People’s Action Coalition), a progressive nonprofit that’s funded by Tides Foundation and the Elias Foundation, among others.

The fuller list of NGO actors driving the campus movement:

• Students for Justice in Palestine — funded via WESPAC and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.
• Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) — funded by Tides Center.
• Adalah Justice Project — funded by Tides Center, NIF, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
• CODEPINK — funded by Tides Center and Benjamin Fund.
• US Campaign for Palestinian Rights — funded by Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Benjamin Fund.
• Palestine Legal — funded by Tides Center and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
• Middle East Children’s Alliance — funded by Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Open Society Foundations.

Then the Jewish-named cover organizations:

• Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) — funded by Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Open Society Foundations, Tides Center, and Benjamin Fund. JVP’s stated strategic objective is to drive a wedge into the American Jewish community and weaken US support for Israel.
• IfNotNow — funded by Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and FMEP (financier of Al-Haq, linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terrorist organization).

The ADL and NGO Monitor have each published public reports documenting this network.

US Federal Response#

In March 2025, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent letters to 60 universities under investigation for antisemitic discrimination and harassment under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Major institutions — Columbia, Brown, UCLA — entered binding agreements restoring previously-frozen federal funds in exchange for sweeping policy overhauls.

The Trump administration has revoked student visas of foreign campus protesters and pursued deportations. USAID itself, the historical financing channel for the kinds of NGO operations documented here, was dismantled by the Trump administration in early 2025; approximately 83% of its programs were cancelled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March 2025.

This is the federal acknowledgment that the network exists and that the federal government had been complicit. The dismantling of USAID under DOGE was the structural admission. The Title VI enforcement is the operational response on the campus side. The House Judiciary investigation is the legislative branch’s accounting.

Symmetry#

The two networks are two sides of one object. The same names appear on both sides.

Note: In May 2026, with the network’s existence on the public record, Open Society Foundations pledged millions to “progressive Jewish groups to combat antisemitism.” The same Open Society Foundations that funds the operation to divide the American Jewish community against Israel and the campus movement that has terrorized Jewish students. You might find yourself a bit skeptical about what that money will be used for.

The networks share a playbook. The pattern in both countries:

• NGO-organized “grassroots” movements with professionally-produced ad campaigns
• Highway blockades and direct action targeting daily life
• Mass-media-trained spokespeople
• High-end PR firms running coordinated narrative campaigns
• Mass-mobilization tactics targeting symbolic dates and events
• Slogans that are professionally manufactured but presented as organic
• A consistent demand that the elected government must be removed
• Calls for civil disobedience by named former officials with documented foreign ties

The networks share simultaneous intended outcomes.

In Israel, the protest infrastructure works toward removing Netanyahu. On Western campuses and in Western cities, the same network works toward stripping Israel of its diplomatic and financial support, pressuring Western politicians to abandon their most consequential Middle East ally, and normalizing anti-Israel sentiment into mainstream political discourse.

In Israel: weaken Netanyahu’s domestic support.
In the West: weaken Israel’s external support.

Two battlefields. One war. Same money.

What to watch for#

The Knesset will dissolve in the coming weeks. Elections will likely be held in September. The protest infrastructure has had three years to refine its playbook and is now poised to surge into election season.

You can expect:

• A new wave of NGO-organized protests at Kaplan and Habima in Tel Aviv, increasing in frequency as the election approaches
• New high-budget ad campaigns by NGOs targeting Netanyahu and his coalition
• IDF reservist refusal campaigns reactivating
• New “civil society” coalitions launching with prominent leadership figures
• Diaspora-Jewish voices on social media echoing the NGO talking points
• Western-press coverage uncritically presenting the protest movement as the popular will of Israeli democracy

Notice the funding paths when they appear. They will be the same paths documented in this piece. The same foundations. The same intermediaries. The same families. The same playbook.

You can trace it yourself. The funding network documented in this piece is fully visible via public data. The full trace is publicly searchable.

Closing#

Israel is a country of nine and a half million people, surrounded by enemies who have spent eight decades attempting to destroy it militarily. Each attempt has failed. The country is now under a different kind of attack — one waged in NGO offices in Washington and Tel Aviv, in foundation boardrooms in New York and London, in PR firm meeting rooms preparing the next ad buy, in classroom curricula being shaped by the next grant cycle.

The Israeli citizens who fill Kaplan Street have come to believe they must save democracy from authoritarianism by overthrowing the democratically elected prime minister.

They are right to debate the serious internal questions that the country faces about its judiciary and the future of its political institutions. But who decides those questions?

Does the decision belong to Israeli voters making it themselves or to foreign enemies that have spent over $900 million to influence the minds of the Israeli public?

Watch the parallelogram. The pattern is visible from above. The cost of seeing it is the willingness to look.

A complete bibliography of all sources cited in this piece is available at: https://profound.af/parallelogram-bibliography-bc8a6023a577.

For the broader pattern of historical US government and foundation funding flowing into political destabilization operations globally, see my prior research piece Aiding & Abetting: The Dark Money Network Trying to Overthrow the Israeli Government.

Primary government documents#

1. House Judiciary Committee. The Biden-Harris Administration’s Funding of Anti-Netanyahu Organizations and Israeli Judicial Reform Protests. Memorandum, July 17, 2025. View source

2. House Judiciary Committee press release. “Memo Reveals Biden-Harris Admin Misused Taxpayer Dollars to Fund Anti-Netanyahu Organizations.” July 17, 2025. View source

3. House Judiciary Committee letter to Movement for Quality Government in Israel. March 26, 2025. View source

4. House Judiciary Committee letter to PEF Israel Endowment Funds. March 26, 2025. View source

5. House Judiciary Committee letter to Jewish Communal Fund. March 26, 2025. View source

6. House Judiciary Committee letter to Middle East Peace Dialogue Network. March 26, 2025. View source

7. House Judiciary Committee letter to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. March 26, 2025. View source

8. House Judiciary Committee letter to Abraham Initiatives. June 30, 2025. View source

9. House Judiciary Committee letter to The Tides Network. June 30, 2025. View source

10. U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. “Sends Letters to 60 Universities Under Investigation for Antisemitic Discrimination and Harassment.” March 10, 2025. View source

11. George Washington. Farewell Address. 1796. Yale Law School Avalon Project. View source

Foundation-owned published records#

12. New Israel Fund. About / Grantmaking page. View source

13. New Israel Fund. Public-facing organizational summary. View source

14. Rockefeller Brothers Fund grantees database — New Israel Fund. View source

15. Rockefeller Brothers Fund grantees database — Middle East Children’s Alliance. View source

16. Open Society Foundations grants — New Israel Fund and related. View source

17. Ford Foundation. “Ford Foundation and New Israel Fund Announce $20 Million Fund for Grant-Making in Israel.” (Press release.) View source

18. Tides Foundation 2022 Form 990 (amended), public disclosure. View source

19. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer — Wexner Foundation 990. View source

20. Israeli Ministry of Justice — Registrar of Nonprofits (GuideStar Israel). Brothers and Sisters for Israel — Civilian HQ (Amuta #580768935), filed financial reports. View source

21. Israeli Ministry of Justice — Registrar of Nonprofits (GuideStar Israel). Blue White Future (Amuta #580516243), filed financial reports. View source

Accountability and policy outlets#

22. NGO Monitor. Funder profile — New Israel Fund. View source

23. NGO Monitor. Adalah profile. View source

24. NGO Monitor. Yesh Din profile. View source

25. NGO Monitor. Association for Civil Rights in Israel profile. View source

26. NGO Monitor. Jewish Voice for Peace profile. View source

27. NGO Monitor. IfNotNow profile. View source

28. NGO Monitor. CODEPINK profile. View source

29. NGO Monitor. “Driving a Wedge: JVP’s Strategy to Weaken U.S. Support for Israel by Dividing the Jewish Community.” View source

30. NGO Monitor. “Funding for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).” View source

31. NGO Monitor. “Jewish Voice for Peace’s Funding Network.” November 13, 2023. View source

32. NGO Monitor. “Analysis of NIF 2015 Funding for 25 Political Advocacy NGOs.” View source

33. NGO Monitor. “The NGO Network Orchestrating Antisemitic Incitement on American Campuses.” April 2024. View source

34. NGO Monitor. Open Society Institute funder profile. (Updated March 5, 2025.) View source

35. NGO Monitor. Ford Foundation funder profile. (Updated April 2, 2025.) View source

36. NGO Monitor. Rockefeller Brothers Fund funder profile. (Updated February 18, 2025.) View source

37. NGO Monitor. Tides Network funder profile. View source

38. Influence Watch. New Israel Fund profile. View source

39. Mida (Israeli policy magazine). “Ehud Barak’s role shaping the anti-Bibi movement.” August 27, 2023. View source

40. Mida. “Legal questions raised over NGO fundraising for protests.” August 20, 2023. View source

41. Anti-Defamation League. “Who is Funding U.S. Anti-Israel Groups?” September 26, 2024 (updated March 12, 2025). View source

42. Anti-Defamation League. “WESPAC (Westchester People’s Action Coalition) Foundation: What You Need to Know.” View source

43. NGO Monitor. “WESPAC (Westchester Peace Action Committee Foundation).” View source

Mainstream Israeli press#

44. Haaretz. “Protests Against Netanyahu Government Took Place Across Israel.” May 16, 2026. View source

45. Haaretz. “Israel seeks to ban NGOs getting more than $30k in foreign funding from protesting.” December 11, 2025. View source

46. Haaretz. “Netanyahu’s Last Stand? What to Know About Israel’s 2026 Election.” April 30, 2026. View source

47. Times of Israel. “Coalition files bill to dissolve Knesset, doesn’t set an election date.” View source

48. Times of Israel. “Anti-Zionist protesters march through NYC Jewish neighborhood, chanting for intifada.” View source

49. JNS. “Ehud Barak calls for civil insurrection to collapse government.” David Isaac, May 5, 2025. Contains the verbatim Army Radio “30,000 citizens” quote. View source

50. Times of Israel. “Barak reiterates calls for non-violent revolt, mass strike to topple government.” View source

51. Times of Israel. “Wexner Foundation: We paid Barak $2.3 million for 2 reports; 1 wasn’t finished.” View source

52. Times of Israel. “Ehud Barak met with Jeffrey Epstein dozens of times, flew on private plane: report.” View source

53. Times of Israel. “Katz bars promotion of senior IDF reserves officer involved in Brothers in Arms protest group.” December 2025. View source

54. Times of Israel. “Anti-government protesters boost rallies against war as support for fighting slips.” View source

55. Times of Israel. “US Jewish groups divided on Trump’s threat to deport campus anti-Israel protesters.” View source

56. Times of Israel — anti-government protests topic page. View source

57. Jerusalem Post. “Netanyahu: Ties to former PM Barak prove Epstein didn’t work for Israel.” View source

58. Israel Hayom. “Major exposé reveals the money machine behind Israel’s 2023 protests.” February 17, 2025. View source

59. JNS. “Brothers in Arms spearheads protests calling for early elections.” View source

60. JNS. “Complaint seeks police probe into Ehud Barak and Wexner Foundation.” View source

61. Jewish Press. “Foreign Funding of Judicial Reform Protests Spurs Knesset Legislation.” February 18, 2025. View source

Mainstream international press#

62. The Jewish Chronicle. “US congressional committee finds Biden administration let $900m go to anti-Netanyahu protests.” View source

63. Drop Site News. “‘Ask Jeffrey’: Epstein Ran Wexner’s Pro-Israel Philanthropy Machine, Emails Reveal.” Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain, December 10, 2025. View source

64. Al Jazeera. “Pro-Palestine group protests outside Israeli real estate event in New York.” Daniel Khalili-Tari, May 6, 2026. View source

65. Fox News. “Global anti-Israel protest network organizes 736 Nakba 78 events worldwide.” View source

66. CNN. “USAID review raised ‘critical concerns’ over Gaza aid group days before $30 million US grant.” July 8, 2025. View source

67. CNBC. “Epstein donated $46 million to Les Wexner’s private foundation in 2008.” July 11, 2019. View source

68. Politico. “Israeli protest movement taps PR assist.” September 8, 2023. View source

69. Axios. “Schumer Israel Netanyahu speech reaction.” March 14, 2024. View source

70. ABC News. “Pro-Palestinian protests unfolded college campuses US timeline.” View source

71. U.S. News and World Report. “Trump’s Higher Education Crackdown: Visa Revocations, DEI Bans, Lawsuits and Funding Cuts.” View source

72. Jewish Insider. “Open Society, which has backed anti-Israel protests, pledges millions to progressive Jewish groups to combat antisemitism.” May 2026. View source

73. Jewish Insider. “Dark money group backing anti-Israel campus activity faces scrutiny for its practices.” May 2024. View source

74. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Rejecting Kahanists and rebuffing anti-Zionists, a new leader of the New Israel Fund makes its case for liberal democracy.” January 16, 2026. View source

Primary-data tracing tools#

75. Pounds, Jennica. DataRepublican — federal grant and nonprofit graph-tracking tool. Index of 913,000 charities and over 1.3 million federal grant flows from USAspending.gov primary records. View source

76. Pounds, Jennica. X profile. View source

77. Pounds, Jennica. DataRepublican Charity Graph — USAID → RPA → JCF → MEPDN chain visualization (EINs 22–3684183, 23–7174183, 13–3615533 queried). Renders the federal-funding chain from primary IRS 990 + USAspending.gov records. View source

78. Pounds, Jennica. “Data Isn’t Transparency: Why USASpending.gov Buried the Truth (and DOGE Dug It Up).” DataRepublican Substack. View source

79. Arbel (@arbelaue). “Who funds Brothers in Arms?” X post citing Hadashot 15 (News 15) channel investigation into BIA donors based on Israeli Ministry of Justice filings. August 4, 2024. View source

80. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer — Jewish Communal Fund. View source

81. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer — Middle East Peace Dialogue Network. View source

82. PEF Israel Endowment Funds. Organizational website (tax ID 13–6104086 confirmed on site). View source

83. Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Organizational website. View source

Wikipedia (concept anchors, never as primary evidence)#

84. Alleged U.S. funding of anti-Netanyahu NGOs during the Biden administration. Wikipedia. View source

85. Students for Justice in Palestine. Wikipedia. View source

86. Brothers and Sisters in Arms. Wikipedia. View source

87. United States Agency for International Development. Wikipedia. View source

88. Jewish Virtual Library — The PFLP hijacking of five planes. View source

89. International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). View source

Author’s prior work (cross-references)#

90. Musighi, Jeremy. Aiding & Abetting: The Dark Money Network Trying to Overthrow the Israeli Government. profoundAF, April 30, 2025. View source

91. Musighi, Jeremy. The Invisible Weapon: Propaganda Operations Behind Global Antisemitism and the Israeli-Palestinian Narrative. profoundAF, March 18, 2024. View source

92. Musighi, Jeremy. Behind the Facade of “Bring Them Home NOW.” profoundAF, January 6, 2025. View source

93. Musighi, Jeremy. The Theater Is The War. profoundAF, May 6, 2024. View source

Note on methodology#

All financial figures cited in this piece come from one of four source types, in order of evidentiary weight:

1. US Government primary sources — House Judiciary Committee findings (memorandum, letters, public statements)
2. Foundation self-published records — annual reports, grants databases, IRS 990 filings
3. Israeli government and parliamentary records — Knesset legislation, Defense Ministry statements, court filings
4. Mainstream press coverage of all of the above

No figure in this piece relies on speculation, anonymous sources, or unverifiable claims. Every dollar amount is traceable to one of the sources above. Readers are encouraged to follow any citation that seems implausible.

If a source link is dead or no longer accessible, archived versions are available at the Wayback Machine (web.archive.org). All sources were accessible at time of publication.

“For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day.” — John F. Kennedy

Subjugation of a sovereign nation can take various forms. As a society, we generally remember classic overt colonialism like the Islamic conquest of the Middle East or European conquest of the Americas. In modern times, however, covert methods have been the more prevalent and less visible mechanism for gaining global power.

Israel — with a long history of colonization by the likes of the Romans, Babylonians, Arabs, Ottomans, and British — has twice lost and regained its native sovereignty over the millennia. Today, it faces a powerful subversive force working in the shadows to once again take power over its land and people.

For years, billions of dollars have flowed into a hidden war against Israel’s democracy, to replace the current leadership which stands in the way of an alternative agenda. The research shared in this piece shines light onto a shocking picture; a glimpse into a vast landscape covered in darkness.

The Covert War on Israel#

Prior to this research, I had only read about declassified CIA foreign operations; many years after the job was done, the damage had been inflicted, and generations had suffered the consequences. It is my hope that sharing this now, while this operation is live and ongoing, contributes to some extent to defending against it. There seems to be a common notion that foreign plots to overthrow governments are a thing of the past, no longer practiced today. This work should dispel such an idea.

In this piece, I’ll expose how the CIA and its affiliated financial network have been subverting the State of Israel for years, especially in recent times leading up to and immediately after the October 7th, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack. Under the false pretenses of foreign aid, humanitarian efforts, and peacebuilding projects, USAID and American NGOs with close ties to CIA have acted as covert vehicles for deploying billions of dollars in an all-out assault to overthrow Israel’s democratically elected government, as they’ve done in many countries over the last ~80 years.

I will prove this, as concisely as possible, in the following ways:

1. Presenting evidence showing that USAID and key American “philanthropic” organizations are controlled by, or acting in coordination with, the CIA.
2. Tracing the flow of funds from CIA-linked institutions to NGOs in Israel, Gaza, and the US, which have subsequently deployed those funds into a multi-front hybrid war aimed at government overthrow.
3. Sharing US government reports and other credible documented evidence to reveal common patterns between today’s political events surrounding Israel and known CIA operations from the past, in which the same kinds of tactics and the exact same financial intermediaries were utilized.

Unmasking USAID#

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been at the center of controversy in 2025. The Trump administration, with the help of Elon Musk and his team at DOGE, have targeted the organization for engaging in “waste, fraud, and abuse” in their use of US taxpayer money. Musk has gone further by calling USAID a “criminal organization” and even lamenting that he’d be killed if he exposed everything his team has found in their investigation.

But what is USAID, really?

On the surface, USAID has presented itself as a noble foreign aid project, dedicated to championing heartwarming causes like democracy, human rights, and peacebuilding. A “premier international development agency” driving global progress. But in reality, USAID has long functioned as a financing arm of the CIA, providing the money to carry out covert operations worldwide over many decades.

Fueling political unrest in Bangladesh, creating a fake social media platform to influence the Cuban population, installing a puppet government in Ukraine, and trafficking drugs in Laos are just a few examples of USAID’s work over the years. USAID often carries out jobs that are too dirty or controversial for the CIA to handle directly; when the CIA can’t secure approval from Congress, or the actions required might violate international agreements or strain alliances.

Mike Benz, a former US State Department senior official, has been the leading whistleblower and activist exposing USAID for years.

Side note: It’s important to recognize that the US government and all of its agencies and departments, in practice, do not act as one cohesive, aligned, coherent entity. They’re a collection of different groups that have captured power within the political system. Not only can they clash with what citizens want, but they can also have interests that oppose each other, and even conflict with the long-term success of the country. In other words, there’s practically no such thing as “The Government” as an entity. I personally do not believe the actions of the CIA reflect US government foreign policy. In my view, its actions, especially in more recent decades, have largely undermined American interests while hijacking public funds and evading accountability.

Dirty and Controversial#

In acting as a vehicle of global soft power and influence, USAID money has reached all corners of the Earth. Their grants have landed in the hands of many different causes, organizations, and people; with varying levels of justifiability in their stated purposes.

While several USAID-funded initiatives have triggered anger and confusion among Americans footing the bill, one would be hard-pressed to find a more extreme case than its activities regarding Israel.

According to congressional testimony from February 2025 and a report from the Middle East Forum, USAID funneled approximately $1.9 billion into the hands of Hamas terrorists in the time immediately after their October 7th attack on Israel. This funding, calculated by MEF as 90% of the $2.1 billion sent to Gaza by USAID during this period, was a significant contributing factor to Hamas’ ability to survive and sustain a prolonged war with Israel and to maintain its control of Gaza without surrendering the hostages it kidnapped.

This was done despite multiple warnings from the US Government Accountability Office that found USAID funds were being “provided for terrorist activities in West Bank and Gaza,” on a repetitive basis ever since 2005, when the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) withdrew from Gaza.

While this story is hard to believe on its own, it’s not even the only time CIA has funded an Islamic terrorist group, let alone via USAID. Hezbollah, Al-qaeda, Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and HTS (which recently took control of Syria) are among the long list of recipients. It’s possible that US taxpayers, because of the CIA and its network, unwittingly rank as a top global financier of terrorism.

The Philanthropists#

As you might expect from an elite spy agency, CIA uses sophisticated methods to obfuscate their money trails when delivering funding to covert projects. Using a web of dark money networks — NGOs that act as a chain of intermediary hops in between US public funds and their target destination — and secretly affiliated organizations that consistently co-invest alongside them, they make it difficult to trace where the money is flowing and what it’s being used for.

“The Agency also maintained covert ties to American foundations in order to pass funds secretly to groups whose work the CIA supported… large amounts could be transferred rapidly, and in a form that need not alert unwitting officers of the recipient organizations to their source… The funding pattern involved a mixture of bona fide charitable foundations, devised foundations and funds, ‘front men’ drawn from a list of America’s most prominent citizens, and lawyers representing undisclosed clients.” — The Church Committee Report

In 1975, a Senate Select Committee called the “Church Committee” conducted a wide-ranging investigation of US intelligence agencies, where it “took public and private testimony from hundreds of people, collected huge volumes of files from the FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, and many other federal agencies, and issued 14 reports…”

In these reports, they refer to The Big Three American “philanthropic” NGOs that consistently played prime roles in funding CIA operations: Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie. Today, the same structure remains but it has grown to include newer key players such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and Tides Center, which have become consistent fixtures.

Analyzing the activity of these entities indicates that they act as a coordinated network, using a combination of money from the world’s wealthiest elites and US taxpayers to operate a machine for overthrowing governments around the world.

Destabilization-as-a-Service#

A key lesson of studying covert regime change operations is that people are extremely vulnerable to manipulation. It’s unfortunately way too easy to program human behavior by pressing the right buttons. At the heart of every CIA government overthrow is a population that’s receptive to influence and (unknowingly) willing to be directed toward self-destruction for the benefit of outside interests.

The CIA network’s fingerprints can be found on revolutions around the world, when you know what they look like. Perhaps the one that’s been documented in most detail is that of 1970s Chile. Determined to overthrow the democratically elected Allende government, CIA orchestrated an all-out psychological war on Chilean society in order to make it happen. With funding from the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation, these were some of their main tactics:

1. Creating a united front of political groups opposing the Allende government in order to defeat him in the 1970 election.
2. Funding the country’s mainstream media outlets to control their narratives and install anti-regime propaganda.
3. Infiltrating and giving undercover financial support to workers unions, universities, think tanks, business associations, cultural institutions, and clergy to promote and give public validation to CIA anti-government narratives.
4. Funding, directly and through 3rd parties, demonstrations, propaganda activities, civil disruption (ie blocking transportation), calls for insurrection, and organized strikes.
5. Penetrating the military and planting false intelligence.

When all of the above still failed to change the outcome of the election, CIA carried out a military coup in 1973; with economists supported by Ford and Rockefeller becoming advisors to General Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.

CIA intervention in the Bolivian elections of 1964 and 1966 ensured the victory of General René Barrientos, with funding from USAID, Ford Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation.

“The objectives of this program have been accomplished. A new political party was built to provide the platform for General Barrientos. This base was reinforced by a coalition of already existing parties. Despite many internal stresses, this pro-Barrientos complex was held together during the crucial pre-electoral period by covert financial support. At the same time covert financial assistance was given to a rival party to ensure its participation in the elections. In addition, a second important opposition party which was considering withdrawing from the electoral process.” — Foreign Service Institute, US State Department

Fast forward to more recent times. 2014 saw the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine, when the unpopular yet democratically elected president Yanukovych was ousted by a grassroots protest movement funded by USAID, Open Society Foundations, and Tides Center. Victoria Nuland of the US State Department was caught orchestrating who would be installed as the new leader, well in advance of the revolution. Senator John McCain was on the ground supporting the protests. Joe Biden managed the transition.

The 2016 color revolution in Macedonia was the result of a grassroots protest movement led by NGOs funded by USAID, Tides Center, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Open Society Foundations — who spent “25 years of dedication” to eventually overthrow the government.

“USAID gave several Soros groups millions of American tax dollars that allegedly went toward stoking social unrest in the Balkan Peninsula, including collaborative efforts to destabilize Macedonia’s democratically elected center-right government and ultimately overthrow it.” — Townhall

The “surprise result” of the 2023 election in Guatemala came amid widespread protests, strikes, and highway blockades by activists demanding the president’s resignation. Additionally, a questionable move blocked the leading presidential candidate from the ballot just weeks before the vote. Funding flowed into Guatemalan NGOs from 2021–2023 from USAID, Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. After the election, Secretary General of the Organization of American States ejaculated that it was “an exemplary election day, a true civic celebration.”

Next we’ll dive into Israel, where it’s easy to spot common elements from each of these regime change operations in current political events. USAID funding to NGOs in Israel grew from $5–10M per year from 2019–2021 to $250M for 2022- 2027.

The Kaplan Movement#

“The Biden-Harris Administration funneled U.S. taxpayer money to certain Israeli entities with the effect of attempting to undermine Israel’s democratically elected government… In 2023, Israel experienced widespread protests over the government’s plan to reform the country’s judicial system… Media reports later revealed that these protests were funded in part by U.S. grant money that had been funneled through various American and Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to groups directing the protests.” — United States House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committee

The Kaplan Street protest movement has raged through Tel Aviv, Israel for 2.5 years, criticizing prime minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s leadership and demanding his removal based on the following main points:

• Holding him responsible for Israel’s failure to prevent or mitigate the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack
• Blaming him for Hamas not releasing the hostages
• Opposing his proposed reforms to the country’s judicial system, which would shift policy decision-making power from the judicial branch to the executive branch

The Kaplan movement was started in January 2023 by Standing Together, an NGO primarily funded by the New Israel Fund, whose CEO Larry Garber was a senior USAID official for 15 years. New Israel Fund acts as a vehicle for funding anti-government movements in Israel and has given over $300 million to 900+ organizations. It has some familiar faces as its donors: Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, and Tides Center (funded by USAID).

NIF grant recipients include:

• Adalah — promoter of anti-Israel UN resolutions and ICC investigations
• Mada al-Carmel — supporter of the BDS movement and advocate for ending Israel’s identification as a Jewish state
• Human Rights Defenders Fund — spreading the lie that Israel is a racist apartheid state
• Mousawwa Center — advocating to change the Israeli flag and national anthem and to repeal the Law of Return
• Yesh Din — using legal warfare to defend terrorist organizations and denying the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism
• Association for Civil Rights in Israel — co-funded by Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations to conduct international anti-Israel advocacy via meetings with foreign diplomats and public events
• Movement for Quality Government in Israel — a US State Department grantee known for attempting to block Bibi from becoming PM after winning the 2020 election.

A second prime player driving the movement is Blue and White Future — an NGO that indirectly received $4M in USAID funding, via three layers of intermediaries (including Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors), and $18M from PEF Israel — an intermediary for Open Society Foundations, New Israel Fund, and the Wexner Foundation , which received $46M from the one and only Jeffrey Epstein. Overall, BWF has raised over $40M, the majority of which is foreign-sourced. The money has been used to fund and operate the headquarters for the coalition of activist groups rallying the Israeli population to fight against the Netanyahu government and to hire a high-end PR firm to run nationwide ad campaigns demonizing the prime minister on billboards, banners, youtube ads, and social media.

BWF’s financial activity includes backing Brothers In Arms — a group that sabotaged Israel’s military defenses before the October 7th terrorist attacks, by running a campaign to convince tens of thousands of Israeli Defense Force (IDF) reservists to refuse to serve when called; as a way to protest against the government. Less than 2 months before Oct. 7 , IDF Brigadier General Ari Singer warned the country:

“Protest leaders are conducting a propaganda and influence operation to topple the government, and appear willing to sacrifice the army’s reputation to do it. It’s called psychological operations, or psyops, and it’s being carried out brilliantly by those leading the protests. It’s like they read the 101 manual on subversion. The army doesn’t appear to recognize what’s happening, which is why it hasn’t adequately confronted the threat.”

Brothers in Arms have applied various pressure tactics onto Israeli society, like blocking highways to demand a change in government, disrupting prayers on Yom Kippur (Judaism’s holiest day of the year), and holding weekly protests demanding the prime minister’s resignation. While their narratives and stunts have varied, they have always been tied to getting rid of the current government. A deeper look at the organization reveals they raised $45M, majority foreign-sourced, from donors like Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and the Wexner Family, with ties to Jeffrey Epstein — suspected CIA asset — and his close associate, Ehud Barak.

Side note: the subject of Israel’s proposed judicial reforms is a big topic on its own, worthy of long discussion and debate. For the purposes of this article, however, the main point I want to convey is that whether you believe the reforms would hurt or help Israeli society, this issue is being weaponized to rally people to attack and destabilize Israel’s democracy — which is something anyone concerned about Israel’s future should not want. The psyop is not only meant to replace the prime minister but also to break the integrity of Israeli democracy.

The Traitor is the Plague#

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politique so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Ehud Barak — former prime minister, spearhead of Israel’s anti-government movement, public instigator of protests and disobedience, and private instigator of a violent coup — is a key inside man of this regime change operation. His former Chief of Staff, Gilead Sher, is the co-founder of Blue and White Future. Barak has championed Israel’s version of the CIA inversionist narrative that the people must stage a coup against the country’s democratically elected government in order to save democracy.

This narrative is modified around the edges to fit the details of politics in each country where it is deployed, but the core concept remains consistently intact. You may have heard a version of it before in your country, or you may in the future.

As they did in Chile, the CIA’s destabilization movement in Israel has made use of key groups and figures in Israeli society:

“Barak and his lieutenants have organized groups of pilots and commandos from elite IDF special forces units. They have mobilized the far-left physicians’ union, the universities, Israel’s business and banking elite, high-tech investors and workers, and other elite groups to present an image that all right-thinking members of Israel’s ruling class oppose the government and view it as illegitimate.” — Caroline Glick

While Barak has tried to obfuscate his ties to the groups orchestrating the movement, he has publicly explained the overall plan:

“All these protests which succeeded… when they reach a level of 3.5% of the population, which ends up being about 8% of the adult population, tenaciously, persistently keeping up the protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and so on- at the end, the government either falls or capitulates… and we already crossed this number… so we are heading in the right direction… Basically I’m confident we’ll do it.” — Ehud Barak

Altogether, the onslaught of NGO funding, psyop campaigns, and protests brought division and instability in Israeli society to an all-time high leading up to October 7th 2023, making it most vulnerable to an attack. But it has not let up since then; shape-shifting with evolving narratives and taking every opportunity to spin the grievances of Israeli society into channeled anti-government rage.

Swimming in PsyOps#

NGOs in Israel, secretly serving as foreign-backed enemies of the state, have created a psychological environment that warps the perception of every day reality for Israelis. Perhaps the most impactful outcome of this has been a developing societal demoralization — the diminishment of the public’s hopefulness in their outlook on the country’s future.

Anecdotally, I’ve had many conversations with people in Israel who hold deep fears, citing concerns that are line-by-line regurgitations of NGO propaganda. Families have moved away and entrepreneurs have decided to build their businesses abroad, due to fear of instability in Israel. Israel’s political and bureaucratic system has many issues — it’s very far from perfect. But this level of panic is not justified by reality. It is a manufactured, programmed result of the constant mental bombardment that the Israeli public receives — from the media, the activists, and the politicians undermining the government.

The overall meme — that the Netanyahu government is the source of all of Israel’s problems (real or imagined) and must be removed by any means necessary — is deeply planted into the minds of many Israelis. I don’t know if that can be reversed.

Their behavior, like the citizens of previously mentioned revolutions, reminds me of the “zombie ant fungus” phenomenon found in nature. When a fungus called ophiocordyceps unilateralis infects an ant, it takes over the ant’s mind, manipulating it to destroy itself and maximize its spread of the fungus to other ants.

The Brothers In Arms campaign could not have been successful in a vacuum. Former soldiers, who risked their lives for the country, would have had to be so deeply demoralized beforehand in order to be pliable enough to the notion of actually boycotting their duty. This is a sign of serious damage to the psyche of Israel’s population.

The Western Front#

On October 8th, 2023, while Hamas terrorists were still actively hunting civilians inside of Israel, the anti-Israel movement began activating on university campuses around the US and then spreading to cities around the Western world.

While most of the people marching have been doing so mindlessly, the ones directing them have not. The movement has been led by a network of NGOs, built to act as its organizational and financial infrastructure. They include:

• Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — funded by Tides Center (recipient of millions from both USAID and Rockefeller Brothers Fund) and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors
• Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) — funded by Tides Center
• Adalah — funded by Tides Center, New Israel Fund, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund
• CODEPINK — funded by Tides Center and Benjamin Fund (led by CODEPINK’s cofounder)
• US Campaign for Palestinian Rights — funded by Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Benjamin Fund
• Palestine Legal — funded by Tides Center and Rockefeller Brothers Fund
• Arab Resource and Organizing Center — funded by Tides Center
• Middle East Children’s Alliance — funded by Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Open Society Foundations.

A big part of the movement has been anti-Israel organizations cleverly named to sound Jewish, like Jewish Voice For Peace, AKA “Hamas Voice For Pretending To Be Jewish.” Unsurprisingly, they’re funded by Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Open Society Foundations, Tides Center, and Benjamin Fund. Their mission? To drive a wedge into the American Jewish community and weaken US support for Israel.

IfNotNow is another organization with a Jewish facade, funded by Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and FMEP — financier of Al-Haq, which is linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a violent terrorist group known for hijacking planes and taking passengers hostage. Yeah, not so Jewish after all.

The US-based anti-Israel NGO network is an effective tool in the war against Israel, in numerous ways:

• Indoctrinating, radicalizing, and recruiting American youth as useful idiots to enlarge the global image of the anti-Israel psyop
• Pressuring Western politicians to cut their support for Israel, to weaken Israel militarily and financially
• Escalating international pressure on the Israeli government to surrender its wars against Hamas and Hezbollah, rather than defeat them

• Attacking the Israeli economy via Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) campaigns
• Normalizing anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda narratives through mass repetition and by integrating them into popular unrelated virtue-signal narratives

• Disrupting and preventing Jewish community gatherings in American cities by intimidating and attacking people attending cultural and religious events and using pressure campaigns to cancel comedy shows and concerts
• Using fear to suppress public expressions of support for Israel and Jews
• Trying to break the morale of the Israeli population as it recovers from the mass murder and kidnapping of their people, by sending the message: “the world hates you”

The Horse’s Mouth#

Beyond the shared financial ties, it’s also interesting to notice the mirroring of rhetoric between the Western anti-Israel movement, the anti-government movement in Israel, and Hamas. Hamas’ propaganda team consistently takes opportunities to specifically inject anti-Bibi propaganda into its narratives. Despite their stated goal to kill every Jew and destroy the entire nation of Israel, they are apparently very focused on tarnishing Netanyahu’s image, however they can.

When Hamas held a ceremony to parade the coffins of the Bibas children and their mother, whom they kidnapped and killed on Oct. 7, they did so in front of a mural depicting a demonic-looking Netanyahu as the person who killed them.

While the Israel anti-government movement can’t make statements at the same level of absurdity as Hamas, they have interestingly echoed the same general message, seizing the opportunity to blame Bibi for hostage deaths and continued captivity, based on a false implicit premise that Hamas has stood ready to release them under reasonable terms.

When Hamas rejected Israel’s most recent April 2025 proposal for a 45-day ceasefire and hostage release, their public response was “We will not accept partial deals that serve Netanyahu’s political agenda.”

When Bibi fired former Shin Bet director Ronen Bar in March 2025, Hamas made a public statement about it saying it “proves Netanyahu’s unwillingness to negotiate,” directly connecting into the narratives of the anti-Bibi movement.

This overall picture suggests that each of Israel’s greatest enemies strongly agrees on Benjamin Netanyahu being a threat that must be eliminated. It indicates that they collectively feel they cannot get what they want as long as he is in charge.

Politics is a complicated show of smoke and mirrors — it’s hard to decipher what the true motives of any politician are, and it’s very easy to speculate on them. But we must ask ourselves: If the narratives are true, that Netanyahu is destroying Israeli society, would Israel’s enemies be so keen to remove him from power? If we know that these narratives are being spread by Israel’s enemies, should we believe them? What does it mean if those who hate Israel and want to destroy it see Netanyahu as a major threat and primary target; so much so that they’re willing to dedicate immense resources to take him down?

Elephants In The Room#

There are many related subjects worth exploring that are outside the scope of this piece. I will acknowledge them briefly with a bullet point each.

• The roles of Iran, Russia, Qatar, and China in the information war against Israel
• The article I wrote a year ago, where I hypothesized that the Russians were most likely behind what we are seeing today. My perspective has significantly changed: Russia has the history, know-how, and infrastructure to be conducting this psychological war and might be involved, but they cannot be the primary player.
• The many other social and political projects that USAID, Ford, Rockefeller, OSF, and Tides are backing via the same NGO model
• The massive role Israeli and international media networks are playing in spreading NGO narratives, influencing Israelis and Westerners alike

Zooming Out#

Mapping the money networks behind the kinetic and psychological war against Israel reveals a coherent multi-pronged strategy at play. Its apparent aim is to generate maximum pressure on Israeli society and government, in order to subvert its democracy to create regime change.

The combination of a divided society, a highly-funded, professionalized, and relentless anti-government protest movement, a weakened and distracted military, a terrorist attack more brutal than anything seen in modern history, a population in daily anguish mourning its dead and praying for its kidnapped, a coordinated international display of animosity and hatred, violence towards Jewish diaspora communities, and a prolonged multi-front military conflict should be enough to cause almost any nation, and its leadership, to crumble. The most amazing part of this whole story is that Israeli society and its democratic system are somehow still standing.

From my Jewish perspective, fighting for Israel is about sovereignty, safety, and the continuation of our ancient heritage and traditions. It is rare for a culture to survive for thousands of years without expanding its numbers via colonialism or forced conversions. We did the opposite — decolonization of our native land and making conversion as hard as possible. Our culture is a rare gem worth preserving.

History has taught us what can happen when we are subjects of regimes that don’t care about us or treat us with hostility; whether in Europe, the Middle East, North and East Africa, the Balkans, or anywhere else.

The fight is not only about defending against enemy nations or terrorists. We must fight just as hard against those who are subverting us from within. War occurs both in the physical space and the mental space and I believe the human mind is the most dangerous weapon of war.

This is what defending Israel is about. It is worth everything and it will take everything.

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“Bring Them Home NOW” is a political slogan and movement designed to focus blame on the Israeli government for the hostages who are still in captivity, while distracting from the fact that they’re being held by murderous Islamic terrorists who have no intention to release them under any reasonable conditions.

The slogan is written to promote the notion that the hostages are available for us to “bring them home” but it hasn’t happened due to a lack of urgency (“NOW”) or a failure to negotiate. It is plastered all over Tel Aviv, backed by a well-funded ad campaign and frequent organized protests, manipulating the emotions and heartbreak of the Israeli people who are grieving this tragedy.

Whether intentional or not, the movement serves to:

1. Force Israel into a losing outcome: returning ~100 remaining hostages while endangering the population of 9.5M people by giving concessions to Hamas that would enable their continued control of Gaza.
2. Drive an emotionally charged wedge between leftists and conservatives in Israeli society and government, intensifying national division.
3. Not only deflect pressure from the perpetrators who can actually set the hostages free, but also to give them their best chance to survive this war and continue their jihad another day.
4. Create as much popular pressure as possible to force Netanyahu out of office — I believe this is the top aim of the campaign; capitalizing on a traumatic moment for political gain.

To be clear, the vast majority of people supporting the movement are doing it because they are desperate to see the hostages come home and are unaware that they’re being used to drive the downstream effects listed above.

However, given those effects, it’s fair to speculate that the significant financial interests behind this could be domestic, foreign, or a combination of both.

If one’s goal is to free the hostages AND neutralize the threat of terrorism, perhaps threatening the captors is a more promising approach:

“In hybrid warfare, information is the weapon.” — Maajid Nawaz

As covered in depth in my research piece The Invisible Weapon, the US has been the subject of a long-running Russian hybrid warfare campaign, with Israel being targeted as an important pressure point.

Like an onion, this war consists of layers; with only the outer-most layer being visible to the naked eye.

The long and obscure line that’s been drawn from Gaza to UCLA and many US university campuses becomes clearer when you can recognize the tactics at work.

The Israel-Hamas conflict — one very public layer of a much deeper and more complex war — can be viewed through two lenses. The first lens, which everyone can see, is the physical war, taking place on Israel’s borders and directly impacting the livelihoods of the Israeli and Palestinian people. However, this is not how hybrid warfare actually works.

The second lens is the content that is created based on the physical war: images, narratives, social media campaigns, slogans — and what they evoke out of people. This is what fuels the real war, which is the information war. The kinetic war is being fought with soldiers and artillery and occurs in a limited geographical location. The information war is being fought with propaganda and occurs inside people’s minds. It is global.

Weaponized human minds are more powerful than any artillery a military can wield. Propaganda (the invisible weapon), can be used to manipulate a nuclear superpower into destroying itself without requiring a head-on conventional war. This is hybrid warfare in a nutshell.

Young developing minds are the most prone to being captured and manipulated by propaganda. Exhibit A: TikTok’s 1 billion monthly active users, including 150 million Americans, 25% of which are between ages 10- 19. Exhibit B: US university campuses.

Students of history will notice striking parallels between the environment in the US today and those of China during the Cultural Revolution (1966- 76) and Iran during the Iranian Revolution (1979). Both cases were major upheavals of social order, carried out by young people brainwashed by Marxist philosophy and the crowds that followed along without knowing why, that went so far as to actually overthrow the existing political regimes (oh, and they were both Russia-backed).

This is the outcome Putin is aiming for in the US today. Two refreshers from the evidence presented in The Invisible Weapon: 1) Russian intelligence created the Palestine liberation movement in the ’60s, 2) Russian intelligence has created protest movements and riots in the US. American youth wearing keffiyehs and Hamas headbands, waving Hezbollah flags, and physically attacking people is a triumph for Russian propaganda.

Like the youth of China and Iran before them, the radicalized American youth of today have no idea that what they’re actually fighting for is to replace Western democracy with a new regime of totalitarian control and oppression. They know they want to tear the system down, but if successful, what would replace it?

This is why what’s happening on college campuses today — the taking over of public and private spaces, blatant discrimination and intimidation, physical and verbal attacks, riots, and all-out brawls — is important for everyone in the West, and not just Jews who are the most explicit current targets. Ultimately the target is America. The theater you see is not a side-effect of the war. It IS the war.

Of the many, many world events that have surprised and confused me over the past 4 turbulent years, perhaps the most shocking was seeing mass demonstrations across the Western world in support of Hamas in response to their Oct 7th terrorist attack on Israel.

From street protests and traffic blockades to a flood of social media posts, a strong narrative has taken hold globally and is driving a mass anti-Israel activist movement. The narrative goes something like this: Jews are white colonizers who stole Israel’s land from the native Palestinians, created an apartheid state, are holding Palestinians in prison-like conditions, and are committing genocide against them.

Amazingly, every single part of this narrative is definitively false; yet it is widely and passionately believed around the world- especially among young people.

The goal of this text is not to prove why the narrative is wrong, as many other people are already doing so and the facts are readily available to anyone willing to do research. My goal is rather to bring light to the side that no one is talking about, to expose where the narrative comes from and reveal what might be the world’s most successful propaganda and psyop campaign, ever.

Could it be that the widespread falsehoods and misunderstandings about the history of Israel and the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians organically emerged and found ideological adoption around the world? It turns out, no.

In this work, I aim to clearly and concisely demonstrate how the Soviet Union and subsequently the current Russian regime have developed and propagated a fabricated narrative and recruited, trained, planted, and supported a network of agents to carry out a wide-reaching campaign of deception and ideological subversion with the intent to advance their geopolitical interests in the Middle East and beyond — and that this Russian effort is at the heart of modern day global antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment.

In making my case, I will rely heavily on firsthand accounts from expert witnesses who held high ranking positions in Soviet intelligence and verified classified Soviet documents. By definition, the work of the KGB or any intelligence organization, if effective, is supposed to be undetectable and untraceable; which is why it’s crucial to rely on sources from the inside.

“There is a widespread belief that the worst damage from Soviet/Russian intelligence operations against the West has been the theft of highly classified secrets, such as the technology for the atom bomb. Not so. The absolutely worst — and often irreparable — damage done to the Free World has been caused by the Kremlin’s disinformation operations designed to change the past… In KGB jargon, changing people’s pasts was called ‘framing,’ and it was a highly classified disinformation speciality.” — Disinformation, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa

In their groundbreaking 2019 academic paper, The KGB and Anti-Israel Propaganda Operations, Eli Cohen and Elizabeth Boyd succinctly describe the challenge of piecing together the totality of the picture: “The facts are well documented but not well known in any single discipline. In this sense, it is transdisciplinary.”

But to make it make sense, I will need start by briefly going back in time.

Anti-Semitism As A Political Strategy#

If you’re a football (soccer) fan, you may have heard the saying, “The English invented football, but the Brazilians perfected it.” While I don’t know where antisemitism started, I can tell you that the Russians perfected it.

Antisemitic propaganda in Russia goes back to the czarist era when a forgery called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was published in the newspaper Znamya in 1903, purporting to expose a conspiracy of Jewish world domination. It was later cited by Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, used by the Nazis as justification for their genocide of Jews, and continues to echo today in anti-semitic and “anti-Zionist” conspiracies spreading on social media.

“In fact, ‘imperial-Zionism’ was a Moscow invention, a modern adaptation of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ and long a favorite tool of Russian intelligence to foment ethnic hatred. The KGB always regarded anti-Semitism plus anti-imperialism as a rich source of anti-Americanism.” — The KGB’s Man, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa [no paywall]

But in 1947, the USSR actually pivoted away from their long-running anti-Zionist stance to support the UN partition plan for Palestine and to be the first to recognize Israel in 1948; because they believed the newly established State of Israel would adopt a socialist system, align itself to the Soviets, and serve to weaken Western influence in the Middle East.

When Israel became a democracy aligned with the US, a more systematic development of Russian antisemitic propaganda and active measures emerged, further heightened by Israel’s repeated military victories against Soviet-backed Arab armies in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973. This was known as Operation SIG.

“Operation SIG is the KGB operation to sow worldwide disapproval for the US and Israel. SIG is the Russian acronym for Sionistskiye Gosudarstva, or ‘Jewish (or Zionist) Government.’ The operation started shortly after 1967, when the drive for Arab unity collapsed along with the economies of the armies that attacked Israel… [it] created the cover for antisemites and antidemocratic forces, thus fulfilling the KGB’s ambition to create chaos in the Middle East…” — The KGB and Anti-Israel Propaganda Operations, Cohen & Boyd

The PLO: World’s Most Successful Psyop Ever?#

I just want to preface this part by saying that I was both very shocked and very fascinated when I first came across this information. It can be hard to process information that strays so far from the popular narrative being echoed every day from so many different directions (media, politicians, academics, international organizations). I believe there is an inherent subconscious process that takes place when we hear the same notion repeated by so many different people — it just becomes true in our minds, by default, and warrants not doing any research to confirm it. It’s also hard to accept when the reality of a situation is more unbelievable than the fabricated version.

As revealed both by KGB internal archives that were smuggled out of Russia by Vasili Mitrokhin and by the writings of former Lt. General of Soviet Intelligence Ion Mihai Pacepa, the Palestinian Liberation Organization— the official representative of the Palestinian people since 1964 through today — is not what it claims or appears to be on the surface.

In 1964, as a brilliant counter to a strengthening state of Israel, the KGB created the PLO, mirroring other guerrilla Marxist-Leninist “liberation” movements the Soviets were supporting or launching elsewhere to expand global influence and control and to counter the US — including the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1949), Cuban Revolution (1958), National Liberation Army in Peru (1962), National Liberation Army in Bolivia (1964), FARC in Colombia (1965), and the People’s Army in Bangladesh (1971). A common thread shared by all of these movements is that they professed a Marxist philosophy of class struggle for the benefit of the people, yet what they produced for the people was oppressive, miserable conditions and staggering numbers of deaths.

“Before I defected to America from Romania, leaving my post as chief of Romanian intelligence, I was responsible for giving Arafat about $200,000 in laundered cash every month throughout the 1970s… I was given the KGB’s ‘personal file’ on Arafat. He was an Egyptian bourgeois turned into a devoted Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence. The KGB had trained him at its Balashikha special-ops school east of Moscow and in the mid-1960s decided to groom him as the future PLO leader. First, the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat’s birth in Cairo, replacing them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth.” — The KGB’s Man, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa [no paywall]

Through generations of brainwashing, the Palestinian population has been radicalized to the point of being ready to commit the most heinous acts against Israeli civilians, on command. The human mind is a powerful weapon and terrorism is an underestimated political tool. As KGB General Aleksandr Sakharovsky said, “In today’s world when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon.”

“Before 1969 came to an end, Palestinian terrorists trained at the KGB’s Balashikha special-operations school east of Moscow had hijacked their first “Zionist” El Al plane and landed it in Algeria, where its thirty-two Jewish passengers were held hostage for five weeks. The hijacking had been planned and coordinated by the KGB’s Thirteenth Department, known in Soviet bloc intelligence jargon as the Department for Wet Affairs (wet being a KGB euphemism for bloody). To conceal the KGB’s hand, Andropov had the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (created and financed by the KGB) take credit for the hijacking.

The media frenzy generated by that terrorist operation convinced Andropov that airplane hijacking was the weapon of the future. He therefore extended the hijackings from Israeli planes to any other ‘Zionist’ flying target of opportunity. During the next two years, various Palestinian terrorists (trained by the KGB) took credit for hijacking thirteen Israeli and Western passenger planes and for blowing up a SwissAir plane in flight, killing forty-seven passengers and crewmembers.

The huge political “success” brought about by the hijacking of ‘Zionist airplanes’ prompted Andropov to expand into organizing ‘public executions’ of ‘Zionists’ in airports, train stations, and other public places. Andropov’s puppet Dr. George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a fanatical Marxist, mirrored the true colors of the new terrorist tactic: ‘Killing one Jew far from the field of battle is more effective than killing a hundred Jews on the field of battle, because it attracts more attention.’” — Disinformation, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa

The global mindshare of the “Palestinian liberation” movement is an extremely valuable Russian political asset, utilized as a mechanism for leverage not only against Israel, but in the greater Middle East and even the West as a strategy in their fight against US dominance.

Today, Mahmoud Abbas, who was revealed by the Mitrokhin Archives to be a former KGB agent, is the current president of the Palestinian Authority and chairman of the PLO, as successor to Arafat. The man who was his KGB handler, Mikhail Bogdanov, is Russia’s current Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The PLO’s Middle East Operations, Beyond Israel#

A brief examination of the PLO’s historical activities outside of Israel demonstrates that they have consistently worked to carry out Russian interests.

In the 70’s, the USSR had political strongholds in Egypt and Syria but not in neighboring Jordan or Lebanon. They mobilized the PLO as a weapon against those regimes with the aim of consolidating Soviet power in the region.

In 1970, Yasser Arafat led an attempt to overthrow the Jordanian regime and assassinate King Hussein — a period known as Black September, when the PLO (supported by Soviet-backed Syria) fought a civil war against the Jordanians; who successfully resisted the PLO and kicked them out of Jordan.

With Syrian assistance, the Palestinian militants then moved across their land and into Lebanon, where in 1975 they instigated the Lebanese Civil War, tearing Lebanon apart for 15 years, as the PLO (with Syrian and Shiite leftist support) fought against the Christian Lebanese Forces (with Israeli support).

Despite failing in Jordan, the Russians scored 1 out of 2, with the war in Lebanon resulting in major changes to the Lebanese regime and constitution, the formation and rise of Hezbollah as a power in Lebanon and another “resistance movement” to the North of Israel, as well as a 30 year military occupation and brutal killings of Lebanese people by Syrian forces. Notice how Hezbollah felt no need to resist that occupation.

Tying Together Past & Present Russia#

“Post-Soviet Russia has been transformed in unprecedented ways, but the widely popular belief that the nefarious Soviet legacy was rooted out at the end of the Cold War the same way that Nazism was rooted out with the conclusion of World War II, is not yet correct.

In the 1950s, when I was chief of Romania’s foreign intelligence station in West Germany, I witnessed how Hitler’s Third Reich had been demolished, its war criminals put on trial, its military and police forces disbanded, and the Nazis removed from public office. None of these things has happened in the former Soviet Union. No individual has been put on trial, although the Soviet Union’s Communist regime killed over a hundred million people. Most Soviet institutions have been left in place, having simply been given new names, and are now run by many of the same people who guided the Communist state. In 2000, former officers of the KGB and the Soviet Red Army took over the Kremlin and Russia’s government.

Germany would have never become a democracy with Gestapo and SS officers running the show.” — Russian Footprints, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa

While we can examine in depth the hidden actions of the USSR thanks to evidence from the inside, we do not have such direct insights into today’s Russian regime. What we do have is a few pieces of a large puzzle, patterns that indicate a continuous presence of Soviet-era strategies, and the knowledge that no radical changes were made to the Russian regime after the USSR collapsed.

“The technology for spreading disinformation and the use of that fake fact to spread friction and discord, to deceive and to menace, may have changed, but the mind-set has remained the same. With an old K.G.B. hand, Vladimir Putin, at the helm, Russia still sees Active Measures as a legitimate means of closing the gap between Russia and the West, and increasing Moscow’s influence across the globe — including in the Middle East.” — How the K.G.B. Started the War That Changed the Middle East, Ronen Bergman

From these, there are three high-level conclusions to be drawn:

1. The Russians and Americans never actually stopped fighting each other when the Cold War “ended” after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
2. The USSR’s transition to the Russian Federation was a reconfiguration and really good rebrand of a country still consisting of the same agencies and the same political leadership.
3. Modern day Russia utilizes “hybrid warfare” methods against the US, Europe, and Israel; in addition to the familiar “active measures” tactics that were highly effective in the past.

“Russian Hybrid Warfare is little more than a remodeled and modern version of KGB active measures: the old ‘tool box’ of the Soviet period has been replaced with modern tools to fit 21st century technology along with the socioeconomic and political climate which differs greatly from the Cold War period.” — KGB Active Measures and Russian Hybrid Warfare: A Brief Comparison, Alan Malcher

In today’s sophisticated hybrid warfare strategy, social media platforms are a core Russian weapon.

“Although Putin’s Russia still use KGB Active Measures to plant stories in the Western Media — paying Journalists to place stories; using lesser known media platforms which are known for not checking sources; the use of forged ‘official’ documents and using radio and television to disseminate the Kremlin message, the power of the internet is now fully exploited. Working in conjunction with the Kremlin controlled press, social media and seemingly independent websites supported by an army of Russian trolls, have made the dissemination of Russia initiatives for systematic and intentional deception not only easier but also allows the creation of artificial credibility. It is often now more difficult to identify the original source which inevitably is a Russian asset or agency.” — KGB Active Measures and Russian Hybrid Warfare: A Brief Comparison, Alan Malcher

A long-running Kremlin strategy from the Soviet era through today has been to engage covertly in political activism, such as developing protest slogans, organizing and co-opting “grassroots” movements, and disseminating forgeries to subvert Western political causes that run against their interests and to support those that help their interests. It is a clever exploitation of a fundamental vulnerability in democratic systems: politicians must be responsive to the voices of their citizens, even if those citizens have been manipulated by a foreign power.

“Political activities include orchestrating political events, demonstrations, civil disturbance and general unrest, by exploiting existing laws in the target nation. Political influence activities can also involve financial support to opposition parties (opposed to the current government or its policies) and lobbying activities aiming at changing laws and regulation in a way favourable for the foreign power.” — Social Media’s Role in Hybrid Strategies, Thomas Elkjer Nissen

False statements, historically inaccurate references, and antisemitic slogans being chanted by activists in the West (who don’t understand what they mean) are being driven by social media-based campaigns.

Telling patterns emerge when we observe the massive wave of anti-Israel social media content today, alongside known Russian propaganda campaigns targeted at other groups or objectives.

“Russian operatives created hundreds of fake personas on social media platforms and then posted thousands of advertisements and messages that sought to promote racial divisions in the United States. This was a coordinated propaganda effort.” — Virtual Hatred: How Russia Tried to Start a Race War in the United States, William J. Aceves

A glimpse into Russia’s international gaslighting can be seen by comparing their covert actions covered in this piece to their overt actions, such as putting forward a UN resolution for an Israeli ceasefire 1 week after October 7th, Putin’s conciliatory public urges for dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian leadership and volunteering to be a “neutral” mediator, and taking public steps to enter formal relations between Russia, Hamas, Fatah, the PLO, and other Palestinian factions. These public moves work hand in hand with private moves carried out via covert operations and proxy groups.

The Free Palestine Movement#

By my analysis, Pro-Palestine/anti-Israel protests and propaganda serve to advance pro-Russia/anti-US political objectives by:

1. Reducing (perceived and real) popular support for Israel among US citizens, thus pressuring US politicians to pull back on financial and military support and weakening Israel’s economy and military defense capabilities.
2. Weakening US geopolitical influence in the Middle East by loosening ties to its most valuable ally in the region.
3. Reducing the intelligence, security, technological, and economic benefits that the US gains from its relationship with Israel.
4. Perpetuating and reinforcing KGB-derived false narratives as accepted truths. Propaganda mindshare is an appreciating asset as it gains deeper adoption.
5. Building public pressure on Israel to withdraw from the war in hopes of preventing the destruction of valuable Russian assets in Gaza (this is the point of the “Ceasefire Now” movement).
6. Causing civil unrest, division between citizens, and destruction of cultural symbols in the US and its European allies; thus degrading the identity and unity of Western nations and creating a climate of instability.

Patterns & Puzzle Pieces#

Putting the pieces together:

1. Israel is a strategic chess piece in the ongoing battle between the US and Russia for global dominance, from its establishment in 1948 until today.
2. The “Palestine Liberation” militant movement and its associated terrorist activities were formed as a Russian psyop and continue to be led by a known Russian asset.
3. Antisemitic propaganda has deep roots in Russia, but has been significantly amplified internationally ever since Israel became a target of Russian subversion in the 1960s.
4. The “Free Palestine” activist movement in the West is a product of Russian propaganda that has used false narratives to manipulate large numbers of people, with immense success, to promote Russia’s agenda within its enemy countries.
5. Today’s international spike in antisemitic rhetoric and actions is a direct result of decades of Soviet and Russian active measures and hybrid warfare operations.

While Jews and Arabs are suffering severe consequences, the endgame of this strategy does not inherently appear to be about Jews or Arabs. It is ultimately a means to advance Russia’s overall battle against the West, by targeting all permutations of the Western democratic system. The enormous amounts of pain, suffering, and bloodshed this has caused for Jews and Arabs are all collateral damage.

Closing Messages#

To the Jewish community, in Israel and around the world: know your enemy.

To the people of the US and Europe: recognize that the fierce societal division and chaos you are experiencing is an intentional outcome of hybrid warfare tactics.

To the pro-Palestine activists: you have been manipulated into believing a false version of reality and serving as pawns in a political chess game that is bigger than Gaza and Israel and has no concern for their lives or yours.

To the global Muslim community: see how your religion has been twisted and abused for political gain, by outsiders who treat your people as disposable tools and by corrupted leadership figures who act as their puppets.

To those who will oppose and/or dispute this content: I welcome any feedback that improves this content’s accuracy or shows any points or sources that I’ve brought forth to be invalid. If you express your opposition by personally attacking me, finding minute and inconsequential points to emphasize, or making distracting statements that are not relevant to the issues discussed here, you will only confirm that my case is valid, you are threatened by the availability of this information, and you have no legitimate basis upon which to dispute it.

Texts, emails, calendar reminder, phone calls, someone liked your Facebook post, new Instagram follower, Linkedin request, new stories on Snapchat, breaking news, new music on SoundCloud, SportsCenter top plays, iOS/Android update, new video from your favorite YouTube channel, tweets you missed, must-listen podcasts, Venmo request, rate your Uber driver, free Postmates delivery promo.

You are drowning in fucking notifications at all times.

How are you supposed to deal with this?

Option 1: Stop what you’re doing every 3 minutes to check the notification on your phone.

Option 2: LET THEM WAIT!

How are you going to get anything deeply meaningful done without focusing for an extended period of time, uninterrupted?

When your phone goes off, ask yourself:

1. Is this an emergency? If it’s not, proceed to the next question.

2. What will happen if I respond to this in an hour?

Nothing will happen.

Don’t be a slave to your notifications.

As I sit here, far from everything that my daily life normally consists of, I’ve stopped to appreciate the freedom to think.

When we disconnect from day-to-day life, we finally give our minds some space to breathe. Free of distractions, minutia, and the constant “emergencies” that take up so much of our attention, there is a part of ourselves that can finally awaken.

When it does, a deeper level of perspective and creativity can flow.

Give yourself this gift.

Exploration of new forms of governance may be blockchain’s greatest societal contribution.

For the first time in our known history, humanity has the tools to organize mass numbers of people in complex governance systems without needing approval/involvement of formal government entities or for the participants to be in geographic proximity to one another.

I define blockchain consensus mechanisms as models for aligning the incentives of individuals who don’t know or trust each other, such that they can securely transact in mutually beneficial ways, while building and sustaining a functioning economy by virtue of their participation.

Today we are seeing a Cambrian explosion of governance models being launched by a plethora of teams with unique philosophies and clever ideas.

One way to view this phenomenon is as mass experimentation on a global scale with real stakes. Blockchain networks can serve as a testing ground upon which we as a society learn what can work better than our current governance systems.

To me this is the most exciting aspect of blockchain technology. At the same time, these networks are generating massive value, as indicated by trading markets.

The potential wealth to be gained via speculation fuels the growth of what you might consider to be high potential research projects. This process is vital and beautifully synergistic.

I’ve been thinking about blockchain for a long time and have finally put finger to keyboard. More to come (whenever it comes).

Recommended reading:

https://medium.com/@FEhrsam/blockchain-governance-programming-our-future-c3bfe30f2d74

https://merkle.com/papers/DAOdemocracyDraft.pdf

We create products as futile attempts to replace human touch.

Video chat enables us to speak face-to-face with people who are far away, but we use it even more with people who are close by.

Phone calls instead of in-person contact, then texting instead of phone calls.

Instagram likes instead of love.

Kids play with iPads instead of each other.

We deny ourselves the basic human need of connecting with others.

We go to great lengths to distance ourselves from each other.

What are we afraid of?