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Home Front: Politix

Ritchie Torres slams ‘blithering idiots' behind secret Israeli influence campaign

2024-06-09

Why government organs (any government) should stay away from social media. Weaponized Democratic party hysteria aside, has it ever been successful?

[IsraelTimes] Lawmaker says ‘brain might be rotting’ of anyone who thinks he needs convincing to support Israel, after NYT report on effort to encourage Black Democrats to back military funding.

New York Representative Ritchie Torres, one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress, said a reported clandestine campaign by the Israeli government that aimed to influence him and other Black Democratic US lawmakers was “embarrassing” and “racist.”

Not racist, but targetted to the groups that in general have the farthest to go on the subject.

The effort, according to a report this week in The New York Times, was orchestrated by Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry and targeted members of Congress and the US public with a pro-Israel social media campaign using hundreds of fake social media profiles.

The $2 million project in conjunction with Stoic, a Tel Aviv-based marketing firm, began in October and continued at least until this week, according to the Times. Involving multiple fake news sites and the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, the operation urged lawmakers to fund Israel’s military effort. (It also included some missteps, such as accounts supposedly of Black men posting as a “middle-aged Jewish woman.”)

The campaign focused on several members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Torres, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, the report said.

The campaign’s focus on Torres was notable because his social media presence is a quintessential example of unabashed and outspoken pro-Israel activism, and he is something of a star in Israel. Torres nodded to that in a statement on X on Friday.

“If you think I need to be ‘influenced’ to be pro-Israel, then please see a doctor because your brain might be rotting,” he wrote. He followed up with what was for him a rare criticism of an Israeli action.

“The blithering idiots behind this embarrassing operation should be fired for gross incompetence,” Torres wrote. “A foreign influence operation that singles out Black Congressional Democrats is racist. There’s no correlation at all between race and Israel in the United States Congress.”

True. Black Republicans are fine on Israel. The correlation is to Progressiveness.

Posted by:Skidmark

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