Understanding Israel Palestine

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The Structural Origins and Damaging Impact of the Deep Israel Lobby Part 2 (with Grant Smith)

Greetings and welcome to Understanding Israel Palestine, a Beyond the Walls edition, I am Jeremy Rothe-Kushel. For this episode, after a Beyond the Walls special Cyber Occupation Report, we return to hear the 2nd part of my archived interview with Grant F. Smith, the research director at the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, about the Structural Origins and Damaging Impact of the Deep Israel Lobby.
 
Resources & Further Reading
To review the primary source documents, declassified files, and extensive research discussed in this episode, please explore Grant Smith’s archival work:

• Israel Lobby Archive: A comprehensive repository of declassified documents regarding lobbying and espionage.
• IRmep: The Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy's ongoing reports and analysis.

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Understanding Israel Palestine archives: kkfi.org/program/understanding-israel-palestine/

Beyond the Walls newsletter: beyondthewalls.substack.com

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A Beyond the Walls special Cyber Occupation Report

From Occupied Palestine to American Precincts: The Cyber-Intelligence Pipeline Seeking to Be Behind Your Local 911

Across the United States, municipal police departments are quietly signing off on cellular interception gear from Cognyte Solutions—an Israeli surveillance vendor spun out of Verint Systems.

Long before Cognyte began marketing interception hardware to American city councils, Verint was building the physical tap into domestic telecommunications. As investigative author James Bamford and former NSA Technical Director William Binney have documented, the surveillance pipeline ran in a full, cynical circle. Binney—the veteran cryptanalyst-mathematician who resigned from the NSA in late 2001 after thirty years when the agency turned its collection apparatus inward—revealed how advanced U.S. signals intelligence technology was shared with Israeli intelligence. Following September 11, that very technology was repackaged, privatized, and sold back to the U.S. government through companies like Narus and Verint—contractors wired directly into AT&T and Verizon switches to execute bulk domestic surveillance with foreign-administered backdoors.

Today, that architecture has migrated from federal switchboards straight into domestic neighborhoods.

Flock Safety now operates an automated license plate reader network logging billions of vehicular movements across American streets every month. Flock’s operational scaling was driven under its former Chief Operating Officer, Elan Greenberg. Greenberg—a Cornell graduate and NYU Stern MBA who served more than a decade as an officer in the U.S. Marine Forces Reserve—subsequently transitioned to executive leadership at Augury. Augury, an AI sensor firm founded in Haifa and backed by Israeli venture capital, is steeped in veterans of Israel’s military-technical sector. It represents a recurring circuit: U.S. military-trained logistical leadership bridging domestic tracking grids with Tel Aviv-founded hardware networks.

Meanwhile, Axon Enterprise has absorbed Fusus, pulling private Ring cameras, commercial video feeds, and municipal traffic sensors into unified "Real-Time Crime Centers."

All that neighborhood telemetry flows into the Microsoft Azure Government cloud—an environment fortified and audited by Adallom, the cybersecurity firm founded by alumni of Israel’s elite Talpiot military program and Unit 8200, which was swallowed into Microsoft’s core architecture.

The final lock turned in early 2026 when Axon completed its 625-million-dollar acquisition of Carbyne911. Originally launched and financed by convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein alongside former Israeli Prime Minister and military intelligence chief Ehud Barak, Carbyne was engineered to access citizen smartphone cameras, real-time geolocation, and biometric audio streams the moment a caller dials 911.

Just as Verint and Narus established bulk-collection interception points inside telecom switches twenty years ago, Axon’s absorption of Carbyne hardwires an identical architecture directly into municipal emergency dispatch:

• Cognyte intercepts the mobile signal.
• Flock logs vehicular movement.
• Fusus aggregates private and public cameras.
• Carbyne taps the 911 caller at the point of distress.
• And Talpiot- and Unit 8200-engineered cloud infrastructure guards the vault.

What was beta-tested on subjugated populations in occupied Palestine hasn't just arrived on Main Street—it has become the privatized nervous system of American municipal policing, turning public safety into an end-to-end digital occupation.

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How did the US media enable Israel's genocide in Gaza? What was happening in newsrooms as Israel intensified its onslaught on Gaza? Professor Emerita Robin Andersen joins the show to discuss how US media outlets encouraged Israel's genocidal campaign through uncritically repeating the lies of the Israeli government and through using sanitized language to describe acts of extreme violence.

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In this updated rebroadcast of a program from November, 2025, Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, director of Israel-Palestine at DAWN (Democracy in the Arab World Now) discusses the accelerating pace of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank,  the history of settler violence, the U.S. role in enabling Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide, and measures that could prompt Israel to chart a different path. A co- author, with Sarah Leah Whitson, of "From Apartheid to Democracy: A Blueprint for Peace in Israel-Palestine," Omer-Man says international allegiance to the Oslo two-state solution has entrenched Israeli occupation and prevented other countries from challenging it o

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For this episode of Understanding Israel Palestine: Beyond the Walls, Jeremy Rothe-Kushel speaks with Stacy Gilbert about the background of her public resignation from the Biden State Department, the longterm humanitarian crisis deepened by the ending of US financial aid and political support of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, and why all of this deeply haunts her and should publicly and politically haunt all those on up through President Biden who facilitated these crimes against humanity, and against American and International law.

Stacy Gilbert is a former Senior Civil-Military Advisor in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, where she worked for more than 20 years in humanitarian emergencies and refugee crises worldwide. She advised U.S. and foreign militaries on humanitarian principles, civilian protection, aid worker security, and emergency response, and deployed to major crises including Kosovo, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In May 2024, she resigned from the State Department in protest after it concluded that Israel was not blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza, a decision that drew national and international attention. She continues to advocate for humanitarian issues, adherence to law, and public accountability.

Stacy will be a panelist on this month’s Voices From the Holy Land film and discussion salon titled The Palestinian Exile - 78 Years and No Future about the ongoing reality and necessary humanitarian resolution to the decades long and recently escalated Palestinian UN refugee camp crisis. The salon will take on place on Sunday September 20th, 2026 at 3pm Eastern time. You can go to VoicesFromTheHolyLand.org to find out more and gain access to the films and salon.

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Understanding Israel Palestine archives: kkfi.org/program/understanding-israel-palestine/

Beyond the Walls newsletter: beyondthewalls.substack.com

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How is anti-Muslim animus driving races around the country, from Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan to Zohran Mamdani in NYC? What accounts for the way in which Muslims, a religious group entitled to freedom of religion, instead are targeted for their participation in American politics? Dr. Sahar Aziz of Rutgers Law School joined the show to unpack these questions. Follow Sahar Aziz on social media @saharazizlaw and learn more about the Center for Security, Race and Rights at csrr.rutgers.edu and on social media @RutgersCSRR and @RUCSRR

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Ian Lustick speaks to Margot Patterson about his and Eli Clifton's new book, "Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power." He discusses how changes both in the United States and in the world have affected the Israel lobby over the last 20 years, altered its strategy and made it more dangerous to Americans' freedom. Lustick is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a specialist in the history and politics of the modern Middle East.

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Sparked by the International Criminal Court's prosecution of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamnin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant for war crimes, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared in July that the United States was launching a government-wide campaign to dismantle the ICC. Richard Falk, Princeton University professor emeritus of international law and chairman of the board of trustees of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, discusses the history of the International Criminal Court, the United States' fluctuating attitudes to the ICC and international law, why some Western member states are also reluctant to support the ICC's prosecution of Israeli leaders ,and the geopolitics behind this.

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No Peace Prescription for Gaza, and Dr. El-Sayed's Proscription of AIPAC Impunity (with Richard Silverstein)

For this episode of Understanding Israel Palestine: Beyond the Walls, Jeremy Rothe-Kushel is joined by Richard Silverstein. 

Richard is an independent journalist, a Jewish American moral essayist, and the creator of the Tikun Olam blog, where he has for more than two decades reported on Israel Palestine, the broader geopolitical machinations in and of the Middle East, and how this all intersects at the heart of American politics.

 After an overview of Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, the episode focuses on Richard's recent article: 

As Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan primary, is it the end of AIPAC?

www.newarab.com/opinion/abdul-el-sayed-wins-michigan-primary-it-end-aipac

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Richard Silverstein' Tikun Olam blog: www.richardsilverstein.com

Understanding Israel Palestine archives: kkfi.org/program/understanding-israel-palestine/

Beyond the Walls newsletter: beyondthewalls.substack.com

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Bryce Greene, organizer, student, and writer based in Bloomington, Indiana, joins the show to discuss hasbara. Most Americans have never heard of hasbara"the Israeli governments official global propaganda and influence program"yet they are targeted by it every day. At $730 million, the 2026 budget is more than 11 times what it was in 2023. Hasbara fuses traditional PR with AI-driven digital psy-ops, coordinated social-media manipulation using chatbots"including a $145 million foreign-ministry campaign to influence AI tools like ChatGPT"paid grassroots influencers, and church-targeted initiatives that push Israeli-aligned narratives on congregants cell phones without disclosure. These tactics brainwash the public, suppress free speech, silence dissent, drive hatred of Palestinians, and manufacture the illusion of public consent for pro-Israeli policies. For many, the truth will be shocking"and that shock is overdue. Bryce is a panelist on the voicesfromtheholyland.org film salon on Sunday, August 16.

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Margot Patterson talks to Robin Andersen, professor emerita of communications at Fordham University, about Andersen's new book, The Complicit Lens: U.S. Media Coverage of the Genocide in Gaza. In it, Andersen writes that the mainstream media in the United States abandoned journalistic standards of accuracy and impartiality in its coverage of events following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. Recycling Israeli talking points without adequate scrutiny, U.S. legacy media became stenographers of genocide, she asserts.

Andersen is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, (FAIR), for which she writes regularly. She is the author, or co-author, of a dozen books, including A Century of Media, A Century of War, for which she won th the  Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award.