Reporting on spyware shows the underlying anti-Israel bias of the media

From AP:

BOSTON (AP) — A leading Egyptian opposition politician was targeted with spyware multiple times after announcing a presidential bid — including with malware that automatically infects smartphones, security researchers have found. They say Egyptian authorities were likely behind the attempted hacks.

Discovery of the malware last week by researchers at Citizen Lab and Google’s Threat Analysis Group prompted Apple to rush out operating system updates for iPhones, iPads, Mac computers and Apple Watches to patch the associated vulnerabilities.

Citizen Lab said in a blog post that attempts beginning in August to hack former Egpytian lawmaker Ahmed Altantawy involved configuring his phone’s connection to the Vodaphone Egypt mobile network to automatically infect it with Predator spyware if he visited certain websites not using the secure HTTPS protocol.

Prior to that, Citizen Lab said, attempts were made beginning in May to hack Altantawy’s phone with Predator via links in SMS and WhatsApp messages that he would have had to click on to become infected.

Once infected, the Predator spyware turns a smartphone into a remote eavesdropping device and lets the attacker siphon off data.

Given that Egypt is a known customer of Predator’s maker, Cytrox, and the spyware was delivered via network injection from Egyptian soil, Citizen Lab said it had “high confidence” Egypt’s government was behind the attack.

Notice anything missing?

Whenever the media reports on spyware from an Israeli company, they always prominently mention Israel. But when the spyware comes from a different country - in this case, North Macedonia and Hungary - no one says a word.

When Ken Roth was criticized for always mentioning Israel in connection to Pegasus spyware, when it is a private company, he justified that by saying that Israeli export laws allowed the spyware to be sold to countries that are less than paradigms of freedom and democracy. But when it comes to these other companies, the countries that allow them to sell their wares to places like Egypt are not even mentioned in the articles, or by Roth. 

Earlier this year, the US Department of Commerce announced they were blacklisting four spyware firms:

Today, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added four entities, Intellexa S.A. in Greece, Cytrox Holdings Crt in Hungary, Intellexa Limited in Ireland, and Cytrox AD in North Macedonia to the Entity List for trafficking in cyber exploits used to gain access to information systems, threatening the privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide.

Where were all the anguished articles about how Greece and Hungary and Ireland and North Macedonia were peddling tools to repressive governments to target dissidents?

They were never written. But the New York Times did cover part of this story - by highlighting not the countries that allowed these exports, but the Israeli connection to two of the four companies.

If spyware doesn't come from Israel, or is not connected to Israel, the media's interest in the stories plummets to practically nothing.  

This is the textbook definition of media bias.

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An 1882 matzoh blood libel in Hungary

Here is the text of an 1883 newspaper article about a blood libel in Hungary at the time 

THE PASSOVER MURDER. 

Vienna, Austria, Aug. 13.—On the 3d day of August the Hungarian Jews who had been under trial on the charge of having killed a young Christian girl for the purpose of mixing her blood with the Passover bread were acquitted. The full text of the conclusion of the trial and of the judgment rendered by the public prosecution is now before me. The prosecutor frankly admitted that the prosecution had never any foundation for their charges, outside of prejudice and ignorant superstition.

T'he circumstances of this case may be summarized as follows: Early in the month of March, lt042, a young girl named Esther Solymosi, in the service of a woman living near Tisza Eslaz, in Hungary, was sent by her mistress to the town to make some purchases, and went, but never returned. As excitement and inquiry grew concerning her dis-appearance, the story began to be circulated that the JEWS HAD KILLED THE GIRL to use her blood for ritual purposes. Samuel Scharf, a child of 5 years old, the son of the Jewish butcher, was induced by liberal gifts of candy to say that his father had called the girl into the synagogue and cut her throat. The child stated that his elder brother, Moritz, a boy of 15, had held the girls' hand while his father killed her. Moritz, however, denied all knowledge of the murder, but the next day, being examined by the police, said that his father and some other Jews killed the girl, and that he had seen the whole affair through the key-hole. Thereupon, the elder Scharf, and ten or twelve other Jews, were seized and thrown into prison.

 In June, 1882, a body was found in the River Thetas, dressed in the lost girl's clothes. No marks of violence were visible upon It, and this should have settled the matter  and released the Jews, but public feeling was. very strong against them, and few would believe that it was the missing Esther. The body was much disfigured from long immersion in the water, the girl 'a mother refused to recognize it, the village doctor declared it to be the body of a woman of 20, and the story was circulated that the Jews had dressed another body in Esther's clothes, to turn aside suspicion from themselves. 

The suspected Jews were kept in prison, and subjected to every species of indignity until June 20, l883, when their trial began, at Nyireghyaza, Hungary. It ended, as has been stated Aug. 3, in the acquittal of the accused parties. Not that there was no evidence against them, there was, on the contrary, an enormous mass of it, but it was almost wholly unworthy of belief. The only motive for the alleged crime was that the blood was wanted to mix with the Passover bread., but as no evidence whatever could be given to show this to be a custom of the Jews, it was soon dropped by the court, and the public prosecutor dismissed it with a mere allusion from his final charge. 

The story of the boy Moritz, completely broke down under cross-examination, although he had evidently learned it well, and repeated it as accurately as a parrot. In more than one detail the boy contradicted himself, and by actual test it was found that through the keyhole he could not have seen nearly all the movements that he described, even had they been going on within. Moreover, the Judge would not admit the boy to oath, not merely on account of his youth, but also because of his evident LACK OF MORAL PRINCIPLE, as shown in his abjuring his religion, and the hatred be manifested toward his parents The magistrate who conducted the preliminary Inquiry last year, who seemed to have been the principal agency in giving currency to the  charge,   and who no doubt instructed the boy Moritz to in the lesson he repeated in court, was found to have been a convict, and to have spent twelve years In an Austrian prison for a murder. His evidence, which was brought forward to strengthen that of Moritz, was thrown out by the court. The raftsmen who had testified that they had taken another body in Esther's clothes from a Jewish woman, and sunk it in the river, afterward confessed that it was false, and they were indicted for perjury. . 

Indeed the amount of false swearing and lying by witnesses un both sides, was one of the most remarkable features of the trial, and raises the question whether men and women, in a certain stage of superstition, know when they are telling the truth. As the prosecution was forced to the admission that it had literally no reliable evidence, it had nothing to do but to let the prisoners go. So they were fully acquitted, and after being kept in prison over a year, on a base and groundless charge, and while there subjected to cruelties and insults without number, and kept under trial for thirty-three days, were dismissed with the kind injunction to harbor no bitter feeling against it Christian fellow subjects. If they can obey this injunction they will prove themselves far better followers of the meek-Nazarene than those who bear his name. 

Tablet magazine published a horrendous postscript to this affair in 2012:

Last Thursday, Jobbik MP Zsolt Baráth delivered a five-minute speech from the floor of parliament commemorating a blood libel that took place 130 years ago. Several days before Passover in 1882, a young girl was murdered in the Hungarian village of Tiszaeszlár, and the local Jewish community was blamed. A group of 15 accused Jews were eventually acquitted in a court trial, but the murder victim, Eszter Solymosi, has since become a martyr figure for the Hungarian right. A memorial constructed in her honor several years ago is a pilgrimage spot for Jobbik members and other far-right activists. “As we can see, there is no clear explanation, we do not know what happened to Eszter,” Baráth said. “Nevertheless, there is one point common to the known variants: The Jewry and the leadership of the country were severely implicated in the case.”

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Palestinian newspaper defends the Mufti's collaboration with Nazis

Mark Regev wrote an article in the Jerusalem Post on November 11, marking the anniversary of the British victory at El Alamein, Egypt in 1942. He says that had the British lost that battle, the Nazis would have overrun Palestine and all the Jews there would have been murdered - because the Palestinian Arabs would have become willing collaborators with the Nazis.

Regev brings proof by noting the well-documented antisemitism and Nazi collaboration of the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin Husseini, whom Palestinians still revere, as well as the adamant Palestinian Arab opposition to allowing Jews in mortal danger to immigrate to Palestine. 

Palestinian writer Amani Qurum is very upset at Regev, saying that his article is filled with lies. 

Writing in Al Quds, Qurum is angry at Regev for his "fierce and repeated attack on Hajj Amin al-Husseini, may God have mercy on him, accusing him of anti-Semitism and cooperating with the Germans and support for what is known as the final solution to the Jews and genocide and help in the killing of a million and a half Jews and pressure on Britain to close the gates of Palestine in front of Jewish immigration." 

Regev didn't say Husseini directly contributed to the murder of 1.5 million children, but that Husseini preferred to see them die rather than go to Palestine. This is documented in an incident, recounted by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:

In the spring of 1943, al-Husayni learned of negotiations between Germany's Axis partners with the British, the Swiss, and the International Red Cross to transport thousands of Jewish children to safety in Palestine. He sought to prevent the rescue operations with protests directed at the Germans and Italians, as well as at the governments of Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Demanding that the operations be scuttled, al-Husayni suggested that the children be sent to Poland where they would be subject to "stricter control." Although his preference that the children be killed in Poland rather than transported to Palestine appears to have been explicit, the impact of the letters was nil. 

Qurum denies or ignores nearly all of the crimes of Amin Husseini. But she admits one - and justifies it:

Of course, Husseini’s relations with the Germans cannot be denied at all, but they must be placed in their proper circumstances and context. Germany did not occupy Palestine and did not give it to the Jews falsely. On the contrary, Britain and France shared the region as a whole between them as the two largest colonial powers at that time. Within the framework of the game of alliances, isn't it natural for al-Husayni to bet politically on Germany, only in order to defend Palestine, which colonial Britain unjustly gave to the Jews?

Qurum proves Regev's main point: Palestinians need to acknowledge their support for a Nazi collaborator, not treat him as a hero. Because of his stature, it is unthinkable for a Palestinian writer to criticize the Mufti, whose hatred for Jews cannot be papered over - he was quite proud of it. 

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