RSS
Jerusalem Tech Community Gathers to Develop Tools to Boost Israel’s Public Diplomacy Amid Gaza War
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen speaks during a press conference with Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis at the Foreign Ministry in Athens, Greece, July 6, 2023. REUTERS/Louiza Vradi
Leaders of industry, government, and academia in Israel’s capital gathered at the headquarters of Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), a top venture capital fund headed by Erel Margalit, for a “hackathon” to develop tools to assist Israel in its public diplomacy efforts amid the Jewish state’s war with the Hamas terror group.
The event, in partnership with Israel’s Foreign Ministry, was developed to bring together the top technical talent in the capital city’s hi-tech scene for a three-day event to “help amplify Israel’s voice in the digital domain.”
Dubbed “HasbaraTech” — taking on the Hebrew word hasbara, the term used to denote efforts to explain Israel’s place in the world — the event combined top corporate and public partners to make it happen. Partners included private tech firms, top academic centers, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and Israeli government agencies at both the local and federal level.
At the event, a member of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit came to address the importance of their work.
Participants have been working on solutions such as a GIF generator to produce pro-Israel content, as well as a tool to share pro-Israel content on social media with just two clicks.
Lital Vilensky, head of innovation and marketing at the Hadassah Academic College’s Blender Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, explained the reasoning behind the event.
“How do we harness the ‘Startup Nation’ and all the brilliant minds here to amplify our voice in the world and compensate for our numerical gap?” she said. “The solution we found for this — a technology hackathon — for 48 hours, the best minds from Israeli hi-tech met together with the factors that lead Israeli hasbara to develop technological solutions for them that will increase Israel’s voice in the world.”
According to Jonathan Sagir, one of the event organizers, the hackathon aims to combat the “challenges identified as the main weak points of Israeli hasbara, including: fake news, developments to optimize the delivery of messages on social networks, and the development of tools to monitor and measure anti-Israeli biases in traditional media.”
The hackathon ends on Sunday afternoon, when the participants will present their built-out solutions to representatives of the Foreign Ministry at their headquarters in Jerusalem. Representatives from other ministries will be present as well. The goal is for some of the proposals to be picked up — through either direct funding or adaption of the tool — by any of the relevant ministries to help their hasbara efforts.
The event comes as Israel continues to face international pressure to curtail its military campaign in Gaza against Hamas, which launched the current war with its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israeli communities. Pro-Israel advocates have argued that the Jewish state’s public relations strategy will be in many ways as important to the war effort as its military strategy.
The post Jerusalem Tech Community Gathers to Develop Tools to Boost Israel’s Public Diplomacy Amid Gaza War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
RSS
Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
RSS
Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.