The US ban on TikTok was fueled by Israel and aims to suppress pro-Palestine content, after American youths opposed the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, an article says.
Congress has passed a ban on the Chinese-owned TikTok, citing national security concerns. The social media platform went offline in the US last month, before resuming service this week as US President Donald Trump delayed the ban.
“The company’s ownership by China never was the driving force in Congress eventually taking action,” American journalist Ken Klippenstein said on Sunday, citing congressional insiders.
He noted that the national security bill “was dead” until Hamas’ October 7, 2023 al-Aqsa Flood operation against Israel, “which brought the legislation back to life.”
“So we had a bipartisan consensus. We had the executive branch, but the bill was still dead until October 7th. And people started to see a bunch of anti-Semitic content on the platform and our bill had legs again,” the article cited former congressman Mike Gallagher, and now a Palantir executive.
He made the remarks when asked by Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, about the “real story” behind the law that could still ban TikTok, at the Munich Security Conference last week. Gallagher, along with Warner, first introduced the bill that claimed TikTok was a national security threat.
The article added that there have been hints of the real reason behind the ban for some time.
“Israeli officials and lobbyists told everyone that would listen in Washington that TikTok’s algorithm fueled American youth opposition to the Israel-Hamas war,” the article said.
“As I reported last year, a State Department source told me that a high-ranking Israeli diplomat was ranting about the supposed malign role of some Chinese-manufactured algorithm, purposely dismissive of the reality that the college protesters’ outrage was sincere, that it was about Israel’s military conduct in Gaza and not some ‘foreign malign influence’ campaign hatched in Beijing.”
The article also referred to a memo, produced by the State Department for its Near East Affairs diplomats, that describes how Deputy Director General for Public Diplomacy at Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Emmanuel Nahshon, blamed youth opposition to the war in Gaza on the TikTok algorithm, and ignored warnings from the Joe Biden administration’s Assistant Secretary for Global Public Affairs, Bill Russo, “oblivious” to the “possibility generational damage to their reputation” they were facing internationally.
“Nahshon disagreed with Russo's assertion that the United States and Israel faced a major credibility problem as a result of the unpopular war on Gaza. The Israelis seemed oblivious to the fact that they are facing major, possibly generational damage to their reputation not just in the region but elsewhere in the world,” read the memo.
It noted that the Israelis made three main counterpoints to this argument, including the one that says, “Young people have turned against Israel in large part because the Tik-Tok algorithm favors pro-Palestinian content.”
The article added that Senator Mitt Romney, a supporter of a TikTok ban, linked his support for shutting down the most popular social media platform amongst young Americans to the Palestinian issue.
"Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites — it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts."
“So the ‘real story’ is pretty simple. Congress chose to take action essentially to suppress speech and protect Israel. The Biden administration hid behind China in its justification as to why a ban was essential,” the article concluded.
Pro-Palestine demonstrations began at Columbia University in New York City on April 17, 2024, and then spread across other campuses in the US in a student movement unlike any other this century.
The protesters, who demanded an end to the US-backed war, which has killed at least 48,271 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 111,693 others, were met with brutal police violence.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Last month, a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was reached after 15 months of the regime's genocidal war on the strip.
The regime was forced to agree to the ceasefire after falling short of realizing any of its wartime objectives, including freeing the captives, “eliminating” the Gazan resistance, and causing forced displacement of Gaza’s entire population to neighboring Egypt.
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