XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.misc, soc.culture.israel   
   XPost: alt.politics   
   From: d@ray   
      
   The Israeli government sought legal advice on how to bypass US federal law   
   governing the spreading of propaganda among the US population by foreign   
   states, an investigation published on 17 August by The Guardian in   
   collaboration with journalists Lee Fang and Jack Poulson shows.   
      
   US federal law requires the disclosure of foreign-backed lobbying   
   campaigns, but leaked documents reviewed by The Guardian show the Israeli   
   government sought legal advice concerning the law out of concern that   
   Jewish and Christian Zionist lobbying groups working in coordination with   
   the Israeli government would be required to register as foreign agents and   
   disclose their ties to Israel.   
      
   The documents, which include emails and legal memos originating from a hack   
   of the Israeli justice ministry, show that Israeli officials proposed   
   creating a new US nonprofit in order to continue Israel’s activities in the   
   US while avoiding scrutiny under the law.   
      
   Lee Fang and Jack Poulson write, “A legal strategy memo dated July 2018   
   noted that compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) would   
   damage the reputation of several American groups that receive funding and   
   direction from Israel and force them to meet onerous transparency   
   requirements. A separate memo noted that donors would not want to fund   
   groups registered under FARA.”   
      
   The memo says the Israeli government was worried about FARA because it   
   compels registrants to “flag any piece of ‘propaganda’ that is   
   distributed   
   to two or more parties in the US, with a disclaimer stating that it was   
   delivered by a foreign agent and then submit a copy of the ‘propaganda’ to   
   the US Department of Justice within 48 hours.”   
      
   To prevent FARA registration and the stigma and scrutiny associated with   
   it, the legal advisors suggested channeling funds through a third-party US   
   nonprofit.   
      
   Liat Glazer, a legal advisor to Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs,   
   wrote that even though the new US nonprofit would not be formally managed   
   from Israel, “we will have means of supervision and management” through   
   grant-making and “informal coordination mechanisms” such as “oral   
   meetings   
   and updates.”   
      
   The Israeli government sought legal advice from Sandler Reiff, a prominent   
   election and campaign law firm in Washington, DC. Joseph E. Sandler, the   
   former in-house general counsel to the Democratic National Committee, and   
   Joshua I. Rosenstein, a widely-cited expert on FARA, provided the legal   
   advice on behalf of the firm.   
      
   Fang and Poulson add that the Israeli government was specifically concerned   
   that a US-based nonprofit, “Kela Shlomo” (which translates to   
   “Solomon’s   
   Sling”) would be forced to register under FARA.   
   The group was formed in 2017 by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs to   
   distribute Israeli propaganda.   
      
   Rebranded as “Concert” in 2018 and “Voices of Israel” in 2021, the   
   group   
   focused on undermining the BDS movement, which leads boycott, divestment,   
   and sanctions campaigns against Israel in protest of its illegal occupation   
   of Palestine and apartheid laws.   
      
   The emails and documents were released by Distributed Denial of Secrets, or   
   DDoSecrets, a US-based nonprofit. The documents were obtained by “Anonymous   
   for Justice,” a self-described “hacktivist collective” that announced in   
   April that it had infiltrated Israel’s Ministry of Justice and retrieved   
   hundreds of gigabytes of data.   
      
      
      
      
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)