IDF Knew Real Hamas HQ While Lying About al-Shifa

While telling the world that Hamas HQ was under al-Shifa Hospital, the IDF had already found the actual command center 8.5km away

by Gareth Porter Posted onNovember 24, 2023

Reprinted from Consortium News with the author’s permission.

Although corporate news media have made it clear they don’t buy the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claim that al-Shifa Hospital has been a cover for a Hamas command and control center and weapons armory, Western media have failed to report a much bigger story.

The IDF and the Israeli government already knew when they launched their propaganda campaign about al-Shifa that Hamas had no military command and control facility hidden there because it had already found the complex kilometers away.

As Consortium News reported last week, for 15 years the Israelis claimed  Hamas was operating its primary command and control base from a tunnel underneath al-Shifa. After the Israeli bombing campaign against Gaza began in October, the Israeli military amplified that message to press its contention that by hiding the Hamas high command, al-Shifa Hospital had lost its immunity from military operations under the law of war, and could now legitimately be taken over by force.

On Nov. 11, IDF spokesman Richard Hecht declared that al-Shifa was the “main hub of Hamas activity;” Newsweek reported the IDF regarded al-Shifa Hospital as “Hamas’s main command post” and the Times of Israel headlined “Hamas leaders again hiding under hospital”.

The crescendo of Israeli propaganda about al-Shifa being a “human shield” for Hamas came with a long report published by The New York Times on Nov. 14. It was based on interviews with eight present and former intelligence and defense officials, describing a vast military command complex under al-Shifa with multiple levels.

But something quite unexpected had happened during this new round of press stories on al-Shifa that completely demolished the entire IDF story line: the IDF had gained control of the real Hamas command and control center in an area where the Hamas leadership had previously had their above-ground offices in the Al Atatra neighborhood, in the extreme northwest of Beit Lahiya city, 8.5km away from al-Shifa.

After that office building was demolished, the IDF discovered a major tunnel facility that was quite certain had been the central headquarters for the Hamas high command – the command and control center for the entire war.

As the IDF leaked to The Jerusalem Post in a story published Nov. 14, the discovery was made “several days ago” of a tunnel with an elevator that reached thirty meters underground, compared with only five meters underground in other tunnels.  Furthermore it had been equipped with oxygen, air conditioning and more advanced communications than seen anywhere else.

Discovery of Real Hamas High Command Bunker

Map shows route to al-Shifa Hospital from the real HQ. (Google Maps). Click for large version.

That major IDF discovery, made on or before the Nov. 11 false stories about al-Shifa, threatened to undermine the Israeli political campaign to justify the IDF’s takeover and destruction of Gaza’s hospitals on the grounds that they were “human shields” for Hamas.

Al-Shifa Hospital was the centerpiece of that campaign, based on the claim that it was hiding the high command of Hamas in a tunnel underneath it. Obviously the IDF and the extreme right-wing Israel government would want to stop all further publicity about the discovery of the actual Hamas high command’s underground base.

No story about the discovery of the real Hamas high command bunker has been published inside Israel or elsewhere in the nearly two weeks since the detailed Jerusalem Post piece on Nov. 14. Somehow the Israeli government and media have been able to completely suppress the discovery of the Hamas headquarters, despite the fact that a number of foreign news media have offices in Tel Aviv and the story is still available on the internet.

Instead of forcing a major climb-down by the IDF and the Netanyahu and the Biden administrations, the discovery of the real Hamas underground high-command center merely brought a slight revision in the wording used to refer to the issue.

Sullivan Revises Wording of Issue

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan speaking to reporters in August 2021. (White House/ Erin Scott)

That slight nuance was introduced not by the IDF, but by U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Nov. 13, when he said:

“You can see even from open-source reporting that Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command and control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters.” [emphasis added.]

And a U.S. official familiar with “U.S. intelligence” who may also have been Sullivan, commented that Hamas had a “command node” under al-Shifa Hospital, using a term that Israeli officials apparently adopted in light of the new discovery of the actual high-command bunker.

Thus the IDF arrived at al-Shifa late at night on Nov. 15, a day after The Jerusalem Post story, to begin the process of the Israeli takeover with a propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the American public in particular that Hamas had been inside the hospital.

Several hours later that morning, in a seven-minute video inside the MRI building, IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus showed “grab bags” of military gear with AK-47s, grenades and uniforms neatly arranged on the floor. He insisted that Hamas had used the MRI room to store weapons and military gear.  He also  produced one computer, which he suggested had been found to contain “incriminating evidence” of military relevance.

The most obvious problem with this seven-minute video, however, is that it showed nothing that could not have been easily brought into the building by the IDF itself. The more serious problem with the presentation is that it offered no plausible reason for Hamas to have hidden a few dozen small weapons and other military gear in the MRI room of a hospital and then supposedly having left them there when they departed.

There was simply no need for the Hamas to store weapons there.  After all, Hamas is estimated to have 150 to 300 miles of space for such storage in its vast tunnel network.

Hagari Video Deleted

IDF Telegram channel. (https://t.me/idfofficial/4666/Wikimedia Commons). Click for large version.

A much bigger problem for IDF credibility on al-Shifa is that on Oct. 27, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari presented an artist’s conception showing that Hamas had taken over parts of five different buildings at al-Shifa Hospital and was using all of them to plan and coordinate its military activities.

He also showed a drawing of the structure of the main building, which he insisted was based on Israeli intelligence, showing that an underground floor of the main building was completely controlled by Hamas. He also insisted that there was an entrance within the hospital to that underground floor.

The Hagari presentation came before the discovery of the actual Hamas high-command bunker underneath the above-ground Hamas high-command office in Beit Lahiya. The IDF has now eliminated the entire video of that long, detailed and illustrated presentation by Hagari from its website, because it would become a major embarrassment to the IDF once the full truth is known.

In recent days, the IDF has fixed the world’s attention on a tunnel, the opening of which was discovered very close to the outer fence of al-Shifa Hospital grounds. The tunnel was found by the IDF to be 10m deep, compared with the 30m deep abandoned high command tunnel.

On Nov. 21, the IDF announced it had breached the heavy blast door of the tunnel, meaning that it could now determine what lay on the other side, if anything. But given that the IDF has already discovered the real Hamas command bunker elsewhere – and the absence of evidence of a connection from  hospital buildings to a tunnel – the IDF is unlikely to find such a connection from the tunnel to the hospital.

The real story of the Israeli effort to sell its argument that Hamas took over al-Shifa and other hospitals to coordinate attacks is the massive deception aimed at U.S. media and public opinion in order to justifying Israel’s war of obliteration of the population of Gaza.

That campaign of deceit has had the full-throated support of the Biden administration, which stands equally guilty of misleading the American people in its support for an illicit Israeli war.

The failure of the Israeli propaganda campaign has been so decisive that most major media organizations have explicitly distanced themselves from the Israeli claims about al-Shifa, and several have shown either field reporters or analysts in the studio declaring explicitly that the evidence displayed by the Israelis had not proved their case at all.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian writing on U.S. national security policy. His latest book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, was published in February of 2014. Follow him on Twitter: @GarethPorter.

 

Night Raids, Tear Gas, and Captivity

Reflections on a mother's eyes.

by Matthew Hoh Posted onNovember 27, 2023

Note: I originally intended this as a short post to provide videos and photos of my time in Palestine in 2017. With news of a possible hostage swap, my mind is on the terror that detention and captivity bring to Israeli and Palestinian families. At the end of this essay, along with the photos, is a documentary of our time in Palestine in 2017, it is violent and distressing.

As I type, reports are being posted that the Israeli government and Hamas are near a deal for a hostage swap.

More than nine years ago, I had dinner with Bowe Bergdahl’s parents. Bowe was the American soldier who had been held prisoner by the Taliban for nearly five years. At that point, 41 years old and having been to war three times, I had seen a lot. However, I had never seen a look of pain like I did in the eyes of Jani, Bowe’s mom, that night. The next day, President Obama announced Bowe’s release as part of a prisoner exchange with the Taliban.

I have been with mothers as they have buried their sons. Holding them as they are forced to accept the atrocity of a son being put in the ground transfers an agony to you that is unnatural and ghastly as if an unholy specter has entered your body, mind and soul to vandalize your past love and steal your future. Similarly, I once had the task of informing a young man of his brother’s death. Putting that kind of pain onto someone was the worst moment of my life.

But I had never seen pain like I saw in Jani’s eyes that night. A mother whose child is held captive in both unknown circumstances and well-understood violence is enduring a helplessness, grief and terror that should never be known.

Then I went to Palestine.

In 2017, I was part of a Veterans For Peace (VFP) delegation that spent three weeks in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. We spent our time with both Israelis and Palestinians, and on multiple occasions, we participated in non-violent resistance against the occupation. Many of those times, maybe most, we were met with a violent response from the Israeli security services as well as Israeli settlers.

We witnessed Palestinians endure the daily humiliation and subjugation of occupation – the checkpoints, the searches, and the house raids – to which, as foreigners, we were not subject, but, as veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, we were familiar with committing. We heard and met those who had loved ones gunned down in the streets where they were born by an occupying power, again something with which we were familiar. There was also the apartheid, evident and apparent – separate roads, denial of water and land, eviction and destruction of housing, and, of course, a forbidden airport. These were rules, restrictions and restraints from which we were exempt, but the Palestinians were not. Yet, none of that is what scarred me.

In every village, town and city we went to in those three weeks, I saw a nightmare in the eyes of Palestinian parents that I had seen only before in Jani’s eyes. Of all the crimes of the occupation, we heard none so often and emotionally as the arrest of children.

Since 2000, the Israeli military and border police have abducted more than 500 Palestinian children a year. These arrests are almost always arbitrary, with night raids on a home and the child taken from bed. A day or two or three in custody, with little information provided to the family, during which the child is interrogated, treated roughly and abused, put in solitary confinement or not allowed sleep, and often forced to sign a confession in Hebrew, which they cannot read. Sometimes that confession is just nonsense; other times, it serves as a mark against the child, and, many times, chillingly, it implicates family members.

Most children are released in 24-72 hours, but some are not. Before October 7, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, at least 146 Palestinian children were being held, the majority without sentence, in Israeli prisons for “security” purposes. The New York Times reports that currently there are 200 Palestinian boys in Israeli prisons, along with 75 women and 5 girls. These women and children would make up the bulk of the Palestinians exchanged for Israelis in the reported deal. Overall, it is believed there are 7,000 Palestinians in Israeli detention.

This rendition of children is as systematic as it is arbitrary; no family can know whether or not their child will be next. A village or a neighborhood only has to be visited with one or two such kidnappings a year to strike a fear in parents that dominates every moment of their life, awake and asleep. It is a deliberate form of state terrorism meant to dissuade resistance to the occupation.

The terror, anger and debilitating apprehension I encountered in Palestinian families across the West Bank, one family after another, was only outdone by their determination to tell us what the occupation was doing to them. I don’t think what we witnessed will ever leave me, just as what I saw in Jani’s eyes will ever been forgotten. It certainly will never leave those who have had to bear it, and just like our occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, with those checkpoints, shootings and night raids, the Israeli occupation has only served to engender and sustain resistance. A resistance that will only grow more violent and extreme as it is suppressed. What else could ever come from occupation, subjugation and humiliation?

Among those held in Israeli prisons are my friends Bassem and Ahed Tamimi (see the documentary at the end of this post). Bassem is a long-time leader of the non-violent resistance in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, a place, among others, where our VFP delegation encountered grenades, gas and live rounds. His daughter, Ahed, gained international attention several years ago when, as a minor, she was arrested by the Israeli military. Bassem was arrested in October without charge, as far as I know. More than 2,000 Palestinians have been detained along with Bassem in the West Bank during the last six weeks, while Israeli soldiers, border police and settlers have killed more than 200. This follows a mass subjugation campaign in the West Bank that saw more than one Palestinian shot dead by Israeli security forces and settlers each day this year before October 7. (Here is an excellent recent report by the AP on the current situation in the West Bank.)

22-year-old Ahed was arrested earlier this month by more than a dozen soldiers in a night raid on her family’s home. The charges against Ahed are of incitement on social media, specifically a post on Instagram. Ahed and her family reject the charges, saying the account that posted the offending words was not hers. I believe that. This war in Palestine is the most propagandized war of our lifetimes, and the use of social media to inform and misinform, rally and manipulate, and justify and condemn is one of its hallmarks. To masquerade as someone else on Instagram or hack an account to justify arrest, detention or worse, is simple. Before I stopped counting, I noted 20 Ahed Tamimi accounts on Instagram, with her picture in the profile. War, a house that has forever been built on lies, has entered a new era. As we are coming to understand, social media is as much a critical driver of war as the newspaper and telegraph line were, and the internet is as much a revolution in military affairs as the stirrup or gunpowder.

I hope the reports of a hostage swap are accurate and that the horror, grief and fear dominating hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian families will come to an end. Maybe by the time you are reading this, men, women, and children have been returned home to their families, and a pain I hope none of us will ever personally know will come to an end. Perhaps, for a relative few, there can be some relief amidst the ongoing death, fear and suffering.

---

Documentary and photos from 2017 Veterans For Peace Delegation to Palestine:

Documentary on VFP 2017 Delegation to Palestine, warning graphic content.

Outside the US Embassy in Tel Aviv. This might have been our only action that was not met with violence. (Photo: Ellen Davidson)

Non-violent action on Shuhada Street in Hebron. Shuhada Street, once a part of a thriving market and residential neighborhood, is off-limits to Palestinians. No more than five minutes later settlers and a platoon of soldiers arrived. (Photo: Ellen Davidson)

Advancing arm in arm with Issa Amro, one of many unheralded “Palestinian Gahndis” towards a line of Israeli Border Police in Hebron. Ray McGovern, the first red shirt on the left, had just been struck in the arm by a tear gas canister. (Photo: unknown)

Gassed in Hebron (Photo: Ellen Davidson)

Children in the Bethlehem refugee camp. (Photo: Will Griffin)

The apartheid wall in Bethany. Chris Smiley, filmmaker, pictured. (Photo: Matthew Hoh)

Outside the Knesset in Tel Aviv after having met with Palestinian MPs. The Palestinian MPs laid out clearly how Palestinian citizens of Israel were second-class citizens. (Photo: Ellen Davidson)

I had my falafel interrupted by Israeli Border Police, East Jerusalem. (Photo: Ellen Davidson)

Gassed again in Nabi Saleh 

Matthew Hoh is the Associate Director of the Eisenhower Media Network. Matt is a former Marine Corps captain, Afghanistan State Department officer, a disabled Iraq War veteran and is a Senior Fellow Emeritus with the Center for International Policy. He writes at Substack.

Four Myths About Putin

by Ted Snider Posted onNovember 27, 2023

In the Russo-Ukrainian war, US propaganda has exploited a time tested syllogistic sophistry. First you identify the nation at war with the individual who leads the nation. It is not Russia’s war on Ukraine, it is Putin’s war on Ukraine. Then you identify the individual with Hitler. At various times, Hilary Clinton, John McCain, Lindasy Graham, Marco Rubio and Zbigniew Brzezinski have all compared Putin to Hitler, as have James Clapper, Kevin McCarthy, Polish President Andrzej Duda, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and others. What powerfully follows psychologically, is that, since the war is a war against “a second Hitler,” any method used to stop him is morally and militarily justified.

A corollary of the Hitler strategy is the madman strategy. By labeling a leader a madman, you render him incapable of reason or, therefore, of negotiation in the public imagination. If he can’t be negotiated with, he can only be defeated on the battlefield. Like the Hitler strategy, the madman strategy is not new. Leading up to the 1953 coup in Iran, while officials privately compared Mohammad Mossadeq to Gandhi, they publicly painted him as unstable, irrational, hysterical and crazy. Putin has been painted as an irrational actor who cannot be reasoned with, trusted or negotiated with.

Putin is no Gandhi. Russia’s pounding assault on Ukraine has disqualified him as a nominee for a Nobel Peace Prize. But Putin is no Hitler.

Myth #1: Putin Wants to Wipe Ukraine Off the Map

The US has consistently accused Putin of seeking to annex Ukraine, end its sovereignty and erase it from the map.

But eliminating the state of Ukraine has never been a stated goal of the Russian military operation. Russia has several times listed their grievances and goals and that goal has never been among them. A guarantee that Ukraine will remain neutral and not join NATO, a guarantee that NATO won’t turn Ukraine into an armed anti-Russian bridgehead on its border, and assurances of protection of the rights of Russian speaking Ukrainians have all been consistently on that list. But wiping Ukraine off the face of the map has not.

John Mearsheimer has pointed out that “There is no evidence in the public record that Putin was contemplating, much less intending to put an end to Ukraine as an independent state and make it part of greater Russia when he sent his troops into Ukraine on February 24th.” Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov recently reminded that Russia “recognized the sovereignty of Ukraine back in 1991, on the basis of the Declaration of Independence, which Ukraine adopted when it withdrew from the Soviet Union.” That Declaration of Independence says that Ukraine “solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs. . ..” That was “one of the main points for Russia,” Lavrov said before saying clearly, “In that version, on those conditions, we support Ukraine’s territorial integrity.”

Russia does not desire to erase a neutral Ukraine from the map; Russia does desire to erase NATO from Ukraine.

Myth #2: Putin Wants to Reestablish the Russian Empire

“The Ukraine crisis is not a territorial conflict, and I want to make that clear…[W]e have no interest in conquering additional territory,” Putin recently told an audience of scholars and diplomats. The war, he explained, is a war over a future security arrangement, over “the principles underlying the new international order,” not over acquiring more territory.

US president Joe Biden has claimed from the first day of the war that Putin “has much larger ambitions than Ukraine. He wants to, in fact, reestablish the former Soviet Union. That’s what this is about.” Reading from the same script, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Putin has “made clear that he’d like to reconstitute the Soviet empire.”

But if Putin had wanted to reestablish the Soviet empire, he wouldn’t have waited until the 2014 coup that aimed to pull Ukraine into the Western sphere to act. He wouldn’t have resisted the mandate from parliament to use military force, not just in Crimea, but in all of Ukraine. At that time, that would have been an easy military feat. He would not have tried to prevent referendums in the Donbas that sought to leave Ukraine and follow Crimea to Russia, and he would have accepted them when they were held.

If Putin had wanted to reestablish the Soviet empire, he would have completed the conquest of Georgia when Russian troops defended South Ossetia from Georgian shelling in 2008. He would have marched the advancing Russian troops all the way to the capitol of Tbilisi and reclaimed Georgia. As in the Donbas, Putin would have recognized the declarations of independence by the ethnic Russian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. And when he finally did recognize their autonomy following the Georgian invasion, he would have annexed them to Russia and not just recognized their autonomy.

There is no evidence in the historical record that Putin has sought to reestablish the Soviet empire.

Myth #3: Putin Has Not Been Serious About Negotiating Peace

Putin has always been serious about negotiating peace. In 2014, he did not annex the Donbas because he remained committed to solving the problems of the region by negotiating its autonomy within Ukraine through the Minsk Accords. It was the Political West that was not serious about negotiating for peace. It is now clear, because of their own testimony, that Germany, France and Ukraine used the Minsk negotiations as a deception to buy time for Ukraine to build an armed forces capable of achieving a military solution to the Donbas. Europe never intended to negotiate a peaceful solution. And the US never pressured them to do so nor gave Ukraine the support it needed to do so.

Putin, though, always remained committed to negotiating peace through the Minsk Accords. In 2014, he “believed that we would manage to come to terms, and Lugansk and Donetsk would be able to reunify with Ukraine somehow under the agreements – the Minsk agreements.” And on the eve of the war in 2022, he was “convinced” that there was “still . . . no alternative.” In the days leading up to the war, Putin continued to push for the implementation of the Minsk Accords. Geoffrey Roberts, professor emeritus of history at University College Cork, reports that Putin spoke with Macron on February 12 and complained of the West’s failure to prompt Kiev to implement the agreements and that the next day he told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that he believed a solution within the Minsk agreements was still possible but that Germany and France had to pressure Ukraine.

In December 2021, Putin pressed the US and NATO to negotiate mutual security guarantees, but the US was not interested in negotiating, and Russia’s central demand, not expanding NATO to Ukraine, was never on the table.

Once the war began, it was the US that was not serious about negotiating a peace, not Putin. Putin demonstrated his seriousness in several sets of talks, starting in Belarus in the first days of the war. According to Naftali Bennett, who was at the time prime minister of Israel and who was mediating negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, Putin made “huge concessions,” and “there was a good chance of reaching a ceasefire,” but the US “blocked it.” Weeks later, Russia would again engage in sincere and promising negotiations in Istanbul. Those negotiations would produce an initialed tentative agreement. But, according to several sources who were present at the talks, the US blocked those talks too. It was not Putin who was not serious about negotiating a peace.

Myth #4: Putin is a Thug Who Murders His Opponents

A constant claim of the Political West is that Putin deals with political threats and opposition by having the opposition killed. “There is,” however, according to the late Stephen Cohen, who was professor emeritus of politics and director of Russian Studies at Princeton, “no actual evidence . . . to support” this claim.

Putin biographer Philip Short concedes that Putin may have “allowed a climate to develop” in which powerful people could order killings. But, he says, “contrary to widespread belief in the West,” Putin “did not” authorize the killings. Short argues that in a list of ten suspicious deaths of Putin critics compiled by The Washington Post in 2017, “only the death of Alexandr Litvinenko can be laid firmly at Putin’s door. All the others appear to have been killed for reasons unconnected with the Kremlin.”

Cohen argued that, even for that one death, despite the verdict that Putin was “probably” responsible for Litvinenko, “there is still no conclusive proof.” “Not a shred of actual proof,” he says, “points to Putin.”

None of this establishes Putin as the protagonist in history. But the many myths written in the west to paint him as the arch-antagonist – as the “second Hitler” – do not stand up under analysis.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on US foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.  To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.

IMPERIALIST PIRACY

Greece PM laments lack of progress with UK on Parthenon Sculptures

The Parthenon Sculptures were removed  STOLEN 

by British diplomat Lord Elgin in the early 19th century.

PHOTO: Reuters

PUBLISHED ONNOVEMBER 26, 2023 


LONDON — Talks over a possible return of the British Museum's Parthenon Sculptures to Athens are not advancing quickly enough, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Sunday (Nov 26).

His comments came as he prepared to meet British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in the coming week.

Athens has long campaigned for the return of the Elgin Marbles, as they are often described.


The 75m of Parthenon frieze, 15 metopes and 17 sculptures were removed by diplomat Lord Elgin in the early 19th century, when he was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which was then ruling Greece.

"We have not made as much progress as I would like in the negotiations," Mitsotakis told BBC television on Nov 26. "I'm a patient man, and we've waited for hundreds of years, and I will persist in these discussions.

"We feel that the sculptures belong to Greece and that they were essentially stolen," Mitsotakis added before playing down the ownership aspect of the discussions and focusing instead on the importance of reuniting the sculptures with those in Athens.

GOT A RECIEPT?!

British officials say the works were acquired legally.

Sunak in March ruled out any change to a law that stops the British Museum handing the marbles back to Greece permanently, but the legislation does not prohibit a loan.

George Osborne, a former British finance minister who is chairman of the museum's trustees, this month expressed hope for a deal that would allow the sculptures "to be seen in Athens".

Mitsotakis is due to meet Sunak on Nov 28.

That meeting will come a day after the Greek Prime Minister meets Keir Starmer, leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, which is riding high in opinion polls ahead of an election expected in 2024.

The Financial Times last week reported that Starmer would not block a "mutually acceptable" loan deal for the sculptures.

UK

Tories woo Middle East cash — just not for their beloved Telegraph

As Global Investment Summit tries to sell brand Britain, MPs and Telegraph journalists fear sale of conservative standard-bearer to UAE-backed fund.

There is mounting Conservative unease at the proposed acquisition of the Daily Telegraph — a staple of British conservatism for almost 200 years |

 Rob Pinney/Getty Images

BY STEFAN BOSCIA

POLITICO UK
NOVEMBER 26, 2023 

LONDON — Brexit Britain is open to the world — unless you’re a Dubai-backed fund trying to buy up the governing Tories’ favorite newspaper.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces an awkward dilemma Monday as his much-hyped Global Investment Summit coincides with mounting Conservative unease at the proposed acquisition of the Daily Telegraph — a staple of British conservatism for almost 200 years — to a fund backed by United Arab Emirates state money.

Amid mounting calls for an official review of the deal and deep concerns about press freedom, senior Conservative MP David Davis warned “being open for business is not the same as being naive.”

But Investment Minister Dominic Johnson told POLITICO on the eve of the summit that Britain needs to avoid being “sentimental about some of our so-called treasured assets” — and signaled he’s relaxed about the deal if the right process is followed.

It’s hardly the ideal backdrop as Sunak and other ministers spend the day in Hampton Court Palace, former residence of Henry VIII, trying to convince leaders from the world’s biggest companies to invest in the underperforming British economy. Ahead of the summit, the U.K. government said it had secured £29.5 billion worth of investment commitments in the country’s green energy, life sciences and technology sectors.

The Global Investment Summit will also play host to representatives from state-backed sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East — so expect schmoozing of representatives from the UAE to play a part.

A growing number of Tory MPs are already calling on Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer to launch an official review of the Telegraph deal. They fear a sale would precipitate a curtailing of editorial freedom at one of Britain’s largest newspapers.

Tory MP John Hayes, a standard bearer for the party’s right, has warned in a letter to Frazer that “material influence over a quality national newspaper being passed to a foreign ruler at any time should raise concerns.” Frazer said on Wednesday she was “minded” to issue a Public Interest Intervention Notice (PIIN), which would trigger a review of the sale by two British watchdogs. But she has not yet made a final decision.

“The truth of the matter is that these are really rather unusual investments,” warned Davis.

“We’re talking about a billion quid and the yearly profits of the Telegraph have never been above £40 million, which implies the interest in this is not simply financial and is something else,” Davis said. “Maybe when they look at it the UAE will be the best candidate, but we have to go through that process first.”

Art of the deal

The controversy has been months in the making, but came to a head last week.

Rishi Sunak faces an awkward dilemma Monday as his much-hyped Global Investment Summit coincides with mounting Conservative unease at the proposed acquisition of the Daily Telegraph | Pool photo by Ian Forsyth/AFP via Getty Images

Lloyds Bank took control of the the Telegraph and the Spectator, a favorite magazine of the Conservative grassroots, earlier this year in an attempt to recoup an estimated £1.1 billion outstanding debt owed by the Barclay family — the now former owners of the titles.

Lloyds last week approved an attempt by Redbird IMI, an investment vehicle controlled by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, to buy out the Barclay family’s debt. It would allow the fund to take control of both publications without a planned auction.

It’s already sent alarm bells ringing in the Telegraph newsroom. Editor Chris Evans wrote an editorial last week urging any future owner of the paper to guarantee complete editorial independence in perpetuity.

Redbird IMI chief Jeff Zucker, the former president of CNN, insisted on Friday that the Telegraph would maintain its editorial independence in an interview with the Financial Times.

One member of staff at the title, granted anonymity to speak freely about their workplace, said they didn’t believe “a f*cking word” from Zucker.

The UAE ranked 145th out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders 2023 Press Freedom Index. It’s a country where criticism of the royal family and members of the government is not tolerated.

Fiona O’Brien, the U.K. bureau director for Reporters Without Borders, said “inside the UAE, journalists” — including those at publications associated with the fund trying to buy the Telegraph — “often face interference in the editorial process.”

Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, who led UAE’s censorship agency for five years, will be a senior member of the new ownership of the Telegraph if the sale goes through, according to The Times.

Al-Jaber, coincidentally, is also the UAE’s president-designate for the looming Dubai-hosted COP28 climate summit.

The saga is creating serious headaches for the British government as it grapples with maintaining an economy open to vast swathes of state investment from countries who do not share the same democratic ideals as the U.K.

A spokesperson for No. 10 Downing Street last week did not deny a report in the Telegraph that the Foreign Office intervened in Frazer’s statement about the sale in order to tone down the language out of fear of offending UAE officials before the Global Investment Summit and COP28.

Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, who led UAE’s censorship agency for five years, will be a senior member of the new ownership of the Telegraph if the sale goes through 

| Ryan Lim/AFP via Getty Images

Taking a government position on selling a conservative-leaning newspaper to Middle Eastern state interests may also raise eyebrows. Ministers happily allowed investment into other revered British cultural institutions, including football clubs Manchester City and Newcastle United. The clubs are controlled by groups backed by the Abu Dhabi royal family and the Saudi Arabian regime respectively.

Manchester City’s owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is also the deputy prime minister of the UAE, is bankrolling the attempted acquisition of The Telegraph.
Open for business

Speaking to POLITICO, Investment Minister Dominic Johnson indicated he would not oppose the sale of a national newspaper to the UAE as long as the proper “judicial processes” were followed.

“The UAE is a first class and extremely well run country. I do a lot of work with them, I’ve always been immensely impressed by the caliber of leadership there,” Johnson told POLITICO.

“My view is that we remain an open economy and it’s very important we remain an open economy if we’re to have the wealth and investment to power this country.”


He added that “we can be quite sentimental about some of our so-called treasured assets” and that “the reality is that media and information has moved on and clearly most of us today don’t buy a physical newspaper or necessarily go to a traditional news source.”

A former Conservative cabinet minister said “our friends in the Gulf need to know that they are safe to invest in Britain — they certainly were under past prime ministers of both colors” and that any government push to intervene in the sale “is unhelpful.”

Sunak will likely to find the timing of the row unhelpful at Hampton Court Monday, where the investment summit’s sponsors include none other than Lloyds Bank.

US, Britain and other countries ink ‘secure by design’ AI guidelines

WE ALL KNOW SELF REGULATION DOES NOT WORK

SO LETS TRY IT AGAIN

The guidelines suggest cybersecurity practices AI firms should implement when designing, developing, launching, and monitoring AI models.




The United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and 15 other countries have released global guidelines to help protect AI models from being tampered with, urging companies to make their models “secure by design.”

On Nov. 26, the 18 countries released a 20-page document outlining how AI firms should handle their cybersecurity when developing or using AI models, as they claimed “security can often be a secondary consideration” in the fast-paced industry.

The guidelines consisted of mostly general recommendations such as maintaining a tight leash on the AI model’s infrastructure, monitoring for any tampering with models before and after release, and training staff on cybersecurity risks.

Not mentioned were certain contentious issues in the AI space, including what possible controls there should be around the use of image-generating models and deep fakes or data collection methods and use in training models — an issue that’s seen multiple AI firms sued on copyright infringement claims.

“We are at an inflection point in the development of artificial intelligence, which may well be the most consequential technology of our time,” U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “Cybersecurity is key to building AI systems that are safe, secure, and trustworthy.”

Related: EU tech coalition warns of over-regulating AI before EU AI Act finalization

The guidelines follow other government initiatives that weigh in on AI, including governments and AI firms meeting for an AI Safety Summit in London earlier this month to coordinate an agreement on AI development.

Meanwhile, the European Union is hashing out details of its AI Act that will oversee the space and U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order in October that set standards for AI safety and security — though both have seen pushback from the AI industry claiming they could stifle innovation.

Other co-signers to the new "secure by design" guidelines include Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, South Korea, and Singapore. AI firms, including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic and Scale AI, also contributed to developing the guidelines.