British Telecom may become national security threat

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Title: British Telecom may become national security threat Originally reported on www.presstv.ir by PressTV

|20000604 • National Security|United States • ISO 3166-2:US 840 USA |Politics • 11000000|

French billionaire and media tycoon Patrick Drahi is under investigation by the UK Government on the grounds of national security subsequent to his newly increased share in the previously state owned telecoms company British Telecom, or BT for short.

Drahi is known to be a passionate Zionist and, as it turns out, in addition to his interesting connections in the media world, he’s also linked to the Zionist entities intelligence agencies.

BT enjoys the custom of almost 30 million people across the UK. It is the largest provider of broadband communication services in the state. It has a significant presence in 180 different countries across the world. It lays claim to the backbone of British internet infrastructure and even handles key service contracts in government departments.

However, in the last year, the mysterious French Israeli billionaire, Patrick Drahi, has become the largest shareholder of the company raising his stake to 18%.

This move has prompted the British government to make use of the new National Security and Investment Act to investigate Drahi’s Altice Company on the basis of national security concerns.

But why would Patrick Drahi’s majority ownership of British Telecom be an issue of national security?

He has several key media and telecommunications interests in the Zionist entity. He has been pictured warmly embracing Israeli Minister of Communications, Moshe Kahlon; he also enjoys a fascinating relationship with Israel’s military and intelligence institutions.

Patrick Drahi’s Israeli news channel, i24, has employed at least 35 former members of the Israeli military as staff, including Hannah Rifkin as an i24 News correspondent who went from being the social media editor of the channel to membership in the Israeli military, and then back to the channel.

Paulina Garaya, the Germany correspondent for i24 News worked at the same time as a social media guru at DW, the German channel where Palestinians were cleansed from the workforce. She started her professional life as the news editor for the Israeli military magazine.

David Matlin, the host of a daily flagship show on i24 News, is a former sergeant in the Israeli military and Area Director for the Israel lobby group, AIPAC.

Another correspondent the channel employs is Al Pinker who was the head of intelligence in the Israeli Navy and later worked as head of division in the Israeli Prime Minister’s office.

i24 News also employed a former social media manager for the Israeli military Daniel Tsemach as a correspondent. He later went on to work as the international media manager and spokesman for the Israeli Arms Company Rafael Systems. The channel boasts of its high level of access to Zionist intelligence figures.

… three former Israeli intelligence chiefs agreed to discuss the methods used by the agencies to fight Israel’s enemies.

I24 News

Patrick Drahi also took over the left wing French newspaper founded by John Paul Sartre, “Liberation”. In 2020 he appointed a former Israeli military intelligence agent of the infamous unit 8-200 as editor in chief of the newspaper.

Drahi is also pictured with Moshe Lion, Mayor of Jerusalem, and Ze’ev Elkin, Israeli Minister of Jerusalem and Heritage Affairs, celebrating the laying of a cornerstone by his foundation in occupied Al-Quds.

Though it has not been stated publicly, it is likely that the national security concerns about Patrick Drahi’s takeover of British Telecom are Israel related.

David Miller is an academic and former professor at Bristol University, a leading British scholar and critic of Israel. He’s also a co founder and co director of a lobbying watchdog SpinWatch.

Mick Napier from Edinburgh is the Secretary of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity campaign, and one of Scotland’s most prominent advocates of the Palestinian cause.

 He has led a number of successful campaigns against the Zionist lobby, and describes himself as a lifelong socialist and anti racist and the only Scotsman certified free of racism by two Scottish courts.

What is the significance of British Telecom for national security?

Well, as viewers may or may not know, British Telecom is the formerly nationalized telecommunications company of the UK and runs all of the exchanges and the telephone systems in this country, still, and was privatized by the Tories as part of their neoliberal selling off of the nation’s assets to the highest bidder and thus it’s a really significant concern in terms of the question of national security.

If you have a hostile foreign power taking over your internet and telephone services, or having access to them in a greater way than they currently do, then that’s a really significant issue for national security. … I guess that’s what this national security investigation is over, seeing whether there is access, or potential access, by a hostile foreign power to BT should it be continuing under the ownership proportion that Drahi now has.

David Miller, Former Professor at Bristol University

What have the consequences of privatizing BT almost 40 years ago been?

While the company, like so many others, has utilized the myths of neoliberal economics to cut down on the workforce, to intensify the rate of work, and really, to make sure that any wage rises do not keep pace with inflation.

In this respect, this is similar to many, many, other companies. But this is a key part of the British infrastructure for a key industry going forwards in the 21st century.

But, no one was surprised when BT Openreach employees embarked on a strike, the first national strike I think over a very long time because of the hollowing out of their conditions and salaries and, and general work life balance being very unpleasant.

Mick Napier, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

David, what do you know about this Patrick Drahi character?

So he’s a French Israeli billionaire. He’s done meat, money, and been involved in media, in French media, in Israeli media, and also, you know, the expansion into other countries such as Morocco, for example.

So he’s, he’s got big media interests, he’s increases his proportion of BT to 18%, which is a very significant share. But also he has, in his media activities, shown his loyalty to the Zionist regime, in particular, by censoring pro Palestinian voices, but also by employing large numbers of intelligence agents from the state of Israel [sic].

So that’s an indication that he has at least an affinity, a strong affinity with the State of Israel and a real indication of the problem that that if he takes over British Telecom, you know, looks like he’s got almost controlling interest, whether that means that there will be access by Israeli intelligence agencies including, famously, the unit 8200 which is the signals intelligence unit like GCHQ, in the UK, and the National Security Agency, in the US, which is involved, explicitly, in the surveillance of mass communications through organizations like British Telecom.

So this is a guy who has a significant and serious conflict of interest in which it’s quite right that these the British state should be investigating this; I hope that they will investigate this properly.

David Miller, Former Professor at Bristol University

What are your thoughts on the British government investigating this takeover on the basis of national security?

They essentially had to investigate it, we kicked up an enormous stink about finally being able to supply competitively in the international market equipment to be used in the electronics, internet communication Infrastructure here and that flagged up the issue of national security, so they could hardly ignore Israel, now.

Having said that, relations between Britain and Israel are so cozy at the top of the tree, not public opinion, but between the elites, at least in the opinion of Israeli ambassadors, that it’s very likely that the investigation will be costly, will not really look at threats to national security, but there are many. And there’s no question that the Israeli oligarch who already owns a huge chunk of BT, we cannot be assured that he would put the British state political interests first.

In fact there’s a long history in Britain of overly trusting people who are assumed to have dual loyalty but when push came to shove, their Israeli loyalty trumped their loyalty to the British state.

I say that not as somebody who admires the British state, it’s just an empirical fact. One can present, one can produce, many examples of this.

Mick Napier, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

David has been investigating Israeli spying missions in the UK.

Many people will probably be surprised that the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, is actively targeting Britain since Israel is supposed to be an ally of Britain.

It is supposed to be … but if you look back at the historical record, not just in the UK, in the US, too. let’s take the example of the UK, you find that there are declassified MI5 files available on the internet, anyone can look at them, which show that the MI5 uncovered a spy in the top British intelligence organization in the foreign office in 1950 from Mossad and they identified this guy and they caught them, and they brought in the internal files: “Now we realize that the Israelis are a hostile state”.

This is MI5 in 1950.  And since then, things haven’t changed, Mossad has, of course, collaborated with British intelligence where it can but when it wanted to, it has conducted operations systematically against this country and indeed, against the US.

In the US they were doing this in terms of gun running back in the 1940s, all the way through to the 80s when a famous spy, Jonathan Pollard, was arrested for stealing nuclear secrets. And then back to this country where there have been several instances during the years where Israeli spies have been expelled for breaking the rules for conducting covert operations in this country. Let’s not forget, of course, the ministry of strategic affairs spy who was unmasked and had to be hastily evacuated.

That’s [sic] an active covert operation by the Israelis to take down, in their own words, a government minister of the Conservative Party. Yeah, so there is a long history of Israeli spies conducting operations against an alleged ally, the UK, and indeed in the US. And so we need to see this in the way in which the empirical evidence gives us the license for, which is, that this is a hostile foreign state attempting to influence, covertly, the internal affairs of the UK and in light of the whole question about Drahi and national security becomes very, very important.

It’s certainly the case that MI5 and MI6 sometimes might turn a blind eye to an ally’s misbehavior that sometimes they don’t want. I mean, we can recall in the coalition government, for example, of David Cameron, that Pauline Neville Jones was going to be appointed to a ministerial position, and her position was downgraded to a junior minister’s position because she was felt by MI5 to have a conflict of interest because of her strong relationships with Ukrainian and Israeli oligarchs.

So MI5 can put national security first and act against Zionists trying to infiltrate this country, and they should do so again.

David Miller, Former Professor at Bristol University

This will be quite shocking, I think, to many viewers, because we’ve heard lots haven’t we, about Soviet spies and you know, in the 50s, and the 60s and the 70s, and so on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything actually in the British media; there certainly have been no films like James Bond or anything like that, dealing with Israeli spies, so it is quite a shocking revelation.

Would you agree that control of BT by a French Zionist represents a genuine threat to Britain’s National Security?

I think that the infiltration of Zionist in this country, not just through the Israeli intelligence agencies, but also through the Zionist movements’ infiltration of public institutions, I think that that constitutes a genuine threat to national security and to the possibility that we could actually act independently in the world in a way which will be consistent with the with alleged British values, which are alleged to foster democracy, etc., (but) If you are infiltrated by the Israelis, then that’s going to be much harder than otherwise.

So yes, I think this is a genuine question of national security and I think it also applies to the US. I mean, the history of Israeli spy operations in the US it’s not widely known, but it’s there on the public record documents have been declassified. There’s tons of material on the internet should you wish to look.

David Miller, Former Professor at Bristol University

French writer Alain Gresh has claimed that he was subject to censorship for his pro Palestinian views on French channel BFM TV. Unsurprisingly, the widely followed digital news source is another plaything of Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi.

On the Middle East eye website Gresh wrote: “after I criticized Israel over its latest assault on Gaza, French digital channel, BFM TV, took my clip offline and canceled a follow up interview. The Patrick Drahi owned BFM channel claimed that this action was taken to “avoid any manipulation of the footage”. However, simultaneous to censoring pro Palestinian voices like Gresh, the channel presented a resident of Tel Aviv to present a passionately pro Israel narrative.

The “resident” was not only a former employee of Patrick Drahi at his i24 News Channel, but he was also employed as a spokesman for the Israeli military less than nine months earlier. In fact, prior to his job at i24 News, where he accompanied the Israeli prime minister on numerous trips, he was a senior community manager for the Israeli military in charge of managing the Army’s website as well as its presence on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Patrick Drahi’s channel i24 News was accused by ex employees in a Haaretz investigation of practicing an Israeli regime dictated counter-culture.

Former journalists allege that one Israeli journalist had been disinvited from appearing on the channel specifically at the behest of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.

In another case, it was claimed that one journalist had been banned from the channel following an intervention from Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair Netanyahu, this happened  while Benjamin was in government.

Large scale censorship in favor of the Israeli regime has taken place at Patrick Drahi’s news channels so blatantly that one wonders whether he can be trusted to remain loyal to British, rather than Israeli, Interests as major stakeholder in BT.

Why are Drahi’s clear links with the Israeli government and its intelligence services not being explored by Britain’s corporate media?

I have genuinely been shocked by the discipline and the almost totalitarian responses of the British media, you know, over the current proxy war between NATO and Russia.

It is remarkable the degree of discipline so when one can be quite sure that on a matter such as this, the oligarchs who own the British media, or control the British media, the main state actors, and Mr. Drahi, will be in consultation.

They might not all attend the same clubs on Pall Mall in London, but they have many, many back channels for communication.

It’s very likely that Britain’s Express statement that Israel is a key ally will trump fears about divided loyalties, which are quite obvious.

Mick Napier, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Is this shareholder takeover a new tactic of Zionist actors?

It’s not you know, I mean, there are plenty examples of Zionist involvement in media companies and social media companies.

Newsweek, for example, the American US magazine, in 2014 was reporting quite candidly on the history of Israeli spy operations in the US that have since been taken over by Zionist friendly forces. And that’s been the same for many other news organizations.

Sometimes it’s through non Jews who take over companies like the example of the Murdoch Empire. Rupert Murdoch, of course is not Jewish, but he’s very strongly pro Zionist.

So you can see there’s a pattern here, which is that Zionists who are in the media business or indeed sometimes outside the media business, do make an attempt to try and control the levers of public perception through media ownership activities.

David Miller, Former Professor at Bristol University

Mick Napier also gave us his opinion on Drahi’s channel i24 News opening a branch in Morocco a few months ago, and what it says about the Abraham accords as a mechanism of economic integration.

Well, we remember that Morocco agreed to the US Embassy being shifted to Jerusalem, in return for which Trump gave them, much as imperial powers have traditionally given, huge chunks of real estate in Africa and Asia, but Trump gave Western Sahara to Morocco, completely in contravention to international (convention).

But I’m not sure that the overriding aspect of the Abraham accords is economic, I think it’s valuable for Israel, but I think it’s overwhelmingly strategic to secure alliances with the United Arab Emirates, Morocco; consolidate the very shaky one with Egypt and open up one publicly with Saudi Arabia in order to be allowed, in full security, to get on with the task of dispossessing the Palestinians.

Mick Napier, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

There was a great deal of fuss kicked up a couple of years ago about the Chinese company Huawei’s proposed deal with the UK with claims that it posed a threat to national security.

Do you think this investigation might conclude that Drahi, or his company, does actually pose a threat to national security?

I don’t think it’s impossible. I mean, I think that there are clearly elements of the British security state who see the genuine threat which Israel poses to British foreign policy, and indeed, British domestic policy.

I mean, the idea of the Israeli intelligence agency’s unit 8200, with which Drahi has particular connections, having access to the British Telecom backbone and Internet services is a clear threat to national security.

And anyone in MI5 who concludes that it’s not, would be mad. So there will be people in MI5 who are looking at this and see it as a real issue. But the question is whether they’ll be able to express that whether that will be able to be the conclusion of the report, same as happens in the US.

The State Department, historically, has been very skeptical about Israeli involvement in US politics, but the politicians have always, as trump said, “no, no, we don’t want to do this. They’re an ally. Let’s not, let’s not do this”, but it’s not impossible, that will there will be material in there, which ministers will see confidentially, which will lead to the conclusion that his share in the company should be limited. Now, that would be a good thing.

And let’s speak to MI5 about this directly. MI5 should properly investigate this and should properly hold Drahi to account.

David Miller, Former Professor at Bristol University

Is the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign currently battling any issues at the moment?

… we want to ramp up the campaign again. We noticed that Palestine action, very much focused on Elbit, the Israeli Arms Company UK wide and I’ll be going to the to the Glasgow court in support of those who were arrested for their direct actions in Glasgow recently.

But Elbit also owns this malign surveillance technology in Glasgow City Centre. So we would hope to cooperate with everyone who recognizes how bizarrely intrusive, I mean, it doesn’t just raise questions about power state in Scotland.

It raises questions about the right of human beings to have a private life free from saturation level state surveillance.

So we would be interested to work with others in order to promote this important campaign because we’re absolutely sure that if the people in Glasgow, were aware about what was going on in the city centre, they would be very unhappy about it, indeed.

Mick Napier, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

 

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