Up until recently, anyway, Barak Ravid was an analyst with Unit 8200, a prominent Israeli spying agency. As recently as last year, Ravid was also a reservist with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) military group.
Ravid is making a name for himself, though not necessarily in the way he probably intended, by spreading propaganda about how "Netanyahu is on a winning streak," as one of his recent headlines for Axios states. Ravid also went viral on social media recently for an Orwellian post he shared claiming that Israel's attacks on Hezbollah are "not intended to lead to war but are an attempt to reach de-escalation through escalation."
Social media users mocked Ravid relentlessly for this bizarre reasoning, not to mention lambasted him for claiming that the bombing of Yemen, the assassinations of numerous Hamas and Hezbollah chiefs, and the infamous exploding pagers incident point to the Israeli military's many stunning "successes" on the battlefield.
Ravid holds incredible power and influence over the Capitol Hill press corps as well. Back in April, he was awarded the prestigious White House Press Correspondents' Award "for overall excellence in White House coverage," this being one of the highest awards in American journalism.
"Judges were impressed by what they described as his 'deep, almost intimate levels of sourcing in the U.S. and abroad' and picked out six articles as exemplary pieces of journalism," explains Mint Press News senior staff writer Alan MacLeod in a piece outlining Ravid's outsized influence on what gets published and televised in American media.
"Most of these stories consisted of simply printing anonymous White House or Israeli government sources, making them look good, and distancing President Biden from the horrors of the Israeli attack on Palestine. As such, there was functionally no difference between these and White House press releases. For example, one story the judges picked out was titled 'Scoop: Biden tells Bibi 3-day fighting pause could help secure release of some hostages,' and presented the 46th President of the United States as a dedicated humanitarian hellbent on reducing suffering. Another described how 'frustrated' Biden was becoming with Netanyahu and the Israeli government."
(Related: Speaking of highly influential Jews, did you know that The Jerusalem Post recently ran a piece celebrating how Jews control many of the world's governments, media outlets, entertainment outfits and financial institutions?)
American media infested with Israeli spies
At the time when this was all happening, protesters of Israel's war in Gaza urged reporters not to attend the event, recognizing that it was nothing but a propaganda event in support of Israel and its war crusade in the Middle East. Not only was there no boycott that ensued, but the organizers of the event really rubbed it in everyone's faces that they are bought and paid for by Israel when they gave Ravid one of the highest journalistic honors, to which Ravid delivered the following speech:
It was a moving and special night that I never imagined even in my wildest dreams. It wouldn't have been possible without my editors at @axios who made my stories better, my sources who trusted me, my family that came with me to Washington, and you, the readers. Thank you pic.twitter.com/aMQd2prsam
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) April 28, 2024
Biden personally presented Ravid with the award while embracing him like a brother. Keep in mind that Unit 8200 is Israel's largest and arguably most controversial spying organization, bearing responsibility for all sorts of espionage and terror operations throughout the West, including the recent pager attack in Lebanon.
Unit 820 also constructed the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered kill list that the IDF is using to assassinate thousands of Gaza residents, many of them women and children.
"That a known (former) Israeli spy could hug Biden in such a manner speaks volumes about not only the intimate relationship between the United States and Israel but about the extent to which establishment media holds power to account," MacLeod further writes.
this is amazing. Barak Ravid, who is considered by the Western media class to be the greatest most objective neutral "journalist" on the ongoing Gaza genocide even though he served in Israeli military intelligence and constantly launders Israeli propaganda, is now openly… pic.twitter.com/lYldfmVqaC
— ??? (@zei_squirrel) September 6, 2024
Ravid is hardly the only Israeli spy to embed himself into the American media machine for pro-Israel propaganda purposes. Another Unit 8200 spy, Shachar Peled, was hired in 2017 by CNN to be a writer and producer. She spent three years putting together segments for Fareed Zakaria and Christiane Amanpour before eventually being hired by Google to be its Senior Media Specialist.
There is also Tal Heinrich, another CNN employee who spent three years as a Unit 8200 agent. Between 2014 and 2017, Heinrich worked as the field and news desk producer for CNN's aggressively pro-Israel Jerusalem Bureau where she developed the propaganda that many media outlets pushed to try to justify Israel's bombardment of Gaza that left more than 2,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands more displaced.
"Since Israel could not continue to prosecute this war without American aid, the battle for the American mind is as important as actions on the ground," MacLeod says. "And as the propaganda war wages, the lines between journalist and fighter blur. The fact that many of the top journalists supplying us with news about Israel / Palestine are literally former Israeli intelligence agents only underlines this."
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