The Israeli Lobby's Motive Promoting The TikTok Ban

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While the prevailing narrative surrounding efforts to ban TikTok in the United States has echoed the same jingoistic appeal to preserve our "national security" that every landmark bill assaulting the civil liberties of Americans has used to veil its true intent, that initiative may be led by another sovereign nation whose perverse influence over American politics makes them much more qualified to be labeled a foreign adversary than anyone pushing the social media platform. Much like the Patriot Act and policy making both foreign and domestic that has shaped the US political landscape for the worst, Israel's ubiquitous influence over American politics shows that the Jewish state's fingerprints are unsurprisingly all over the TikTok ban as well. It's no secret that Israel is losing the information war over Gaza when it comes to Gen Z. By promoting a bill that divests existing parties from control over the app, the ban paves the way for a new consortium of ownership to come in and use the platform to usurp control of the narrative on the war in Gaza back in the hands of the pro-Israel lobby.

The bill itself defines a "foreign adversary" as those listed under 10 U.S. Code § 4872(d)(2) which in turn refers to these parties as "covered nation[s]". On that short list are the usual suspects when it comes to the eternal boogeymen that instill fear in the hearts of every simple minded NPC in the United States: North Korea, China, Iran, and of course RussiaRussiaRussia. Those countries have something else in common that has emerged in the international geopolitical landscape, their growing opposition to the Israel-US axis and its view on the future of the Gaza Strip. In recent months, China in particular has taken a much more overtly pro-Gaza position against Israel, joining North Korea and Iran but most importantly Russia.

The overtures categorizing Israel's war effort against Hamas in Gaza as something more akin to a genocide than a military operation put Israel on the outside looking in by losing favor with emerging foreign powers that are amalgamating the might to challenge the existing Zionist-led efforts to shape international sentiment on the war and the future of control over Palestinian territories. After the International Court Of Justice ruled in favor of a South African-led case to urge the UN impose measures on Israel to minimize civilian casualties, Beijing voiced its support for the ruling in an effort to implement what Israel and the United States have been so adamant against: a ceasefire.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin was the first Chinese official to remark on the ICJ ruling. “We hope that the ICJ’s provisional measures can be effectively implemented...We condemn all acts against civilians and oppose all moves that violate international law. China urges parties to the conflict to realize a comprehensive cease-fire at once, abide by the international humanitarian law,” he said. Less than one week before the US House Of Representatives voted to pass the ban on TikTok, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi echoed the sentiment made by his ministry shortly after the ICJ ruling in much sterner words. "It is a tragedy for humankind and a disgrace for civilization that today, in the 21st century, this humanitarian disaster cannot be stopped," Wang told journalists at a press conference during the annual meeting of China's  National People's Congress in Beijing. Although Chinese President Xi Jinping has been more cautious in remarking on the ICJ ruling given China's own concerns over calls against its own genocide of Uighur Muslims, he has urged for a ceasefire and recognition of a Palestinian state which is enough alone to further alienate China from Israel.

While Xi's sentiment is not held by the current powers that be aligned with Israel and the US, the same cannot be said for TikTok users across the globe. With the bulk of its users being from Gen Z, Gaza is the first real war the largest demographic of its userbase has been able to take to social media to shape its views and express its opinion on. This change in popular support of Israel among Zoomers projects forward to has a tremendous impact on the shifting political landscape in the United States where younger voters who are normally born into the Democratic Party has chosen Gaza as their hill to die on, distancing themselves from the Biden administration given its pro-Israel policy making going into the 2024 Presidential Election.

21 year-old Dylan Young of Boston is a microcosm of this paradigm shift among younger voters. Young was enrolled at Emerson College in Boston before being placed on academic probation for violating school rules governing campus resources when he emailed his fellow students to express his defiance over support for Israel to galvanize them through Emerson's student union. Disavowing Biden, who he voted for in 2020, Young said “We cannot see a genocide of 30,000 people using our taxpayer dollars and pretend that it’s not an issue." What makes Young's example so exceptional is that it counters the prevailing narrative equating support of Palestine and criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism given that Young himself is Jewish. Speaking to that point, he said “Nothing has done more damage to my community in my lifetime than the equation of Zionism and Judaism."

What makes the example of Dylan Young so noteworthy is that his experience is the perfect summation of how the war in Gaza is making Gen Z a liability to the existing axis of power aligned with Israel. With TikTok becoming Zoomer's social media platform of choose, the app only magnifies their criticism of and thus amplifies the calls to challenge Israel's existing hegemony. Given that, it's no surprise that when calls to ban TikTok re-emerged late last year, the tried and true tactic of accusing the app of platforming antisemitism became a rallying cry of the shills in congress pushing the initiative to be sure they sustained their campaign contributions from the AIPAC.

One such congressman who debased himself to avert the peril of losing the support of his Zionist overlords was Missouri Senator Josh Hawley. The big government republican categorized TikTok as a “purveyor of virulent antisemitic lies" along with claiming it was a spy resource for the Chinese when he renewed his support of the platform's ban. TikTok disputed this claim by highlighting its community guidelines which expressly ban content from terrorist organizations like Hamas, which cannot be said of many domestic internet service providers who quite literally will host the domain of the Islamic terror group's own website. Yet in spite of that, those ISPs who platform terrorists don't face the same shakedown Hawley and others want to put TikTok through.

Of course, logical consistency is not relevant when the aim is to preserve narrative control in favor of Israel as opposed to actually acting in the interest of national security. With 60% of TikTok users posting the hashtag #standwithpalestine being between 18 to 24, control of the app by pro-Israel ownership would be an invaluable resource in reshaping their positions or at least censoring them from the platform and thus global discourse their generation relies on social media to engage in. Although proposed legislation has colloquialized the bill as a ban on TikTok, the measure would more likely urge divestment of ownership labeled as a "foreign adversary" within 180 days of it being signed into law.

Even though the TikTok ban has yet to reach Biden's desk or even pass the Senate, the President has voiced his support for it and the higher chamber of congress appears to be in the same camp. With that seemingly like an inevitability, a pro-Israel consortium has already emerged to buy out Chinese parent company ByteDance's ownership stake in TikTok should divesting from the app be the recourse they take. Former US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin seems to have taken pole position in the race to potentially buy TikTok, stating "I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold...It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok," on CNBC's Squawk Box. According to CNBC, there is common ground between Mnuchin's Liberty Strategic Capital and ByteDance - as Masa Son's SoftBank Vision Fund invested in ByteDance in 2018, and is also a limited partner in Liberty Strategic, which may give Mnuchin's effort the inside track to purchasing the app.

Mnuchin, who found himself in Israel on January 6th, 2021 when the votes to cement the stolen 2020 election were certified would bring a change in ownership to TikTok that would likely reshape the app's terms and conditions to censor existing support for Palestine voiced across the platform. However, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew expressed his reticence on any such sale. Regardless of that outcome, the concerted effort to ban TikTok from the US or coerce it into changing its ownership is representative of a coordinated government over reach to undermine the civil liberties of Americans, namely their freedom of speech. Like in previous instances such as the Patriot Act before it, this iteration of that tactic in inextricably tied to the preservation of the power of the US-Israel axis, highlighting how the majority of congress places its support of Israel ahead of its support for the rights of its own populous.