Haaretz and Israel Join the Phony Russian Meddling Crowd

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

When repeated enough, Big Lies take on a life of their own. The whopper about Russian US election meddling was discredited long ago.

In legitimate tribunals, charges without credible evidence are rejected. Guilt depends on proof beyond a reasonable doubt - the gold standard in criminal prosecutions.

Innocence is presumed unless proved otherwise by hard facts. None exist suggesting Russian US election meddling - or anywhere else.

Phony accusations crumbled. Yet they persist, part of US-sponsored Russia bashing. Israel and Haaretz shamed themselves by spreading the Big Lie.

Former Mossad head Tamir Pardo falsely claimed Moscow used a virtual army of bots to influence the outcome of America's 2016 presidential election.

He lied. Instead of ignoring or debunking him, Haaretz went with the fabricated claim by publishing it, proliferating the Big Lie, operating as unacceptably as US major media, saying:

"…Pardo said that it seems to him that the Russians simply chose to support the candidate that would be the most politically advantageous for them."

Haaretz quoted him saying Russia asked "which candidate would we like to have sitting in the White House? Who will help us achieve our goals? And they chose (Trump)." 

"From that moment, they deployed a system (of bots) for the length of the elections, and ran him for president (sic)."

Russia very much likely preferred Trump to militantly Russophobic Hillary. Pardo's baseless claim ignored the obvious. Not a shred of credible evidence indicates Kremlin meddling in the political process of any other countries - what the US does repeatedly worldwide, he failed to mention.

Separately, Pardo said computer program bots designed to run automatically, mimicking cyber behavior of a real user, are "just the tip of the iceberg…the greatest threat of recent years, and it threatens the basic values that we share – democracy and the world order created since World War II."

Like America and other Western countries, democracy in Israel is pure fantasy. Values its ruling authorities share feature apartheid viciousness, wars of aggression, and neoliberal harshness against its citizens.

Previous articles debunked phony accusations about Russian US election interference, including online.

One article quoted Google CEO Sundar Pichai, saying "we undertook a very thorough investigation, and, in 2016, we now know that there were two main ad accounts linked to Russia which advertised on Google for about $4,700 in advertising." 

It was a drop in the ocean compared to $6.5 billion spent by US candidates for all offices in 2016 races, including primary contests.

There's more. Facebook explained that 56% of ads linked to Russia on its platform appeared after the US 2016 presidential election.

Alleged Internet Research Agency Russian hackers spent $100,000 from mid-2015 to mid-2017 on 3,000 ads. One-fourth of them were never shown to anyone. 

Only around 1,000 ads of Russian origin appeared during the presidential campaign. Many ads expressed no preference for any candidate.

US presidential candidates spent hundreds of millions of dollars in online advertising.

Twitter's vice president Colin Crowell explained "(w)e have not found accounts associated with (possible election meddling) to have obvious Russian origin but some of the accounts appear to have been automated."

Twitter suspended a small number of suspicious accounts, none connected to Russia, some others suspended for terms of service violations. None of the above registered as advertisers.

Over 3.2 million automated accounts were found, no evidence of any connected to Russian US election meddling.

RT, RT America and RT en Espanol spent $274,100 for 1,823 US ads – none supporting one US presidential aspirant over another.

No evidence suggests Russian US election meddling online or in any other way. The Big Lie won't die, including phony claims by Pardo, Haaretz going along by featuring them, failing to debunk what no evidence supports.

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