Update 24-04-05: I have rephrased the last paragraph to a way of asking whether we should know who our mayor is meeting in our names.
The mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, says he met with Israeli charity Disrupt to facilitate money for Black South West Network.
At January’s Full Council meeting, Suzanne Audrey asked the mayor the following:
In September 2022, you said: “My Ted talk in Vancouver led to a number of live contacts, not least a tech philanthropist who will be in Bristol in the coming weeks with a commitment to working with three UK cities, meeting with our community organisations with a commitment to putting real finance into their social innovation.” Question 1. Please will you give an update on the visit from the tech philanthropist and which community organisations have benefitted from the commitment of real finance for their social innovation.
Response:
I met Guy Podjarny, co-founder of the Disrupt Foundation disrupt.org in Vancouver.
At my introduction, Black South West Network then hosted the foundation’s CEO, Miri Weingarten, and various community groups at a roundtable event in September 2022. After which, representatives of Disrupt joined BSWN’s first Race and Justice Conference in the South West, with a particular focus on the topic of Access to Justice. Some of the key actions from the event focused on an effort to educate, train, and mobilise communities in the South West in the protection/advocacy of their right to access justice, with adequate representation. This is while also recognising that race and justice remain underappreciated as a social determinant to health, and we should pursue partnerships that merge health, race, and access to justice together.
In attendance on the day was Dalia Abu Yassien from Disrupt Foundation, who was interested in these key actions and the excellent forward-moving energy generated at the event. It was agreed to remain in touch and explore if the Foundation had a role to support any of these actions. The Disrupt Foundation were hugely impressed by the work being done, so as a result of the connections, Disrupt are funding BSWN’s Access to Justice pilot work with a substantial grant.
Who are Disrupt
The Sunday Times on Guy Podjarny: "Podjarny launched Snyk with two fellow former members of Israel’s cyberspy agency, the Israel Defense Forces’ 8200 intelligence unit."
Israel is currently committing ethnic cleansing in Gaza, killing tens of thousands of civilians and the ICJ has said it has a case to answer in response to accusations of genocide. The 8200 is instrumental in that action. To read more about the 8200 unit, this article by Jonathan Cook is very useful: Israeli software used on Palestinians is producing new cyber weapons that are rapidly being incorporated into global digital platforms.
Israel’s status as a “startup nation” was established decades ago. But its reputation for hi-tech innovation always depended on a dark side, one that is becoming ever harder to ignore.
‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza
The magazine +972 revealed in November 2023 that AI technology was used in mass indiscriminate killings of Palestinians through a program they call Gospel.
The result of these policies is the staggering loss of human life in Gaza since October 7. Over 300 families have lost 10 or more family members in Israeli bombings in the past two months — a number that is 15 times higher than the figure from what was previously Israel’s deadliest war on Gaza, in 2014. At the time of writing, around 15,000 Palestinians have been reported killed in the war, and counting.
According to posts on the Israeli military's website, the Gospel was developed by Israel's signals intelligence branch, known as Unit 8200. The system is relatively new — one of the earliest mentions was a top innovation award that it won in 2020 (link).
Bristol aid worker killed by Israel
On 1 April 2024, Israel attacked three convoys, 2.3km apart, which were delivering much-needed aid to starving people in Gaza. “James Kirby, 47, from Bristol, was one of three British aid workers killed in the attack on Monday,” reported the BBC. In total, seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) workers died. John Chapman, 57 and James Henderson, 33, were also from the UK.
Marvin Rees has supported Israel from the start, lighting up Bristol’s City Hall with the colours of the Israeli flag after October 7, 2023, while not showing the same recognition to Palestinians who are being murdered at unprecedented levels. In response to a petition that went to Full Council, in January, to encourage Bristol City Council to ask for a ceasefire, Rees published a blog that one must ask whether the mayor was blaming Hamas and Palestinians for their own genocide?
At that time, Israel had killed 32,246 people in the Gaza Strip. Of those, 29,720 were civilians, including 12,660 children. They’d displaced 2 million people, killed 115 journalists, and destroyed 24 hospitals, and much more.
In support of a country committing genocide, Rees wrote “Hamas makes it difficult to distinguish between military targets and civilians” and cites “7 October’s attacks on Israel by the terrorist organisation Hamas.”
It is Israel, as we have seen, which does not discriminate between civilian and military targets. A new expose was released yesterday of another AI program designed by 8200, called Lavender. For each low level target, there is permission to kill 20 civilians.
The same level of disregard to human life could be seen in Obama’s regime when targeting Al Qaeda in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Rees goes on to quote Obama in his blog with no sense of the blood-filled irony he has stepped into.
I would ask why Rees never once condemns the genocide perpetrated upon the Palestinians? His only allusions come to respecting international law but always balanced by Israel’s need to defend itself. An occupying power has no right to defend itself from the people it occupies, in international law. It can only protect its civilians.
As UN rights expert Francesca Albanese has said: "It's time for an arms embargo and diplomatic, political and economic sanctions against the Israeli regime for its genocide."
We need to ask who Marvin Rees is meeting in our names and whether we should be as a city taking part in actions which could be seen as linking Bristol residents with genocide.
Truly shocking what you have written 😓
Thanks for sharing Joanna