Assaf Kaplan’s work in notorious cyber unit surveilling
and extorting Palestinians fits with Labour’s new ethos under Keir
Starmer
Jonathan Cook - Middle East Eye: The revelation
this week that the British Labour Party recently appointed a former
Israeli military spy to work in its headquarters, reporting to the
office of leader Keir Starmer, is truly extraordinary in many different
regards.
It is hard to believe the Labour leadership did not know who Assaf
Kaplan was or appreciate the likely backlash to placing someone with his
background in charge the party’s social media work. That may explain
the continuing reluctance from the Labour leadership to comment.
In his online CV, Kaplan had drawn attention to his years spent in
the notorious Israeli military intelligence unit 8200, which has a long
and ugly record of surveilling Palestinians.
One of the unit’s main tasks, highlighted by a group of whistleblowers in 2014 and widely publicised in the British media, is to gain damaging information to blackmail
individual Palestinians. They are then threatened into collaborating
with Israel’s military authorities against fellow Palestinians.