Over the past few years, there has been more than one wave of alarming news items about repressive governments in the Middle East using software developed by the Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO to eavesdrop on their domestic opponents. Irina Tsukerman argues that the evidence for the abuse of this technology has always been thin, and bear some familiar marks of other attempts to slander the Jewish state:
On the strength of commercial spyware, Jerusalem has been able to translate security relationships into diplomatic breakthroughs as its more trusted partners were able to address some of their most significant threats coming from terrorist groups, revolutionary opposition, ideological extremists, and organized crime. The media scandal surrounding the now infamous Pegasus software allegedly used by a number of allies and ally-adjacent countries is just one example of how the BDS [boycott, divest, and sanction] movement has succeeded in associating Israel with alleged human-rights abuses.
The politicized human-rights organizations behind this campaign [to demonize NSO]—the Canada-based Citizen Lab, Amnesty International, ACCESS NOW, and Front Line Defenders—have never provided evidence of a Pegasus’s presence for independent verification. These organizations were criticized by several technical experts for their failure to abide by the scientific method and to meet academic standards of transparency, verifiability, and independent peer review. Their response was to dismiss, ignore, or outright smear the experts who took issue with their reports.
No longer focusing exclusively on the Palestinians, this anti-Israel nexus is now focused on tainting Israel’s cybersecurity industry in the eyes of the world as a weapon that supports corrupt regimes against peaceful civilians. These attacks deliberately ignore legitimate threats posed by supposedly peaceful dissidents and journalists who often double as political operatives, spies, and ideological extremists. Thus, the effect is not only the besmirching of Israel’s cybersecurity programs but a tarnishing of associations with Israel.
Read more on BESA Center: https://besacenter.org/the-bds-campaign-against-israel-de-localizes-the-palestinian-cause-focuses-on-global-surveillance/