By Evi Tsakali,
How are a French reporter and an Israeli intelligence-on-demand company linked? In order to answer the question, let us discuss the matter from the beginning…
It has not been long since it was discovered that BFM-TV presenter Racki M’Barki personally selected and presented segments that his editors had never approved, possibly on behalf of foreign governments. The journalist has since claimed to never have been paid and that he did it only as a favor to an acquaintance, Jean Pierre Duthion, a French intermediary who specializes in influence campaigns. His payments have been frozen ever since by the channel, pending investigation.
That was the starting point for an investigation under the name of #StoryKillers carried out by the partners of the Forbidden Stories consortium, including – but not limited to – Le Monde, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel. That investigation would shed light on the affair and bring before us one revelation after the other; albeit ongoing and still having much to reveal, it led us to now international headline dominating “Team Jorge”.
Team Jorge is based in Tel Aviv, Israel. It basically consists of disinformation specialists who offer the services of a private intelligence agency, like the creation of fake social media accounts to post hate-fueled or misleading comments, or planting articles in international media outlets. Do you want an airtight safe fake account to purchase sex toys online and have them delivered to your political rival’s front porch (non-ironically, one of the cases revealed)? Then Team Jorge will do the job for you; that, and many more. Its clientele includes authoritarian governments, election candidates, and even criminal suspects… and the list does not stop there. As an entity, Team Jorge seems to have no legal existence, it thus operates as a shadow company, and is probably — according to the findings – created by former Mossad and Israeli army officers.
The contractors are run by Tal Hanan, a 50-year-old former Israeli forces operative who was caught (hence his identity revealed) in an undercover sting operation by journalists of the Forbidden Stories consortium Frédérick Métézean and Omer Benjakob. In a secretly filmed meeting between the journalists and Hanan, some excerpts of which are documented in the Guardian, the latter goes into detail about the agency’s activities in an attempt to persuade his undercover potential clients. In a shocking statement, he would say (among other details which I will omit for purposes of consistency and clarity); “We are now involved in one election in Africa […] we have a team in Greece and a team in the Emirates […] We have completed 33 presidential-level campaigns, 27 of which were successful”.
“Things do not have to be true in order to be believed”, stated Alexander Nix of Cambridge Analytica in the past. Amid this whole new private intel scandal, that could have not been more relevant apparently. What is certain is that we will be more than intrigued to learn what else the findings of the #StoryKillers investigation behold, and – most importantly – reflect on what that means regarding our democracies and their quality…
PS: To the guy who provides me with the latest news from French media like my personal broadcaster and who discovered the Team Jorge affair before it became a thing; thank you and I am sorry for writing that so late.
References
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#StoryKillers: The links between Israel-based ‘Team Jorge’ and a French TV presenter who aired fake news. lemonde.fr. Available here
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Affaire «Team Jorge» : il est temps de s’attaquer sérieusement aux menaces numériques à la démocratie. radiofrance.fr. Available here
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‘Team Jorge’ ― how disinformation threatens democracy. dw.com. Available here
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Forbidden Stories. forbiddenstories.org. Available here
