Israel Lobby is Coming for TikTok: Mearsheimer

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is owned by AIPAC, is currently rushing a bill to force the sale of TikTok.

Professor John Mearsheimer, the professor and co-author of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, said in an interview published Wednesday that the Israeli lobby in the U.S. has nearly complete influence over main news outlets like The Wall Street Journal and New York Times, so it will likely turn its attention to TikTok, which is more influential to young Americans than either of these outlets.

“It's important to distinguish between the mainstream media and the alternative media when we talk about the lobby’s efforts to influence, maybe even control the discourse in the mainstream media,” he said. “The lobby is very effective and all you have to do is look at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times… The Wall Street Journal supports Israel down the line it; supports the Netanyahu government down the line. There is hardly ever any meaningful criticism of Israel in the Wall Street Journal it's quite remarkable and this has been the case for a long time.”

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He continued that critics of Israeli policy can have their voices heard in the alternative
media “and this is a huge problem for the lobby and they are scrambling to do everything they can to control the alternative media and you see this most clearly with regard to TikTok. There's no question that the lobby is going to enormous length to shut down TikTok because TikTok is filled with pieces that are critical of Israel and lots of young people get their news from TikTok,not from the Wall Street Journal
and not from the New York Times.”

Israeli-owned U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to rush legislation that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner to divest the app and bundle it into the $95 billion military funding bill for the Senate to approve.

The Financial Times wrote: “Assuming the House approves the bills when they come up for votes on Saturday, they would be bundled into one package and sent to the Senate, according to people familiar with the plan. That would significantly boost the odds that the Senate passes the measure, since many senators will be reluctant to scupper military funding for Ukraine.”

The United States government produced no evidence to support its claim that TikTok is working to coordinate with the Chinese Communist Party, raising new suspicions as to why Washington is so determined to either ban the popular social media site or sell it off to a U.S. entity.

The Intercept reported that officials from the FBI, CIA, and Department of National Intelligence have been “careful not to qualify the national security threat posed by TikTok as purely hypothetical.” 

The report cited a 2022 interview between William Burns, the CIA head, and CNN. The topic of ByteDance, the Chinese company, came up and he told the outlet that it was “troubling to see what the Chinese government could do to manipulate TikTok,” the key word, of course, being “could.”

When contacted by the outlet, the FBI said it has no new information about TikTok’s alleged ties to Beijing and referred to previous vague comments from FBI Director Christopher Wray who spoke about the “potential” of China stealing data.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 352-65 in favor of banning TikTok from U.S. app stores. President Joe Biden said that he would sign the bill if passed by the Senate. The bill would call for the app to be either sold to a U.S. company or be banned. 

Anti-Chinese lawmakers say there is a clear risk that ByteDance could provide Beijing with user data from the U.S. and note that there are already U.S. laws in place that require companies to help with intelligence gathering, according to The Independent.

Anti-Semitism the Cause for the Ban?

Social media users have raised speculation that pressure from Jewish groups in the U.S. could be prompting politicians that they own to suddenly come out forcefully against the company that has been around since 2016. 

The Jewish Federations of North America, or JFNA, came out earlier and said it completely backs the bill while calling the rise in antisemitism “the most important issue to our Jewish communities today.”

The group said antisemitism is not limited to TikTok, but identified the Chinese app as “the worst offender.”

There was also reportedly a leaked phone call with ADL Chief Jonathan Greenblatt, who is heard saying, “We have a major TikTok problem.”

Eric Fingerhut, the CEO of JFNA, called the House vote an example of “strong, bipartisan support for ensuring that TikTok cannot continue to push hateful messages into our communities, and we urge the Senate to quickly take up and pass this legislation.”

Haaretz noted that Rep. Pam Keith, D-Fla., took to X after the vote and was critical of the timing. 

“Wow! I am fucking SHOCKED that Dems are voting to ban TikTok. This is AIPAC at work,” she posted.

The paper noted that AIPAC, the Jewish lobby group, held an annual summit shortly before the House voted on the bill, “sending more than 1600 of its key activists to Capitol Hill to lobby for emergency assistance to Israel.” TikTok was reportedly not mentioned in the lobby’s official agenda, but the paper noted Jake Shields, a popular social media presence, blamed these groups for influencing credulous politicians like Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, a top neocon.

Shields posted: “The ADL said TikTok is a threat to Israel. AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, gave Dan Crenshaw millions of dollars.” He followed up the post: “It’s very clear TikTok is being banned for Israel not because of China.”

TRENDPOST: It is worth noting that China is also taking offense to the U.S. threat of banning TikTok, which is one of the world’s most popular apps.

The New York Times reported that TikTok has about 170 million active users in the U.S., which is an increase from 100 million in 2020. About 1 billion people use the app across 140 different countries, the report said.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on Thursday that accused the U.S. of a blatant double standard.

Shen Yi, a scholar of cyberspace governance at Fudan University in Shanghai, told The Times that it is hard to carry out business in such a fashion.

He told the paper that Washington used national security as a “gun to the head of any company from any country, saying: ‘Sell it or find other companies to work with. It’s for your own good.’”

The bill has a good chance of dying on the Senate floor, and former president Donald Trump even came out in opposition to the measure. 

One of the names that continue to be mentioned in any potential sale is Trump’s former Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, who told reporters that he is putting together a group to buy the app.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Mnuchin has long spoken out about the dangers of China owning the app. TikTok could be valued at over $100 billion.

Mnuchin has been touring Israel recently with Trump’s former U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, a pro-Zionist, pro-settler former official now looking for businesses in Israel with Mnuchin. 

Seems like the perfect team to make sure TikTok becomes a pro-Israel app like all the others in the U.S.