TikTok Ban in the USA: It’s Not About China, It’s About Israel
January 22, 2025The TikTok ban isn’t about China. It’s about Israel being exposed on social media and turning Gen Z and every other demographic on TikTok AGAINST the murderous Zionist state.
Think that’s a stretch? Watch this video
The U.S. is banning TikTok “for security reasons,” yet Israel, the supposed ally we’re doing this for, hasn’t banned it. The irony is laughable.
The question isn’t why TikTok is being banned.
The question is: WHO is this really for?
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@ahmedeldin
English Script:
James Li: We need to talk about TikTok. TikTok, if you will, it is the is the 24/7 news channel of so many of our young people, and it’s like Al Jazeera on steroids. In November of 2023, a recording was leaked of Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, referring to TikTok as a problem that needed to be taken care of.
Jonathan Greenblatt: We have a major, major, major generational problem. I think the United States support for Israel is not left and right, is young and old, and so we really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem. Our community needs to put the same brain that gave us Tag Lee, the same brains that gave us all these other amazing innovations, need to put their energy into this, like fast.
James Li: Now, one interesting side note here is that I came across an ADL report expressing frustration that they couldn’t access TikTok’s analytics the way they can with every other big tech company. Like, should they be able to do that? Anyway, now we’re about a month into this war, and all these studies started coming out making claims about the proliferation of anti-Semitism on TikTok. The most notable one from a statistician and tech executive named Anthony Goldblum. He tweeted out on November 30th that a study he commissioned concluded 30 minutes a day on TikTok makes someone 17% more antisemitic. Politicians like Nikki Haley would then go on to regurgitate this claim on national television.
Nikki Haley: We do you need to ban TikTok once and for all, and let me tell you why. For every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok every day, they become 17% more antisemitic.
James Li: Except A, that survey didn’t say that at all because it conflated anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments, which I believe to be different. And B, Goldbloom himself admitted that he made some logical leaps when he was drawing his conclusion. But now things are really moving at a rapid pace. The next day, on December 1st, 2023, the New York Post reported that a group of 40 mostly Jewish tech leaders and business executives confronted TikTok CEO Shouzi Chew over their concerns about anti-Semitism and the allegedly disproportionate popularity of pro-Palestine videos on the app. One of those executives, Anthony Goldblum, the same Anthony Goldblum who we were just talking about and from everything I understand the meeting didn’t go well in the sense that TikTok didn’t commit to a kind of wholesale removal of pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel content. So, from then on, the fight against TikTok pivoted from a kind of PR battle that we are just looking at to now laying the groundwork to push legislation through that would ultimately ban the app. In March of 2024, a bill was introduced in Congress, H.R. 7521, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, sponsored by representative Mike Gallagher.
Mike Gallagher: Foreign adversary control of what is becoming the dominant news platform for Americans under 30. This is a common-sense measure to protect our national security. I urge my colleagues to support this critical, bipartisan legislation.
James Li: The argument is one we’ve heard before. TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, could pose a threat to US national security by harvesting user data, and its algorithm could also be weaponized to brainwash Americans. Now, these concerns, I do think are valid in a sense, but I think it’s worth noting that companies like Facebook and Google engage in similar data collection practices, and then they would go on to sell this data to China. So, China is getting the data anyway. But here’s where things get really interesting. You start digging into Gallagher’s largest campaign donors. You uncover a story that goes far beyond data privacy or Chinese influence. Near the top of his donor list is APAC, the Israeli lobby. Here’s a crazy statistic for you. Of the 500 plus members of Congress, only 33 members did not receive a donation from the Israeli lobby in the last campaign cycle. So essentially, when Israel wants something from America, they usually get it. Now, another contributor, I want to draw your attention to Palantir Technologies, which is a defense contractor co-founded by billionaire Peter Teale. Palantir just happens to work very closely with the Israeli military, providing advanced surveillance and targeting software used extensively in their war on Gaza. And one of their consultants, a man named Jacob Helberg, was responsible for writing the bill. Yeah, it’s incredible. A defense contractor who profits off Israel’s war, were also the ones behind drafting a bill that would, in effect, stifle criticism of said war, which is a clear conflict of interest, no? At around the same time, the Jewish Federations of North America penned a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to ban TikTok due to anti-Semitism. Not one mention in their letter about China or data privacy.
John Mearsheimer: TikTok runs all sorts of videos that portray the Israelis acting towards the Palestinians in barbaric ways, and when young people see these videos on TikTok, they obviously become remarkably sympathetic to the Palestinians. And they think badly, to put it mildly, of the Israelis. So, Vlabi would like to shut down TikTok.
James Li: On March 23rd, 2024, H.R. 7521 passed with largely bipartisan support. Looking back, I was fully expecting the bill to pass the House very, very quickly and easily because there are a lot of bills that pass the House and don’t make it through the Senate. The Senate is meant to slow things down. But one month later, on April 24th, the act passed in the Senate, again with overwhelming bipartisan support, and was signed into law by Joe Biden on the following day. Like I said, I had never seen a bill go through Congress with that kind of speed and velocity with very little opposition or debate, it’s wild, and maybe even wilder by that summer. Mike Gallagher, the representative who had sponsored the bill, was now working for Palantir as their head of defense. He didn’t even finish out his term. He just resigned from Congress and took a job there. I know all of this sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory. In fact, the ADL did call this a conspiracy theory. The Atlantic also called this a conspiracy theory. They even namechecked me in their article, “the entire world knows exactly why the US is trying to ban TikTok, James Li declared on March 16th”. Not bad for your boy here, huh? And honestly, this would remain a conspiracy theory. I don’t know if I would have made this video if they hadn’t come out and confirmed their true motivations.
Mitt Roomney: Typically, the Israelis are good at PR. What’s happened here? Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down, potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so, among TikTok broadcast. So, I know that’s of real interest.
James Li: And that’s where we are today. China or Israel? I’ll let you be the judge.
