The developers behind hundreds of Android and iPhone apps with billions of downloads are former Israeli spies whose apps are generating significant revenues for Israel's genocidal war economy.
The apps I've identified range from innocuous image and video editing apps to casual games, and most users won't be aware they're installing Israeli products on their phones. Many of these app developers operate under the radar, their ownership structures are opaque and the identity of their owners isn't commonly known.
The identification of these apps should add another frontier to the boycott, divest, sanctions movement, as it provides a straightforward way for ordinary people to avoid Israeli products that contribute to apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing.
The proliferation of these apps on Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store also raises questions over privacy and the harvesting of personal data, given the reputation of Israeli technology and past scandals involving spyware being smuggled onto devices by apps made in Israel.
One of the most significant Israeli app holding companies and developers is ZipoApps, whose model is to buy-out and monetise apps at a large scale. The apps owned by Zipo (which also goes by the name Rounds.com) include a suite of photo and video editing apps that have received hundreds of millions of total installs. Individual apps include Collage Maker Photo Editor and Instasquare Photo Editor: Neon, both of which have received more than 50 million downloads from the Google Play Store. Other ZipoApps products include baby photo editing and retouching tools. In 2022, the founder and CEO of Zipo, Gal Avidor, told an interviewer (in his only interview to date), that all the founders of the company are former Unit 8200 Israeli intelligence personnel. On Reddit, users have complained about ZipoApps approach to privacy and data mining. One popular group of tools known as Simple Gallery went from free and open source to a paid product with ads and trackers just one week after ZipoApps acquired it.
Facetune, made by the developer Lightricks and available for Android and iPhones, is another Israeli photo editing app with over 50 million installs. Users on the Apple Store have called Facetune, which demands access to unique identifiers and your location, a scam. The co-founder of Lightricks, Yaron Inger, spent five years in Unit 8200.
If you're into mobile gaming, or if you create mobile games to sell, you will have come across Israeli company Supersonic from Unity, probably without knowing it. With billions of downloads in recent years, Supersonic is one of the largest mobile game publishers in the world with revenues estimated at around $23 million per year. Earlier this year the company reported that they owned three of the top ten most downloaded casual player mobile games in the world: Build a Queen, Going Balls, and Bridge Race. Trash Tycoon is another popular title. The company also has a game called 'Conquer Countries' which has been downloaded millions of times and on its advertising tile features a cartoon version of Donald Trump. The founder of Supersonic, Nadav Ashkenazy, spent seven and a half years in the IDF where he rose to become the head of operations for the Israeli air force, managing almost half the full-time staff. You can see all Supersonic's games here.
An app you may have heard of, but not have known is Israeli, is Moovit. The urban transport app was founded by a number of ex-IDF including Nir Erez who spent years at the IDF's specialist computing centre known as Mamram, which Israeli propaganda says creates 'cyber warriors.' As the unit which runs the military's intranet, Mamram is central to Israel's genocide of Gaza. Moovit, which has close to one billion users and delivers significant revenues to Israel, has been an official partner of the Olympic Games, the European football championships and also partners with Microsoft.
MAMRAM is an elite cyber unit in the Israeli Army
On the ride-hailing front, Gett, which is focused on corporate passengers and is particularly popular in London as a way to hail black cabs, was founded by ex-Unit 8200 Roi More and Shahar Waiser. A notable mention for GPS navigation app Waze, probably the most famous Israeli app of the last decade, acquired by Google in 2013 for $1.3 billion and also founded by ex-Unit 8200 spies.
Another fast-growing Israeli app which has been featured on Oprah, in the New York Times and on CNN is Fooducate, whose founder, Hemi Weingarten, flew bombing missions for the Israeli air force.
Other Israeli air force veterans behind popular apps include husband and wife team Gilad and Liat Mordechay Hertanu, who run the personal assistant and calendar-syncing app 24me. Liat was an officer in the Israeli air force while Gilad was a pilot who flew bombing missions.
This expose, which follows my investigations into former Unit 8200 building AI for big tech giants, and the ex-IDF soldiers working at Meta and Google, further confirms how deeply and insidiously embedded Israel is in our digital lives.
These investigations also reveal how Israel is foundationally reliant on being in a permanent state of dominance over the Palestinians, because the only thing of value the country produces are tech companies founded by ex-IDF. Without being able to train their citizens as spies and soldiers, and butcher Palestinians at will, Israel's economy would collapse.
Yet most people who use these apps will have downloaded them in good faith with little idea they are contributing to Israel's occupation-apartheid-genocide economy. In addition, these apps will be gathering information and data, including large amounts of personal images, and delivering them to devotees of Israel committed to maintaining the country as an apartheid state.
So check your phone and please spread the word.
Delegitimising, defunding and deleting Israeli products is one easy step we can all take to help dismantle Israel's machinery of genocide.
Reader Comments
At least this guy isn't shy about his true origin: Nadav Ashkenazy.
I do my best to only load apps that don't require all the access nonsense that too many do. It may take me a long time of trolling the apps and reading all the requirements but it's worth it in the end. Trouble is some are just unavoidable.
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sent from my 20yr old Nokia.
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Swap them out, for apps made by US spies or Chinese spies !
Unit 8200 was all over I from the get go.
Internet is USMilitary from 1950’s, all the start up inventors are just gate keepers for unit 8200. Suckerberg, Gates, Theil, Black Rock pos, all of the AI bullsh!ters, etc etc.
And we have a big hill to climb, but climb we must, the alternative is Huxley or Orwell dystopian nightmares.
Internet is the Telephone system.
Means and content of Communications have always been, are now, and always will be tightly controlled by the State.
Post, Telephone, Telegraph - PTT - is owned and run by "the Government" in every country. USA has pretty much always pretended that only the Post is actually run by the Government, but you don't have to look too deeply into Federal this and United that to find the Deep State.