Freelance writer: https://nitter.cf/t.co/GQXujfkJqM. See Substack for writing on Bristol.
Bristol
Joined June 2010
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Bristol’s tallest ever building - and the money and power behind it:
- An Israeli pension giant that has directly financed vast IDF military bases, including for intelligence units central to the AI-driven mass killing of civilians in Gaza
- A CEO of a global property investment firm who is also one of the leading figures of the UK’s pro-Israel lobby
- A student accommodation partnership with a UK portfolio valued at over £800m
- Financial and political networks spanning Israel, the Gulf, Europe and the US that help secure international toleration for Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide
- A housing crisis reshaping Bristol and driving the transformation of its skyline
- Bristol’s historic duality: a city shaped by wealth from slavery and empire, but also by a long tradition of radicalism and resistance — a tension that continues today
My investigation for Middle East Eye 👇
middleeasteye.net/news/how-b…
Joe Banks retweeted
🔴 REVEALED: Palantir led closed-door review of how MoD buys software
Review was presented to defence minister Luke Pollard by Palantir UK boss Louis Mosley in Feb and has mostly been implemented
None of this was made public
New investigation🧵
democracyforsale.substack.co…
Joe Banks retweeted
Manchester City's Abu Dhabi ownership provided investment that fuelled 'Manchesterism' and helped propel Andy Burnham into Downing Street. But at what cost?
My long story on Man City, the UAE and Manchester, for @MiddleEastEye
middleeasteye.net/big-story/…
Joe Banks retweeted
The war propaganda is reaching insane levels. The only good news is that compared to previous pre-war propaganda drives (e.g., Iraq) record numbers of people are seeing through the bs.
Yesterday’s announcement that the UK will ban goods from illegal Israeli settlements was only one part of a much wider new sanctions regime.
The government says it will also target companies and individuals providing “construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate” for settlement expansion. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband warned those who “finance or facilitate illegal settlements” that they will face UK sanctions.
That has potentially significant implications for a story I investigated last month for @MiddleEastEye.
What will become Bristol’s tallest tower is currently rising in the city centre. Behind it is Israeli pension and insurance giant Menora Mivtachim, which backs Cain’s UK student-housing platform - a partnership whose portfolio was valued at more than £800m after its expansion into Bristol, with developments across Russell Group university cities.
According to Who Profits, Menora Mivtachim have:
- Directly financed settlement construction, including 80 homes in Ariel and 84 homes in Ma’ale Adumim - the major West Bank settlement adjoining the crucial E1 area, whose expansion the UK is specifically seeking to deter.
- Financed a 1,642-home development in Katzrin in the occupied Syrian Golan, alongside tourism, roads and infrastructure.
- Holds a 74% stake in a solar project in the occupied West Bank, jointly owned with the Israeli settlement of Na’ama.
- Built significant shareholdings in companies involved in settlement construction, infrastructure and services.
- Holds significant stakes in companies providing security, fuel and other services to settlements across the occupied territories.
All this sits alongside the fact that they have helped finance major Israeli military projects, including the IDF’s huge new intelligence campus in the Negev, intended to house Unit 8200, the signals-intelligence unit behind AI targeting tools used in Gaza.
None of this means Menora will be sanctioned. The legislation and designation criteria are still to come.
But yesterday’s announcement puts my investigation in a new light: Menora has documented financial links to the kinds of settlement construction, infrastructure, financing and commercial activity the UK government now says its new sanctions regime will target.
Last month’s story for @MiddleEastEye:
middleeasteye.net/news/how-b……
@oscarrickettnow
Interesting to see if Bristol’s local press continue to ignore the Israeli finance aspect of this story following UK govt announcement - they’ve written about the building of Bristol’s tallest tower many times. Clearly of great interest to many people in the city.
Any plans?
@TristanCorkPost @beardedjourno @PeteGavan
Yesterday’s announcement that the UK will ban goods from illegal Israeli settlements was only one part of a much wider new sanctions regime.
The government says it will also target companies and individuals providing “construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate” for settlement expansion. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband warned those who “finance or facilitate illegal settlements” that they will face UK sanctions.
That has potentially significant implications for a story I investigated last month for @MiddleEastEye.
What will become Bristol’s tallest tower is currently rising in the city centre. Behind it is Israeli pension and insurance giant Menora Mivtachim, which backs Cain’s UK student-housing platform - a partnership whose portfolio was valued at more than £800m after its expansion into Bristol, with developments across Russell Group university cities.
According to Who Profits, Menora Mivtachim have:
- Directly financed settlement construction, including 80 homes in Ariel and 84 homes in Ma’ale Adumim - the major West Bank settlement adjoining the crucial E1 area, whose expansion the UK is specifically seeking to deter.
- Financed a 1,642-home development in Katzrin in the occupied Syrian Golan, alongside tourism, roads and infrastructure.
- Holds a 74% stake in a solar project in the occupied West Bank, jointly owned with the Israeli settlement of Na’ama.
- Built significant shareholdings in companies involved in settlement construction, infrastructure and services.
- Holds significant stakes in companies providing security, fuel and other services to settlements across the occupied territories.
All this sits alongside the fact that they have helped finance major Israeli military projects, including the IDF’s huge new intelligence campus in the Negev, intended to house Unit 8200, the signals-intelligence unit behind AI targeting tools used in Gaza.
None of this means Menora will be sanctioned. The legislation and designation criteria are still to come.
But yesterday’s announcement puts my investigation in a new light: Menora has documented financial links to the kinds of settlement construction, infrastructure, financing and commercial activity the UK government now says its new sanctions regime will target.
Last month’s story for @MiddleEastEye:
middleeasteye.net/news/how-b……
@oscarrickettnow
Joe Banks retweeted
🧵🚨 NEW: Israel is spending millions of dollars to influence AI chatbots—and according to a new Drop Site investigation, it’s working.
Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is overseeing a network of websites created for the Israeli government that are increasingly appearing in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and other AI systems.
Joe Banks retweeted
“whereas the streets of the old mercantile port were far removed from the agonies of the slave ships, today the bland exteriors of high-rise towers cannot obscure the reality of ethnic cleansing and genocide.”
Bristol’s tallest ever building - and the money and power behind it:
- An Israeli pension giant that has directly financed vast IDF military bases, including for intelligence units central to the AI-driven mass killing of civilians in Gaza
- A CEO of a global property investment firm who is also one of the leading figures of the UK’s pro-Israel lobby
- A student accommodation partnership with a UK portfolio valued at over £800m
- Financial and political networks spanning Israel, the Gulf, Europe and the US that help secure international toleration for Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide
- A housing crisis reshaping Bristol and driving the transformation of its skyline
- Bristol’s historic duality: a city shaped by wealth from slavery and empire, but also by a long tradition of radicalism and resistance — a tension that continues today
My investigation for Middle East Eye 👇
middleeasteye.net/news/how-b…
Joe Banks retweeted
In the centre of Bristol, two towers are rising slowly into the sky.
The money behind St James House connects Bristol to global capital networks that run from the Gulf through Israel to Europe.
They connect the city to Israel’s atrocities.
@JoePBanks reports
Joe Banks retweeted
How Bristol’s tallest tower will be tied to Israel’s atrocities
Funded by Menora Mivtachim and Cain, St James House links Bristol to capital flows that run from the Gulf, through Israel to Europe
My piece for Middle East Eye on the investors closely involved with the Israeli state and military-industrial complex who are behind Bristol’s tallest ever building
In the centre of Bristol, two towers are rising slowly into the sky.
The money behind St James House connects Bristol to global capital networks that run from the Gulf through Israel to Europe.
They connect the city to Israel’s atrocities.
@JoePBanks reports
Joe Banks retweeted
As our Minab film shows, there seem to be profound problems with the Pentagon's targeting database. The investigation is clearly being stifled, lessons not learned, just as US returns to bombing Iran at full tilt, civilian locations including rail stations again assaulted. 1/
Joe Banks retweeted
“So, this system is literally making bills higher for consumers in England and Wales?”
“That’s right. There’s a privatisation premium that ordinary people face ... and that is an upward redistribution of income towards shareholders.”
@DantonsHead on @LBC with @AndrewMarr9 👇
Joe Banks retweeted
UN commission of inquiry says Israel committing genocide in Gaza by deliberately targeting children bbc.in/44m7eF8
This is because Israel dislikes Loffredo’s entirely legitimate reporting. We aren’t a free country and we aren’t a sovereign one either.
I’ve been waiting for @_isaacrose’s rejoinder to some of the current incoherence around the idea of Manchesterism. It did not disappoint.
Manchesterism is not socialism. Andy Burnham’s city is a neoliberal metropolis.
“Manchesterism” is a contradiction. Rather the city representing a break with neoliberalism, Manchester appears in many ways to be an exemplar case. In the 19th century the Germans had a term for laissez-faire free trade liberalism. They called it Manchesterthum, or “Manchesterism” – the ideology of the factory owners and shopkeepers who ran the city in the interests of industrial capital. Far from a new vision of socialism, might today’s “Manchesterism” instead be a cousin of that ideology?
By Isaac Rose
newstatesman.com/politics/ec…
Joe Banks retweeted
RIP Roger Cook. Had some of the biggest balls on TV; confronted some right wrong ‘uns and often got a whack for his troubles. This clip defines his style…
#RogerCook
Joe Banks retweeted
At the height of the genocide, the government invited the head of the Israeli Airforce - General Tomer Bar - to an air show in Gloucestershire. At the time, 10 children a day were losing one or both limbs in Gaza due to Israeli air strikes.
