Defending NSO Group an easy fit for pro-Israel Democratic lobbyist

The infamous story of the Israeli NSO Group and its terrifying spying software Pegasus is so troubling, even the United States government blacklisted the company for “malicious cyber activities.” But that didn’t stop the company from hiring four high-profile lobbying firms to try to reverse the listing and win federal contracts. 

Three of the lobbying firms were typical conservative, corporate lobbyists. But one, Bluelight Strategies, stood out because of its association with not only Jewish and pro-Israel causes, but for its strong connection to the Democratic Party. Bluelight’s president, Steve Rabinowitz, is a familiar face around the Washington Jewish community and on Capitol Hill. 

All four of the lobbying firms came under fire from the human rights group DAWN (Democracy in the Arab World NOW), an organization seeded by Jamal Khashoggi before his brutal murder by Saudi Arabian agents commanded by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. The lobbyists were all required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and, while they did so, they failed to report fully on the connection of their client, NSO Group, to the Israeli government. 

The connections there are clear, and Israel has not concealed that it is advocating in Washington for NSO Group. Last week, at a hearing in the House of Representatives, serious concerns were raised about NSO Group’s Pegasus tech being used to spy on Americans. 

Carine Kanimba, a U.S. citizen and daughter of famed Rwandan activist Paul Rusesabagina (who was the subject of the film “Hotel Rwanda”), testified that her father had been lured from their home in Texas to Dubai, where he was kidnapped, put on trial and sentenced to 25 years for his human rights advocacy. Soon after, Carine herself discovered she, too, was being surveilled by the same technology used to gather intelligence on her father, Pegasus. 

This prompted Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) to comment: “NSO Group claims its spyware cannot be used against Americans…Your experience is clear evidence that this is simply not true, as [is] the experience of U.S. diplomats in Uganda and other locations who had their phones hacked with NSO spyware.”

This is what Rabinowitz and his fellow lobbyists were trying to not just let loose on U.S. citizens, but was actually trying to get the U.S. government to pay for. 

For many, the sort of cynicism that drives a lobbyist to press the U.S. government to permit commercial, virtually unregulated spying software that can infiltrate a phone without any indication of such an intrusion to the user, is the kind of activity broadly associated with the political right and the Republican party. Indeed, DAWN’s own release about Rabinowitz states, “Bluelight’s decision to represent NSO Group seems at odds with the majority of the firm’s clients, many of which are center-left in American Jewish society, or human rights and global development organizations.”

Actually, while Bluelight’s clients span a good deal of the spectrum of the mainstream Jewish community, it is far from a list of “center-left” groups. Among the organizations Bluelight proudly lists on its web sites are the American Jewish Committee, the Academic Engagement Network, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the Israel Action Center, the Israel on Campus Coalition, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, the Jewish Federations of North America, Ohr Torah Stone (whose founding rabbi, Shlomo Riskin, was also the founding Chief Rabbi of the Israeli settlement, Efrat), the Orthodox Union, Thank Israeli Soldiers, and other organizations that work tirelessly to support and defend Israel’s policies. No realistic assessment could possibly consider these groups centrist, let alone liberal or progressive. 

Yet Bluelight also works for some unquestionably liberal organizations, such as Walls of Demand, founded by parents of one of the students murdered in 2017 at Parkland High School; Unity Productions Foundation; RespectAbility; National Parks Conservation Association; and other similar groups that, while certainly far from radical, are mainstream liberal organizations. 

This sets Bluelight apart from the other lobbying firms NSO Group has retained, none of whom would be examples of what Buzzfeed labeled Bluelight as: a Jewish progressive firm. But that is certainly Bluelight’s and Rabinowitz’s image. 

Rabinowitz’s career took off after he worked on Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign and subsequently became Clinton’s director of media planning. He had also worked on the presidential campaigns of Jerry Brown, Mike Dukakis, and John Kerry, among others. He worked with Barack Obama’s campaign, and for the re-election of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). After setting up several communications firms, he became well-known for working on Jewish issues, for the Jewish community and as a political liaison to it. 

Working Against Qatar

In recent years, particularly when parts of the organized Jewish community had decided that Qatar was an enemy state to be dealt with accordingly, Rabinowitz worked to discredit the Gulf emirate. In 2017, Qatar retained the services of a Washington public relations firm that was well know for its Republican connections in an effort to counter the attacks on it from Donald Trump and his cohorts. Rabinowitz went to work for the other side, ironically working against these Republican-aligned firms to attack Qatar, and thus defend the position of Donald Trump. 

Rabinowitz told Ha’aretz that Qatar is “the one country that alone is funding Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Nusra Front.” He also said “Qatar has its own billion dollar world-wide whitewash, I mean PR effort, that includes its own television network. Half-a-million-dollars a year to court American Jews is chump change – and we Jews are the chumps if we buy any of it.”

Rabinowitz worked with the extremist neoconservative organization Foundation for Defense of Democracies on a conference they held to demonize Qatar and support what ended up being futile Saudi and Trump efforts to isolate the country. He helped put together a similar conference for the right wing Hudson Institute around the same time. 

That Rabinowitz and Bluelight maintain a reputation as a progressive firm reflects the cognitive dissonance on Israel that is so ubiquitous in Washington. Much like the pro-Israel community itself, Bluelight is firmly entrenched in the Democratic Party which lends it a liberal sheen because it is naturally compared to the Republicans and their more open fascism. On Palestine, for instance, Republicans are forthright about their disdain for Palestinian rights, and even the basic humanity of Palestinians and Muslims. Democrats would never be so open, yet their policies, as Joe Biden just demonstrated on his trip to the region, reflect the same disregard for the rights and very humanity of Palestinians.

Maybe Rabinowitz is not defending the worst of the Israeli settlers, but a close examination of his clientele reveals a lot of advocacy for Israeli apartheid and support of Israel despite its obvious crimes against the Palestinian people. The support for NSO Group is only one step beyond that advocacy, which has not stopped Rabinowitz’s Bluelight being regarded as a “progressive Jewish” lobbying firm. It’s a misnomer. But it is very emblematic of a firm that is so deeply tied to the Democratic party, like most of its clients. The policies of most Democrats fit the very same box that Bluelight does. Far from being a progressive box, it is anathema to even the most moderate of progressive values, as support for apartheid policies must be.