The wilful ignorance of Epstein’s connections with Israeli Intelligence

Editor’s note: This article examines media framing, intelligence-linked influence networks, and accountability failures surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein case. It does not allege collective responsibility by any nation, religion, or ethnic group, but interrogates the actions of individuals, institutions, and state actors where evidence, reporting, or credible testimony exists.

There’s a moment in a catastrophe where it goes into slow motion for everyone involved – participants and observers alike. It becomes a collective experience. Growing appreciation of the problem and its irresolution increase anxiety. And yet with each revelation no action results and we find ourselves in the space between not knowing what will happen and dreading what will happen when it happens. We have to slow it down to take it all in. Time itself must slow down to give us the space needed to absorb it. We pause for a breath. It happens in crashes, capsizes and it’s happening now with the three million files from the Epstein release. It is simply overwhelming.

The Epstein Files and the Politics of Non-Action

The names are mostly all there now, and pictures and videos too. Many of them look like individuals facing credible allegations of sexual abuse, some of them less brazen and more carefully sanitised. The financials are emerging, the medical and research concepts are horrors and those responsible for dealing with Epstein are making furious denials of wrongdoing to save their reputations. The resignation of the politically toxic Peter Mandelson, has been got, and a few other resignations, but nothing has happened. No arrests. Even with the names there – no search warrants (apart from Mandelson), no arrests. Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is roaming free around the royal grounds. Many have been outed as liars at least, and as alleged perpetrators of serious sexual crimes at most. Everyone is drawing breath.

When Institutions Freeze: Familiar Patterns of Media and Police Paralysis

The closest to this moment that I have blogged about over the last few decades would be the 24 hours following the revelations that TV One sports presenter Tony Veitch had Jake Muss’d his missus and he went on air that night as if nothing had happened and “Veitchy” yucked it up as usual with Simon Dallow even though we all knew he had sent his partner to hospital. Remember that? We all collectively threw up as the disgraced presenter slimed his way through his sportsball report. It was a pause – no one knew what to do. We just watched the news helplessly as he was treated like a treasured and trusted colleague, instead of the individual whose behaviour was already well-documented, that he was. We know how that turned out after the pause – he got the arse – but at that moment when the state media pretended not to know what we all knew we seemed powerless to react, we were just subjected to their projection of reality left wondering if we were losing our minds.

The other event was the Roastbusters West Auckland rape gang scandal where for about 72 hours the police just point blank refused to do anything leaving the public increasingly distressed, but too shocked to effectively demand a remedy which allowed NZ Police to diffuse the crisis with a ruse of focusing an operation on the victims which was easily swallowed by the media. But in the moment we really cannot predict how it may evolve or who may be guilty or of what.

Power, Intelligence Links, and the Limits of Accountability

With Epstein we ask the same questions: What shall be done? What can be done? Who will do it? I ask that at this lull stage before the waves have broken because here is where we are right now as far as the Epstein files and the American criminal justice system goes:

Robin: Holy gaslighting, Batman! We were told this was all random excess and coincidence.

Batman: Indeed, Wonder Boy. A rogue financier, a few bad apples, and nothing more — at least that’s the story we’re supposed to swallow. Pay no attention to the intelligence-linked protection networks quietly shaping the narrative behind the scenes.

Robin: But Batman, why do the files show repeated contact with political power brokers, defence contractors, and elite research interests — and why do so many of the same names keep appearing in the flight logs?

Batman: Because when power investigates itself, the outcome is already decided. Now pass the pizza — accountability is exhausting.

[Both stare silently at the audience]

That is where we are up to in the chapter of advanced capitalism. It has the attributes of a sordid Machiavellian soap opera as much as it does an economic model.

Media Gatekeeping, Narrative Management, and the Israel–Russia Deflection

The disclosures from the emails show that personal relationships and power broking are closed circuits and there for rampant manipulation. Insider trading is the whole game. The institutional Western media has so far in this lull done their utmost to create a fictionalised version of what the files signify, so it’s Russia instead of Israel that is behind Epstein and his motives. It is laughable. It is propaganda. And who is this protecting? It has been a most shameful spectacle.

It is a litmus test like when ex-President Hu Jintao was publicly, very deliberately, very dramatically dragged off the top table by President Xi ‘s goons at the 20^th congress in 2022. Turns out you’re never too old for re-education — a reminder of what happens to the Uighurs today. The commentariat either said what it was – purged – or pretended it was impenetrable oriental confusion, buying state media’s official line that it was an innocent health matter. That was the credulity test. Many failed who should have called it exactly what it looked like. Believe your eyes!

The Credulity Test: Who Refuses to Say What Is Visible

So, to see the BBC and even France 24 in a panel show pretending Epstein is KGB and never mentioning Israel once is outrageous. David Brooks at the New York Times, sure he’s been caught out at dinner with Epstein and the same and worse for Michael Wolff at The Daily Beast – those two have no credibility at all. But the Rest is Politics UK and USA never mentioned Israel once either – just absurd levels of avoidance and attempting to peddle a Russia narrative.

The Trump gaggle mid-air too was shameful as Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary who so vehemently claimed he never had anything to do with Epstein and who appears cavorting in business and pleasure in the emails, hovers behind Trump and no reporters ask anything about it. It is insane. Lutnick cannot continue as a proven liar that he is… and yet he does. How much longer will this lull persist before social media can break through where mainstream media has so thoroughly abandoned its watchdog role.