Shalev Hulio, the CEO and cofounder of NSO, the Israeli surveillance company at the center of a bombshell investigation this week that found its tools have been used to spy on journalists, politicians, and human rights activists around the world, is now suggesting that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that's trying to pressure Israel to end its occupation of Palestine is somehow behind the story.

Either it or Qatar.

Hulio mentioned the conspiracy in an interview with Israel Hayom, the free, right-wing daily newspaper funded by the casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who died earlier this year.

"It looks like someone decided to step on our head," Hulio said. "There's an attack on [Israel's cyber industry] generally. After all, there are so many cyber intelligence companies in the world, but everyone just focuses on Israelis. To make a consortium of journalists from all over the world like this and bring in Amnesty [a key partner in the investigation]—it looks like there's a deliberate hand here."

When asked whose hand exactly, Hulio elaborated:

"I believe that in the end it's either Qatar or BDS or both," he said. "In the end it's always the same entities. I don't want to sound cynical now, but there are those who don't want [Israel] to import ice cream or export technologies."

Hulio is referring to Ben and Jerry's recent decision not to sell its ice cream in Israeli-occupied territories following years of BDS campaigns. Hulio also said that he doesn't think it's a coincidence that the investigation about his company dropped around the same time that another Israeli surveillance company, Cellebrite, is being challenged by digital rights group while attempting to go public, and the publication of an investigation about Candiru, yet another Israeli surveillance company.

"It's just illogical that this is all happening at once," he said.

"Israel's NSO Group is now exposed to the world as deeply implicated in very serious crimes and grave human rights violations worldwide, so it is expectedly desperate to deflect by fabricating pathetic conspiracy theories,” BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti told Motherboard. “Israel's spyware and military technologies are field-tested on Indigenous Palestinians under Israeli occupation and apartheid and then exported to the world as tools of repression and war crimes. It is time the world held apartheid Israel accountable, as apartheid South Africa once was, and not just for the sake of Palestinians but for the sake of world peace and justice as well."