According to filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), Israel has contracted at least three public relations firms to improve its reputation online and among the country’s Christian right.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in accordance with US Department of Justice records, worked with European Havas Media Group to create the newly established Bridges Partners, Christian PR firm Show Faith by Works, and online consulting Clock Tower X.
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All of the companies that were contracted made the promise to improve the nation’s online reputation and win back the support of young right-wing and evangelical US voters, which polls indicate is causing haemorrhaging as a result of Israel’s occupation of Gaza.
Israel’s allies and supporters in the US are acutely aware of the need to control how their war, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 68, 000 Palestinians, perceive it.
A coordinated social media campaign, which started in October 2023, was revealed in a study of Israel’s online activity that was published by the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies in May.
In the first few months of the war, Israel was able to gain favorable coverage from the traditional US media, but it was losing the battle on social media, where videos showing the massacre and destruction of Gaza were popular and gaining Palestinian support.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged this, referring to social media as a “weapon” in Israel’s effort to win US support, and citing TikTok’s purchase by a consortium led by pro-Israel billionaires as “the most important purchase.”
I had the honor of posing a query to Bibi Netanyahu about the possible loss of evangelical support for the state of Israel following Charlie Kirk’s murder. pic. https://twitter.com/XP2faZQa0N
Each of the PR firms hired by Havas promises to take a different approach to the campaign, including including how war is discussed online, as well as religious groups.
preserving one’s faith
In order to promote “positive associations with the Nation of Israel” in American churches and portray “the Palestinian population” as “extremist,” Israel has hired Show Faith by Works to run a $3.2 million outreach and digital targeting campaign, according to its FARA filing.
Show Faith by Works also promises Israel that it will carry out “the largest geofencing and Christian targeting campaign in US history,” according to documents included in the FARA filing.
When users are in close proximity to a specific location or area, such as Christian universities or churches, geofencing targets and tracks their communication devices.
The company also has plans for a mobile “10/7 Experience,” which could include events, conferences, and events involving Christian colleges and churches in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The experience would include a “VR headset, set pieces, full-length TVs for interactive experience” of the attack, which saw 1, 139 people killed and about 250 taken captive, according to the filings.
The company claims to be able to offer the participation of “Christian Celebrity Spokespeople” like actors Chris Pratt and Jon Voight, both of whom have publicly supported US President Donald Trump.
Rewriting the present
Clock Tower claims in its FARA filing that it has been engaged to connect with the Gen Z age demographic through social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram and to engage with artificial intelligence (AI) platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok. The activities officially aim to “combat anti-Semitism” – a term often deployed by the Israeli government to counter criticism of its genocidal war on Gaza.
In its filing, Clock Tower promises to use AI modelling to ensure that the Israeli-supervised campaign – and by extension narratives – are prominent online during the course of its war on Gaza.
“If you can create enough online noise, through either social media or highly ranked websites, you’re able to influence AI’s large language models]like ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok]”, said Marc Owen Jones, an associate professor of media analytics and an expert in disinformation at Northwestern University Qatar.
“LLMs]large language models] are trained on a set amount of data, where they scrape large amounts of]historical] information. However, many models such as Grok, ChatGPT or Gemini use what they call retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), where they also pull contemporary data from websites and social media”, Jones said.
“What companies like Clock Tower X are promising is that, if they can flood the information space with sites and content sympathetic to Israel – what’s called RAG poisoning – , there’ll be enough there to at least muddy the waters around what others see as a clear-cut genocide”.
Clock Tower, headed by former Donald Trump aide Brad Parscale, also says that much of this content will be integrated with that of right-wing Christian network Salem Media, which in April announced a strategic partnership with Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
Anonymous influencing
The campaign promised by Bridges Partners has already become the source of an online meme – but not in the way the company or Israel would have been hoping.
Bridges Partners ‘ campaign involves an unnamed cohort of between 14 and 18 influencers who would be paid to post in support of Israel. After breaking down the figures included by Bridges Partners in their invoices to Havas, Responsible Statecraft – the Quincy Institute’s online magazine – found that the influencers were likely being paid around $7, 000 per post.
The number has been quickly seized upon by detractors of Israel, who regularly post the amount underneath posts they suspect of being part of the pro-Israel campaign, indicating that they believe the poster has been “bought” by Israel.
Responsible Statecraft reported earlier this month that the anonymity of the US influencers, who under the terms of their agreements would post paid pro-Israel content since July, could potentially be illegal if their identities remain undisclosed.
At present, the Bridges Partners filing names only one registered foreign agent: consultant Uri Steinberg, who holds a 50 percent stake in the company.
It is too early to say whether the campaign will ultimately be successful. But the backlash towards the arrangement once it became public illustrates just how difficult the task will be for Israel to change perceptions that have now become deeply ingrained, particularly among younger people.
“No matter what artificial data is produced, it still won’t be enough to counter the volume of factual reporting of the war on Gaza”, Jones said.
There might be enough to arouse a sense of uncertainty, make both sides more equal in the conflict, or make Israel’s response to the October 7 attack more reasonable than some people currently believe it to be.
Al Jazeera is unable to contact Bridges Partners, Clock Tower X, or Show Faith by Works for comment.
Eran Shayovich, the head of the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs, and Havas Media Group have also received inquiries that have not been resolved.
Source: Aljazeera
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