5 months ago
16
TEL AVIV: Israel organised and paid for an
influence campaign
last year targeting
US lawmakers
and the American public with
pro-Israel messaging
, as it aimed to foster support for its actions in the war in the
Gaza Strip
, according to officials involved in the effort and documents related to the operation.
The covert campaign was commissioned by Israel’s
ministry of diaspora affairs
, a govt body that connects Jews around the world with the state of Israel, four Israeli officials said.
The ministry allocated about $2 million to the operation and hired
Stoic
, a political marketing firm in Tel Aviv, to carry it out, according to the officials and the documents.
The campaign began in Oct and remains active on the
social platform
X. At its peak, it used hundreds of fake accounts that posed as real Americans on X, Facebook and Instagram to post pro-Israel comments. The accounts focused on US lawmakers, particularly ones who are black and Democrats, with posts urging them to continue funding Israel’s military.
ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot, was used to generate many of the posts. The campaign also created three fake English-language news sites featuring pro-Israel articles.
The Israeli govt’s connection to the influence operation, which NYT verified with four current and ex-members of ministry of diaspora affairs and documents about the campaign, has not previously been reported. FakeReporter, an Israeli misinformation watchdog, identified the effort in March.
Last week, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, said they had also found and disrupted the operation. The campaign didn’t have a widespread impact, the two companies had said. The fake accounts accumulated more than 40,000 followers across X, Facebook and Instagram, FakeReporter found. But many of those followers may have been bots and didn’t generate a large audience, Meta said.
The secretive drive signals the lengths Israel was willing to go to sway American opinion on the war in Gaza. The US has long been one of Israel’s staunchest allies, with Prez Biden recently signing a $15 billion military aid package for the country. But the conflict has been unpopular with many Americans, who have called for Biden to withdraw support for Israel in the face of mounting civilian deaths in Gaza. Israel’s ministry of diaspora affairs denied involvement. Stoic didn’t respond for comment.
Gaza offensive won’t stop for talks: Israel
Israel reiterated on Wednesday its refusal to halt the Gaza offensive for a resumption of hostage-release talks with Hamas, after mediator Qatar said it had given the Palestinian militants a US-backed truce proposal. “Any negotiations with Hamas would be conducted only under fire,” defence minister Yoav Gallant, said in remarks after he flew abroad a warplane to inspect the Gaza front. On the other hand, Hamas political head Ismail Haniyeh said the group will deal “seriously and positively” with any agreement that is based on the total halt of war, complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
(With Reuters inputs)
