Israel conducted a covert influence campaign targeting U.S. lawmakers and the American public with pro-Israel messaging to garner support for its actions in the war with Gaza. This campaign, commissioned by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, aimed to strengthen ties between Jews worldwide and Israel. The ministry allocated approximately $2 million and hired Stoic, a Tel Aviv-based political marketing firm, to execute the operation.
The campaign began in October and remains active on the platform X. At its height, it used hundreds of fake accounts posing as real Americans on X, Facebook, and Instagram to post pro-Israel comments. These accounts particularly targeted U.S. lawmakers, especially Black Democrats like Representative Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Raphael Warnock, urging them to continue funding Israel’s military.
Many of the posts were generated using ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot. The campaign also created three fake English-language news sites that featured pro-Israel articles. The New York Times verified the Israeli government’s connection to this operation through interviews with four current and former members of the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and documents related to the campaign. This connection had not been previously reported. FakeReporter, an Israeli misinformation watchdog, identified the effort in March. Meta and OpenAI, which own Facebook and ChatGPT respectively, stated they had found and disrupted the operation.
This campaign highlights the lengths Israel was willing to go to influence American opinion on the Gaza war. The United States has long been one of Israel’s strongest allies, with President Biden recently signing a $15 billion military aid package for the country. However, the conflict has been unpopular among many Americans, who have called for President Biden to withdraw support for Israel due to mounting civilian deaths in Gaza.
Social media experts indicate that this is the first documented case of the Israeli government organizing a campaign to influence the U.S. government. While coordinated government-backed campaigns are not uncommon, they are typically hard to prove. Countries like Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, and the United States are believed to conduct similar efforts globally, often masking their involvement by outsourcing to private companies or running them through third countries.
Achiya Schatz, the executive director of FakeReporter, criticized Israel’s role in this campaign as reckless and probably ineffective. He emphasized that Israel’s operation, which interferes in U.S. politics, is extremely irresponsible.The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs denied any involvement in the campaign and claimed no connection to Stoic. Stoic did not respond to requests for comment. Meta and OpenAI reported last week that the campaign did not have a widespread impact. The fake accounts amassed over 40,000 followers across X, Facebook, and Instagram. However, many of these followers were likely bots and did not generate a large audience, according to Meta.
The operation commenced just weeks into the war in October, as indicated by Israeli officials and documents. Numerous Israeli tech start-ups received emails and WhatsApp messages inviting them to join urgent meetings to become “digital soldiers” for Israel during the war. These communications came from Israeli government officials, tech start-ups, and incubators. The first meeting occurred in Tel Aviv in mid-October. It appeared to be an informal gathering where Israelis could volunteer their technical skills to support the country’s war effort. Members of several government ministries also participated.
Participants were encouraged to be “warriors for Israel” and that “digital campaigns” could be run on behalf of the country. The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs allocated a $2 million budget for a campaign aimed at the United States. Stoic was hired to run this campaign. Stoic, founded in 2017 by political and business strategists, describes itself as a political marketing and business intelligence firm. Other companies may have been hired to manage additional campaigns.
Many fake accounts on X, Instagram, and Facebook posed as fictional American students, concerned citizens, and local constituents. These accounts shared articles and statistics supporting Israel’s position in the war. The campaign focused on more than a dozen members of Congress, mainly Black Democrats. Representative Ritchie Torres, a pro-Israel Democrat from New York, was among those targeted, along with Jeffries and Warnock.
Some fake accounts responded to Torres’s posts on X by commenting on antisemitism on college campuses and in major U.S. cities. For example, in response to a Dec. 8 post by Torres about fire safety, a fake account replied with a message blaming Hamas for the conflict and included a hashtag about Jewish persecution. On Facebook, fake accounts posted on Jeffries’s public page, asking if he had seen a report about the United Nations employing Hamas members in Gaza. Jeffries, Torres, and Warnock did not respond to requests for comment.
The campaign also created three fake news sites, such as Non-Agenda and UnFold Magazine, which stole and rewrote material from outlets like CNN and The Wall Street Journal to promote Israel’s stance during the war. Fake accounts on Reddit then linked to the articles on these so-called news sites. The operation was poorly executed. Some profile pictures did not match the fictional personas, and the language used in posts was awkward. For instance, accounts with photos of Black men posted about being middle-aged Jewish women. Many posts shared identical sentences, such as “I gotta reevaluate my opinions due to this new information.”
Meta and OpenAI published reports attributing the influence campaign to Stoic. Meta removed 510 Facebook accounts, 11 Facebook pages, 32 Instagram accounts, and one Facebook group tied to the operation. OpenAI stated that Stoic created fictional personas and biographies meant to represent real people on social media in Israel, Canada, and the United States to post anti-Islamic messages. Many of these posts remain on X.
