What was supposed to be a quiet meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a cohort of pro-Israel influencers last month has had a loud impact, revealing what has been described as a desperate attempt by the government to polish Tel Aviv’s perception globally, amid mounting criticism for war crimes in Gaza.
The influencers are estimated to have been paid around $7,000 per post across various platforms, all on Israel’s behalf, according to media reports.
Records filed with the Department of Justice show that the Israeli government hired a firm called Bridges Partners LLC to manage the influencer network, which has been code-named “Esther Project”.
Bridges states its work was to “assist with promoting cultural interchange between the United States and Israel,” while contracts show up to $900,000 in payments to be divided up over several months to cover upfront payments, concept development, influencer fees, production and agency costs.
In the New York meeting with influencers, Netanyahu stressed that social media is a new tool to counter waning public support for Israel and its growing pariah status amid the two-year war on Gaza.
The UN, human rights organisations, and legal experts have all labelled Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, while the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for crimes against humanity, and a genocide case is pending at the ICJ.
Public support for Israel in Europe and the United States is at an all-time low, with more Americans now sympathising with Palestinians rather than Israel for the first time since polling began in 1998.
In late September, more countries, such as the UK, Canada, France, Australia, and Portugal, formally recognised a Palestinian state.
Meet the influencers
A range of influencers from different sectors attended the roundtable. Among them were Lizzy Savetsky, a lifestyle and fashion figure, Miriam Ezagui, a US-based nurse who posts on TikTok about Jewish orthodox life and traditions, as well as Zach Sage Fox, who posts pro-Israel videos.
In February, Savetsky shared a video of Jewish supremacist Rabbi Meir Kahane, a violent fanatic who routinely espoused anti-Arab and Palestinian rhetoric. In a caption to one of her social media posts, Savetsky writes, “The only language Arabs understand is force and fear”, paraphrasing Kahane.
Yair Netanyahu, the Prime Minister’s son, who has been at the centre of several social media scandals in recent years, was also among the influencers. Most recently, he denied that there was a famine in Gaza, blaming images of starving children on genetic issues.
A New York City-based influencer, Debra Lea, who attended the meeting, posted a photo saying it was an “honour” to meet Netanyahu, calling him “one of the greatest politicians of all time”.
In response to a question she posed at the meeting, Netanyahu hinted at his strategy to have a larger Israeli influence on TikTok.
“Weapons change over time. We can’t fight today with swords or with cavalry, we have these new things - drones - I won’t get into that. But we have to fight with weapons that apply to the battlefield in which we’re engaged - and the most important one is social media,” he said.
'Paid propaganda'
The meeting has garnered a critical response from media commentators and experts, who say that Israel is becoming increasingly desperate in attempts to improve its public image.
“This meeting is something we know from the past, it is a practice Israel does by investing heavily in various industries like the ministry of foreign affairs or diaspora or other Zionist organisations,” Jalal Abukhater, policy manager at the 7amleh digital rights organisation, told The New Arab.
“They invest money or use influencers with big platforms to boost their content and also pay them for the content, so it seems that it is posted organically,” he added.
Abukhater said Israel is “paying influencers to whitewash Israel’s image of genocide”, which involves the justification of acts the state is committing while also influencing tech firms, some of whom are making significant moves towards controlling social media platforms.
“One such platform is TikTok, with the current purchase deal in the US and potentially very strong components of Zionism in the new leadership of TikTok…we can see them trying to dissuade people from protesting against genocide and portraying Israel as a victim of the genocidal war it is unleashing on Gaza,” he added.
Part of the strategy, he says, also involves negatively smearing Muslims to boost Israeli propaganda, which in turn delegitimises pro-Palestine protests and conveys them instead as “pro-terror” protests.
“It is a very significant matter that they are investing hundreds of millions of dollars into such efforts, but it also shows their desperation to control the narrative when they are so isolated because the whole world rejects genocide…” he said.
He warned that any attempts from TikTok to promote pro-Israel content and silence Palestinian voices on the app may, in turn, discourage people from using it.
Ines Abdel Razek, co-director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD), agrees, calling Israel’s battle for influence over tech and social media a sign of weakness.
“While money can definitely have a significant impact on manufacturing further consent for their genocide and colonial violence, our grassroots impact shows that money isn’t enough,” she told TNA.
“For so long, Zionism and Israel have successfully built their image on lies, myths and ethnic cleansing…but people around the world started seeing through this and are also fed up of being smeared and bullied when speaking up.”
Israel's history of Hasbara
Netanyahu’s meeting with content creators is not the first time Israel has engaged with the world of influencers. On the contrary, experts say this is a core part of Israel’s public diplomacy strategy, also known as ‘Hasbara’.
Hasbara, a Hebrew word for “explanation”, dates back to the early 20th century and is a strategic campaign to defend Israel diplomatically and in the world of public opinion.
Often state-funded, but also backed by global pro-Israel lobby groups, the objective is to spread information in the media, academia, and online to delegitimise Palestinian advocacy and boost Israel’s image.
In August, the Israeli diaspora affairs ministry paid for US and Israeli social media influencers to film and share content from distribution sites in Gaza, where over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since May. Many of the starving aid-seekers were directly shot at, and tear gas was used on them to disperse crowds.
The 10 influencers entered the devastated coastal territory despite foreign journalists being banned, and were told to “reveal the truth” about humanitarian efforts there. The creators included Xaviaer DuRousseau, who has over 500,000 followers on Instagram and describes himself as a Zionist activist.
Following his visit to Gaza, he wrote in a post on X: "There is enough food at this aid base to feed every person in Gaza for at least a week, but the UN, Hamas, etc refuse to distribute the food efficiently. Instead, it sits here to spoil and be stolen. How’s that Israel’s fault?".
According to a report in +972 Magazine, Netanyahu reestablished the ministry of Hasbara, which briefly existed in the 1960s and 70s, and there is a national headquarters for Hasbara in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Speaking to The New Arab, Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a US policy fellow at Al Shabaka, said it is important to understand why Israel puts so much energy and resources into propaganda.
“Since its establishment, Israel has depended on unconditional support from the West in order to sustain its national project through the provision of weapons, diplomatic cover, and political/economic support,” he said.
Because of this dependency, he added, Israel has had to win over the hearts and minds of Westerners, which has historically been done through promoting verifiably false narratives that project Israel as a liberal, Western, utopian oasis at the forefront of Western civilisation's crusade against the "uncivilised" east.
“When Israel calls itself the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ and makes claims like ‘Israel made the desert bloom,’ despite the fact that these are verifiably false or misleading, they shape a cultural hegemony that has defined US/Western-Israel relations for decades. But with the undeniable reality of genocide, this is beginning to change,” he continued.
The strategy is wide-reaching, he said, and on the ground includes assassinating Palestinian journalists to prevent them from portraying the reality of Israeli war crimes. Online, meanwhile, the Israeli government uses its influence to censor information.
Kenney-Shawa says that when Israel is unable to counter the effects of shocking images from Gaza online, it resorts to instead barraging the public with disinformation and propaganda to make the public question what they see.
“Israel is desperately pursuing this PR crusade because they've lost the argument. In head-to-head debates, when information is allowed to be accessed and flow freely, Israel loses the argument because there is no denying the horrors of the atrocities Israel is committing in Gaza,” he said.
But it is dangerous to underestimate the potential impact of these censorship and propaganda efforts, even if many young people are becoming increasingly aware of Israel being seen as a regional bully.
“With pro-Israel apologists buying control of some of the most popular social media and news platforms, from TikTok to CBS News, I have no doubt that we will see an uptick in efforts to silence Palestinian voices and mute their perspectives,” Kenney-Shawa said.
While the truth will keep trickling through, he says, the bigger issue is that there are increasingly more competing claims that people cannot independently verify. Israel does not need to “win the argument outright”, he added, but instead continue to “sow enough discord and confusion that the wider public remains immobilised”.
Dahlia Scheindlin, an American-Israeli political consultant and journalist, echoes his sentiment.
“In general, Israel always believes that its image is an essential aspect, always believes it is facing a global delegitimisation campaign that is unrelated to its actions, and government figures have spoken of the image issue as an additional front in the current war”.
Israel and artificial intelligence
Israel’s efforts to change how it is perceived have also extended to artificial intelligence.
Last month, it was also revealed that the Israeli government has hired a new firm, Clock Tower X, to produce content aimed at Gen Z audiences and to train ChatGPT to take a more pro-Israel stance.
According to reports, Clock Tower was brought on to build new websites designed to influence how artificial intelligence systems, including ChatGPT, frame issues by training them on large datasets.
Filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act currently state that Clock Tower was hired to help "execute a nationwide campaign in the US to combat antisemitism".
“Narrative warfare in the 21st century is a major part of the battlefield, particularly in Palestine, as international impunity and complicity with the Israeli regime is what enables it to exist,” Abdel Razek says.
Nadda Osman is a senior journalist at The New Arab
Follow her on X: @naddaxosman