The hidden war: Israel’s secret influence campaign to Whitewash genocide

According to documents filed under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the Israeli cabinet has contracted with at least three PR firms to bolster its image online and among American Christian communities.

U.S. Department of Justice records show that Israel’s foreign ministry has hired the European media group Havas, the newly formed Bridges Partners, the PR agency Show Faith by Works, and the online consulting firm Clock Tower X.

All the contracted firms promise to strengthen the regime’s online reputation and to recover support among young American voters — support that polls indicate has declined as a result of the occupying regime’s war on Gaza, in which more than 68,000 Palestinians have been killed.

Israel is acutely aware of the need to control how its allies and financial backers in the U.S. perceive its war. A study of Israel’s online activity published by the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies in May found a coordinated social media campaign to generate international sympathy for the regime during the Gaza war that began in October 2023.

While Israel secured favorable coverage in mainstream U.S. media in the early months of the war, it has been losing the battle on social platforms, where videos revealing mass killings and devastation in Gaza spread rapidly and generated sympathy for Palestinians.

Benjamin Netanyahu has recognized this and described social media as a weapon in the regime’s campaign to win support in the U.S., saying that the purchase of TikTok by a consortium led by regime-supporting investors was the most important acquisition.

Each of the PR firms hired via Havas promises a novel approach in that campaign, targeting key demographic groups, religious constituencies, and even the way the war is discussed online.

Maintaining loyalty to the regime

Reports indicate that Show Faith by Works was hired to run a $3.2 million digital information and targeting campaign aimed at bolstering what it calls “positive ties with Israelis” inside U.S. churches and portraying Palestinian communities as extremist.

Show Faith by Works also promised Israel the largest Christian-targeted influence campaign in American history.

Geofencing targets and tracks users’ communication devices when they are near a specific place or area (in this case, Christian colleges or churches identified by the PR firm).

The company is also planning what it calls a “10/7 mobile experience” (referencing the October 7, 2023 Hamas operation), which could be taken to colleges, churches, and Christian events.

According to filings, this experience would include virtual-reality headsets, action scenes, and full-size screens for an interactive re-creation of the operation in which more than 1,100 Israelis were killed and about 250 settlers were taken captive.

The firm says it can also arrange participation by high-profile Christian spokespersons, including Hollywood actors such as Chris Pratt and Jon Voight — the latter an outspoken supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Rewriting the present

Clock Tower claims it is working to reach Gen Z through social platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram and to engage with AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok. The stated official aim of these activities is to fight anti-Semitism — a term routinely used by Zionists to counter criticism of their genocidal war on Gaza.

Clock Tower X has pledged to use AI modeling to ensure that campaigns overseen by the Israeli regime remain prominent online throughout the Gaza war.

Mark Owen Jones, a media-analysis and misinformation specialist at Northwestern University in Qatar, said: if you can generate enough online noise through social media or high-ranking websites, you can influence large language models.

Jones explained that large language models are trained on a given corpus of data, where they ingest vast amounts of information. Many models such as Grok, ChatGPT, or Gemini also use what is called retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), drawing on contemporary data from websites and social media. What companies like Clock Tower X promise is that if they can flood the information environment with pro-Israel sites and content (what Jones called “RAG poisoning”), there will at least be enough material to muddy the waters around what others call an obvious genocide.

Anonymous influence

The campaign promised by Bridges Partners has already become an online meme — but not in the way the firm or Israel hoped.

Bridges Partners’ campaign involves an anonymous group of some 14–18 influencers paid to post content supporting Israel. Responsible Statecraft, after analyzing figures cited by Bridges Partners, found that influencers were likely being paid about $7,000 per post.

That figure quickly drew criticism from Israel’s detractors, who regularly post it under data-x-items they suspect are part of the pro-Israel campaign, indicating their belief that the poster was bought by the regime.

Responsible Statecraft recently reported that the anonymity of these U.S. influencers, who under their contracts have been posting pro-Israel content since July, could be illegal if their status as paid foreign agents is not disclosed.

So far, only one registered foreign agent is listed in the Bridges Partners filing: an adviser named Yuri Steinberg, who owns 50 percent of the company.

Al Jazeera wrote that the negative backlash to the deals, once exposed, demonstrates how difficult it will be for Israel to change perceptions that are now deeply rooted — especially among young people.

Jones said: “No matter what synthetic data is produced; it will not be sufficient to counter the volume of real reporting from the Gaza war.”