'Israel' covertly tries to sway US lawmakers via fake accounts: NYT
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Social media experts reveal that this is the first documented case of "Israel" organizing a campaign to influence US lawmakers to make it more pro-"Israel".
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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., meets with reporters at his weekly news conference, at the Capitol in Washington on June 4, 2024. (AP)
"Israel" launched and funded an influence campaign last year targeting America and its lawmakers via pro-"Israel" propaganda to garner support for its genocide in Gaza, as confirmed by The New York Times citing officials involved in the effort and documents related to the operation.
Four officials in the occupation reveal that the campaign was commissioned by "Israel’s" Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, noting that it designated around $2 million for it and hired a political marketing firm in Tel Aviv called Stoic.
It began mere weeks after October 7 and remains active on the platform X, as it used hundreds of fake accounts posing as real Americans on X, Facebook, and Instagram to spread pro-"Israel" content and the accounts focused on US lawmakers, especially African Americans, and Democrats, such as Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader from New York, and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia.
Many fake accounts were even posed as American students and worried citizens to gain more sympathy.
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The NYT report notes that ChatGPT was used to generate several of the posts for the operation that also generated three fake English-language news sites with names like Non-Agenda and UnFold Magazine, which stole and rephrased content from outlets such as CNN and The Wall Street Journal according to analysis by FakeReporter (an Israeli misinformation watchdog).
According to FakeReporter, the accounts garnered more than 40,000 followers across all platforms but many of the followers may have been bots.
"Israel's" connection to the operation has not previously been reported, but it has been verified by the NYT alongside four current and former members of the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and documents.
Social media experts reveal that this is the first documented case of "Israel" organizing a campaign to influence the US and even though organized government-backed campaigns are not unusual, they are still difficult to prove.
Achiya Schatz, the executive director of FakeReporter, said: “Israel’s role in this is reckless and probably ineffective,” noting that "Israel" “ran an operation that interferes in US politics is extremely irresponsible.”
"Israel’s" Ministry of Diaspora Affairs has denied being involved and claims it has no connection to Stoic.
'Digital soldiers'
The operation began weeks into the war in October, per Israeli officials and the documents on the effort.
Many Israeli tech start-ups received emails and WhatsApp messages in October as an invitation to join urgent meetings and become “digital soldiers” for the occupation, according to messages viewed by the NYT and others sent from Israeli officials.
The first meeting held in mid-October was an informal gathering where participants volunteered their technical skills to join the war, three attendees said, as participants were given sugarcoated words of being “warriors for Israel” according to recordings.
On Stoic's website and LinkedIn, it says it was founded in 2017 by a team of political and business strategists while one Israeli claims that other firms may have been hired to run more campaigns.
One instance shows fake accounts posted on Jeffries’s Facebook page by asking if he saw a recent report about the United Nations employing members of the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza.
Some accounts had profile pictures that didn't match the personas they were claiming to be, and the language used in posts was too organized. For example, two accounts with profile photos of Black men posted about being a “middle-aged Jewish woman” and on 118 posts sharing pro-"Israel" articles, the same sentence was posted: “I gotta reevaluate my opinions due to this new information.”
Meta and OpenAI published reports last week revealing that Stoic was behind the campaign. Meta claimed to have removed 510 Facebook accounts, 11 Facebook pages, 32 Instagram accounts, and one Facebook group tied to the campaign.
Meanwhile, OpenAI exposed Stoic for creating fictional people on social media services used in "Israel", Canada and the US to post anti-Islamic messages and many of these messages remain on X.
Stoic's LinkedIn page boasted about running AI campaigns, saying: “As we look ahead, it’s clear that AI’s role in political campaigns is set for a transformative leap, reshaping the way campaigns are strategized, executed and evaluated”. By last Friday, the statement was removed.
Emerson T. Brooking, a former cyber policy advisor to the Defense Department who studies disinformation and propaganda campaigns as a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, expressed that the level of organization for pro-"Israel" propaganda is one-sided, noting that “it exists because there are government ministries in "Israel" that support these tools and encourage their use.”
One app is directly tied to the occupation. Moovers pushes users to “Advocate for Israel, One Click at a Time.”
It allows users to mass react to pro-Palestine content pulled in from social media apps such as reporting it for review or commenting on it. It also gives pre-written pro-"Israel" responses to similar posts.
