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ISRAEL SECRETLY TARGETS U.S. LAWMAKERS WITH INFLUENCE CAMPAIGN ON
GAZA WAR  
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Sheera Frenke, Reporting from Tel Aviv
June 5, 2024
New York Times
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_ Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs ordered the operation,
which used fake social media accounts urging U.S. lawmakers to fund
Israel’s military, according to officials and documents about the
effort. _

The campaign focused on more than a dozen members of Congress,
including Representative Ritchie Torres, left, and Hakeem Jeffries,
the House minority leader., Photo credits: Gabriela Bhaskar for The
New York Times, Kenny Holston/The New York Times

 

Israel organized and paid for an influence campaign last year
targeting U.S. lawmakers and the American public with pro-Israel
messaging, as it aimed to foster support for its actions in the war
in Gaza [[link removed]],
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 government 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 October and remains active on the 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 U.S. lawmakers, particularly ones who are
Black and Democrats, such as Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House
minority leader from New York, and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia,
with posts urging them to continue funding Israel’s military.

ChatGPT
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the artificial intelligence-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 government’s connection to the influence operation,
which The New York Times verified with four current and former members
of the 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
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which makes ChatGPT, said they had also found and disrupted the
operation.

The secretive campaign signals the lengths Israel was willing to go to
sway American opinion on the war in Gaza. The United States has long
been one of Israel’s staunchest allies, with President Biden
recently signing a $15 billion military aid package
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the country. But the conflict has been unpopular with many Americans
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who have called for Mr. Biden to withdraw support for Israel in the
face of mounting civilian deaths in Gaza.

 
An Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip on Monday. The secretive
influence campaign signals the lengths Israel was willing to go to
sway American opinion on the war in Gaza.  (Credit: Ramadan
Abed/Reuters //  New York Times)
The operation is the first documented case of the Israeli
government’s organizing a campaign to influence the U.S. government,
social media experts said. While coordinated government-backed
campaigns are not uncommon, they are typically difficult to
prove. Iran
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North Korea, China
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United States
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widely believed to back similar efforts around the world, but often
mask their involvement by outsourcing the work to private companies or
running them through a third country.

“Israel’s role in this is reckless and probably ineffective,”
said Achiya Schatz, the executive director of FakeReporter. That
Israel “ran an operation that interferes in U.S. politics is
extremely irresponsible.”

Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs denied involvement in the
campaign and said it had no connection to Stoic. Stoic didn’t
respond to requests for comment.

The campaign didn’t have a widespread impact, Meta and OpenAI said
last week. 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 operation began just weeks into the war in October, according to
Israeli officials and the documents on the effort. Dozens of Israeli
tech start-ups received emails and WhatsApp messages that month
inviting them to join urgent meetings to become “digital soldiers”
for Israel during the war, according to messages viewed by The Times.
Some of the emails and messages were sent from Israeli government
officials, while others came from tech start-ups and incubators.

The first meeting was held in Tel Aviv in mid-October. It appeared to
be an informal gathering where Israelis could volunteer their
technical skills to help the country’s war effort, three attendees
said. Members of several government ministries also took part, they
said.

Participants were told that they could be “warriors for Israel”
and that “digital campaigns” could be run on behalf of the
country, according to recordings of the meetings.

The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs commissioned a campaign aimed at the
United States, the Israeli officials said. A budget of about $2
million was set, according to one message viewed by The Times.

Stoic was hired to run the campaign. On its website and on LinkedIn,
Stoic says it was founded in 2017 by a team of political and business
strategists and calls itself a political marketing and business
intelligence firm. Other companies may have been hired to run
additional campaigns, one Israeli official said.

Many of the campaign’s fake accounts on X, Instagram and Facebook
posed as fictional American students, concerned citizens and local
constituents. The accounts shared articles and statistics that backed
Israel’s position in the war.

The operation focused on more than a dozen members of Congress, many
of whom are Black and Democrats, according to an analysis by
FakeReporter. Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from New York
who is outspoken about his pro-Israel views
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was targeted in addition to Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Warnock.

Some of the fake accounts responded to posts by Mr. Torres on X by
commenting on antisemitism on college campuses and in major U.S.
cities. In response to a Dec. 8 post on X by Mr. Torres about fire
safety, one fake account replied, “Hamas is perpetrating the
conflict,” referring to the Islamist militant group. The post
included a hashtag that said Jews were being persecuted.

On Facebook, the fake accounts posted on Mr. Jeffries’s public page
by asking if he had seen a report about the United Nations’
employing members of Hamas in Gaza.

Mr. Torres, Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Warnock didn’t respond to requests
for comment.

The campaign also created three fake news sites with names like
Non-Agenda and UnFold Magazine, which stole and rewrote material from
outlets including CNN and The Wall Street Journal to promote
Israel’s stance during the war, according to FakeReporter’s
analysis. Fake accounts on Reddit then linked to the articles on the
so-called news sites to help promote them.

The effort was sloppy. Profile pictures used in some accounts
sometimes didn’t match the fictional personas they cultivated, and
the language used in posts was stilted.

In at least two instances, accounts with profile photos of Black men
posted about being a “middle-aged Jewish woman.” On 118 posts in
which the fake accounts shared pro-Israel articles, the same sentence
appeared: “I gotta reevaluate my opinions due to this new
information.”

Last week, Meta and OpenAI published reports attributing the influence
campaign to Stoic. Meta said
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had removed 510 Facebook accounts, 11 Facebook pages, 32 Instagram
accounts and one Facebook group tied to the operation. OpenAI said
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had created fictional personas and biographies meant to stand in for
real people on social media services used in Israel, Canada and the
United States to post anti-Islamic messages. Many of the posts remain
on X.

X didn’t respond to a request for comment.

On its LinkedIn page, Stoic has promoted its ability to run campaigns
backed by A.I. “As we look ahead, it’s clear that A.I.’s role in
political campaigns is set for a transformative leap, reshaping the
way campaigns are strategized, executed and evaluated,” it wrote.

By Friday, Stoic had removed those posts from LinkedIn.

_[SHEERA FRENKEL [[link removed]] is a
reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering the ways
technology impacts everyday lives with a focus on social media
companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube,
Telegram and WhatsApp. More about Sheera Frenkel
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* Israel
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* fake news
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* Propaganda
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* social media
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* Congress
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* Black elected officials
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* African American elected officials
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* Palestine
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* Ceasefire
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* Hostages
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* Hamas
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* Oct. 7
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* Democratic Party
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* 2024 Elections
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* U.S.-Israel relations
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* U.S.-Israel military aid
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