Israeli Government Funded Covert Influence Campaign Targeting US Lawmakers
The ministry allotted $2 million to the operation in October and hired Stoic, a Tel Aviv-based political marketing firm, to carry it out.
Stoic established fake news websites and hundreds of fake accounts on X, Instagram, and Facebook that posted pro-Israeli messages, trying to push lawmakers such as Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the House minority leader, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) to fund Israel’s military and support its war efforts, the Times reported.
The influence campaign had been reported by a few news and nonprofit organizations in recent months, but the Times article, which drew from operation documents and interviews with current and former diaspora ministry officials, was the first to show that Israel’s government was behind it. Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, published a related story one hour later on Wednesday.
Critics condemned the Israeli government for its role in the disinformation campaign.
“So in addition to the pro-Israel lobby spending tens of millions to defame and defeat progressives in Congress, we now learn that Israel creates fake media to target friends and opponents by inundating with fake news supporting Israeli positions,” James Zogby, co-founder of the Arab American Institute, wrote on social media.
The disinformation campaign comes amid other efforts by pro-Israel groups to influence U.S. politics during its assault on Gaza, notably the lobbying and campaign money spent by groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliates.
The Israeli disinformation campaign also drew comparisons to Russia’s well-known attempt to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which was a central focus of the U.S. political commentariat in the years that followed.
Ishmael Daro, an editor at Democracy Now!, made a tongue-in-cheek prediction that the reaction from the U.S. political establishment would be similar this time.
Last week, both Meta and OpenAI issued reports on Stoic’s disinformation campaign and said they had blocked the company’s network from further activity.
Meta said it had closed more than 500 fake Facebook accounts and OpenAI called Stoic a “for-hire Israeli threat actor,” NBC Newsreported. Stoic’s users remain active on X, the Times reported.
Many of the fake social media posts were generated using ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot owned by OpenAI, and much of the language in the posts was “stilted” and repetitive, the Times reported.
