Tel AVIV: According to leaders involved in the work and documents related to the procedure, Israel organized and paid for an effect plan last year that targeted US politicians and the British government with pro-Israel communication in order to encourage support for its actions in the Gaza Strip.
Four Israeli officials claimed that the government of diaspora affairs, a government agency that connects Jews from all over the world to the state of Israel, was responsible for initiating the secret campaign. According to the authorities and the records, the government funded the activity by about$ 2 million and hired Stoic, a political marketing organization in Tel Aviv, to carry it out.
The campaign launched in October and is still active on X’s social network. At its height, it posted pro-Israel comments on X, Facebook, and Instagram using hundreds of fake accounts that posed as real Americans. The accounts focused on US lawmakers, particularly ones who are black and Democrats, with posts urging them to continue funding Israel’s military.
ChatGPT, the AI- powered chatbot, was used to generate many of the posts. Additionally, the campaign created three fake English-language news websites with Israel-related articles.
The Israeli government’s involvement in the influence operation, which NYT verified with four current and former ministry of diaspora members and campaign documents, 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, which makes ChatGPT, said they had also found and disrupted the operation. The campaign did n’t have a widespread impact, the two companies had said. 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 did n’t generate a large audience, Meta said.
The covert motivation indicates how far Israel was willing to influence American opinion regarding the Gaza war. Prez Biden recently signed a$ 15 billion military aid agreement for Israel, which has long been one of Israel’s most steadfast allies. In response to the rising civilian casualties in Gaza, many Americans have called for Biden to withdraw support for Israel. Israel’s ministry of diaspora affairs denied involvement. Stoic did n’t respond for comment.
Gaza offensive wo n’t stop for talks: Israel
After mediator Qatar announced it had given the Palestinian militants a US-backed truce proposal, Israel reiterated on Wednesday its refusal to stop the Gaza offensive in exchange for a resumption of hostage-release talks with Hamas. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated in a statement after flying a warplane abroad to inspect the Gaza front that “any negotiations with Hamas would only be conducted under fire.” On the other hand, Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of Hamas, stated that the organization would” seriously and positively” deal with any agreement that would require the total cessation of the Israeli civil war and the complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
( With Reuters inputs )
