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| Anti-Trump and pro-Palestine protesters gather outside the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace in Washington, DC on 19 February 2026 (Heather Diehl/Getty Images/AF |
A Pew Research Center survey conducted in March found that a majority, 60 percent of the American public, including 57 percent of Republican voters under the age of 50 and 84 percent of Democrats under 50, view Israel unfavourably.
Much of this is down to an increasing number of younger people using social media rather than mainstream outlets, which are overwhelmingly pro-Israel, for their news.
To counter this shift, Israeli lawmakers approved a record budget of $730m for public diplomacy - known by its Hebrew name Hasbara - in March, amounting to almost five times its previous annual budget, which was already 20 times pre-2023 levels.
In September 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with several American influencers in New York to enlist them to amplify pro-Israel messaging in the US.
During the meeting, Netanyahu stressed the importance of their role, saying: "We have to fight with weapons that apply to the battlefields in which we’re engaged in and the most important ones are on social media."
He added that the deal, which saw American billionaire Larry Ellison, alongside several other pro-Israel businessmen, acquire TikTok's US operations, was "the most important purchase going on right now".
As part of its propaganda campaign, Israel used secret PR operations and hired corporate firms to manage paid influencer networks under a plan code-named the "Esther Project".
According to documents filed under the US's Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara), Israel paid influencers up to $7,000 per social media post, operating through its contractor Bridges Partners, which worked with a global ad agency called Havas Media Group Germany for an “Influencer Campaign”.
Havas also signed a $15m contract with Trump's former campaign manager Brad Parscale’s firm Clock Tower X, which was recently exposed to be behind a social media campaign to attack the US president’s ceasefire deal with Iran on behalf of Israel... READ MORE https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-use-social-media-influencers-support-backfired
[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]
