Showing posts with label Hasbara. Show all posts

Thursday, August 27, 2026

Fake US thinktank set up and funded by Israel sought to game AI for propaganda: In effort to prime chatbots to make pro-Israel arguments the site published 124 reports, over 560,000 words in nine days, Guardian analysis shows

A crow perches on an Israeli flag near an empty beach along the Tel Aviv coastline in April 2026. Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

Jason Wilson

Wed 26 Aug 2026

A pro-Israel messaging website badged with the name of a thinktank that does not exist has published more than half a million words in nine days, built on a commercial platform that promises to optimize content so that AI chatbots will cite it.

The site gives Israel’s position on subjects including the torture of Palestinian prisoners, Israeli war crimes and whether Israel has deliberately starved Palestinians in Gaza, all presented as neutral research.

The New York media production company Piro Inc filed the site with the US justice department this month under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara), a 1938 law that requires anyone working for a foreign government to formally disclose it, as material it distributes for the Israeli government.

The site publishes in the name of the Hanover Institute for Public Policy, which apparently does not exist as a legal entity in any jurisdiction, has no physical address, and carries no named staff and no bylines on any of its reports. Its own terms of use are governed by the laws of “the state in which the Institute is established”, which they decline to name.

The existence of the site was first reported on 14 August. Since then the institute has added a page headed funding, which states: “An earlier version of this page said the Institute operated without external funding, and that was true when it was written.”

The site is one part of a broader effort, financed by tens of millions of dollars from the Israeli government and routed through third parties including the European advertising group Havas Media, to prime chatbots to make Israel’s arguments for it... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/26/fake-thinktank-israel-ai-propaganda

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies here, there- and everywhere]

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Amid the systematic killing of Palestinian and Lebanese journalists, one organisation has been quietly bringing British media workers to Israel.

Journalist Amal Khalil reporting in Lebanon last month (Photo: Mohammed Zaatari/Alamy)

Lobby group taking journalists on propaganda tours of Israel

JOHN McEVOY
23 April 2026

On Wednesday, journalist Amal Khalil and photographer Zeinab Faraj were reporting from southern Lebanon when an Israeli airstrike reportedly hit a car in front of them.

The two journalists, working for the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, were then targeted as they sought shelter in a nearby home. Khalil was killed and Faraj was seriously injured.

Khalil is one of over 259 Palestinian and Lebanese journalists to be killed by Israel since 2023, with the IDF responsible for two-thirds of all journalist killings globally in 2025.

While systematically killing Palestinian journalists, the Israeli government blocked entry of foreign media workers to Gaza, in an effort to create a blackout of its genocidal campaign.

At the same time, an influential lobby group named ELNET has been quietly taking UK journalists on propaganda tours of Israel, Declassified can reveal.

ELNET was created in 2007 to “counter the widespread criticism of Israel in Europe”, and is increasingly seen as the AIPAC of Europe.

The journalists who participated in ELNET delegations to Israel have written for some of Britain’s largest news organisations including the Telegraph, Spectator, and Mail on Sunday.

ELNET has also taken former British military officers to Israel, with many of them returning to Britain and putting a positive spin on the IDF’s operations in Gaza.

Des Freedman, professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths, told Declassified: “Journalists can try to claim that these are fact-finding visits but, in reality, they are junkets specifically deigned to generate pro-Israel coverage.

“Embedded journalism like this is dodgy in peacetime but utterly scandalous during a genocide when the rest of the world’s media have been locked out of Gaza.

“At the very least, just as the UK competition regulator insists that paid-for content must be ‘clearly labelled’, the same should apply to news stories that are made possible by well-funded supporters of the Israeli regime”.

ELNET...

Saturday, August 1, 2026

How much is your support for Israel worth? Try $1 billion [that we know of]... Israel is spending wads of cash on public diplomacy in a desperate attempt to reverse waning American support for the country after it stands accused of genocide in Gaza and pushing the U.S. into the Iran war.

(Quincy Institute's Youtube) https://youtu.be/j1UxyTFGdFk?si=bJGOgQxa0IGDNc9S

Jul 25, 2026 ALWAYS AT WAR | A QI SHOW

In the latest episode of Always at War, Courtney and Alex examine Israel's $1 billion campaign to shape global opinion and policy toward Israel with the researcher who's done the work to expose it: QI Fellow Nick Cleveland-Stout.

Quincy Institute researcher Nick Cleveland-Stout has the most comprehensive data yet on the extent of this foreign influence campaign

By Courtney Rawlings, reposted from Responsible Statecraft, July 30, 2026

Israel is spending wads of cash on public diplomacy in a desperate attempt to reverse waning American support for the country after it stands accused of genocide in Gaza and pushing the U.S. into the Iran war.

Since Oct. 7, Israel has spent over a billion dollars on global “hasbara” — television appearances, social media campaigns, chat-bot training, and other efforts to influence how people think about Israel. And this “public diplomacy” budget more than quadrupled in the last year alone.

To understand these efforts to win back American hearts and minds, we welcomed Quincy Institute Research Fellow Nick Cleveland-Stout to the latest episode of Always at War. Nick’s latest research is the most-definitive accounting yet of Israel’s new approach to winning over American’s hearts and minds.

Nick’s findings surface a surprising development in Israel’s influence efforts: while the country used to rely almost exclusively on wealthy, sympathetic advocates tilting the policy process toward Israel’s interest via American lobbying groups like AIPAC, Israel has recently been forced to hire U.S. contractors and firms that have to register as foreign agents under FARA.

While the transition signals Israel’s increasing desperation, it also allows us to see who Israel is hiring and for what. Take for example, Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale, who is currently the proud holder of three of Israel’s largest contracts. His main gig: running a mass texting campaign on behalf of Israel while posing as mysterious “peace” groups like “Allies for Peace.” Or, to take another example, the public diplomacy group Targeted Communications Global, which has spent nearly $10 million to run ads on places like X, the Daily Caller, and Breitbart. It turns out, Israel is more worried about maintaining their right-leaning supporters.

But perhaps the most shocking revelation is just how much time and money Tel Aviv is spending on “training” our chat bots — think Claude, ChatGPT, or Grok. The Israeli government is actually paying for “LLM poisoning” — developing pro-Israel websites that feed information to these chatbots whenever they’re asked about Israel. The apparent goal is that, when you ask about a straightforward incident — like Hind Rajab’s murder by the IDF — the chatbot will feed you a “he-said, she-said” story that features Israel’s justifications for shooting a five-year old, not a straight, factual accounting of events... READ MORE https://israelpalestinenews.org/how-much-is-your-support-for-israel-worth-try-1-billion/

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine ]

READ NICK'S NEW RESEARCH: https://quincyinst.org/research/the-e...

2:45 - Meet the researcher exposing Israel's $1 billion influence machine

5:07 - Why Netanyahu called this his most important war

9:34 - How Israel went from AIPAC to hiring Trump's campaign manager

24:31 - Who Israel is trying to influence (and why it's not working)

32:21 - How to manipulate an AI chatbot

41:19 - $10 million in secret ads — and nobody noticed

48:08 - Why Israel's influence campaign is backfiring

Friday, July 24, 2026

'A triumphant failure': How Israel's use of social media influencers to win back support backfired- Israel quadrupled its PR budget to $730m in 2026 and is reportedly paying influencers up to $7,ooo to post pro-Israel content

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

Fleur Hargreaves

Published date: 23 July 2026 12:18 BST | Last update: 20 hours 49 mins ago

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]

Saturday, May 16, 2026

The True Story of Israel's Creation: Debunking Israel's Foundational Lies from Their Leaders' Mouths

Muhammad Shehada

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk55AwbXDaw

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

Saturday, March 7, 2026

Assal Rad- Good reminder: The language of manufacturing consent:

Assal Rad

@AssalRad

Good reminder.

https://x.com/AssalRad/status/2030133479716077899/photo/1

Sunday, February 1, 2026

"The war on journalists in Gaza continues Despite a supposed ‘ceasefire’, international journalists are still not freely allowed in Gaza and Palestinian journalists continue to be killed by Israel. Western journalists should be in uproar about this assault on press freedom. Instead the likes of CBS are simply parroting Israel’s talking points." Arwa Mahdawi

The war on journalists in Gaza continues

Despite a supposed ‘ceasefire’, international journalists are still not freely allowed in Gaza and Palestinian journalists continue to be killed by Israel. Western journalists should be in uproar about this assault on press freedom. Instead the likes of CBS are simply parroting Israel’s talking points.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/31/save-act-voting-arwa-mahdawi

AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

CPJ calls on Israel to lift ban on foreign journalists and stop targeting broadcasters

New York, January 26, 2026—As Israel’s Supreme Court considers petitions on Monday challenging the ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza, the Israeli government has simultaneously doubled down on restrictions against foreign media operating inside Israel. The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Israeli authorities to immediately allow foreign journalists to freely enter and report from Gaza safely, and to end all restrictions on foreign media broadcasters operating in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.

On January 26, the Israeli government approved a 90-day extension to the ban on Qatar-based Al Jazeera and Beirut-based Al Mayadeen, under a 2024 law allowing the communications minister and prime minister to shut down offices, block websites, seize equipment, or shut down foreign broadcasters deemed a “security threat.” In December 2025, the Knesset extended this so-called “Al Jazeera Law” for two more years.

The recent decision, promoted by Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, consolidates powers that can silence independent reporting and intimidate foreign media, expanding the Israeli police’s authority to impose media bans, censorship, and surveillance... READ MORE https://cpj.org/2026/01/cpj-calls-on-israel-to-lift-ban-on-foreign-journalists-and-stop-targeting-broadcasters/

'I'm afraid to go out and film': Journalists in Gaza fear they are being targeted by Israel

Saša Petricic

| CBC News | Posted: January 27, 2026 6:53 PM | Last Updated: January 27

They are the latest in a long list of Palestinian reporters killed in the Gaza war

The Committee to Protect Journalists calls the territory "the deadliest place for journalists in recent history," deadlier than "any other conflict, anywhere else in the world," said the group’s Jodie Ginsberg.

Besieged local reporters are still the only media with eyes on Gaza war

https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/9.7062255

Bari Weiss’s CBS News Won’t Even Condemn Israel for Killing a CBS Contributor

Instead, the network’s new top anchor Tony Dokoupil peddles Israel’s talking points about it killing a Palestinian journalist. A CBS source calls it a ‘disgrace.’

Annie's New Letters (& notes)

Labels