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 

“From tourism to education to business, Americans have profited enormously from the open global order that international law has enabled. Trump’s return to a world of power politics would mean a more circumscribed and impoverished America.” What would happen if every state acted like Donald Trump’s America? by Kenneth Roth

"As Washington tramples norms, alliances might give way to grudging partnerships, with allies slow-walking their commitments" 

In a might-makes-right world, US allies, not to mention the emerging powers of the global south, would begin to hedge their bets in dangerous ways 

 

Kenneth Roth  in The Guardian 

 

14 Jan 2026   

What is wrong with resurrecting the prerogative of major powers to claim a sphere of influence in which they dictate and others must follow? That idea informs the “Donroe Doctrine” behind the US invasion of Venezuela to seize Nicolás Maduro. Donald Trump seems to believe that, as the world’s strongest military power, the United States should be allowed to invade other countries at will. Trump’s homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, says “the real world” is “governed by strength”, by “power”, so we should get used to it.

There is a beguiling simplicity to this abandonment of the norms long designed to govern the behavior of states big and small. China has touted it as the reality that its Asian neighbors must live with. Russia, a third-tier power by comparison but still a nuclear-armed regional heavyweight, has periodically treated the boundaries of post-Soviet states as mere suggestions. But do we really want to return to the law of the jungle in which the guy with the biggest stick calls the shots?

Trump’s distaste for any constraints on US power did not emerge in a vacuum. The US government has long considered international law to be what Lilliputians use to restrain Gulliver. That wariness lies behind, for example, Washington’s reluctance to accept international standards that most others view as benign, such as the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions (articulating modern standards for warfare and ratified by 175 states), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (the US is the only nation in the world not to have ratified it) or the Law of the Sea Treaty (171 state parties). Joining the international criminal court (ICC) is deemed beyond the pale.

To some extent, spheres of influence have long existed. The United States has dominated the western hemisphere, while China held significant sway in parts of Asia and Russia in the countries of the former Soviet Union. On occasion those big powers flexed their military muscles without regard to international law – the United States to invade Iraq, for example, Russia to seize chunks of Ukraine and Georgia, China to fence off much of the South China Sea. But these forays have been exceptions, justified with allusions to Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, Putin’s stated fear of Nato expansion or China’s historical territorial claims. Trump is proposing a more unabashed return to great-power spheres of influence enforced largely by coercion.

In the past, the US government at least nominally portrayed its dominance as aimed at upholding democracy and the rule of law. Despite the many exceptions, Washington spent enough time promoting a rights-based world order that its hegemonic role seemed more palatable. Under Trump, that is all history... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/14/trump-might-makes-right-world

 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] 

United Nations Geneva: "The greatest danger to our future is apathy. You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you.” Let her words of love & faith inspire you every day. Together, let’s honour Jane Goodall’s legacy by working towards a better world. #ActNow

United Nations Geneva

@UNGeneva

"The greatest danger to our future is apathy. You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you.” Let her words of love & faith inspire you every day. Together, let’s honour Jane Goodall’s legacy by working towards a better world. #ActNow

"A humanitarian official told CNN that organizations are concerned about foreign powers like China and Russia using the US aid freeze to increase their own soft power overseas. And there are concerns that non-state actors, like terrorist groups and child soldier recruiters, could gain influence in areas where US funding currently supports refugee camps, the official highlighted."

The US Agency of International Development (USAID) has issued 'stop-work orders' impacting multiple sectors following a directive from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to pause most US foreign aid.

J. David Ake/Getty Images/File

US foreign aid freeze is upending global aid and the work of contractors

By Lauren Kent, CNN

The extent of the impacts of the Trump administration’s sudden 90-day freeze of almost all foreign aid is still unclear almost a week on, as officials and aid workers overseas try to make sense of which activities must be suspended.

The suspension of foreign aid was outlined in a diplomatic cable from Secretary of State Marco Rubio last Friday.

In addition to widespread confusion around ongoing aid projects, the suspension means some aid contractors are not being paid for contracts and work that they have already completed, one aid industry source told CNN, speaking anonymously for fear of retribution.

Contractors working with USAID – many of them US-based companies and small businesses – often front the money for aid work, then submit invoices and get reimbursed later.

Now, some are not being paid for millions of dollars’ worth of services already rendered, the aid industry source said. That means there will be significant furloughs of staff at many aid contractors and subcontractors...  READ MORE  https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/30/world/us-foreign-aid-freeze-intl-latam/index.html

[Palestinian] Arab Americans Need Political Normalization

"As long as normative American political behavior is stigmatized as anathema, political normalcy for Arab Americans, as a community, will remain a distant dream. Self-imposed marginalization will persist. And self-defeating Arab Americans will continue to regard "normalization" not as a goal, but as the most damning of invectives." Hussein Ibish

Arab Americans Need Political Normalization

Hussein Ibish
The Daily Beast (Opinion)
November 12, 2012 - 12:00am
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/12/arab-americans-need-political-normalization.html

Following the recent election, and noting the growing influence of nontraditional power blocs such as Latinos, Arab Americans have again raised the question of how they can become politically empowered. There is only one answer: become politically "normal" Americans.
 

This seems simultaneously a provocative and absurdly facile response. Who wants to be "abnormal?" The initial reaction might be outrage: in what way are you suggesting we're not "normal Americans?" But for many Arab Americans, especially as a collectivity, becoming politically "normal"—successfully acculturated to and invested in the American political system—is easy to endorse in theory but exceptionally difficult to accomplish in practice.
 

Normalization means accepting that the system is open to all. There are no laws preventing effective participation, and no candidates who aren't responsive to the normal levers of influence: votes, money, time and advocacy. But there is a self-defeating delusion prevalent among many Arab Americans that they are uniquely excluded. Some identify anti-Arab racism or Islamophobia as insurmountable barriers. Others say our opponents are so powerful that we cannot be heard.
 

Moreover, the community is badly divided along numerous axes. Many Arab Americans have imported political allegiances from the Middle East. They identify primarily with organizations or constituencies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Palestine, rather than those here in the United States, and formulate their policies accordingly. As my friend and colleague Ziad Asali, President of the American Task Force on Palestine, has pointed out, this is the equivalent of running into the middle of a football game waving a tennis racket and expecting to affect the outcome.

Many Arab Americans left the Middle East precisely to get away from politics, where it has been a terrain of oppression, corruption and, above all, defeat...READ MORE