Israeli Influence Operation Targets U.S. Lawmakers on Hamas-UNRWA
Omer Benjakob
Haaretz
Mar 19, 2024 6:00 am IST
For the first time since the war in Gaza began, social media researchers have discovered an Israeli influence operation active across a number of platforms using hundreds of fake accounts to advance what was termed "Israeli interests" online among young Western audiences, in English.
The campaign, discovered by an Israeli online watchdog, is not pushing out disinformation but rather focuses on un-organically amplifying claims and reports regarding the involvement of UNRWA workers in the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and its targets include U.S. lawmakers.
At the center of the campaign, researchers at Fake Reporter found, were three "news sites" that seemed to have been created especially for the operation. The sites published reports that were copied from other, real news outlets, among them CNN and The Guardian – for instance, a UN report about sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. Hundreds of avatars – complex online digital personas – intensively promoted the "reports" from the campaign's sites, as well as posting screen captures from real ones, such as a Wall Street Journal report on UNRWA staff members' involvement in the attack.
The avatars were all created on the same dates, made use of the same profile photos and naming conventions, and shared other characteristics that indicate they are all part of the same network, stated a report published by the watchdog on Tuesday (Full report in Hebrew available here). The accounts were opened in sets across Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter); one of the avatars has Hebrew letters in its username in what looks to be a typo. While so-called bots are automatic accounts that can be easily identified by platforms, avatars are "cyborgs" and are not fully automated, but rather try to mimic real human behavior by being active on a number of platforms.
Over 500 different avatars were found on the three social networks. They pushed out posts with almost identical wording and links to what Fake Reporter called "the three main assets" in the influence operation: UnFold Magazine, Non-Agenda and The Moral Alliance. The date that UnFold's X profile was created was the same date on which a large number of the avatars were also created. While the Moral Alliance only has a presence on social media, the other have two actual websites – and these two also share a number of technical characteristics that indicate they are linked to each other and were set up as part of the same operation.
The three assets have over 40,000 followers across social media, and according to researchers, the network includes a core group of users, a secondary group for amplification – including some Israeli avatars, though most were American (including many with Jewish and African American names) – and another group for retweeting or responding.
The operation began a few weeks after the war broke out and is still active today. The campaign, researchers found, tried to inflate the exposure of its content and to artificially boost the popularity of online materials deemed to be pro-Israel or advancing Israeli interests.
A review of its content reveals that it began by focusing on Zionism and Jewish history, in what seemed like an attempt to address rising antisemitism in the West, especially among young Jewish and African American progressives in the U.S. The campaign's content also attempted to address widespread denialism of rape and sexual violence during the Hamas massacre. Later, it shifted to more aggressive tactics and more political content, amplifying claims also being pushed out by the Israeli government, the Foreign Ministry and Israel's official hasbara (public diplomacy) channels – namely, claims against the UN aid agency and its ties to Hamas.
In January, Haaretz revealed that an Israeli body had procured an online influence system to respond to what numerous sources called "Israel's hasbara crisis" and a "pro-Palestinian online hate machine" that was pushing out antisemitism, pro-Hamas propaganda, massacre denialism and disinformation that was undermining Israel's international legitimacy online – and thus also the Israeli army's ability to battle Hamas.
The system was intended to counter unauthentic support for Hamas online. At some point, it was transferred to a civilian body, likely a governmental agency, and today it operates alongside other hasbara initiatives, including official and private initiatives being funded by Israel's hasbara directorate and the Diaspora Affairs Ministry.
It's impossible to know who is behind this current operation being exposed here today – and it's impossible to find the operators or those funding such campaigns using social media analysis alone.
'As an African American woman'
The three assets at the center of the campaign opened prior to the war in the Gaza Strip, but kicked into action only after it began. They published content that can be described as being of interest to general progressive audiences. The websites published reports about climate change, AI regulation, the state of democracy across the world – and of course the Gaza war, Iran's role in Yemen and even Jewish history. There were also reports on culture, including about the Oscars. Researchers believe these were intended to draw non-political readers to the sites and increase their followers on social media that at a later stage would also see pro-Israel content.
Most of the content, researchers found, was copied, likely automatically, from other websites, mostly prominent and respected media outlets, and were either copied in full or used as the basis for what looks like an automatic rewrite. The website also published original content that may have also been generated automatically using AI – for example, a real UN report about sexual violence was written up on Non-Agenda.
The different avatars retweeted, shared and posted similarly worded posts, and many began their digital lives with a declaration of identity: "As a middle-aged Jewish American male, I stand against human rights violations, but I cannot support Hamas; let's find a peaceful solution for justice," tweeted "David Taylor." Taylor's profile picture shows a young Black man.
Others also tweeted similar phrases and in some cases there was incongruence between their names, pictures and claims of identity, researchers found. Aaliyah Martinez Paul tweeted, "As an African American middle-aged male, I find solace and strength in my Christian faith," though the profile picture showed a woman. Butler Juan, whose profile picture is of a person of color, also wrote that he found solace in his faith – but as a "middle-aged white American man."
After basing their identity, the different avatars began to tweet about a wide array of topics, including lack of safety for Jewish Americans on college campuses and discrimination against Jewish students, and even tagged academic institutions like Harvard as the Senate was discussing the Gaza war's effect on American academic life.
Others focused on the shared history of African Americans and U.S. Jewry, and the role Jewish Americans played in the civil rights struggle: "The Jewish people stood by the black community and supported your fight for equality, now you need to support us against those who want to destroy us," a user named Lisa Akerman tweeted.
The avatars pushed out the different reports published on the three assets. For example, UnFold's content stressed the values shared by Israel and the West and the shared liberal values at the heart of Judeo-Chrisitan culture. There was also general content about Jewish history on Non-Agenda, for example debunking myths regarding Judaism or stressing Jews' historical links to the region.
Content dealing directly with the Gaza war was taken from other websites, including Jewish outlets like the Jewish Telegraph Agency and the Jewish Chronicle; Israeli outlets like the Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel; and even respected outlets considered liberal-leaning, like CNN, The Guardian and others.
To further attract a broad readership, Non-Agenda was set up as a general interest news site. Out of the three, Non Agenda had the most followers on social media. On its website and on social media, Non Agenda offered its readers purported coverage on a wide array of topics, purportedly devoid of any agenda.
On its homepage, it automatically aggregated the X feeds of other outlets not focused on Israel at all: For example, the BBC's feed was embedded into the site. However, it also included feeds from other lesser known outlets. It showcased the tweets of Nexta, an online TV channel run by Belarussian now based in Poland, and from Visegrád 24, a mysterious online media presence with active YouTube and Telegram channels that in the past has pushed out content considered favorable to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and is considered close to the pro-Donald Trump European right. Both outlets gained online popularity after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and after the Gaza war broke out they began publishing content on this topic, too.
UNRWA for Democrats
At the end of January, now with tens of thousands of followers, the campaign pivoted toward a much more political topic: From Jewish history, antisemitism on U.S. campuses and Judeo-Christian values shared by Jews and African Americans, the avatars and assets shifted their focus to what was at the time the main narrative of Israeli diplomacy: UNRWA, its staff members' ties to Hamas and their role in the events of the October 7 massacre.
For years Israel has claimed that the Gaza aid agency is collaborating with Hamas. On January 18 The New York Times published that the UNRWA chief met with the deputy head of Israel's Foreign Ministry, who presented damning evidence collected by the Israel Defense Forces that linked UNRWA staff to the terror organization. A week later, UNRWA conducted an internal investigation into its workers, and a number of donor states froze support. As part of the aggressive campaign against the agency, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the international community and the UN to shutter UNRWA.
After UNRWA's announcement of the investigation and news that donors were halting funding, on January 28, the influence network's avatars and assets began pushing out content about UNRWA. On January 30, the social media platforms of all three assets posted the same screen capture of the same Wall Street Journal report on intelligence linking UNRWA staff to the October 7 attack.
The avatars worked to inorganically amplify the assets' posts, and they responded to U.S. lawmakers, influencers and prominent news outlets on social media with almost identical comments regarding the "shocking" and "disturbing" revelations made in the report.
The people targeted the most with such comments by the campaign's avatars were American politicians, specifically the social media accounts of Democratic lawmakers, and accounts considered pro-Israel. An analysis of the campaign's content over the span of the war reveals that UNRWA has been the single most popular topic.
Some 85 percent of all the American politicians whose accounts were targeted with such content were Democrats, and 90 percent of them were African Americans, Fake Reporter's analysis found.
The American lawmaker targeted the most was Ritchie Torres, a Democratic congressman from the Bronx considered to be among the party's more pro-Israel member. After Torres, the lawmakers who got the most responses from avatars were Rep. Joe Neguse, Rep. Hank Johnson, Rep. Cori Bush, Rep. Lucy McBath, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Sen. Rev. Raphael Warnock, Rep. Robin Kelly, Rep. Richard Blumenthal, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove and Rep. Danny K. Davis. These cover a wider ideological span within the party.
"Have you seen this?" the avatars asked in the comments section of the lawmakers' Facebook pages, or in response to one of their tweets, appended with a link to one of the assets' reports about UNRWA.
Since the war broke out, and ahead of the U.S. presidential election this November, tensions regarding Israel and American support for it have grown within the Democratic party. The younger progressive wing of the party has urged U.S. President Joe Biden to restrict aid to Israel and demand a cease-fire. Targeting Democratic African American lawmakers seems to be an attempt to try to address the wave of support they have given to Palestinians.
Researchers speculate that the decision to target Torres' page was likely due to his popularity among pro-Israel Democrats, and the campaign had hoped to use the page's comments section to increase exposure to its content among Black users.
In recent weeks, the campaign has started shifting focus again, now tweeting more about global terror funding and the "axis of evil" of Iran, China and Russia.
Haaretz
Mar 19, 2024 6:00 am IST
For the first time since the war in Gaza began, social media researchers have discovered an Israeli influence operation active across a number of platforms using hundreds of fake accounts to advance what was termed "Israeli interests" online among young Western audiences, in English.
The campaign, discovered by an Israeli online watchdog, is not pushing out disinformation but rather focuses on un-organically amplifying claims and reports regarding the involvement of UNRWA workers in the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and its targets include U.S. lawmakers.
At the center of the campaign, researchers at Fake Reporter found, were three "news sites" that seemed to have been created especially for the operation. The sites published reports that were copied from other, real news outlets, among them CNN and The Guardian – for instance, a UN report about sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. Hundreds of avatars – complex online digital personas – intensively promoted the "reports" from the campaign's sites, as well as posting screen captures from real ones, such as a Wall Street Journal report on UNRWA staff members' involvement in the attack.
The avatars were all created on the same dates, made use of the same profile photos and naming conventions, and shared other characteristics that indicate they are all part of the same network, stated a report published by the watchdog on Tuesday (Full report in Hebrew available here). The accounts were opened in sets across Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter); one of the avatars has Hebrew letters in its username in what looks to be a typo. While so-called bots are automatic accounts that can be easily identified by platforms, avatars are "cyborgs" and are not fully automated, but rather try to mimic real human behavior by being active on a number of platforms.
Over 500 different avatars were found on the three social networks. They pushed out posts with almost identical wording and links to what Fake Reporter called "the three main assets" in the influence operation: UnFold Magazine, Non-Agenda and The Moral Alliance. The date that UnFold's X profile was created was the same date on which a large number of the avatars were also created. While the Moral Alliance only has a presence on social media, the other have two actual websites – and these two also share a number of technical characteristics that indicate they are linked to each other and were set up as part of the same operation.
The three assets have over 40,000 followers across social media, and according to researchers, the network includes a core group of users, a secondary group for amplification – including some Israeli avatars, though most were American (including many with Jewish and African American names) – and another group for retweeting or responding.
The operation began a few weeks after the war broke out and is still active today. The campaign, researchers found, tried to inflate the exposure of its content and to artificially boost the popularity of online materials deemed to be pro-Israel or advancing Israeli interests.
A review of its content reveals that it began by focusing on Zionism and Jewish history, in what seemed like an attempt to address rising antisemitism in the West, especially among young Jewish and African American progressives in the U.S. The campaign's content also attempted to address widespread denialism of rape and sexual violence during the Hamas massacre. Later, it shifted to more aggressive tactics and more political content, amplifying claims also being pushed out by the Israeli government, the Foreign Ministry and Israel's official hasbara (public diplomacy) channels – namely, claims against the UN aid agency and its ties to Hamas.
In January, Haaretz revealed that an Israeli body had procured an online influence system to respond to what numerous sources called "Israel's hasbara crisis" and a "pro-Palestinian online hate machine" that was pushing out antisemitism, pro-Hamas propaganda, massacre denialism and disinformation that was undermining Israel's international legitimacy online – and thus also the Israeli army's ability to battle Hamas.
The system was intended to counter unauthentic support for Hamas online. At some point, it was transferred to a civilian body, likely a governmental agency, and today it operates alongside other hasbara initiatives, including official and private initiatives being funded by Israel's hasbara directorate and the Diaspora Affairs Ministry.
It's impossible to know who is behind this current operation being exposed here today – and it's impossible to find the operators or those funding such campaigns using social media analysis alone.
'As an African American woman'
The three assets at the center of the campaign opened prior to the war in the Gaza Strip, but kicked into action only after it began. They published content that can be described as being of interest to general progressive audiences. The websites published reports about climate change, AI regulation, the state of democracy across the world – and of course the Gaza war, Iran's role in Yemen and even Jewish history. There were also reports on culture, including about the Oscars. Researchers believe these were intended to draw non-political readers to the sites and increase their followers on social media that at a later stage would also see pro-Israel content.
Most of the content, researchers found, was copied, likely automatically, from other websites, mostly prominent and respected media outlets, and were either copied in full or used as the basis for what looks like an automatic rewrite. The website also published original content that may have also been generated automatically using AI – for example, a real UN report about sexual violence was written up on Non-Agenda.
The different avatars retweeted, shared and posted similarly worded posts, and many began their digital lives with a declaration of identity: "As a middle-aged Jewish American male, I stand against human rights violations, but I cannot support Hamas; let's find a peaceful solution for justice," tweeted "David Taylor." Taylor's profile picture shows a young Black man.
Others also tweeted similar phrases and in some cases there was incongruence between their names, pictures and claims of identity, researchers found. Aaliyah Martinez Paul tweeted, "As an African American middle-aged male, I find solace and strength in my Christian faith," though the profile picture showed a woman. Butler Juan, whose profile picture is of a person of color, also wrote that he found solace in his faith – but as a "middle-aged white American man."
After basing their identity, the different avatars began to tweet about a wide array of topics, including lack of safety for Jewish Americans on college campuses and discrimination against Jewish students, and even tagged academic institutions like Harvard as the Senate was discussing the Gaza war's effect on American academic life.
Others focused on the shared history of African Americans and U.S. Jewry, and the role Jewish Americans played in the civil rights struggle: "The Jewish people stood by the black community and supported your fight for equality, now you need to support us against those who want to destroy us," a user named Lisa Akerman tweeted.
The avatars pushed out the different reports published on the three assets. For example, UnFold's content stressed the values shared by Israel and the West and the shared liberal values at the heart of Judeo-Chrisitan culture. There was also general content about Jewish history on Non-Agenda, for example debunking myths regarding Judaism or stressing Jews' historical links to the region.
Content dealing directly with the Gaza war was taken from other websites, including Jewish outlets like the Jewish Telegraph Agency and the Jewish Chronicle; Israeli outlets like the Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel; and even respected outlets considered liberal-leaning, like CNN, The Guardian and others.
To further attract a broad readership, Non-Agenda was set up as a general interest news site. Out of the three, Non Agenda had the most followers on social media. On its website and on social media, Non Agenda offered its readers purported coverage on a wide array of topics, purportedly devoid of any agenda.
On its homepage, it automatically aggregated the X feeds of other outlets not focused on Israel at all: For example, the BBC's feed was embedded into the site. However, it also included feeds from other lesser known outlets. It showcased the tweets of Nexta, an online TV channel run by Belarussian now based in Poland, and from Visegrád 24, a mysterious online media presence with active YouTube and Telegram channels that in the past has pushed out content considered favorable to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and is considered close to the pro-Donald Trump European right. Both outlets gained online popularity after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and after the Gaza war broke out they began publishing content on this topic, too.
UNRWA for Democrats
At the end of January, now with tens of thousands of followers, the campaign pivoted toward a much more political topic: From Jewish history, antisemitism on U.S. campuses and Judeo-Christian values shared by Jews and African Americans, the avatars and assets shifted their focus to what was at the time the main narrative of Israeli diplomacy: UNRWA, its staff members' ties to Hamas and their role in the events of the October 7 massacre.
For years Israel has claimed that the Gaza aid agency is collaborating with Hamas. On January 18 The New York Times published that the UNRWA chief met with the deputy head of Israel's Foreign Ministry, who presented damning evidence collected by the Israel Defense Forces that linked UNRWA staff to the terror organization. A week later, UNRWA conducted an internal investigation into its workers, and a number of donor states froze support. As part of the aggressive campaign against the agency, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the international community and the UN to shutter UNRWA.
After UNRWA's announcement of the investigation and news that donors were halting funding, on January 28, the influence network's avatars and assets began pushing out content about UNRWA. On January 30, the social media platforms of all three assets posted the same screen capture of the same Wall Street Journal report on intelligence linking UNRWA staff to the October 7 attack.
The avatars worked to inorganically amplify the assets' posts, and they responded to U.S. lawmakers, influencers and prominent news outlets on social media with almost identical comments regarding the "shocking" and "disturbing" revelations made in the report.
The people targeted the most with such comments by the campaign's avatars were American politicians, specifically the social media accounts of Democratic lawmakers, and accounts considered pro-Israel. An analysis of the campaign's content over the span of the war reveals that UNRWA has been the single most popular topic.
Some 85 percent of all the American politicians whose accounts were targeted with such content were Democrats, and 90 percent of them were African Americans, Fake Reporter's analysis found.
The American lawmaker targeted the most was Ritchie Torres, a Democratic congressman from the Bronx considered to be among the party's more pro-Israel member. After Torres, the lawmakers who got the most responses from avatars were Rep. Joe Neguse, Rep. Hank Johnson, Rep. Cori Bush, Rep. Lucy McBath, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Sen. Rev. Raphael Warnock, Rep. Robin Kelly, Rep. Richard Blumenthal, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove and Rep. Danny K. Davis. These cover a wider ideological span within the party.
"Have you seen this?" the avatars asked in the comments section of the lawmakers' Facebook pages, or in response to one of their tweets, appended with a link to one of the assets' reports about UNRWA.
Since the war broke out, and ahead of the U.S. presidential election this November, tensions regarding Israel and American support for it have grown within the Democratic party. The younger progressive wing of the party has urged U.S. President Joe Biden to restrict aid to Israel and demand a cease-fire. Targeting Democratic African American lawmakers seems to be an attempt to try to address the wave of support they have given to Palestinians.
Researchers speculate that the decision to target Torres' page was likely due to his popularity among pro-Israel Democrats, and the campaign had hoped to use the page's comments section to increase exposure to its content among Black users.
In recent weeks, the campaign has started shifting focus again, now tweeting more about global terror funding and the "axis of evil" of Iran, China and Russia.
