The Israeli government is paying for anti-BDS journalism

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The Israeli government is paying for anti-BDS journalism
By Itamar Benzaquen
By The Seventh Eye
December 20, 2017
https://www.972mag.com/the-israeli-gove ... ournalism/

The Israeli ministry tasked with fighting the BDS Movement is spending millions of shekels to place propaganda that looks like news in Israel’s most prominent media outlets.

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Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Chief of Police Roni Alsheikh attend a ceremony for Israeli police at the Police National College, Bet Shemesh, September 22, 2016. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

The Israeli government paid the Yedioth Group, publisher of Israel’s best-selling daily newspaper, hundreds of thousands of shekels to publish articles and interviews meant to influence readers to support a campaign Israel is waging against its critics. The Strategic Affairs Ministry, headed by Minister Gilad Erdan, purchased positive coverage and the distribution of that content on the Internet.

According to information provided to “The Seventh Eye” and “Hatzlacha,” as part of a freedom of information request, the Yedioth Ahronoth Group received NIS 350,000 ($100,000) to publish journalistic articles, which were then distributed by member organizations of the “Pro-Israel Network” in Israel and around the world. The articles, according to the information furnished, were meant to motivate or enlist Israelis into the struggle.

The paid-for articles were published starting in June 2017 in the news section of Yedioth Ahronoth‘s weekend magazine, and on its website, Ynet. Like other campaigns that included purchasing articles from the newspaper, this one also included promotions in the widely-distributed weekend edition.

Alongside the paid-for articles, Ynet also published promotional videos produced by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, as well as three interviews with a ranking official at the ministry, Tzahi Gabrieli. Two of those paid-for interviews were conducted by Ynet’s senior political correspondent, Attila Somfalvi, who asked soft-ball questions that allowed him to present his talking points.

In addition to the interviews with Gabrieli, Yedioth also interviewed a string of people from various Jewish organizations that do not have direct ties to the state. The role of those organizations in the government efforts against de-legitimization and their ties to the government are unclear.

Two of those organizations, the “World Jewish Congress” and “Stand With Us,” were sponsors of Yedioth’s anti-BDS conference last year, in which senior politicians and officials from the Strategic Affairs Ministry took part. “Over the last year,” wrote journalist Reuven Weiss in one of the paid-for articles, “the boycott movement’s main base of operations in their campaign to delegitimize Israel has moved to social media, and new tools are required.”

The aim of at least some of those state-sponsored articles was to enlist the public to help some of those civil society organizations in spreading government messaging on the internet and to combat unflattering content. In other words, to get the public to execute the Ministry of Strategic Affairs’ strategy.

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Education Minister Naftali Bennett speaks at Yedioth Ahronoth’s Stop BDS conference, March 28, 2016. (photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

“Are you sick of hearing the lies about Israel spread in the international media and on social networks?” read an accompanying box in one of the Hebrew-language state-sponsored articles. Readers were then encouraged to Google the campaign’s name, “4il,” go to the site, and start sharing “videos, caricatures, and articles that expose the lies of BDS.” In addition, Yedioth suggested that readers download an app called Act.il, which enables them to take part in “daily missions” to advance pro-Israel messaging on social media.

As has become customary at Yedioth Ahronoth in recent years, readers are told only that the article they are reading was published “in cooperation with” an Israeli government ministry, without explaining that “in cooperation with” actually means “paid for by.” In recent months, the list of articles featuring that disclosure has grown to include articles written by the news organization’s diplomatic correspondent Itamar Eichner.

The relationship between the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Yedioth Ahronoth is only part of a much broader, well-funded campaign: in June and July of 2017 the ministry spent nearly NIS 7 million ($2 million) on spreading its messaging to the public in Israel and abroad. That is larger than any of the other campaigns that have been exposed by The Seventh Eye in recent years. The second-largest such campaign documented previously was NIS 11 million, and that was over the course of more than a year.

In addition to the journalistic content that the Ministry of Strategic Affairs purchased in Yedioth, it also spent over half a million shekels on placing content on Israel’s highest-rated television news channel, Channel 2 and its website, Mako. And in addition to Hebrew-language articles, the ministry also purchased journalistic content targeting a more global audience, enlisting it in the fight against delegitimization.

The state-sponsored articles aimed overseas audiences were published in The Jerusalem Post, which was paid NIS 120,000 ($34,000); in the Times of Israel, which was paid NIS 95,000 ($27,000); and the J Media Group, an American publishing group, which was paid NIS 115,000 ($33,000). The J Media Group, which operates a television station called ILTV, also received money from the Strategic Affairs Ministry, along with Hebrew-language newspaper Makor Rishon. The ministry refused to release data on its relationship with Sheldon Adelson’s newspaper, Makor Rishon.

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Israeli BDS activists take part in an anti-corruption demonstration in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, December 9th, 2017. (Hagar Shezaf)

According to the data that was released, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs’ biggest expenditure of the campaign — over NIS 2.6 million ($740,000) — was budgeted to promote content on social media and search engines, including Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Another large sum, around NIS 2 million ($570,000), was budgeted for building the Act.il website and producing multi-media content for it. Another roughly NIS 490,000 ($140,000) was budgeted for “strategy,” “creative,” and “branding.”

The funds the government is using to purchase state-sponsored journalistic articles come from the public, and therefore most government ministries have agreed to release information on those types of relationships. It will soon be far more difficult to obtain information about the purchase of journalistic content by Ministry of Strategic Affairs. The ministry has in recent months been advancing legislation that would exempt it from Israel’s Freedom of Information Law. According to the draft legislation, “successfully waging this battle requires keeping it as ambiguous as possible.”

The Strategic Affairs Ministry claimed that the law would not apply to the types of relationships like that with the Yedioth Ahronot Group, but the bill itself, which passed a preliminary vote over the summer and is now waiting for its second and final votes, is written in a way that will apply to all of the ministry’s activities. In response to past freedom of information requests by The Seventh Eye and Hatzlacha, the ministry claimed that some of the requested documents were “classified.” It redacted other documents, claiming that they were liable to harm Israel’s foreign relations, and even state security.

Attila Somfalvi declined to respond to interview requests. Ron Yaron, the editor of Yedioth Ahronoth, sent the following response:

We are proud of the broad and comprehensive coverage Yedioth Ahronoth has been leading against the boycott of Israel. When, in that framework, there has been cooperation with [government] officials or bodies in articles that were published, there have been prominent disclosures of it, similar to what is done in other media outlets when they cooperate with various bodies

This article was first published in Hebrew on The Seventh Eye.

The Seventh Eye is Israel’s only independent media watchdog. Established in 1996, today it publishes daily media reviews, articles, op-eds, and investigative reporting aimed at exposing unacceptable journalistic practices, foreign interests in Israeli media, censorship and self-censorship, discrimination, and racism. The site’s writers follow and document progress in the Israeli media world, from a resurgence of journalists’ unions to exposing hidden ‘advertorial’ content, all with an aim of encouraging independent, fair and unbiased journalism.

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How Israeli spies are flooding Facebook and Twitter
by Asa Winstanley
The Electronic Intifada
25 June 2019
https://electronicintifada.net/content/ ... tter/27596

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Act.IL’s chief executive Yarden Ben Yosef is an eight-year veteran of Israel’s military intelligence agency. (YouTube)

Israel secretly operates a troll army of thousands, partly funded by a government department.

The Ministry of Strategic Affairs is dedicated to a global “war” against BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.

To conceal its involvement, the ministry has admitted to working through front groups that “do not want to expose their connection with the state.”

The troll army Act.IL is one of many such groups. It focuses on spreading Israeli propaganda online.

What does it do with its million dollar budget?

Act.IL is run by a former Israeli spy who has argued that his outfit is involved in “a new kind of war.”

While Act.IL publicly denies being supported by the Israeli government, the group’s chief executive has admitted in Hebrew to working closely with Israeli ministries, and in English that his staff are mostly former Israeli spies.

His name is Yarden Ben Yosef. Last year, he explained his group’s methods in an article for a journal aimed at Israeli diplomats. He lamented that – in Gaza that May – “the Palestinian narrative prevailed in world media over the Israeli one.”

Israeli snipers had massacred more than 60 unarmed Palestinian protesters on a single day during the Great March of Return protests, injuring thousands more.

Ben Yosef advocated for “inserting ourselves” into online discussions, because readers nowadays see the comments section under articles published by websites as part of the story.

Operational links

Using sophisticated “monitoring software,” he wrote, Act.IL closely watched news and social media the week before the opening of the new US embassy in Jerusalem – one of the triggers for the Palestinian protests.

Ben Yosef explained that “controlling the online media discussion became our top priority.”

He claimed victory in these efforts, successfully “bumping the pro-Israeli comments to the top of the list in 85 percent of the cases.”

He wrote that this strategy allows Israel to circumvent its “limited ability to influence world public opinion during crises” due to the “official identity” of government agencies.

Supposedly “grassroots” groups like Act.IL work as convenient fronts for Israel to do just that.

In a Hebrew-only interview with Forbes Israel last year, Ben Yosef made Act.IL’s ongoing operational links with the state even more explicit.

“We work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and with the Ministry of Strategic Affairs,” he admitted. Ben Yosef added that Act.IL seeks the advice of these ministries and undertakes “joint projects” with them.

He said this was done “without remuneration” – a claim undermined by funding disclosures made by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs in 2017.

What are these “joint projects” and how exactly do they work?

Messaging

The front page of Act.IL’s website lays out some of its main propaganda themes: Hamas is evil, while Israel is diverse, Israel “is NOT an apartheid state,” and Palestine solidarity activists are against “freedom of speech.”

In other words, the aim is to smear Palestinians and their supporters, while simultaneously changing the subject and distracting from Israel’s human rights abuses.

In its whitewashing, Act.IL seems to have a weakness for the cringeworthy – a trait fairly typical of such state-backed fake grassroots groups.

One slogan is titled “Israel Extreme Yourself,” which Act.IL describes as “a cool and fresh way” to promote Israel through “extreme sports.” The video shows young Israelis surfing, snowboarding and skydiving.

Act.IL claims “the video reached more than 250K views and over 2,000 shares” within its first 36 hours of being posted. But the video that the website links to in fact had less than 2,000 views on YouTube as of this writing.

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Another of its campaigns is more sinister. It involves using the common right-wing slur “Pallywood” to smear Palestinians as inherent liars.

Such racist conspiracy theories seem to inform much of Act.IL’s propaganda – its chief executive Yarden Ben Yosef has also retweeted notorious Islamophobe Daniel Pipes.

Origins

Act.IL’s roots lay in the Interdisciplinary Center, or IDC, in Herzliya, an Israeli university with close links to the state’s intelligence agencies.

Act.IL also has close ties to the Israeli American Council – a right-wing lobby group funded by Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate who was the top donor to Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign.

The Israeli American Council is led by Adam Milstein, a real estate mogul once imprisoned for tax fraud.

Supplementing the funding from Israel’s anti-BDS ministry, Adelson has also donated to Act.IL.

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Act.IL’s Yarden Ben Yosef appearing at a 2018 AIPAC panel with funder of The Israel Project Adam Milstein, and Jacob Baime, another US Israel lobby operative who has privately admitted to coordinating with Israel’s anti-BDS ministry. (Facebook)

As the Act.IL website states, the idea for the app came from short term “situation rooms” that operated in Herzliya during the major Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2012 and 2014.

Each of these “situation rooms” was titled “hasbara war room” in Hebrew. Literally translated as “explanation,” hasbara is a common Hebrew word for “propaganda.”

As The Electronic Intifada reported at the time, the 2014 “war room” was established by Yarden Ben Yosef – then chair of the IDC student union.

It was Ben Yosef who founded Act.IL, and still works as the organization’s chief executive.

A leaked Act.IL report dates the group’s founding to 2015 – although the app was not formally launched until 2017.

According to his online profile, Ben Yosef was a captain in Israeli military intelligence – “in a special combat intelligence unit.”

The Forward reported in 2017 that Ben Yosef spent eight years in that role, and admitted that “Act.IL’s staff is largely made up of former Israeli intelligence officers.”

With such ties, it’s no wonder that Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs felt comfortable plowing large sums into Ben Yosef’s project.

As The Electronic Intifada has reported, this anti-BDS ministry is staffed by “former” Israeli spies, mostly from Aman, Israel’s military intelligence agency.

Led by Gilad Erdan – a prominent figure in the Likud party – the ministry is responsible for a campaign of “black ops” with a global reach.

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One of Act.IL’s main activities this year has been fighting the BDS campaign against the Eurovision Song Contest which took place in Tel Aviv in May.
The group repeatedly hijacked online polls gauging public support for the boycott.

In April, Irish publication TheJournal.ie conducted a poll asking readers if they supported the boycott. Although the poll initially ran in favor of the boycott, the tide turned after Act.IL directed users of its app to vote.

The poll closed with 54.3 percent against the boycott. Before Act.IL’s intervention, that figure was only 38 percent.

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In a private group chat on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, Act.IL then claimed “success” that its users had hijacked the poll. The screenshots above were provided by Michael Bueckert, a researcher who monitors the app and posts his findings to the @AntiBDSApp Twitter account.
In the same group chat, Act.IL also encouraged users to cheat by voting multiple times to fix the poll. “Each time you delete your cookies, you can revote,” users were advised.

In February, there had been a similar incident in the UK, after Good Morning Britain, a popular TV show, asked on Twitter if viewers supported boycotting Eurovision “over Israel’s human rights record.”

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The accompanying poll again initially ran in favor of the boycott, with 55 percent voting “yes” – as Act.IL’s own screenshot proves.

So Act.IL launched a “mission” in its app directing its troll army to vote “no.” (The group claimed in an internal report earlier this year to have 15,000 users completing 1,580 such “missions” each week.)

Good Morning Britain’s postings to Twitter and Facebook were later deleted, but not before the Israeli intervention had successfully reversed the poll’s initial result. The proportion of respondents supporting a Eurovision boycott dropped to 40 percent.

Udi Avivi, a spokesperson for Israel’s embassy in London, then claimed the poll had been deleted as there had been “an inconvenient result.”

Combating the cultural boycott of Israel is far from the only issue that motivates Act.IL.

Influence campaign against Corbyn

In August last year, Act.IL ran a campaign directing its troll army to make and promote comments online against the British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, accusing him of anti-Semitism.

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Act.IL’s app directed users to promote material accusing Jeremy Corbyn of anti-Semitism. (Michael Bueckert)

The app told users to comment on Facebook in response to a Huffington Post UK story about Corbyn’s alleged “anti-Israel remarks,” which it claimed were “often a way to hide anti-Semitism.”

It was only one of many Israeli government efforts to derail Corbyn’s route to power.

This meddling in British democracy came during the height of summer 2018’s media hysteria about a supposed “crisis” of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.

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The app has made similar dishonest interventions attacking US lawmaker Ilhan Omar, including one directing users to share on Facebook a bigoted attack against her by notorious Islamophobe Brigitte Gabriel.

Starting last year 4IL – a website established by Israel’s strategic affairs ministry to promote Act.IL – even runs a real-world annual conference, attended by Ben Yosef.

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The event gathers “social media experts” from around the world under the Israeli government’s auspices.

From the UK alone, these have included the anti-Palestinian activists David Collier and Simon Cobbs, as well as professional Israel lobbyist Luke Akehurst, who is also a right-wing activist in the Labour Party.

An Act.IL “mission” has directed users to “like and comment” on a tweet Collier had made in response to an article in The Guardian by the rock star Roger Waters, who supports the BDS movement. Collier smeared the article as “hate.”

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David Collier addressing an Israeli government conference in 2019. (Twitter)

Collier spoke at this year’s conference. One slide he displayed during his presentation indicated that Collier may be a little paranoid. He warned that Palestinian rights activists were using “solidarity movements,” “BDS meetings” and “books.”

Collier, Cobbs and Akehurst did not reply to requests for comment.

Real world harrassment

The Act.IL app has also promoted at least one of the targeted anonymous websites harassing US college students and academics campaigning for BDS.

These harassment campaigns have spilled over into real world efforts.

In The Lobby – USA, a four-part undercover documentary by Al Jazeera’s investigative unit, Jacob Baime, the director of another group linked to the Ministry of Strategic Affairs explains how it set up “some anonymous website” promoted by targeted Facebook ads against “the anti-Israel people.”

You can watch the relevant clip in this video.



Some such campaigns have involved defamation against BDS activists, including knowingly false allegations of sexual assault.

Funding disclosures made by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs in 2017 revealed more than $570,000 worth of funding for online ads, including to Facebook. The ads were taken out for undisclosed purposes, but it is likely they were used to promote Act.IL content.

In the undercover documentary, Baime admitted that his group “coordinates” with the ministry.

While Act.IL is big on using buzzwords about its “community” of “volunteers,” in reality, the group is state-funded, and backed by rich donors from the right wing of the Israel lobby.

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Act.IL chief executive Yarden Ben Yosef giving a presentation to Israeli civil servants. (Facebook)

In one recent Hebrew-only Facebook posting Ben Yosef gives a glimpse into this reality.

The posting shows the “former” Israeli spy giving a presentation about Act.IL to a group of Israeli civil servants. Ben Yosef wrote that this would “add thousands of volunteers” for “the benefit of the state of Israel.”

It is highly questionable to what extent state employees using a state funded app to spread state propaganda really are “volunteers.”

The Electronic Intifada emailed Facebook and Twitter to request responses to the issues raised in this article. Facebook did not reply. A spokesperson from Twitter initially promised a response, but failed to send one.

Until Facebook, Twitter, Google and Silicon Valley’s other unaccountable social media giants take the threat of Israeli meddling seriously, the online “war” against Palestinan rights looks set to continue.

With translation by Dena Shunra.

Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist and an associate editor with The Electronic Intifada.

Act.il Ministry of Strategic Affairs Yarden Ben Yosef trolls Facebook Twitter 4IL Aman (military intelligence) Great March of Return Ministry of Foreign Affairs YouTube Daniel Pipes Islamophobia IDC Herzliya Israeli American Council Sheldon Adelson Donald Trump Adam Milstein Jacob Baime Herzliya BDS Gilad Erdan Eurovision Michael Bueckert Udi Avivi Jeremy Corbyn Labour Party Labour witch hunt Ilhan Omar Brigitte Gabriel David Collier Simon Cobbs Sussex Friends of Israel Luke Akehurst Roger Waters The Lobby--USA