© The Dial
Israel's global propaganda machine is facing increasing legal pressure after influencers, consultants, and media companies filed lawsuits worth millions of shekels against the government, accusing it of failing to pay for work done in support of its international messaging campaign during Israel's genocide in Gaza, the Calcalist reported on 5 March.
According to Calcalist, many of the individuals involved say they were urgently recruited at the height of the war to promote Israeli narratives abroad, only to later discover that the government had not secured proper payment arrangements.
Investigations have since uncovered serious irregularities inside the Prime Minister's Office, which took over Israel's international messaging apparatus after the collapse of the Ministry of Information following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in October 2023.
Officials reportedly bypassed formal tender procedures and instead expanded existing contracts with private production firms, which then served as conduits to funnel payments to pro-Israel commentators and consultants operating overseas.
Several of those companies now say the state has refused to settle its debts.
One firm, Intellect Production and Publishing Group, filed a lawsuit seeking roughly 1.7 million shekels (around $552,000) after covering travel costs and media operations aimed at countering pro-Palestine demonstrations during hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Former Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy is among the figures who say the government still owes them money for work carried out in Israel's international messaging campaign.
According to the Calcalist report, Levy's monthly pay of 41,125 shekels (just over $13,000) was routed through the production company Intellect Production and Publishing Group, rather than paid directly by the state.
Another company, Speedy Call, established a 24-hour interview studio inside the Kirya military headquarters used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials.
The company says Israel now refuses to pay more than 600,000 shekels (around $200,000) for nine months of work.
The payment disputes unfolding inside Israel's propaganda apparatus are emerging alongside broader revelations about the scale of Tel Aviv's global messaging campaign during the war on Gaza.
Investigations and public filings have shown that Israeli-linked public relations firms paid US social media influencers thousands of dollars per post to promote pro-Israel narratives online.
Documents submitted under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) revealed payments averaging up to $7,000 per post as part of the so-called "Esther Project," a propaganda campaign aimed at shaping public opinion on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram in favor of Israel, and demonizing its opposition.
Israel has previously organized carefully managed influencer tours inside Gaza, inviting social media figures to visit aid distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a deadly US-Israeli aid scheme, in an effort to counter international reporting on famine in the enclave.
The visits were presented as proof that Israel was facilitating humanitarian assistance, despite extensive documentation by numerous organizations, including the UN, showing that the famine in Gaza was a direct result of Israel's systematic restrictions on humanitarian aid and its obstruction of relief deliveries.
These initiatives form part of what Israeli officials themselves have described as the "eighth front" of the war - a parallel battle over narrative and perception fought across social media platforms, advertising networks, and AI-driven digital campaigns designed to shape global opinion about the war in Gaza.
Comment: If you have to go to all that trouble to project it, you do not have it at all.
Reader Comments
Does any of that make sense?
My sincere apologies for butchering that lovely language. I speak it better than I write. And I probably snuk a bit of Dutch and Flemish in there.
See here… I translated that loosely as I can’t write German.
Yandex said I can’t write English” or words to that effect “English” being the most obvious mistake.
I had extended contact with Flamish folks (Belgians and Dutch) at times, and your wording and orthograpy reminded me much of them. I might be wrong, though. I don't speak this language, just understand a few words. Perhaps you know, but the English, German, Flemish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian languages are a very close group, and share many similiarities in terms, sentence structure, and tenses.
But as everybody that even started to learn a foreign language knows, it is not at all about memorizing words and perform a one-by-one substitution. Differences in the way of thinking and in culture all reflect in language.
Had quite a bit of Russian language education, somewhat less voluntary. But it didn't hurt, and it is my wife's native language. And it serves as an entry into Slavic languages, which differ a bit from Germanic ones'. But less than you might thing. The greatest hurdle to learning Russian is the Cyrillic (Byzantine) alphabet, which is very similiar to Greek.