Israeli influence campaign on the US over the Gaza War

Lee Fang and Jack Poulson have been reporting on Israeli lobbying activities in the US in the following articles, all from Substack:

• Israeli Documents Show Expansive Covert U.S. Influence Campaign 06/24/2024. (Also also carried by The Guardian, which collaborated on the report.)
• Pro-Israel Group Censoring Social Media Led by Former Israeli Intelligence Officers 07/11/2024
• Leaked Israeli Docs Reveal Effort to Evade Foreign Agent Lobbying Law 08/17/2024

Countries try to influence each other all the time. There are international laws as well as national ones regulating what is acceptable and not acceptable formally. And countries commonly push the limits on what fits within the legitimate boundaries. They also tend to push harder on the boundaries with less friendly countries than with friendlier ones.

It’s common at the moment to distinguish between “misinformation/disinformation” and “influence operations” proper:

Two common tactics to manipulate voters are misinformation and “influence operations”. Where misinformation means the creation and spread of false or misleading information, either deliberately or accidentally, influence ops are purposeful projects to skew how people see the world. The two tactics are often linked. Influence ops can take the form of spreading misinformation, but could, for example, also mean boosting something true but relatively minor to take a disproportionate size in online conversations. (1)

Espionage (stealing secrets), sabotage, and subversion (undermining a government) are still other categories of international interference. Looking at US relations with its Latin American neighbors since World War II would provide a kaleidoscope of the many types of such operations. Even straight-up overthrow of a government like the one the US directed in Chile in 1973 employ a full range of information operations and political subversion. Even seemingly straight-up military coups have a heavy political component to them.

In Israel’s case, their country is extremely dependent on the US for military support in the kind of policies they pursue with other countries, in the occupied territories, and even inside Israel proper. Benjamin Netanyahu for decades has pursued the goal of getting the US into a direct war with Iran. But he has also followed a strategy of trying to gradually diversify Israel’s sources of international support. One which Netanyahu’s disastrous response to the October 7 attack last year has set back enormously.

As Arie Krampf wrote in 2022:

The future of the Netanyahu doctrine also depends on the course of the Israel–US relationship because Israel remains significantly dependent on the US. Israel’s ability to forge independent relations with China and Russia has limits due to US concerns with technology transfer. It could be the case that after Russia’s war in Ukraine, a revitalized West led by the US will pressure Israel to realign its foreign policy, despite its increased financial independence. [my emphasis] (2)

The internal political pressure inside the United States to distance itself from at least the most atrocious and brutal aspects of Israeli policies has of course grown enormously since 2022.

Lee Fang spoke to Owen Jones on this subject last month: (3)

Fang and Poulson reported in the June 24 piece how Likud Knesset party member Amichai Chikli described a heavy-handed influence-and-disinformation Israeli was running against the US:

Chikli assured the lawmakers that there was new money in the budget for a pushback campaign, which was separate from more traditional public relations and paid advertising content produced by the government. It included 80 programs already underway for advocacy efforts “to be done in the ‘Concert’ way,” he said.

The “Concert” remark referred to a sprawling relaunch of a controversial Israeli government program initially known as Kela Shlomo, designed to carry out what Israel called “mass consciousness activities” targeted largely at the US and Europe. Concert, now known as Voices of Israel, previously worked with groups spearheading a campaign to pass so-called “anti-BDS” state laws that penalize Americans for engaging in boycotts or other nonviolent protests of Israel.

Its latest incarnation is part of a hardline and sometimes covert operation by the Israeli government to strike back at student protests, human rights organizations, and other voices of dissent.

Voices’ latest activities were conducted through nonprofits and other entities that often do not disclose donor information. From October through May, Chikli has overseen at least NIS 32 million, or about $8.6 million, spent on government advocacy to reframe the public debate. [my emphasis]

This is separate from the Israel Lobby (4), which, as one of its most prominent critics John Mearsheimer continues to state, is careful to operate under existing US law. The Concert “mass consciousness activities” may influence the legal lobbies, as well. But it’s important to remember that not all pro-Israeli-government activities are the same.

And the US government does have a legal responsibility to combat activities even from friendly governments that violate US law and sovereignty, as doe-eyed-naive as that may sound in the current circumstances.

CyberWell and the “IHRA definition” of antisemitism

The July 11 Fang-Poulson story describes that activities of CyberWell, “an Israeli nonprofit with deep ties to the intelligence arm of an Israeli government propaganda effort, has been influential in shaping social media content since October 7.”

CyberWell’s primary focus has been to pressure social media companies to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) redefinition of antisemitism, which has been described by one of its core contributors as designed to combat growing international human rights criticisms of Israel as an apartheid state, beginning with the United Nations’ 2001 Durban declaration. In reference to the now-defunct advocacy organization known as the Adopt IHRA Coalition, CyberWell’s 2022 annual report noted that “On the heels of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter,” CyberWell “served as the [Adopt IHRA Coalition] data provider, demonstrating our value through collecting, vetting, and leveraging a dataset of over 1,200 recent antisemitic Tweets.”

The IHRA definition has come under fire as an attempt to criminalize and suppress First Amendment-protected speech critical of Israel and its occupation of Palestine. Pro-Israel lobbyists have pushed to encode the IHRA definition into hate crime statutes and official speech codes for hundreds of institutions and have succeeded in advancing legislation on the state and federal level. The IHRA definition of antisemitism includes “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” If enacted, such a definition would mean that an American can call any government, including his own, racist, except for Israel. [my emphasis]

The US State Department currently affirms that the US Government relies on the IHRA standard as a “working definition” of antisemitism. Specifically, “a non-legally binding ‘working definition’ of antisemitism.” (5) Netanyahu’s far-right government, of course, would love for other countries to make it illegal to criticize the country of Israel. Because free speech in other countries is not a priority for the nation that advertises itself as The Only Democratcy In The Middle East. (6)

An international group of scholars prepared The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism in response to the very flawed IHRA definition used by the US State Department. (7)

The August 17 Fang-Poulson report deals with the legal aspects of some of Israel’s information/influencing operations:

The Israeli government sought legal advice on a US federal law requiring the disclosure of foreign-backed lobbying campaigns, out of concerns that mounting enforcement of the law could ensnare American groups working in coordination with the Israeli government, leaked documents reviewed by the Guardian suggest.

Emails and legal memos originating from a hack of the Israeli justice ministry show that officials feared Israeli advocacy efforts in the US could trigger the US law governing foreign agents. The documents show that officials proposed creating a new American nonprofit in order to continue Israel’s activities in the US while avoiding scrutiny under the law.

A legal strategy memo dated July 2018 noted that compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) would damage the reputation of several American groups that receive funding and direction from Israel, and force them to meet onerous transparency requirements. A separate memo noted that donors would not want to fund groups registered under FARA.

FARA requires people working on behalf of a foreign government to register as foreign agents with the US Justice Department. [my emphasis]

As they noted in the June 24 installment, FARA “requires groups receiving funds or direction from foreign countries to provide public disclosures to the Department of Justice.”

Notes:

(1) Jackson, Jasper (2023): What Are Influence Operations and Why Are We Investigating Them? Bureau of Investigative Journalism 07/27/2023. <https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-07-27/what-are-influence-operations-and-why-are-we-investigating-them/> (Accessed: 2024-18-08).

(2) Krampf, Arie (2022): The Netanyahu Doctrine. Jerusalem Strategic Tribune Nov. 2022. <https://jstribune.com/krampf-the-netanyahu-doctrine/> (Accessed: 2024-15-05).

(3) Israel's Propaganda Campaign To Silence Critics - The Shocking Truth - w/. Lee Fang. Owen Jones YouTube channel 07/18/2024. <https://youtu.be/Z1i0UbAyrpk?si=sFZPYAe8wU0EOmYT> (Accessed: 2024-18-08).

(4) Mearsheimer; John & Walt, Stephen (2007): The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

(5) Defining Antisemitism. US Department of State, n/d. <https://www.state.gov/defining-antisemitism/> (Accessed: 2024-18-08).

See also: Stern-Weiner, Jamie (2021): IHRA: The Politics of a Definition. Oxford University Israel Studies Seminar 02/16/2021. <https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/jamie-stern-weiner-ihra-politics-definition> (Accessed: 2024-18-08).

Stern-Weiner (2021): The Politics of a Definition. How the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism Is Being Misrepresented. Free Speech on Israel, April 2021. <https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20689366-stern-weiner-j-fsoi-the-politics-of-a-definition> (Accessed: 2024-18-08).

(6) For a critical analysis of the “only democracy” claim, see: Pappe, Ilan (2017): Ten Myths About Israel. London & New York: Verso.

(7) The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (2021): <https://jerusalemdeclaration.org/> (Accessed: 2024-18-08).