Alessandra Bajec
The New Arab / August 5, 2026
Since 2023, Israel has built a billion-dollar digital influence campaign to win back US public opinion – but it isn’t working.
Israel has spent more than $1 billion on public diplomacy since 2023, including over $100 million on influence operations in the United States disclosed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), according to a new paper published by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Its FARA spending is set to triple from 2024 to 2026, positioning the country to become the biggest foreign spender on influence efforts registered under the law this year.
Israel allocated more than $700 million in its 2026 budget to improve its international image and global standing. The previous year, it earmarked $150 million for public diplomacy, already around 20 times higher than its pre-Gaza war spending.
The billion-dollar battle for hearts and minds
Israel is increasingly shifting away from its traditional reliance on powerful US lobbying groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), turning to foreign agents, PR firms, influencers, and AI-powered campaigns.
Seventeen firms registered under FARA to represent Israeli interests in 2024 and 2025. The largest contract, worth $46.5 million, went to Clock Tower X, the firm founded by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.
Based on its disclosures, the company has been building a network of websites to seed pro-Israel narratives into content that may be used to train large language models, to shape how AI chatbots like ChatGPT characterise Israel.
FARA disclosures reveal a broader influence campaign targeting social media, religious communities, and young Americans.
Since the Hamas-led attacks of October 2023, Tel Aviv has significantly expanded spending on US-focused foreign engagement efforts, including initiatives to shape AI-generated information, mobilising influencer networks, mass-messaging campaigns, and funding Christian theology programmes for outreach to evangelical communities
According to the Quincy Institute’s report, the Israeli government paid $161,000 to Yoav Davis, who runs the @jews_of_ny Instagram account with nearly 200,000 followers, and $900,000 to Bridges Partners to compensate more than a dozen influencers promoting pro-Israel content, none of whom registered as foreign agents.
Using influencers allows political messaging to be presented as personal views or lifestyle content, rather than as official government statements.
Talking to The New Arab, Dahlia Scheindlin, a Tel Aviv-based political analyst and public opinion researcher, pointed out that Israel has historically devoted resources to building its own international image and public diplomacy, steadily investing in shaping perceptions abroad.
She sees today’s influence campaign as a modern technological expression of a long-standing effort, adapted to a transformed media landscape.
“The circumstances are new, but the efforts are not,” the pollster told The New Arab. “What has changed is the understanding of how public attitudes are formed and influenced.”
At the centre of Israel’s new influence strategy is the French communications firm Havas Media, which has subcontracted at least seven US-based firms registered under FARA since 2024. Through these partners, the company has directed tens of millions of dollars towards campaigns targeting key constituencies where support for Israel has waned, including young Americans, Evangelical Christians and conservatives.
The newly published study said the efforts used targeted messaging for different political, religious and demographic groups, moving away from a national communications playbook.
In September 2025, Havas signed a $3.2 million contract with Christian marketing firm Show Faith by Works for a “geofencing” campaign designed to deliver pro-Israel advertisements to US churchgoers. The location-based targeting tool uses mobile data to map audiences and tailor outreach based on users’ physical location.
“The fact that they are now targeting Christian conservatives is very telling of what’s happening,” Eli Clifton, a senior advisor at the Quincy Institute, told The New Arab. He explained that Israel’s push to shore up support among traditionally supportive constituencies signals concern that it is losing backing from these groups.
“They are starting to see cracks emerging on the right, where they thought they had locked in support, and that’s very dangerous for them,” he added.
The campaign reflects an increasing awareness that AI systems are becoming influential channels for accessing information and political analysis. By attempting to influence the data and content used by these systems, the operation seeks to affect how Israel and its policies are portrayed to users.
For decades, Israel’s influence in Washington relied heavily on an ecosystem of US-based advocacy groups, donors, and political allies, including AIPAC and Christians United for Israel, alongside official diplomatic channels.
Because these groups are US-financed and formally independent, they fall outside FARA’s foreign-agent disclosure requirements, enabling Israel to benefit from extensive political support without directly managing a foreign lobbying operation.
From AIPAC to AI: a new era of influence
Clifton argued that Israel’s largely American-funded and -run lobbying model has reached its limits as US public opinion has shifted dramatically over the past two and a half years.
“Israel can no longer achieve its policy objectives in the US through the mechanisms it has relied on since 1948,” the expert told The New Arab, who focuses on money in politics and US foreign policy.
He described Israel’s current use of data-driven tools to track Americans’ beliefs and political leanings for adapted messaging and narrative shaping as an “attempt at social influence and control”.
As the Gaza war reshaped the US political landscape and eroded support for Israel among parts of the American public, Tel Aviv broadened its public relations strategy, moving toward a more direct approach that relies on US contractors and firms to ramp up its influence efforts, allowing it to control messaging, target specific demographics, and operate with greater speed and precision.
The strategic pivot marks a major transformation in Israel’s influence model for shaping American public opinion and policy, coming at a time of growing criticism of its policies among US voters, lawmakers, and political figures.
“Israel’s image has suffered immeasurably, both in the United States and globally. Now it’s trying to repair the damage caused by Benjamin Netanyahu,” Craig Holman, the Capitol Hill lobbyist for Public Citizen, told The New Arab. He maintained that Tel Aviv no longer holds the same weight in US politics as it once did, calling that a “huge flip”.
The lobbyist doubts Israel can restore its public image as long as the Gaza war continues, arguing that Israel’s reputation in the US has become so negative that pro-Israel advocacy funding is often channelled through other organisations to obscure its origins.
Holman remarked that spending to shape public opinion has not only skyrocketed but expanded beyond traditional lobbying into major campaign contributions and independent expenditures ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
“Israel is now seeking to influence election outcomes rather than simply lobby Congress on Israel-related interests,” the lobbying specialist said.
“It’s a sign of the desperation Israel is facing in this battle for public opinion,” Clifton commented, referring to its new mass-scale influence offensive and the deployment of significant funds directly into the United States.
The foreign policy specialist highlighted the steady decrease in support for Israel among Americans, cutting across demographics, with an increasing number of people objecting to its actions in Gaza.
“A lot of Americans are starting to connect Israel’s conduct to the taxpayer dollars and diplomatic backing Washington provides to its longtime ally,” he continued, noting that public awareness has risen substantially.
Scheindlin discussed the changed political environment in the United States following global backlash over Israel’s assault on Gaza, emphasising how it is now fighting an image battle amid an unprecedented level of hostility.
“The difference today is the cumulative deterioration of Israel’s image,” she told The New Arab. “The war has taken on an extreme dimension, and the stakes are higher because, for the first time, attitudes in the US are turning negative”.
Too little, too late
Yet even a sophisticated and costly influence campaign has so far failed to halt the growing challenge to the long-standing consensus around unconditional US military and diplomatic support for Israel, while criticism of its genocide in Gaza and policies toward Palestinians has been gaining traction across Congress and both major political parties.
As Nick Cleveland-Stout, author of the Quincy paper, noted, Israel’s new tactics may be transforming America’s influence landscape, but they have failed to overcome “the erosion in public support that is being driven by Israel’s deeply unpopular policies”.
Any image-repair efforts are unlikely to be sufficient to sway public attitudes in its favour.
Citing recent surveys, Scheindlin observed a consistent drop in Americans’ favourability toward the Israeli government and people, alongside growing sympathy for Palestinians. Gallup poll data showed that, for the first time, more Americans sympathised with Palestinians (41%) than Israelis (36%) in the Middle East conflict. A July poll from the Pew Research Center found that 69% hold an unfavourable opinion of the Israeli government.
In a further effort to counter growing reputational damage, Israel is funding a multimillion-dollar campaign to influence AI chatbot responses on Gaza and Israel, according to Cleveland-Stout’s latest report. Overseen by Brad Parscale, the operation uses a network of around 1,000 websites, hundreds of blog posts and mass-texting campaigns directing Americans to Israeli government-funded content.
“Unless Israel significantly changes its policies, revising its image will be almost impossible,” public opinion expert Scheindlin affirmed, adding that Tel Aviv is also contributing to its negative image beyond Gaza and the West Bank through expansionist actions across the region.
Clifton expressed similar reservations: “I don’t know whether a public relations solution is possible without Israel changing the realities on the ground resulting from its policies and actions”.
Alessandra Bajec is a freelance journalist currently based in Tunis
