Israeli army tanks deploy in an area of Israel s southern border with the Gaza Strip on June 5, 2024. AFP
The covert campaign was commissioned by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, which connects Jews worldwide with the State of Israel, four Israeli officials told the NY Times.
According to the officials and the documents, the ministry allocated about $2 million to the operation and hired Stoic, a political marketing firm in Tel Aviv, to carry it out.
The US newspaper added that the campaign began in October and remains active on the platform X and that, at its peak, the campaign used hundreds of fake accounts, posing as real Americans, on X, Facebook, and Instagram to post pro-Israel comments.
The accounts targeted especially Black and Democrat lawmakers such as Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader from New York, and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, urging them through posts to continue funding Israel’s military, according to NYTimes.
ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, was used to generate many of the posts. The campaign also created three fake English-language news sites featuring pro-Israel articles.
The New York Times's report was verified by four current and former Ministry of Diaspora Affairs members and by documents about the campaign. FakeReporter, an Israeli misinformation watchdog, identified the effort in March.
Last week, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, said they had also found and disrupted the operation.
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