What's the point of Israel doing some astroturfing in the US, when there are plenty of US citizens and US lobby groups willing to support it anyway?

Question

The NYT reports:

The campaign began in October and remains active on the platform X. At its peak, it used hundreds of fake accounts that posed as real Americans on X, Facebook and Instagram to post pro-Israel comments. The accounts focused on U.S. lawmakers, particularly ones who are Black and Democrats, such as Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader from New York, and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, with posts urging them to continue funding Israel’s military.

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 operation is the first documented case of the Israeli government’s organizing a campaign to influence the U.S. government, social media experts said. While coordinated government-backed campaigns are not uncommon, they are typically difficult to prove. Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and the United States are widely believed to back similar efforts around the world, but often mask their involvement by outsourcing the work to private companies or running them through a third country.

The campaign didn’t have a widespread impact, Meta and OpenAI said last week. [...] On Facebook, the fake accounts posted on Mr. Jeffries’s public page by asking if he had seen a report about the United Nations’ employing members of Hamas in Gaza. [...]

The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs commissioned a campaign aimed at the United States, the Israeli officials said. A budget of about $2 million was set, according to one message viewed by The Times.

What's the point of Israel risking exposure over a relatively small operation like that (apparently only $2 million was allocated to it) when pro-Israel lobby groups (that are legit US citizens) like AIPAC have budgets of around $100 million?

Answer 1

I don't see how anyone who follows this site can believe that Israel has such widespread support in the US that is has no need to influence anyone on social media . Or even that the Israeli point of view is understood by most American social media followers.

You can also ask this question in reverse too. Why did the US State Department spend $350 thousand to prop up the left-wing parties and to influence Israeli elections, when the left-wing has so much power in Israel already?

https://www.ngo-monitor.org/ngos/onevoice_international_/

Anyway, the anti-Israel activist websites are constantly claiming that their campaigns, whether it is blocking bridges and people from getting to work, whether it is taking over college campuses, or whether it is online campaigns, are super successful in changing people's opinions. Particularly politicians. Being that those campaigns mostly start on social media, it makes sense to try to combat them on social media.

Answer 2

The answer is right in the question:

when pro-Israel lobby groups (that are legit US citizens) have budgets of around $100 million?

Pro-Israeli US lobbyists are in the US. Many are from the US or intend to stay here permanently. They support Israel in the abstract, but they don't necessarily support specific actions of the Israeli government, and they don't necessarily push the same narrative as the government (or whichever part of the government is paying for this specific campaign, which is not necessarily the same as other parts of the government). They might back a different faction within Israeli politics or society, or they might push stories with a spin that - although they think it will garner support - is counter to the spin that some other agency is pushing.

It's always nice to have friendly lobbyists on your side, but special interest groups can be inconveniently independent in their messaging. It's valuable to have a group, even a relatively small one, that you can give a very precise narrative to push and know that they'll follow it to the letter.

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Historically, this was a major issue for the USSR trying to export Communism to the West. They had many willing proxies and advocates: Communist parties, student groups, other special interests. But those groups had a tendency to push ideas that were inside the Communist umbrella but disfavored or even banned in the Soviet Union, like Trotskyism or (after the Sino-Soviet split) Maoism. Where major controversies like the Hungarian Revolution were concerned, some proxies stood by the party line, some tried to avoid discussing it at all, and others were more or less in opposition. Moscow had to toe a fine line between using the tools it had (such as financial support) to push its proxies in the direction it wanted, without accidentally turning them against the party or weakening them to the point of uselessness.

Answer 3

Younger Americans are more likely to sympathize with the Palestinian people than the Israeli people. A third of adults under 30 say their sympathies lie either entirely or mostly with the Palestinian people, while 14% say their sympathies lie entirely or mostly with the Israeli people. The rest say their sympathies lie equally with both, with neither or that they are not sure.

Older Americans, by comparison, are more likely to sympathize with Israelis than Palestinians. For example, among people ages 65 and older, 47% say their sympathies lie entirely or mostly with the Israeli people, while far fewer (9%) sympathize entirely or mostly with the Palestinians.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/02/younger-americans-stand-out-in-their-views-of-the-israel-hamas-war/

Most likely due to the fact that younger people uses social media like Tiktok and traditional media doesn't influence them as much as younger people. This is also probably a preemptive measure to ensure that the majority of Americans support Israel in the foreseeable future.

Answer 4

I fail to see why this is surprising. The US is a critical source of aid to Israel. Popular opinion in the US has been shifting rapidly against Israel. Israel has a history of engaging in disinformation.

Answer 5

The loudest Americans are the youngest.

They tend to get their information from social media. Which is hardly neutral. For example: Bin Laden's Letter to America not only went viral recently but frighteningly had a popular view by a percentage of the young. https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2023/11/16/guardian-osama-bin-laden-letter-to-america/ (paywall). This is horrifying to most adults that watched the Towers go down on 9/11, only to hear Gen Z glorify Bin Laden.

They are taught by very left-leaning teaching institutions. They have propagated the idea of oppressor / oppressed in every situation. This study shows the socialist trend in higher education: https://collegestats.org/explore/red-campus-blue-campus/

Qatar has given literally billions to US schools for "Middle East" studies that typically use staff with an anti-Israel bias. Qatar is the home of the Hamas political leadership and the Hamas funding conduit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatari_involvement_in_higher_education_in_the_United_States

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/03/us-qatar-hamas-hostages-ceasefire/ (paywall)

Interviews have shown that protesters are mostly ignorant of what they are protesting for: https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-which-river-to-which-sea-anti-israel-protests-college-student-ignorance-a682463b (paywall)

The loudest people in the US are biased and not clear on the facts.

So does Israel have a right and duty to educate? Of course they do. The US has free speech, so why wouldn't they?

UPDATE 6/30/2024 With groups carrying Hamas and Hezbollah flags blocking memorials in the US, there is a problem. This isn't free speach. The radical left is very loud. It shouldn't be ignored. https://nypost.com/2024/06/10/us-news/anti-israel-mob-chanting-long-live-intifada-light-flares-outside-nyc-exhibit-that-memorializes-oct-7-nova-music-festival-victims/