ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - In recent months, the Israeli government has signed multimillion-dollar contracts aimed at rebuilding its image in the eyes of the American public, both on the internet and in the real world, coming as the so-called “Gen Z“ cohort has become increasingly disenfranchised with Israel following years of daily exposure to atrocities committed in Gaza.

On December 5, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar unveiled the 2026 national budget, which includes an allocation of 2.35 billion shekels (approximately $750 million) for pro-Israel public advocacy efforts, commonly referred to as 'hasbara.'

The allocation comes in the wake of a September poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College showing that American support for Israel has plummeted following two years of genocide in Gaza, with an increasing number of voters stating they side with Palestinians. In a dramatic shift in public opinion since October 7, a majority of American voters now oppose providing Israel with further economic or military assistance. Furthermore, 40 percent of respondents believe Israel is deliberately targeting civilians, a figure that has nearly doubled since the same question was posed in a 2023 survey.

According to a government statement, the funds will be used to promote pro-Israel messaging worldwide, including financing social media campaigns, partnering with civil society groups, and bringing delegations of political leaders, elected officials, influencers, and other high-profile figures to Israel. Particular attention was to be given to American college campuses, which have been the stage of protests in support of Palestinians and against the genocide in Gaza.

More than $300 million has already been authorized. The foreign ministry will also receive an additional $150 million for “diplomacy,” a sum more than 20 times higher than comparable budgets in previous years.

Sa’ar noted that while the approved funding remains modest relative to global challenges, it marks a major turning point. “Our adversaries invest massive sums against us,” the top diplomat said. “Israel has operated with limited means and must now scale up its resources while adopting modern techniques.”

He further emphasized that the battle for public perception is a strategic necessity. “Investing in the war of awareness is critical,” Sa’ar added. “We are taking unprecedented steps, but we must invest far more heavily, treating it with the same priority as we do aircraft, munitions, and missile interceptors.”

Facing a notable erosion of backing on the conservative right, Israel has retained firms not only to run traditional public diplomacy campaigns but also to reach millions of Christian church members, deploy bot networks to boost pro-Israel content online, and shape what appears in search results and in answers generated by leading AI tools such as ChatGPT.

The most significant of the new hasbara contracts was signed in September with Clock Tower X LLC, a firm solely owned by Brad Parscale, the former digital media director for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and manager of his 2020 re-election bid. Many of the other firms enlisted have close ties to the Republican Party or evangelical communities, underscoring that Israel is now pouring significant resources into constituencies once assumed to be reliably pro-Israel.

Clock Tower X has registered with the US Department of Justice as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in connection with a planned nationwide communications effort on behalf of the State of Israel. According to the registration statement, the company will provide “strategic communications, planning, and media services in support of Havas’ engagement by the State of Israel to develop and execute a nationwide campaign in the United States to combat antisemitism.”

In practical terms, Clock Tower X positions itself as a key execution arm for this US‑focused campaign, working in support of Havas Media Network and, through that relationship, advancing a communications initiative backed by the Israeli government, while formally disclosing its role as an agent of foreign principals pursuant to FARA.

According to the Statement of Work included in the FARA filing, the campaign is heavily oriented towards Gen Z, with a mandate that “at least 80 percent of all content” be tailored specifically for that demographic. The strategy prioritizes high-traffic platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts, with a stated goal of generating a “minimum of 50 million impressions every month.”

The operation goes beyond traditional advertising, employing advanced technical strategies to ensure its messaging remains dominant in digital spaces. The agreement authorizes the use of MarketBrew AI, a specialized software platform, to optimize search engine results and improve the visibility of the campaign’s narratives.

In a disturbing expansion into the frontier of AI influence, the contract also calls for the deployment of dedicated websites and content specifically engineered to deliver “GPT framing results.” This tactic appears aimed at influencing the responses generated by artificial intelligence models, such as those powering popular chatbots, to ensure they reflect the campaign's preferred messaging during users' conversations.

To maintain this digital footprint, Clock Tower is tasked with a massive content output, including the “production of minimum 100 root creative assets” and as many as “5,000 monthly variants” to keep the campaign’s messaging fresh and pervasive across the American digital landscape.

Campaign messaging is slated to run across properties owned by Salem Media Network, a conservative Christian broadcaster that operates more than 200 radio stations and affiliated websites. Earlier this year, Parscale was appointed as Salem’s Chief Strategy Officer.

The campaign’s focus on Christian audiences reflects a strategic response to a sharp decline in support for Israel among historically pro-Israel groups. While American evangelicals were once considered a reliable base, Pew polling from 2022 to 2025 shows that negative views of Israel have climbed to 53 percent nationwide, with roughly half of Republicans under 50 now holding unfavorable opinions. This trend is mirrored among younger evangelicals, who, according to Tel Aviv University research, are increasingly critical of Israel compared to older generations. The backlash has been fueled further by conspiracy theories circulating in far-right media following the death of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, which alleged Israeli involvement in response to his public criticism of the country.

The move represents a potential first in digital propaganda: a documented attempt by a foreign government to influence the outputs of generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude. This strategy marks a significant shift from traditional search engine optimization (SEO): rather than simply trying to boost the ranking of pro-Israel websites in search results, the effort is focused on “chatbot optimization,” shaping the actual framing and context that AI systems provide when answering questions about Israel and Palestine. The pursuit of new business horizons has not prevented Israel from keeping up more conventional strategies: in the second half of 2025, its government spent more than $45 million on digital advertising campaigns across Google, YouTube, X, and Outbrain.

Internal documents obtained by Haaretz show that AI has been explicitly defined as a "core tool" in the technological arsenal of Voices for Israel, a government-backed nonprofit, and its sponsor, the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism. Voices for Israel's mandate is to carry out mass online “perception operations” as part of Israel's fight against “delegitimization campaigns” worldwide.

The Esther Project

Another hasbara campaign disclosed in the FARA filings follows a similar pattern of outsourced influence work. Records show Israel’s government earmarked $900,000 to pay influencers from mid-June through November. The Israeli Foreign Ministry is funding the effort through Havas Media Group, which transfers the money to Washington-based Bridge Partners LLC, the firm managing the influencer program.

In filings, Bridge Partners said the work aims to “promote cultural interchange between the United States and Israel.” The documents also state the firm will recruit 14 to 18 influencers to publish 25 to 30 pro-Israel posts per month across social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, and Threads. Each post can potentially earn as much as $6,000, with some garnering upwards of $7,000. The initiative is called the ‘Esther Project.’

During his trip to the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with a group of influencers in New York City and told them that the way to address declining support for Israel was by using influencers on social media. He said it complemented an Israeli media strategy that saw the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs enter a $1.5m contract with Parscale to provide “strategic communications” to combat antisemitism in the US. The Israeli government has faced scrutiny at home for failing to win the information war.

Essentially, Havas functions as an intermediary, managing and signing agreements with American companies on behalf of the Israeli government. According to the Attorney General’s FARA report for the six months ending December 31, 2018, the firm has been paid upwards of $100 million since 2018 to manage Israeli tourism promotion within the US market. Beyond its work for Israel, Havas also handles comparable initiatives for various other international clients, including several nations in the Gulf region.

The results of such waning international sympathy are stark. For Netanyahu and his allies, the battle is not only about military power but about shaping the story — and in the narrative realm, Israel’s once‑secure position appears increasingly fragile.