How Israeli spies are flooding Facebook and Twitter
Act.IL’s chief executive Yarden Ben Yosef is an eight-year veteran of Israel’s military intelligence agency. (YouTube)
-25 June 2019
srael secretly operates a troll army of thousands, partly funded by a government department.
The Ministry of Strategic Affairs is dedicated to a global “war” against BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
To conceal its involvement, the ministry has admitted to working through front groups that “do not want to expose their connection with the state.”
The troll army Act.IL is one of many such groups. It focuses on spreading Israeli propaganda online.
What does it do with its million dollar budget?
Act.IL is run by a former Israeli spy who has argued that his outfit is involved in “a new kind of war.”
While Act.IL publicly denies being supported by the Israeli government, the group’s chief executive has admitted in Hebrew to working closely with Israeli ministries, and in English that his staff are mostly former Israeli spies.
His name is Yarden Ben Yosef. Last year, he explained his group’s methods in an article for a journal aimed at Israeli diplomats. He lamented that – in Gaza that May – “the Palestinian narrative prevailed in world media over the Israeli one.”
Israeli snipers had massacred more than 60 unarmed Palestinian protesters on a single day during the Great March of Return protests, injuring thousands more.
Ben Yosef advocated for “inserting ourselves” into online discussions, because readers nowadays see the comments section under articles published by websites as part of the story.
Operational links
Using sophisticated “monitoring software,” he wrote, Act.IL closely watched news and social media the week before the opening of the new US embassy in Jerusalem – one of the triggers for the Palestinian protests.
Ben Yosef explained that “controlling the online media discussion became our top priority.”
He claimed victory in these efforts, successfully “bumping the pro-Israeli comments to the top of the list in 85 percent of the cases.”
He wrote that this strategy allows Israel to circumvent its “limited ability to influence world public opinion during crises” due to the “official identity” of government agencies.
Supposedly “grassroots” groups like Act.IL work as convenient fronts for Israel to do just that.
In a Hebrew-only interview with Forbes Israel last year, Ben Yosef made Act.IL’s ongoing operational links with the state even more explicit.
“We work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and with the Ministry of Strategic Affairs,” he admitted. Ben Yosef added that Act.IL seeks the advice of these ministries and undertakes “joint projects” with them.
He said this was done “without remuneration” – a claim undermined by funding disclosures made by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs in 2017.
What are these “joint projects” and how exactly do they work?
Messaging
The front page of Act.IL’s website lays out some of its main propaganda themes: Hamas is evil, while Israel is diverse, Israel “is NOT an apartheid state,” and Palestine solidarity activists are against “freedom of speech.”
In other words, the aim is to smear Palestinians and their supporters, while simultaneously changing the subject and distracting from Israel’s human rights abuses.
In its whitewashing, Act.IL seems to have a weakness for the cringeworthy – a trait fairly typical of such state-backed fake grassroots groups.
One slogan is titled “Israel Extreme Yourself,” which Act.IL describes as “a cool and fresh way” to promote Israel through “extreme sports.” The video shows young Israelis surfing, snowboarding and skydiving.
Act.IL claims “the video reached more than 250K views and over 2,000 shares” within its first 36 hours of being posted. But the video that the website links to in fact had less than 2,000 views on YouTube as of this writing.
Another of its campaigns is more sinister. It involves using the common right-wing slur “Pallywood” to smear Palestinians as inherent liars.
Such racist conspiracy theories seem to inform much of Act.IL’s propaganda – its chief executive Yarden Ben Yosef has also retweeted notorious Islamophobe Daniel Pipes.
Origins
Act.IL’s roots lay in the Interdisciplinary Center, or IDC, in Herzliya, an Israeli university with close links to the state’s intelligence agencies.
Act.IL also has close ties to the Israeli American Council – a right-wing lobby group funded by Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate who was the top donor to Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign.
The Israeli American Council is led by Adam Milstein, a real estate mogul once imprisoned for tax fraud.
Supplementing the funding from Israel’s anti-BDS ministry, Adelson has also donated to Act.IL.
Act.IL’s Yarden Ben Yosef appearing at a 2018 AIPAC panel with funder of The Israel Project Adam Milstein, andJacob Baime, another US Israel lobby operative who has privately admitted to coordinating with Israel’s anti-BDS ministry. (Facebook)
As the Act.IL website states, the idea for the app came from short term “situation rooms” that operated in Herzliya during the major Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2012 and 2014.
Each of these “situation rooms” was titled “hasbara war room” in Hebrew. Literally translated as “explanation,” hasbara is a common Hebrew word for “propaganda.”
As The Electronic Intifada reported at the time, the 2014 “war room” was established by Yarden Ben Yosef – then chair of the IDC student union.
It was Ben Yosef who founded Act.IL, and still works as the organization’s chief executive.
A leaked Act.IL report dates the group’s founding to 2015 – although the app was not formally launched until 2017.
According to his online profile, Ben Yosef was a captain in Israeli military intelligence – “in a special combat intelligence unit.”
The Forward reported in 2017 that Ben Yosef spent eight years in that role, and admitted that “Act.IL’s staff is largely made up of former Israeli intelligence officers.”
With such ties, it’s no wonder that Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs felt comfortable plowing large sums into Ben Yosef’s project.
As The Electronic Intifada has reported, this anti-BDS ministry is staffed by “former” Israeli spies, mostly from Aman, Israel’s military intelligence agency.
Led by Gilad Erdan – a prominent figure in the Likud party – the ministry is responsible for a campaign of “black ops” with a global reach.
