Unveiling Israel’s Secret Contracts for Social Media Influence and Censorship

On June 26, 2025, the Israeli Government Advertising Bureau (GAB) published its plans to partner with major social media platforms like Google, Outbrain/Teads, Twitter, and YouTube for an ambitious outreach advertising and information campaign. Following the launch of Operation “Am Kelavi”, the largest Israeli military strike ever carried out against Iran, involving over 200 fighter jets, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rallied all his employees and suppliers in a high-stakes emergency initiative aims to kick off a sweeping campaign of public relations and propaganda that spans various government ministries and security organizations, including the Home Front Command, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Diaspora, among others.

Under Netanyahu’s leadership, the campaign effectively reached both domestic and international audiences by combining public relations messaging and propaganda. The level of misinformation was such that it was eventually exposed by employees working for the contracted social media platforms. The campaign skillfully leveraged digital media beyond Israel’s borders to shape global perceptions and control the narrative regarding Israel’s illegal military campaign in Iran, as well as the ongoing famine and genocide in Gaza—resulting in significant revenue for tech platforms like Google, YouTube, X, Meta, Outbrain/Teads, and others.

DOCUMENT: (Eng/Hebrew) Israeli Government Advertising Bureau (GAB) outlines specific agreements with each of the organisations listed in the document below, collectively fulfilling the Israeli government’s diverse advertising and communications requirements with a substantial purchase of airtime (Source: Israel Government Procurement Administration)
Israel GAB Adverting Procurement

It is worth noting that in July 2023, less than two months before the Oct 7 attack, a lucrative tender for media purchasing using programmatic tools, for a target audience outside of Israel, was issued by the Israeli Government Advertising Bureau. The Bidder had to be a corporation legally registered in the State of Israel. The chosen social media platforms outlined in the tender were TikTok, Taboola, DV360, Facebook, Google Ads, and Outbrain. What’s perhaps even more interesting is that the submission deadline was 06/09/2023, the day before the Oct 7 attack.

DOCUMENT: (Eng/Hebrew) Public tender for the provision of programmatic media purchasing management services to a target audience abroad for the Prime Minister (Source: Israel Government Procurement Administration)
GAB Tender for Media Purchasing Abroad

In 2024, the UN was already sounding the alarm, reporting on Israel’s use of commercial advertisements, including billboards in several cities around the world and paid Google ads on multiple websites, stating “the Government of Israel has stepped up its disinformation campaign against UNRWA”. Subsequently, the United Nations demanded that those responsible for the spread of disinformation, including advertising companies, be stopped and held accountable. Yet nothing happened.

Although it will be difficult to estimate the full impact of Israel’s information warfare campaign, which not only targeted UNWRA but also the Hind Rajab Foundation, and many other International Organisations monitoring closely the famine and genocide in Gaza, it is still possible to identify the Israeli government ad campaigns and messaging that were unscrupulously pushed for profit, by the very social media platforms that claim to fight disinformation.

VIDEO: Author recorded recent ad campaigns run by the Israeli Government Advertising Agency  (Source: Ads Transparency)

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Since the attack on October 7, many independent journalists and their platforms have faced significant censorship, particularly those shining a light on Israel’s heinous actions in Gaza. It’s disheartening to realise that Netanyahu’s plan, which many see as genocidal, could not have unfolded without the backing of major mainstream media and prominent social media platforms.

This calls for urgent accountability; we must demand that these corporations adhere to standards that ensure fair reporting, rather than allowing their practices to drift towards a political or ideological agenda, far beyond journalistic and humanitarian values. All Intelligence, in collaboration with Drop Site, has the story….

Jack Poulson and Le Fang report on All-Source Intelligence Substack…
(Published in collaboration with Drop Site News)

Google’s $45 Million Contract With Netanyahu’s Office to Spread Israeli Propaganda

Google is in the middle of a six-month, $45 million contract to amplify propaganda with Netanyahu’s office. The contract describes Google as a “key entity” supporting the prime minister’s messaging.

On March 2, 2025, hours after the Israeli government announced the blockade of all food, medicine, fuel, and other humanitarian supplies from entering Gaza, lawmakers in Jerusalem demanded answers—not on the devastating human toll of such a decision, but on how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office was preparing to handle the public relations fallout.

“I began with the example of the cessation of humanitarian aid – did you prepare for this thing this morning?” asked Knesset member Moshe Tur-Paz, the chair of a subcommittee on Foreign Affairs in Israel’s parliament.

Avichai Edrei, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces who was asked the same question later in the hearing, assured the legislators work was underway, stating, “We could also decide to launch a digital campaign in this context, to explain that there is no hunger and present the data.”

Publicly available government contracts show that Israel’s advertising bureau, which reports to the prime minister’s office, has since embarked on a mass advertising and public messaging effort to conceal the hunger crisis. The push includes the use of American influencers, widely reported on last month. It also includes a high-dollar spending spree on paid advertising, yielding tens of millions for Google, YouTube, X, Meta, and other tech platforms.

“There is food in Gaza. Any other claim is a lie,” asserted a propaganda video published by Israel’s foreign ministry to Google’s YouTube video sharing platform in late August and viewed more than 6 million times. Much of the video’s reach results from an ad placed during an ongoing and previously unreported $45 million (NIS 150 million) advertising campaign initiated between Google and Netanyahu’s office in late June. The contract—which is with both YouTube and Google’s advertising campaign management platform, Display & Video 360—explicitly characterises the ad campaign as hasbara, a Hebrew word whose meaning is somewhere between public relations and propaganda.

Records show that the Israeli government similarly spent $3 million (NIS 10 million) for an advertising campaign with X. The French and Israeli advertising platform Outbrain/Teads is also set to receive roughly $2.1 million (NIS 7 million).

The ads have aired in response to increasing global outcry over the deteriorating situation in Gaza. In August, the UN formally declared a famine in the Gaza governorate, which includes Gaza City. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the leading global authority on food security, projected the threshold for famine would be crossed in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis in the coming weeks, stating “this Famine is entirely man-made; it can be halted and reversed.” The UN aid coordination office, OCHA, further warned on Friday of “a descent into a massive famine” in the Gaza Strip.

At least 367 Palestinians, including 131 children, have died as a result of hunger and malnutrition since the war began, according to the health ministry in Gaza. The existence of an Israeli Google Ads campaign to discredit the UN’s primary aid agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, was similarly reported by WIRED last year. Hadas Maimon, head of public awareness for Israel’s diaspora ministry, stated during the March 2 Knesset hearing that, “For almost a year now, we have been leading a major campaign on the issue of UNRWA.”

Other Israeli government ads on Google’s platforms accused the United Nations of “deliberate sabotage” of aid delivery into Gaza and promoted the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is backed by Israel, the U.S., and unnamed European countries. One campaign promoted prosecution of the militant group Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, for debunked allegations of mass sexual violence as a result of a controversial report published by the Israeli advocacy group Dinah Project.

Despite the denial about the famine, prominent Israeli government voices have championed the effort to cut off food and water to Gazans as a strategy for inducing mass migration out of the territory. “In my opinion, you can besiege them,” said Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli Finance Minister and a coalition partner to Netantayu’s government, according to Channel 12. “No water, no electricity, they can die of hunger or surrender,” Smotrich said.

Amichay Eliyahu, the Knesset member who leads the Heritage Ministry in Netanyahu’s government, has similarly called for starving the Palestinian population of Gaza. “There is no nation that feeds its enemies,” Eliyahu said during a radio interview in July. In May, the minister argued the Palestinians “need to starve” and added, “If there are civilians who fear for their lives, they should go through the emigration plan.”

Another campaign has attempted to discredit the pro-Palestinian lawfare organisation known as the Hind Rajab Foundation, which accumulates evidence of apparent Israeli war crimes and advocates for international prosecution. Several ads link to an Israeli government report entitled “Unmasking the Hind Rajab Foundation,” which characterises the organisation as having “deep connections to extremist ideologies and terrorist organisations, raising serious concerns about its true motives.”

IMAGE: Israeli ad accusing UN of sabotage. Screenshot: YouTube.

In response to a June report from UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, which concluded that Google had profited from the “genocide in Gaza,” the centibillionaire Google co-founder Sergey Brin reportedly described the UN as a “transparently antisemitic” organisation on an internal company forum on July 5. Albanese’s criticism of Google centred around the company joining Amazon in 2021 on a major cloud computing contract with the Israeli government—including the military—known as Project Nimbus.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office ads referring to famine in Gaza as a “lie” were placed through the Israeli Government Advertising Agency, known by its Hebrew acronym, Lapam, which began waging its six-month hasbara campaign through Google and X ads in June, according to government disclosures. The contracts were initially centered around a propaganda surge attempting to persuade international audiences to support the Israeli military’s twelve days of air strikes against Iran, known as Operation Rising Lion. One bullet point in the published contract clarified that “the request is for campaigns following Operation ‘Rising Lion’ as well as for ongoing activities.”

According to an estimate from the U.S.-based nonprofit Human Rights Activists in Iran, at least 436 Iranian civilians were killed by the Israeli airstrikes.

IMAGE: A screenshot from the Israeli government disclosure of the roughly $45 million contract between Israel’s government advertising bureau (Lapam) and Google’s Display & Video and YouTube advertising platforms. Both campaigns are listed as spanning June 17 to December 31, 2025.

“Since the opening of Operation ‘Rising Lion,’ Lapam has been working with all of its employees and suppliers in a full emergency format, in order to conduct a wide-ranging outreach activity for all government ministries and security bodies, including the Home Front Command, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Publicity Division, the Ministry of Diaspora, and more,” reads the underlying June contract.

“The suppliers with whom the contract is being sought are among the key entities with which Lapam works on an ongoing basis, both during routine periods and in times of emergency, and they possess the infrastructure and knowledge required to carry out the necessary information tasks,” continues the Israeli government document, in reference to the central role contracts with Google and X play in amplifying the spread of Netanyahu’s propaganda.

An editorial published in early August by the Arab fact-checking organisation Misbar reported that information disclosed in Google and Meta’s ad transparency portals amounted to a “large-scale Israeli propaganda campaign” operating during Operation Rising Lion. Misbar characterised the Israeli government’s ad campaigns as having “used disinformation to justify the strikes, presenting them as essential for the security of Israel and Western countries.”

Google, Outbrain/Teads, and the Israeli Government Advertising Agency did not respond to requests for comment.

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Source: https://21stcenturywire.com/2025/09/04/unveiling-israels-secret-contracts-for-social-media-influence-and-censorship/