Why Is Israel’s Image So Bad Right Now — and What Can We Do About It?

In recent months, the level of anti-Israel propaganda has reached entirely new proportions, including a major campaign around starvation in Gaza, a massive global push for unilaterally recognizing Palestinian statehood (which Palestinians see as a reward for the October 7 massacre), and restricting Israel from global trade, even among traditional Israeli allies.

Though clearly at odds with factual reality, this global propaganda campaign has nonetheless garnered enormous traction: including among leaders, celebrities, and the general public. This is no mere popularity contest, but a nation-state level strategic weapon, similar to a navy or an air force: a weapon that took Israel’s enemies decades to develop, and for which Israel has no “Iron Dome” defense system.

How did it happen?

At a 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa, the Palestinian Authority and its various allies (including Qatar and Iran) launched what later came to be known as the “Diplomatic Intifada.”

Their aim: to defame Israel in every sphere — political, diplomatic, lawfare, education, communications, grassroots, and more. The goal was to change the world, not in a year or even 10 years — but rather to persuade an entire generation that hadn’t even been born yet (today’s 18-24 year old cohort).

Fast forward to 2025: nearly 25 years of work and billions of dollars per year in investment have gone into the following types of projects:

Communications: This includes obvious conventional communications, such as Al Jazeera (an entire television network founded by Qatar and controlled by the Qatari royal family), as well as more subtle business plays: for example, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are investing heavily in American mainstream television networks and entertainment companies, while niche opinion-makers have been accused of receiving funding from sources linked to Qatar and Iran.

Digital: Entire armies of “bots” (fake social media accounts) share and promote content online, thus manipulating the algorithms into causing that content to go viral and ultimately to influence real people. For example, during Israel’s “Twelve Day War” against Iran, the Iranian regime shut down the local internet. At that exact time, thousands of (apparently) British and Scottish Twitter accounts (which had been advocating for Scottish independence) suddenly went dark. The accounts returned promptly when the war ended — except now they were tweeting pro-Iran as well anti-United States and anti-Israel messaging.

Intelligence analyst Ryan McBeth explains that this and other related data reveals that the accounts were actually Iranian bots all along, and that such a discovery is merely a small peak into a much larger operation.

In short, it’s no accident that anti-Israel messaging goes viral more than pro-Israel content: a huge, nation-state scale investment is dedicated to manipulating the algorithms.

Education: The Diplomatic Intifada also includes manipulation of US and European education systems through direct donations, endowing university professorships (on the condition that the professor promotes the right ideology), indirect donations through charities and NGOs, funding student groups, and more.

The key is that investors operate at a critical mass: funding not just a professor or two, but enough to change the character of entire universities. Many universities run high school education programs, which often include similar ideology geared to even younger students.

This education strategy dovetails with the communications strategy: by the time young adults see ideologically driven posts on social media, they have been already indoctrinated, by over a decade of long-form education, during their most formative years.

It is therefore a mistake to assume that social media creates anti-Israel opinions: more accurately, it serves as a reinforcement mechanism for existing opinions that the Diplomatic Intifada had already cultivated and cemented for years.

Politics: Lobbying and promoting political candidates for office. For example, favored New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, Members of Congress Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and others receive funding from CAIR.

It’s important to understand that some voters support Mamdani and other extremist candidates not in spite of their antisemitism, but because of it.

When asked about Zohran Mamdani’s statements in support of jihadism and violence against Jews, over a third of New Yorkers, including almost 60% of likely Mamdani voters, said such statements make them more likely to vote for him, with over 40% declaring those statements make them “much more likely” to vote for him.

In other words: the antisemitism is not a bug, it’s a feature.

Grass roots: Billions invested in NGOs and charities around the world, some of which subsequently go to organizing and hiring paid protesters to create the illusion of massive public support for their ideology. One notable example was recently exposed by X influencer Nate Friedman, and echoed online by President Trump.

In effect, this is a strategic weapon, a process not much different than taking decades to build a modern air force or navy. The ultimate effect is to impact the opinions and emotions of real and ordinary people, on a massive scale.

Why now?

On the one hand, this can be seen as an encouraging sign — it means Hamas (and its allies) are desperate, and finally realize they’re losing. They are therefore capitalizing to an unprecedented degree on the only truly effective weapon they have left: weaponized propaganda.

Over time — or in the short term, if an anti-Israel president enters the White House — these results could prove to be catastrophic for global (and especially American) support for Israel.

What is Israel doing about it?

Not much.

The Israeli government has set its priorities on military, intelligence, security, healthcare, and emergency services. There is minimal investment in communications. The best talent in Israel is not typically encouraged to enter this area, and it is simply not considered a strategic priority.

While this may seem an obvious strategic mistake by Israel, it is not without its logic: the Israeli leadership generally believes that anti-Israel propaganda may sound bad, but doesn’t truly have an impact in the real world. In a small country with limited resources, Israel’s leaders find communications to be a waste of resources compared to other important needs.

But are Israel’s leaders right?

To some extent Israeli officials are not wrong — despite all their propaganda, Israel’s enemies keep losing militarily, and many (such as Iran) face economies and societies that are in a state of collapse. Given the choice between funding communications versus (for example) more missile defense interceptors, Israel chooses defense.

But what happens when Israel can no longer access such life-saving hardware, because its allies have caved to the propaganda and turned against the Jewish State?

That’s why Israeli officials are partly right, but also terribly wrong.

How many times have US and other Israeli allies delayed or withheld needed weapons, forced Israel to delay necessary military operations, or forced Israel to provide aid and resources (effectively) to enemy combatants?

These realities have prolonged the war, prolonged the captivity of the hostages, and cost the lives of IDF soldiers. In addition (in my own humble opinion), Israel has certain moral responsibilities for the safety of global Jewish communities as well as Israelis traveling abroad: neglecting the communications battlefield endangers both groups.

So what can we do about it?

The truly right (but impractical) answer is to invest billions of dollars per year for the next 25 years with the goal of making a change — not for us, but for our children and our grandchildren.

Israel needs a “communications force” on the scale of a navy or air force. Israel’s stunning operation against Iran’s nuclear program was 20 years in the making — and a proper communications battle requires no less.

But for now, there are some things we can do in the near-term:

RealityCheck focuses on producing persuasive reports that trigger actual policy changes by specific governments and international agencies — it’s a way that we can have an actual impact that does more than “preaching to the choir” and actually accomplishes something real.

Other groups are doing the same, and this work needs to continue and intensify.

Another frontier is AI; we have a new program of training the AI platforms which are fast becoming a core source of news information. Other groups are working on this, and it’s a way to make a positive difference right now.

Obviously, these steps are not enough against a multi-billion dollar, 25 year, strategic weapon, and among all our other activities, we are working to persuade the Israeli government and the philanthropic world to help Israel address this properly.

Each one of you can be a voice for change — and I hope you will.

Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.