Making Israel's case to ChatGPT and Grok: Hasbara meets AI in multi-million dollar PR push

About this episode

Omer Benjakob discusses the Israeli government's digital PR campaign and its implications on the narrative surrounding Israel and Palestine.

Fighting antisemitism online was meant to be the focus of the Israeli government’s multimillion-dollar digital PR campaign run by President Donald Trump’s former digital guru, Brad Parscale. But instead, Haaretz disinformation and cyber correspondent Omer Benjakob said on the Haaretz Podcast, Parscale’s firm has built a network of pro-Israel websites targeting the U.S. evangelical right, stressing the contrast between Western and “Judeo-Christian” values while promoting negative messages regarding Palestinians and Islam. Among them is “praise for international calls to recognize settlements,” and “articles dedicated to why giving the Palestinian Authority control of Gaza is a terrible idea, and almost worse than letting Hamas take control." Repeatedly, he added, the websites reflect a “compulsive obsession with perception and narrative,” insisting that all negative content about Israel online is false and manipulated. On the podcast, Benjakob explained that the multiple new websites created by Parscale's consulting firm are designed to look like research institutes and think tanks in order to optimize them for…

People in this episode

Guest: Omer Benjakob

Topics covered

• digital PR campaign
• antisemitism
• pro-Israel websites
• narrative control
• AI optimization
• Palestinian conflict

Keywords

• antisemitism
• digital PR
• pro-Israel
• AI chatbots
• narrative
• Palestinians
• Gaza
• Brad Parscale

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Israeli government, Haaretz, Hamas, Palestinian Authority, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude

Places: U.S., Gaza

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