We Found Israel's U.S. Influence-op Accounts. No One Actually Follows Them

A storm of conspiracies and speculations has taken over the American right regarding Israel's online influence. Haaretz examined and found a network of accounts with little to no reach

July 22nd, 18PM July 22nd, 19PM

U.S. Vice President JD Vance responded last week to criticism of the cease-fire agreement with Iran by saying that Israel was "losing the battle" for American public opinion. He described the criticism as part of "a funded foreign influence campaign," adding that those taking part could, as far as he was concerned, "go to hell."

A Haaretz examination of the campaign Vance was referring to – a network of pro-Israel websites and American social media accounts run by the firm of Brad Parscale, Donald Trump's former digital strategist, and revealed in filings with the U.S. Justice Department – found an operation lavishly funded by Israeli taxpayers.

But unlike what Vance and others have suggested, it does not appear to involve paid influencers, at least not openly – and it is reaching almost no one.

Since October 7, Israel has committed roughly $100 million to influence campaigns abroad, ranging from social media projects and email outreach to physical events.

A large share of that money flows through advertising giant Havas to Clock Tower X, Parscale's company. Clock Tower X is registered under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act as distributing material "on behalf of the State of Israel," and its monthly payments have tripled this year to $4.5 million.

Earlier this year, Haaretz exposed a network of professional-looking websites posing as independent research, fact-checking and news outlets. Allyvia, Justorium, FactSignal, Cognitura, Culturavia, Paxpoint, Compassion Pulse and others were built to be surfaced by AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude.

Although branded as independent, they are collectively run by an umbrella organization called Friends for Peace and disclose only in small print that they are funded by Israel.

New documents filed this week led Haaretz to the social media accounts opened for those sites across every major platform. Across X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Rumble, the network operates 42 accounts with roughly 885 followers and subscribers combined. About 854 belong to a single YouTube channel, Allies for Peace.

The remaining 41 accounts share just 31 followers between them, while several X accounts have no followers at all despite months of daily posting.

The thin following bears the marks of a coordinated campaign rather than organic growth. Every X profile was created in May 2026, their biographies follow nearly identical templates, and posts are published across brands in lockstep.

Rather than following one another, each account follows the same carefully curated list of Israeli and U.S. government accounts. Despite the sums invested, almost no one is spreading the material.

A Haaretz analysis found that virtually every account interacting with the campaign's posts or websites belonged to critics, researchers or journalists documenting the operation – not supporters amplifying it.

The only content attracting significant traffic consisted of a handful of YouTube videos with between 5,000 and 13,000 views; most videos have fewer than 200. Searches of Google's and Meta's public advertising transparency libraries found no registered advertising purchases by Clock Tower X or any of its brands, making it impossible to determine from public records why a few videos dramatically outperformed the rest.

The findings stand in sharp contrast to the online speculation surrounding the campaign. Reports based on the public filings have fueled claims on the American right that Israel is secretly paying prominent influencers to promote its message.

The accusations resurfaced during the controversy surrounding the Tel Aviv visit of the "looksmaxxing" influencer Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters. Peters insisted his trip was apolitical, and no evidence has emerged that Israel funded it. Similar accusations have since spread to other commentators.

Parscale himself has become central to those theories. Beyond running Trump's digital campaigns, he co-founded the Argentine political consulting firm Numen with Fernando Cerimedo, a strategist associated with Javier Milei's rise. Yet the FARA filings connect Clock Tower X only to the websites and their distribution infrastructure – not to payments for influencers.

Haaretz found no influencer amplifying the Friends for Peace network. Israel has separately run an already disclosed "Influencer Campaign" – the Esther Project – commissioned by the Government Advertising Agency for the Foreign Ministry and managed through Bridges Partners. But that operation is distinct from Parscale's network.

Bridges disclosed payments to marketing and public relations firms and stated that it had "no role in developing, creating, promoting, or disseminating any content."

In other words, even what was disclosed last year does not account for the accusations now flying on the American right. Whether similar, favorable content is being produced elsewhere without disclosure is, by its nature, nearly impossible to confirm.

One thread does run back to the same advertising giant. Under a Freedom of Information request filed by the Israeli Freedom of Information movement, the Diaspora Affairs Ministry released a list of foreign "influencers" its minister, Amichai Chikli, has met since 2023.

The list was given in response to the request, the latest of a number filed by the non-profit; ministry says it paid none of them, and refered the requester to the Government Advertising Agency, LAPAM, which it says bought services on its behalf from Havas - the same firm behind the U.S. campaign - but did not link the payments to the influencers.

In other words, the document names meetings - not funding. In fact, Haaretz found no proof any of the influencers the minister met posted content linked to the campaigns, or even interacted with any on of its themes.

The list shows that among those the minister has met are British commentator Douglas Murray, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, Newsmax founder Christopher Ruddy, actor Michael Rapaport and pro-Israel influencer Lizzy Savetsky – as well as far-right British activist Tommy Robinson, whose October 2025 visit Chikli has said was funded by the Israeli government. Savetsky has publicly denied ever taking government money.

Adv. Hedi Negev, CEO of the Movement for Freedom of Information: "Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli was supposed to be responsible for the relationship between world Jewry and the State of Israel – it has now been revealed that he mainly meets with far-right activists and influencers."

"Precisely at this moment of Israel's greatest crisis vis-à-vis Diaspora Jews and rising antisemitism, the absence of a moderate government figure who could serve as a connecting bridge is sorely felt. Minister Chikli would do well to publish his meetings and calendar transparently and proactively, so the public can scrutinize and oversee them."

Direct Engagement

The latest FARA filing submitted on July 16 by Parscale's firm shows how the network of websites and online accounts is run. It includes the operation's internal scheduling calendar, exported from the marketing platform Sprout Social, listing 77 posts across two weeks – every one stamped as authored from a single workspace labeled "by Clock T.," for Clock Tower X. The same messages, on the same days, are queued to fire simultaneously from the accounts of the ostensibly separate brands.

Despite the claims on the American right, the posts rarely center on Trump himself, instead advancing the positions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government: defending the war with Iran and campaigning against the June U.S.–Iran deal.

Others are more innocuous, promoting Christian tourism and Israel's new "envoy to the Christian world"; still others attack the mainstream media's coverage of Israel, the United Nations and human rights groups.

A recurring target is Qatar, Israel's rival for influence in Washington: recent pieces accuse Doha of "buying" the International Criminal Court and of bankrolling a resurgent Muslim Brotherhood "through Turkey and Qatar" – the theme the network's own calendar shows it pushed more than any other in mid-July.

The case and the storm around it underscore the gap between spending on hasbara and its results – investment rising as public support falls – and the same drift shows in the content.

Clock Tower X registered to run a campaign "to combat antisemitism," and its earliest material, as Haaretz reported, broadly fit that remit, courting evangelical and MAGA audiences around claims such as the "Jesus was a Palestinian" lie. The newer articles range much wider, posted since the campaign pivoted to the Iran war – which our earlier reporting showed even included a dedicated new website devoted to Iran.

An effort framed around antisemitism has become broad geopolitical advocacy, pulled into the American right's infighting while making little dent on the audience it was built to win.

All this is exposed in public documents. Clock Tower X's latest report to the Justice Department, covering the six months ending in March, shows Israel sent it $15 million and that it paid roughly $13 million to American subcontractors.

The largest single line item – about $6.5 million, filed under "Direct Engagement" – went to SparkFire, an Atlanta firm whose AI platform reportedly texts Americans under neutral-sounding "peace" pretenses and steers them to Parscale's pro-Israel sites and videos. One recipient recently complained about the texts to his congressman, U.S. Representative Andrew Clyde.

The content has an author, too. The network's articles are bylined by a Jerusalem-based specialist in the AI-driven search optimization the sites depend on to surface in Google results and AI chatbots – precisely the kind of work Havas and its subcontractors were hired to provide.

Haaretz found that the consultant advertised for "hasbara" writers while working on the campaign and that he is himself a registered foreign agent in Clock Tower X's filings.

The result is a foreign-funded influence machine that is professionally built, centrally directed and technically ambitious – and that, by the measure of the audience it has actually assembled, is failing. Over the same period, according to Vance's own account and successive Pew and Gallup surveys, American opinion of Israel has continued to slide.

Noa Shpigel contributed to this report