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I will begin at the end.
Jews and Israel are evil because we have all been trained to believe that Jews and Israel are evil through concentrated, systematic, and coordinated efforts dating back at least four decades.
But these concentrated efforts are not presenting both sides. They are overtly and purposefully one-sided and biased — aimed at undermining liberal democracies around the world. And they have eroded any chance of meaningful coexistence between Israel and Palestinians.
The ramifications are extremely dangerous:
Dooming the Palestinian citizens in Gaza to continued oppression
Promoting violence and destroying any chance of coexistence in the Middle East
Dehumanizing Jews and rampant, unfounded antisemitism
Eroding liberal democracies
In February, Microsoft dropped two extensively researched reports titled: “Iran surges cyber-enabled influence operations in support of Hamas.”1
The must-read reports give explicit details, timelines, and examples of how Iranian actors and their network of global supports have been conducting coordinated “influence operations” for years.
The preferred methods of operation for Iran and its operatives are as follows:
Cyber-Enabled Influence Operations – Operations which combine offensive computer network operations with messaging and amplification in a coordinated and manipulative fashion to shift perceptions, behaviors, or decisions by target audiences to further a group or a nation’s interests and objectives.
Cyber Persona – A manufactured public-facing group or individual that takes responsibility for a cyber operation while providing plausible deniability for the underlying group or nation responsible.
Sockpuppet – A false online persona employing fictitious or stolen identities for the purpose of deception.
In other words, Iran and its operatives have been running a massive, global misinformation campaign utilizing fake profiles, stolen profiles, doctored images, fabricated information, and so forth. For example, Iran is actually behind this social media profile:
According to Microsoft, the goal of this massive, global operation is working toward “four broad objectives: destabilization, retaliation, intimidation, and undermining international support for Israel. All four of these objectives also seek to undermine Israel and its supporters’ information environments to create general confusion and lack of trust.”
Iran-backed disinformation campaigns against Jews, Israel, and the West have been going on for years, but efforts greatly ramped up and become more streamlined since October 7th.
The Microsoft reports are notable by the fact that it is Microsoft. Massive global corporations have extremely stringent protocols regarding anything that is released for public consumption. For Microsoft to publish something like this, on this topic and at this time, means that the report went through the wringer of legal and regulatory compliance. It is as credible as it gets.
Other multinationals have also sounded the alarm, like TikTok. In addition, there have been a number of third-party reports and analyses about rampant “influence operations” to discredit Israel and skew public perception against Jews and the West (such as in Wired magazine, Forbes, Rolling Stone magazine, CNN, NewsGuard, CyberWell, Cyabra, Coalition for a Safer Web, and dozens more publications).
Like Microsoft, these reports give countless examples of fabrications, disinformation, and flagrant lies utilizing fake personas, doctored images, and more — working in concerted and coordinated efforts to reach the widest possible audience across the globe.
The coordinated online disinformation campaigns against Jews and Israel has been going on for years.
In 2014, Hamas even issued instructions for prospective supports on their official website, Twitter, and Facebook pages:
“Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Begin [your reports of] news of resistance actions with the phrase ‘In response to the cruel Israeli attack,’ and conclude with the phrase ‘This many people have been martyred since Israel launched its aggression against Gaza.’”
These fabrications traverse the globe in nanoseconds, with negligible oversight. Many are picked up by influencers who willingly promote the content on their own social channels, further expanding the influence of the anti-Jewish and anti-israel bias.
International superstar model Gigi Hadid, for example, has frequently come under the microscope for her biased disinformation, and recently gave a public apology for sharing on her social media that “Israel is the only country in the world keeping children as prisoners of war” — a flagrant lie.
Gigi’s sister, Bella Hadid (who has more than 61 million followers on Instagram) was similarly outed recently for a disinformation technique called “repurposing.” The video she cited in an Instagram post is from 2013 or 2014 from the Al Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria, even as she wrote a caption that accompanied the video which said: “Gaza on my mind.”
Jews and Israel are just the tip of the iceberg. For Iran and its proxies, “Palestine” is just a cause celebre (an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning, and heated public debate). In other words: an effective platform for undermining the liberal democratic world. Targeted and systematic disinformation campaigns against the Western liberal democracies have been ravaging social media for years, utilizing much of the same playbook highlighted in the Microsoft report.
Vahid Beheshti, an Iranian journalist and human rights activist, recently leaked a confidential letter signed by Brigadier General Majid Kazemi, head of the Intelligence Security Organization for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The letter and subsequent promotional video highlights Iran’s plans for “disrupting the public order in Europe, USA, Australia, and Asia all under the pretext of supporting Palestinians.” As Beheshti stated:
“This is a political movement intended to cause as much chaos and instability as possible, which are the exact goals of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The regime of the Islamic Republic has on multiple occasions, stated clearly that their goal is to destroy the modern society and build a global Islamic state.”2
This was confirmed in July by Avril Haines, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence. She wrote:
“Iran is becoming increasingly aggressive in their foreign influence efforts, seeking to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions, as we have seen them do in the past, including in prior election cycles. They continue to adapt their cyber and influence activities, using social media platforms and issuing threats. It is likely they will continue to rely on their intelligence services in these efforts, as well as Iran-based online influencers, to promote their narratives.”
“We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”3
In Western academia, efforts to sow disinformation against Jews, Israel, and the West started long ago.
The turning point arguably started when Palestinian-American philosopher and academic Edward Said published “Orientalism” in 1978. The book offered a skewed, biased, and deeply flawed revisionist version of Western influence on the Middle East. Said’s book became a darling in academic circles, and is the grandfather of much of the post-colonial “oppressed versus oppressor” dialogue we see today across college campuses.
Said’s book was also blatantly and purposefully misleading. In 2003, shortly after his death, the Lebanese newspaper Daily Star eulogized Said by writing: “Everyone agrees that Said’s work was a work of fiction designed to derail Western civilization” and that “U.S. Middle Eastern Studies were taken over by Edward Said’s postcolonial studies paradigm.”
But it was too late. The seeds were planted.
Twenty-five years ago, Ameer Makhoul, director of Ittijah (a network of Palestinian NGOs) explained the full game plan:
“We will create, over the next years, Palestinian campus activists in America and all over the world. Bigger and better than any Zionist activists … Just like you have been part of creating global pro-Israel organizations, we will create global pro-Palestinian organizations. Just like you today help create PR campaigns and events for Israel, so will we, but we will get more coverage than you ever have.”
Makhoul’s vision came to fruition both directly and indirectly. For example, Students for Justice in Palestine, the BDS movement, and “Israel Apartheid Week” all emerged on college campuses in Canada and the U.S. from 2001 to 2005, and have been gaining steam ever since.
These three initiatives all used the same modus operandi: pushing only one biased version of the complex picture and never engaging in bilateral dialogue. Instead of aiming for coexistence, understanding, and mutual respect for both sides, these organizations solely focused on a purposefully lopsided agenda that served to create more division.
Dr. Catherine Chatterly, a Canadian historian, summarized “Israel Apartheid Week” as follows:
“If the goal were actual education and informed discussion about the Arab-Israeli conflict, “Israel Apartheid Week” programming would incorporate competing points of view. All subjects central to the conflict would be on the agenda — such as the many wars fought by Arab armies against Israel, the historical and contemporary arguments of Arab nationalism, the Islamization of the conflict itself, and, the very real question of whether anyone in the region actually wants to accept the existence of a Jewish state.”
All three initiatives were all rightly criticized for extreme bias at the minimum, and for direct ties to terrorist organizations at the maximum.
What we know today is that all three initiatives are intertwined through shady NGOs like American Muslims for Palestine, with direct connections to Islamic terror organizations.4
Students for Justice in Palestine, which has been particularly successful on college campuses, is a front for Hamas and has been receiving funding from the terror group for years.5
Students for Justice in Palestine is also responsible for overt anti-West bias, pushing only one narrative that the U.S. and other Western countries are solely responsible for all the ills of global society — eerily similar to Edward Said’s theory.
Most importantly, as noted by Dr. Chatterly, these three organizations never made attempts at fostering dialogue, understanding, or progress toward peace. They opted for an extremist track of delegitimization which ultimately undermines bridge-building and mutual respect and bilateral consideration.
The indirect pathway toward Ameer Makhoul’s dream is the growing influence of foreign adversaries on academic institutions in liberal democracies.
Today we know that questionable foreign sovereignties, specifically Qatar, have spent billions to buy influence on college campuses in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe for decades. These donations, which go largely unreported, allow Qatari influence on selecting which academic programs to promote, and which educators will push a one-sided and biased agenda.
According to an independent study from the U.S.-based Network Contagion Research Institute in November 2023: “A massive influx of foreign donations to American institutions of higher learning, much of it concealed and from authoritarian regimes, with notable support from Middle Eastern sources, reflects or supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry, and free expression.”
It is not just that Qatari influence pushed a one-sided agenda. The Network Contagion Research Institute also divulged that “receipt of foreign funding was associated with erosion of free speech norms: increased campaigns to punish scholars for their speech.”
In other words, Qatari influence on academia punished those who dared to question the blatantly one-sided agenda. There was no option for students to even explore both sides of the narrative because those trying to foster two-sided objective dialogue were silenced.
A modern day example of shutting down dialogue comes from the City University of New York chapter of “Not In Our Name” — an organization that allegedly represents “anti-Zionist Jews.” The chapter is actively curtailing the voice of students on campus by coercing and intimidating students to lie on a campus-wide survey regarding rising anti-Jewish activity on campus, according to an email obtained by Luke Tress, a reporter for New York Jewish Week and Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Instead of working toward reconciliation, academic institutions and numerous shady campus organizations are actively fostering extreme polarization, pushing the two sides away from each other.
It took approximately two decades, but Qatari influence paid off. Curricula changed to reflect an echo chamber of narrow perspectives and a stifling of free speech. Any hint of trying to understand both sides — of any issue — is actively shunned and shut down.
Political analyst Ross Douthat summarized the changes in academia recently, where he referred to the state of academia today as “intellectual narrowing.”6 This intellectual narrowing limits perspectives on contemporary issues and simplifies history into exactly what Edward Said promoted 40 years ago — oppressed versus oppressor.
This perspective simply does not align with the complexity of the modern world. For example, college students shout out for “Jews to go back to Europe” even though 70 percent of Israeli Jews come from the greater Middle East North Africa region, and before that all Jews can trace their lineage back to Judaea in the modern-day “West Bank” (as it was rebranded by the Jordanians).
Western college students also express their wish to “Globalize the Intifada” even though in practice it means killing civilians. And college students support the Yemen-based Houthis (another terrorist organization and Iranian proxy) even though the official Houthi flag explicitly states: “Death to America.”
Israel and Jews are seen as a scapegoat for broader historical grievances, which fuels additional antisemitism. As Ross Douthat stated: “Israel is a kind of enemy of convenience for a left-wing worldview that otherwise lacks real-world correlates for its theories.”
Twenty years of “intellectual narrowing” — coupled with blatant anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, and anti-West bias — have led to what we see today on campuses.
Certainly, students have a right to protest, and even the encampments can be tolerated when they do not destroy public property. But instead, what we see are countless videos of Jewish students — who have nothing to do with Israel — being barred from entering campuses. We see countless videos of blatant hate speech, and also actions.
Professor John McWhorter from Columbia University in New York pointed out the hypocrisy when he wrote:
“I thought about what would have happened if protesters were instead chanting anti-Black slogans or even something like ‘D.E.I. has got to die,’ to the same ‘Sound Off’ tune that ‘From the river to the sea’ has been adapted to. They would have lasted roughly five minutes before masses of students shouted them down and drove them off the campus.”7
What we see in many academic circles today is a sad and troubling trend that started decades ago. Harvard Magazine recently asked “Is Harvard Antisemitic?” Their answer, of themselves, is: yes.
But what is most disturbing from what we see on campuses and the state of academia today is the countless videos of “pro-Palestine,” anti-Israel, and pro-Hamas protesters who refuse to engage in any form of constructive dialogue.
David Lederer, a sophomore at Columbia University, eloquently summarized the hypocrisy of Students for Justice in Palestine and the like when he wrote:
“It is unfortunately apparent to me that they [SJP] hate Israelis more than they love the people they claim to champion… They cannot have it both ways. Either they are for peace or they are for war, no matter the cost of Palestinian lives. Their chants of ‘death to the Zionist state,’ which only aid Hamas’ efforts, tell me that they are on the side of perpetual war.”8
Again and again, we see an active disdain for two-sided understanding, for realism, or for pragmatic steps toward coexistence and reconciliation.
Image if, instead of pushing blatantly one-sided agendas, universities returned back to their original goals of fostering critical thinking, freedom of thought, and intellectual exploration. These university students could potentially build practical bridges toward coexistence instead of promoting belligerent propaganda.
Ultimately, the overriding issue with these nefarious activities on social media and across academia is that none of them promote bilateral understanding, two-sided empathy, or rational approaches to coexistence.
The only purpose of these coordinated efforts are to delegitimize Israel, dehumanize Jews, and undermine Western liberal democracies.
“Iran surges cyber-enabled influence operations in support of Hamas.” Microsoft Security Insider.
“Leaked Document Reveals IRGC’s Role In Global Anti-Israel Campaign.” Iran International.
“Statement from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on Recent Iranian Influence Efforts.” Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
“BDS Umbrella Group Linked to Palestinian Terrorist Organizations.” Tablet.
“Pro-Palestine campus group behind Columbia University protests received over $3million a year in funding from 'charities' linked to Hamas.” Daily Mail.
“What Students Read Before They Protest.” The New York Times.
“I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice.” The New York Times.
“Why I counterprotest SJP rallies.” Columbia Spectator.
This is an excellent piece of writing. Said may have been the trigger, but all he did was let the long-existing genie out of the bottle. This genie is not going back into the bottle. New thinking and action is required.
Stop whining and be proactive. Stop acting like victims. FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE.
Organize Jewish internet talent here and in Israel. They must do a continuous world wide blast . This is a full time permanent job. Counter lies , promote the truth about Arab crimes against the US. Isn’t it ridiculous that it was Arabs that were behind 9/11 and yet nobody brings it up?Repeat this atrocity forever.
Promote Israel and Jewish contributions to the world.
Let’s face it. Nobody is going to police the internet. Nobody is going to counter the libel except us.
Steve Laitman