Publications

This article examines the influence campaign led by the Muslim Brotherhood against the Egyptian regime since the ouster of President Morsi in 2013. The movement operates satellite television channels, websites, and social media networks, while also relying on affiliate movements and cross-border campaigns, with the aim of destabilizing the regime and encouraging internal unrest and resistance. The influence campaign highlights the regime’s failures in terms of the economy, infrastructure, and human rights, and depicts President...

The ISNAD campaign is a sophisticated foreign intervention effort, presented as a grassroots movement aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. Its objective is to assist Hamas in its war against Israel in the Gaza Strip through extensive influence operations on social media. The campaign employs psychological warfare techniques and the use of fake Israeli profiles to create the impression of authentic internal criticism of the state and to undermine public legitimacy in Israel for the war. Following the outbreak of the war between Israel...

In recent years, and even more so since October 7, Iran has been conducting influence and interference campaigns targeting the Israeli public. These efforts aim to deepen societal divisions and weaken the country from within. Recently, an aggressive Iranian operation was uncovered, designed to recruit Israelis for espionage, terrorism, and to assist Iran in the event of war. The latest revelations about Iran’s long-standing influence and interference operations in the United Kingdom highlight a common ground between Israel and other...

Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025 signaled dramatic changes in how the United States addresses threats of foreign influence and interference in the digital realm. The administration swiftly moved to dismantle government mechanisms that had been established in previous years to protect the United States from hostile foreign influence. These steps—from the dismissal of senior security officials to the shutdown of dedicated teams in government departments—raise concerns about the West’s overall capacity to...

This article addresses the phenomenon of Iranian foreign interference in social media platforms in Israel during the years 2020–2022. Its aim is to examine and characterize the phenomenon, discuss its consequences, and propose policy addressing it. The study reveals that agents of foreign interference in the discourse on Israeli social networks do not favor a certain group or agenda in Israeli society; rather, they aim to deepen the rifts in Israeli society and weaken it. The article begins with a description of the main operations...

A recent FBI report reveals a Russian influence campaign targeting several countries, including the United States and Israel. The report highlights Russia’s attempts to sway Israeli public opinion, particularly during times of political upheavals, with the aim of encouraging support for its war against Ukraine. For the first time, it was publicly disclosed that the Arab population in Israel was also a target of Russian influence. The campaign utilized digital media and the creation of fake content, which was spread via social...

Since the October 7th massacre, Russia has stepped up its semi-covert disinformation attacks against Israel, as part of its global Doppelganger influence campaign, which began in 2022. These attacks align with Russia’s official stance, which has remained hostile to Israel in recent months. They signal a strategic shift in the Kremlin’s approach, by grouping Israel with countries it perceives as enemies. A policy shift by the Israeli government should reflect these dynamics and address the new risks to Israel posed by an increasingly...

In the context of the war in Gaza, a foreign influence campaign is flooding Israeli users of the social network X (formerly Twitter) with messages in Hebrew designed to promote Hamas’s objectives. The campaign is executed by a community of Arab Muslims from several countries and orchestrated by Egyptian activists affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood movement who operate from Turkey. Since the group seeks to recruit people to its efforts, it openly describes its goals and some of its action methods, allowing a rare “behind the...

Unlike in previous rounds of fighting with Hamas, it appears that in the Swords of Iron war, thousands of Israeli citizens have joined “professional” network influencers in the global struggle over the narrative. In addition, dozens if not hundreds of civilian “war rooms” have been set up to stream public diplomacy explanatory material, and work groups focusing on technology and the cognitive campaign were formed, designed to make hasbara – Hebrew for public diplomacy – more effective. Israeli hi-tech has also joined the fight, and...

The Gaza war that began after the murderous Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 in the western Negev is also a war in international public opinion. Although at the start of the war, due to the brutality of the attack, Israel received broad public sympathy, now it appears that Hamas is perceived as a victim that enjoys the decided advantage in the struggle for public sympathy in the international arena. One of the explanations for the Hamas success is that unlike Israel, which tries to justify itself to the world, Hamas clings to the...

In recent years, Iran, using social media, has made several attempts to undermine Israel from within. In recent weeks, several networks operating against the backdrop of the widespread civil protest against the government’s would-be judicial revolution were revealed – networks that identified with both supporters and opponents of the plan. This activity seeks to take advantage of the civil protests against the proposed judicial overhaul to deepen the existing polarization and division. The threat of this foreign influence is a...

In the digital era, social media have gained widespread popularity and become an important element of human culture. These platforms constitute a modern town square – a space for public discourse, where information and ideas flow rapidly. This article discusses the point where social media, as arenas for social and cultural conflict, intersect with strategic campaigns for cognitive impact, by examining the Korean pop community – also known as K-Pop – which connects people based on a musical genre and creates a cultural identity...