The State Comptroller’s report highlights significant deficiencies in Israel’s preparedness to counter foreign interference in the digital sphere. These include the lack of a comprehensive national policy, coordination gaps, and only partial preparedness ahead of the elections. This article argues that these findings reflect a broader problem: the absence of an agreed-upon national concept regarding both the threat itself and the methods to address it. Accordingly, it proposes developing an integrated strategic approach...
Artificial intelligence is now integrated into the core of defense, intelligence, and economic operations, but its reliability depends entirely on the integrity of the data from which it learns. A new memorandum by Dr. Shay Hershkovitz examines one of the most significant vulnerabilities in the AI era: “data poisoning”—the covert and intentional manipulation of datasets or models. The memorandum demonstrates how this threat goes beyond a technical cyber problem and constitutes a profound strategic and cognitive threat....
Bias against Israel on English Wikipedia is a known and documented phenomenon, yet its internal mechanisms often remain hidden from the broader public. This article examines the underlying mechanisms of this phenomenon through a focused analysis of the behavioral patterns of Iskandar323, a senior and experienced editor who operated on the platform for nearly twelve years before being permanently banned in early 2026 for violating prior restrictions on editing articles on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The study is based on mapping...
Iran’s strategic communications effort in Operation Roaring Lion reflects an integrated strategy of military action, information warfare, and advanced technologies aimed at influencing domestic, regional, and international audiences. The current campaign reflects an advanced stage in the evolution of Iranian doctrine, which has shifted from religious-ideological propaganda to operational, multidimensional information warfare. This article examines Iran’s main patterns of operation, including the use of missiles and UAVs as a...
The end of the war in Gaza in October 2025 posed a fundamental challenge to foreign influence campaigns that had operated against Israel during the fighting, including the ISNAD campaign, which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. These campaigns—relying on a sense of urgency, heightened public attention, and intense emotional mobilization—were now required to adapt to a new reality in which public discourse gradually returned to political, social, and economic issues. In this context, maintaining relevance and influence...
Knowledge bias on English Wikipedia and political tendentiousness in discourse surrounding sensitive topics have generated growing criticism, manifested, among other things, in the rise of digital alternatives such as Grokipedia and Justapedia. This article offers a qualitative case study of how the encyclopedic entry on Zionism is designed and framed across the three platforms, highlighting differences in emphasis and narrative structure. Focusing on the opening sentences, the analysis examines four axes of comparison: the implied...
The English-language Wikipedia is one of the main arenas shaping global consciousness regarding Israel and the conflict. However, the dominant presence of anti-Israeli editors makes it a tool that produces a one-sided narrative. When it was launched in 2001, Wikipedia inspired great hope for the democratization of knowledge, but over the years, it has become a battleground over the shaping of narratives on sensitive issues. Hostile actors toward Israel often determine the content frameworks, decide on the admissibility of sources,...
Recent reports from the United Kingdom and Italy about the involvement of Iran’s PressTV television channel in sophisticated influence operations in those countries attest to the ongoing efforts of Iran’s state propaganda network—operated under the supervision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting—to weaken Western nations and amplify the Iranian narrative within them. The ability to curb Iran’s global influence depends, among other things, on the international community’s capacity to disrupt this elaborate system that Iran...
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...
