Israeli Influence Operations Target US Evangelicals and AI

Israeli influ­ence oper­a­tions are tar­get­ing US evan­gel­i­cals and AI chat­bots fol­low­ing sharp declines in con­ser­v­a­tive sup­port for Israel. On 9 Novem­ber 2025, Haaretz report­ed that Israel signed con­tracts worth mil­lions with Trump-linked firms to con­duct the largest geofenc­ing cam­paign in US his­to­ry map­ping church perime­ters to iden­ti­fy and track eight mil­lion church­go­ers, while attempt­ing to influ­ence Chat­G­PT and oth­er AI sys­tems to gen­er­ate pro-Israel fram­ing. The arti­cle begins:

The Israeli gov­ern­ment has signed con­tracts worth mil­lions of dol­lars in recent months to reha­bil­i­tate Israel’s stand­ing in Amer­i­can pub­lic opin­ion, both online and offline. Amid a sharp drop in sup­port from the con­ser­v­a­tive right, Israel has hired firms to con­duct not just “has­bara [pub­lic diplo­ma­cy] cam­paigns” but also cam­paigns tar­get­ing mil­lions of Chris­t­ian church­go­ers, bot net­works to ampli­fy pro-Israel mes­sages online, and efforts to influ­ence both search results and the respons­es giv­en by pop­u­lar AI ser­vices like Chat­G­PT. Among the experts recruit­ed is a for­mer cam­paign man­ag­er for Don­ald Trump and many of the oth­er firms are linked to the Repub­li­can par­ty or Evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ties, indi­cat­ing that Israel is focus­ing mas­sive efforts on com­mu­ni­ties once con­sid­ered auto­mat­i­cal­ly pro-Israel.

Read more: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2025–11-09/ty-article-magazine/.premium/losing-the-republican-base-israel-pours-millions-to-target-evangelicals-and-churchgoers/0000019a-540e-db4c-a5fb-dfafea590000 [pay­wall]

Key Points

• Israel con­tract­ed Show Faith by Works for a cam­paign exceed­ing $3 mil­lion to con­duct the most exten­sive geofenc­ing cam­paign in US his­to­ry, map­ping phys­i­cal perime­ters of every major church and Chris­t­ian col­lege in Cal­i­for­nia, Ari­zona, Neva­da, and Col­orado to iden­ti­fy, track, and tar­get eight mil­lion church­go­ers and four mil­lion Chris­t­ian students.
• Clock Tow­er X owned by Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Brad Parscale received a $6 mil­lion con­tract includ­ing a Search and Lan­guage Oper­a­tion designed to gen­er­ate fram­ing out­comes in GPT con­ver­sa­tions and AI-based dia­logue sys­tems, rep­re­sent­ing the first pub­licly doc­u­ment­ed case of a state attempt­ing to shape dis­course through gen­er­a­tive AI.
• SKD­Knicker­bock­er was con­tract­ed for rough­ly 2.5 mil­lion shekels to devel­op a bot-based pro­gram that floods the zone with pro-Israel mes­sages across Tik­Tok, Insta­gram, LinkedIn, and YouTube while recruit­ing spokesper­sons to pro­mote Israeli messages.
• The cam­paigns respond to sharp declines in con­ser­v­a­tive sup­port, with half of young Repub­li­cans now hold­ing neg­a­tive views of Israel and sur­veys show­ing young evan­gel­i­cals are more crit­i­cal of Israel and no longer sup­port it auto­mat­i­cal­ly unlike their parents.

Israel’s Role in the Global National Conservative Alliance: Likud Joins European Far-Right Coalition

Israel has emerged as a cen­tral anchor with­in the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance, for­mal­iz­ing its place through Likud’s observ­er sta­tus in Patri­ots for Europe, the Euro­pean Par­lia­men­t’s third-largest bloc. On Feb­ru­ary 7, 2025, at the Patri­ots con­gress in Madrid, the Israeli par­ty was offi­cial­ly and unan­i­mous­ly award­ed observ­er sta­tus with imme­di­ate effect. This posi­tions Netanyahu’s gov­ern­ment along­side par­ties includ­ing Aus­tri­a’s Free­dom Par­ty, France’s Nation­al Ral­ly, Hun­gary’s Fidesz, Italy’s Lega, the Dutch Par­ty for Free­dom, and Spain’s VOX. The Madrid sum­mit drew key mem­bers includ­ing Vik­tor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, and Mat­teo Salvini.

The con­ver­gence reflects a broad­er ide­o­log­i­cal realign­ment ground­ed in civ­i­liza­tion­al nation­al­ism and oppo­si­tion to lib­er­al inter­na­tion­al norms. Israel and India func­tion as co-anchors, with both Netanyahu’s coali­tions and Mod­i’s BJP gov­ern­ment con­struct­ing par­al­lel nar­ra­tives of nation­hood root­ed in reli­gion and majori­tar­i­an iden­ti­ty. This transna­tion­al net­work lever­ages Nation­al Con­ser­vatism con­fer­ences and shared media strate­gies to fos­ter oper­a­tional part­ner­ships, with fig­ures like Israeli philoso­pher Yoram Hazony advo­cat­ing civ­i­liza­tion-state frame­works that pri­or­i­tize eth­no-reli­gious con­ti­nu­ity over lib­er­al universalism.

This alliance has trig­gered sig­nif­i­cant back­lash when Israel’s Dias­po­ra Min­is­ter invit­ed Euro­pean far-right politi­cians to an anti­semitism con­fer­ence in March 2025. French philoso­pher Bernard-Hen­ri Levy and Ger­man offi­cials with­drew after learn­ing guests includ­ed Jor­dan Bardel­la from France’s Nation­al Ral­ly and Mar­i­on Marechal. The Times of Israel report­ed that promi­nent fig­ures includ­ing British Chief Rab­bi Ephraim Mirvis, Ger­many’s anti­semitism czar Felix Klein, and oth­ers boy­cotted the event, express­ing con­cern that Israel was pro­vid­ing legit­i­ma­cy to par­ties with his­to­ries of anti­semitism and racism.

With­in the Unit­ed States, inter­nal ten­sions sur­faced when Her­itage Foun­da­tion Pres­i­dent Kevin Roberts defend­ed Tuck­er Carl­son after the for­mer Fox News host plat­formed white nation­al­ist Nick Fuentes. Jew­ish part­ners resigned and Her­itage’s flag­ship anti­semitism ini­tia­tive col­lapsed, expos­ing how the alliance’s anti-glob­al­ist mobi­liza­tion can cir­cu­late anti­se­mit­ic tropes even while claim­ing to defend Israel. The episode revealed fun­da­men­tal con­tra­dic­tions as part­ners styling them­selves as defend­ers of Jew­ish iden­ti­ty main­tain con­nec­tions to par­ties his­tor­i­cal­ly entan­gled with anti­se­mit­ic narratives.

Exter­nal References:
• Israel’s Likud extends con­nec­tions in West with Patri­ots for Europe talk — Jerusalem Post
• French, Ger­man offi­cials opt out after Israel invites far right to anti­semitism con­fer­ence — Times of Israel
• Israel’s Likud par­ty joins Patriots.eu in Euro­pean Par­lia­ment as observ­er — Brus­sels Signal

 Dis­claimer: The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.