Renewed Russian Disinformation Campaign Targets Gaza Conflict

On 20 Novem­ber 2023, Haaretz report­ed a resur­gence in the Krem­lin-linked Dop­pel­ganger dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign, now focus­ing on the Israel-Hamas con­flict in Gaza. Uti­liz­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed tech­nol­o­gy, includ­ing AI, the cam­paign has cre­at­ed and dis­sem­i­nat­ed false con­tent through fake ver­sions of rep­utable news web­sites like Fox News and Der Spiegel. These fab­ri­ca­tions, aimed at mis­lead­ing glob­al audi­ences, include deep-fake videos and false nar­ra­tives sur­round­ing the Gaza con­flict. A key tac­tic has been the spread of anti­se­mit­ic themes, as evi­denced by graf­fi­ti inci­dents in Paris orches­trat­ed by Moldovan nation­als paid by a for­eign actor. The campaign’s impact is mag­ni­fied by social media plat­forms’ dimin­ished anti-dis­in­for­ma­tion mea­sures, par­tic­u­lar­ly on Twit­ter. This lat­est wave of dis­in­for­ma­tion under­scores Russia’s con­tin­ued dig­i­tal inter­fer­ence in inter­na­tion­al affairs, lever­ag­ing the Gaza con­flict to sow dis­cord and manip­u­late pub­lic perception.

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