{"id":59776,"date":"2026-06-17T05:39:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T13:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=59776"},"modified":"2026-06-17T05:39:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T13:39:14","slug":"israeli-desperation-leading-to-enormous-sums-for-lobbying-media-manipulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/17\/israeli-desperation-leading-to-enormous-sums-for-lobbying-media-manipulation\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli Desperation Leading to Enormous Sums for Lobbying, Media Manipulation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_G31weIysz0?si=Exu0K_6cD83q1t0Z\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Things aren\u2019t going so well these days for Israel\u2019s Benjamin Netanyahu. While his partner President Trump is working actively to end the war with Iran by inking a memorandum of understanding to halt the fighting, American public opinion of Israel <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/short-reads\/2026\/04\/07\/negative-views-of-israel-netanyahu-continue-to-rise-among-americans-especially-young-people\/\">continues to plummet<\/a>. That is no surprise \u2014 Israel\u2019s war on Gaza has now killed over 73,000 Palestinians (at least), the Gaza Strip is largely rubble, and Israel has moved to do the same in south Lebanon.<\/p>\n<p>Netanyahu <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\/israeli-pm-netanyahu-argues-public-opinion-shift-israel-correlates-almost-100-social-media\">blames the loss of support on TikTok and social media<\/a> writ large (not his government\u2019s own policies) and is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to pursue media management and pro-Israel advocacy in the U.S. On a parallel track, Israel is seeking <a href=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/israel-us-military\/\">unprecedented integration with the U.S. military <\/a>and its <a href=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/us-intelligence-israel\/\">intelligence agencies<\/a> \u2014 which would mean co-production on weapons, technology and sharing of sensitive intel. Experts say this is why Israel has been insisting it doesn\u2019t \u201cneed\u201d the 10-year agreement that provides Israel $3.8 billion annually in military aid. This would shift that aid to the places that don\u2019t require the same oversight and overt American buy-in.<\/p>\n<p>My colleagues <a href=\"https:\/\/quincyinst.org\/author\/ben-freeman\/\">Ben Freeman<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/quincyinst.org\/author\/nick-cleveland-stout\/\">Nick Cleveland-Stout<\/a>, who form up the <a href=\"https:\/\/quincyinst.org\/program-areas\/democratizing-foreign-policy\/\">Democratizing Foreign Policy<\/a> program at the Quincy Institute, have been digging away at these Israel efforts on myriad fronts. Ben has been writing about the integration legislation on both the <a href=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/israel-us-military\/\">military<\/a> and intel sides, now making their way through Congress. Nick has been sifting through Foreign Agent Registration Act and other public efforts to expose the millions that have been going to former Trump campaign guy Brad Parscale to <a href=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/brad-parscale-israel\/\">push pro-Israel messaging<\/a> through conservative media platforms, <a href=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/parscale-pro-israel-texts\/\">text campaigns<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/israel-chatgpt\/\">manipulating ChatGPT<\/a>, and more.<\/p>\n<p>Both talk to me this week about how all of these efforts have ramped up as Israel is more keenly aware that it has lost the thread with the American people and that powerful lobbying forces like AIPAC are not enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ufeff Things aren\u2019t going so well these days for Israel\u2019s Benjamin Netanyahu. While his partner President Trump is working actively to end the war with Iran by inking a memorandum of understanding to halt the fighting, American public opinion of Israel continues to plummet. That is no surprise \u2014 Israel\u2019s war on Gaza has now [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_social_image_id":59778,"_social_image_url":"","_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1297],"class_list":["post-59776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","_social_image_id":"59778","subtitle":"Ben Freeman and Nick Cleveland-Stout on the lengths Israel is going change public opinion and continue US aid flowing indefinitely"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59776"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59779,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59776\/revisions\/59779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59776"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=59776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}