Israel's psychological warfare

Abridged from source. URL for original in title.

[Opinion. And so many fall for this propaganda…]

Israel’s curriculum for ‘influencing public consciousness’

A leaked Defense Ministry tender lays out the army’s training program for manipulating public opinion in Israel and abroad.

Illy Pe’ery

+972 Mag: 04 Jun 2026

Israel’s defense establishment is training soldiers and other defense officials to conduct psychological operations designed to “influence public consciousness” in Israel and abroad, an internal Defense Ministry tender published last July.

Among the offerings are courses on how to use data to discretely shape the attitudes and actions of target audiences, intelligence gathering for such operations, and influencer training. Most of the courses are geared toward “offensive” influence operations — those aimed at actively disrupting or manipulating the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of target audiences.

In one course, participants learn to apply “Black Hat” techniques — a term used to describe manipulation methods that circumvent tech platforms’ rules around cybercrime, cyber warfare, or other malicious activity. The army course explicitly states that this module is designed for “the distribution and promotion of illegitimate content using technological tools and solutions — a route that bypasses Facebook and Google.”

The curriculum is divided into thematic clusters. One, titled “fundamentals of psychological warfare, propaganda, deception, legitimacy and public diplomacy, and segmentation of target populations with emphasis on foreign audiences,” includes instruction on identifying adversarial influence efforts, narratives, and imagery, as well as deepfakes, psychological warfare, propaganda, deception, legitimacy, and public diplomacy.

However, as a recent investigation by The Hottest Place in Hell revealed, the military does not limit these methods to the realm of “personal enrichment.” Between October 2023 and December 2024, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit conducted a psychological operation targeting both Israeli and international audiences, under the guise of a “non-profit news organization” specializing in “fact-checking” claims surrounding Israel’s war on Gaza.