They have to get the last word - otherwise no money from Israel... https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-869219 ByASAF ELIA-SHALEV/JTA OCTOBER 1, 2025 12:07 Updated: OCTOBER 31, 2025 20:30 Newly filed records with the Department of Justice show that Israel’s government has quietly launched a two-track influence operation in the United States, blending big-budget political advertising with grassroots-style influencer campaigns. The filings reveal that a firm called Bridges Partners LLC has been hired to manage an influencer network under a project code-named the “Esther Project.” Attached documents show that the firm, owned by Israeli consultants Uri Steinberg and Yair Levi, was formed in June 2025 in Delaware and soon after received nearly $200,000 to recruit and coordinate US-based social media influencers. The contracts allow for up to $900,000 in payments over several months and include a detailed pricing schedule: $60,000 in upfront payments to cover influencer recruitment and concept development, another $140,000 in development-phase payments as five or six influencers began posting, and monthly allocations of up to $250,000 earmarked for influencer fees, production, and agency costs. A final $50,000 was budgeted for wrap-up and post-campaign reporting. The documents also list payments to a range of contractors, suggesting the project was not just about paying influencers directly but about constructing an entire support ecosystem, including content production, legal compliance, and campaign analytics, to sustain the network over several months. There is evidence that the work is already underway: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with a group of influencers on Friday in New York City. When one asked him about how to win back declining support for Israel, he said, “We have to fight back. How do we fight back? Our influencers. I think you should also talk to them if you have a chance, to that community — they are very important.” Netanyahu added, “We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields in which we engage, and the most important ones are on social media.” The Bridges filings — unreported until now — add new information about Israel’s sweeping current diplomacy push, in what Israeli officials have taken to calling an “eighth front” in the country’s current war. They complement a separate, larger deal that has drawn public attention this week: Israel’s $1.5 million per month contract with Brad Parscale, a former campaign strategist for President Donald Trump. Parscale rose to prominence as Donald Trump’s 2016 digital director and later campaign manager, where he built a reputation for aggressive Facebook microtargeting of prospective voters. Parscale’s Israel campaign promises to produce 100 ads or pieces of content each month, plus 5,000 different variations of those ads, a level of output that likely requires automated tools. Taken together, the filings show a multimillion-dollar push to saturate US media and digital channels with pro-Israel narratives. The effort emerges amid an unprecedented expansion of resources by the Israeli government to promote its views abroad. In December 2024, as part of coalition negotiations with Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar secured a $150 million allocation for global public diplomacy, known in Hebrew as hasbara. The allocation was about 20 times more than previous hasbara budgets, and the ministry started receiving the funds in May. The push to harness social media voices echoes advice Netanyahu received from a major American ally earlier this year. In May, several months before his assassination, conservative activist Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA, sent the prime minister a private letter warning that Israel was “losing the information war” and needed a “communications intervention.” Kirk argued that even within conservative and evangelical circles, Israel’s support was fraying, and he urged the government to treat narrative battles on social media and college campuses as seriously as military fronts. “If this trend continues,” Kirk wrote, “Israel risks losing not only the next generation but the political cover it depends on in Washington.”
Create an account or sign in to comment