This is outrageous, that the author doesn’t also give “credit” to the U.S. DOD and CIA for doing the same to the U.S. population. But to their “credit,” Israel stands atop the world in achievement of how to wage “Cognitive Warfare,” which this is. With the “science” of it explained quite well here, https://www.inss.org.il/publication/the-cognitive-campaign-strategic-and-intelligence-perspectives/
though this in itself is “Cognitive Warfare” as it projects on to the “Enemy,” capabilities that only Israel has, with the U.S. playing “catch-up,” but that “gap" has virtually gone away.
Israeli Army Conducted Online Psy-op Against Israeli Public During Gaza War
IDF used fake social media accounts to push the message it was 'forcefully retaliating against Hamas' ■ It posted dozens of #Gazaregrets videos in Netanyahu Facebook groups and tagged right-wing politicians ■ Senior officer: this is illegal, must not be done ■ IDF in response: We erred
From the #Gazaregrets op conducted by the Israeli army
The Israel Defense Forces’ Spokesperson’s Unit conducted a psychological warfare operation against Israeli citizens during the May 2021 Guardian of the Walls campaign in Gaza, with the aim of boosting public awareness of the IDF’s offensive maneuvers and the “toll” these moves take on the Palestinians.
Soldiers used fake social media accounts to conceal the campaign’s origin. They took to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and uploaded images and clips of the army’s strikes in Gaza using the hashtag #Gazaregrets with captions such as “Why do they only show Israel being attacked instead of our own strikes in Gaza? We have to show everyone how strong we are!” and “Share so that everyone can see how we retaliate big time” or “Making sure Gaza regrets...Am Israel Chai.”
Haaretz has learned that this “propaganda campaign” was launched several days into the fighting, after the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit felt that the Israeli public was more impressed by the rocket strikes launched against Israel by Gaza than by the IDF’s actions inside the Strip. According to internal discussions, the unit’s use of fake accounts – “bots” – was meant to prevent its “attribution” to the army. This, the army hoped, would make it look authentic, as if it originated organically from the public.
To echo the campaign further, the Spokesperson’s Unit discreetly teamed up with two popular Israeli Instagram accounts – @idftweets and @pazam_gram – which have hundreds of thousands of followers. On the first day of this campaign, @idftweets shared posts and stories of an IDF strike with the hashtag #Gazaregrets. The content received hundreds of likes and enthusiastic comments like “kill them all” or “why are any buildings still standing in Gaza?” @pazam_gram followed suit with stories on their accounts.
The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit also intended to use social media influencers in order to sway Israeli public opinion.
It is unclear if the IDF paid the Instagram account holders for their services. According to a source familiar with the inner workings of the unit, this is not the only time such cooperation has taken place.
Operation Guardian of the Walls was launched on May 10th, after Hamas fired rockets towards Jerusalem during the Flag March held on that tense day. This was followed by a barrage of rockets aimed at central Israel. The IDF responded with massive strikes on Gaza, which flattened a number of high-rises. The campaign lasted 11 days and saw 4,000 rockets launched towards Israel, leading to the deaths of ten Israelis and three foreign citizens. 350 Gaza residents were killed as a result of the IDF strikes, most of them Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives.
Soon after the fighting began, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit decided to launch its psychological warfare campaign against Israeli citizens. On May 12th, they opened a fake Twitter account belonging to “Moshe Vaknin” with photos of the Israeli flag.
The soldier operating the account tweeted 27 times in just three hours. Every post contained images of Israeli strikes on Gaza or the destruction created in their wake with the hashtag #Gazaregrets. To increase reach and visibility, each tweet was posted as a reply to popular Twitter accounts with tens of thousands of followers – most of these accounts belonged to people who were known to be supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The tweets also tagged right-wing politicians and media personalities.
In response to a tweet posted by far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir, calling “to turn the Gaza neighborhood of Hamas’ villas into a parking lot,” the soldier operating the fake account replied with an image of a collapsed high-rise in Gaza with the caption “Itamar, share this urgently so that all of Israel can see that #Gazaregrets.”
In response to Israeli right-wing TV host Yinon Magal’s tweet, mocking then-Defense Minister Benny Gantz, fake “Moshe Vaknin” replied with a photo of an IDF strike and the caption “Yinon #Gazaregrets share urgently so everyone can see.”
#Gazaregrets. Fake account operated by Israeli army asking far-right politican Itamar Ben Gvir to share its tweet
On May 12th, another fake account was created on Facebook under the name Dana Lock, with a profile picture of a young girl draped in an Israeli flag. In two days, the account posted eight videos of Israeli strikes with the caption “We will not remain silent! We are not suckers! #Gazaregrets! Share!!”
To reach a larger audience, the videos were posted to several Netanyahu supporters’ Facebook groups, totaling over 100,000 followers combined. Another two fake accounts on Instagram and TikTok published 13 similar posts.
Overall, the propaganda campaign gained very little engagement from the Israeli public: With the exception of a single TikTok video that received a few dozen likes and comments, the rest of the social media posts attracted almost no comments, shares or likes. The attempt to promote the #Gazaregrets hashtag also fell flat. Only six organic (i.e. authentic) profiles used the hashtag on Facebook, but other networks saw no real use of the tag.
<Fake account operated by Israeli army posting #Gazaregrets video in Netanyahu supporters' groups>
Fake account operated by Israeli army posting #Gazaregrets video in Netanyahu supporters' groups
Despite this, Haaretz has learned that – once the 2021 Gaza war concluded – the unit received an award for “best operational campaign” during Guardian of the Walls. The prize was granted by Lt. Col. Merav Stollar-Granot, head of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit’s Media department.
The Campaigns Unit within the department operates as a kind of media office for the IDF and organizes internal and external campaigns to raise awareness of the army’s different units and military issues. It was headed at the time by Yuval Horowitz, a civilian contracted as a marketing campaigner, who now works for Keshet Media. The unit is staffed by reservists who work as advertisers and designers.
The IDF said in response: “During the Guardian of the Walls campaign the spokesperson’s unit disseminated authentic footage of the fighting, from within the Gaza Strip, that was obtained from social media platforms. All IDF contact with Israeli social media influencers was done on an official capacity. Since the footage was shot by Palestinians in Gaza, its dissemination was done with no attribution to the IDF.
The IDF indeed set-up a limited number of fake accounts that posted the footage on social media, in order to maximize audience reach. In retrospect, using those accounts was an error, and it was limited to 24 hours. There was no such further use in the last two years. The IDF’s Spokesperson’s Unit is committed to the truth, and insists on reliable and accurate reporting, as much as possible, in order to convey information to the public in a respectful manner.”
Psychological Warfare
The IDF had employed for years psychological warfare against Israel’s enemies in an attempt to undercut their narratives, influence the population (in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran for example) and tout its operational achievements. A psychological warfare unit was formed in 2005 under the aegis of Military Intelligence. As part of activities against the “enemy,” Israeli intelligence collected intel that included public opinion from an enemy’s population regarding their stances on leadership at the time and on war. They also tried influencing an enemy’s public discourse to sow uncertainty, undermine the credibility of the ruling power’s messaging and encourage public pressure on their respective leadership. Most of these activities were conducted covertly and relay information intended to serve Israel in one way or another.
During Operation Guardian if the Walls in 2021, Israeli intelligence waged a social media campaign in Arabic directed at Gaza’s population under the heading “Hamas is killing the nation” and “Hamas is to blame.”
Military Intelligence had abilities to reach civilian populations in many dimensions. However, the IDF is barred under Israeli law from using those capabilities internally – meaning that covert psychological warfare against Israeli citizens is illegal.
“These capabilities were developed to identify enemy countries’ mindsets and to influence them from the outside – without the IDF’s fingerprints – on the domestic situation of the people with whom Israel is fighting a war,” a senior defense official told Haaretz. “No psychological warfare operations were conducted against Israeli citizens. This is prohibited by law. [It’s such a sensitive matter that] even during COVID-19 the IDF was not allowed to deploy some of these capabilities to locate confirmed cases.”
During former Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi’s term, psychological warfare was given high priority, mainly vis-à-vis the Palestinians, and they changed the unit’s name to the Impact Division. Although attempts were made to transfer authority for it to the IDF spokesperson – which deals with the Israeli public – it remains under the purview of Military Intelligence.
“The effort went up to the highest levels of the establishment, but they failed, at least officially,” said the official. “Those who opposed it felt this could only be done by people identified as with the IDF and in a way that made clear that the message was from the IDF. It was made clear to all those who wanted to change the existing law that this was unacceptable.”
That source was not aware of the #gazaregrets operation and was surprised to find out that it was indeed carried out under the former IDF spokesman, Maj. Gen. Hidai Zilberman, whom Kochavi had appointed as the IDF’s Spokesperson in 2019. Before that, Zilberman began his career in the Artillery Corps, and later became a senior commander in the Northern Command and the army’s Planning Directorate. In 2021 he was appointed as the Israel Defense and Armed Forces Attaché to the U.S.
IDF chief Aviv Kochavi promoting Hidai Zilberman to the rank of Major GeneralCredit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit
On the fourth day of Operation Guardian of the Walls, the IDF launched Operation Lightning Strike, which aimed to use hundreds of fighter jets to hit Hamas’ tunnel network based on the assumption that a majority of its armed wing and senior Hamas officials were located there at the time.
The IDF spokesperson misled the media by reporting that ground forces had begun entering Gaza. The idea was to cause Hamas officials and fighters to quickly enter the tunnels, where they would later be killed. The operation failed because Hamas recognized the deception for what it was. Despite dropping hundreds of tons of explosives, only a few junior officials were killed.
However, when news of the deception came out, which was employed only with the foreign press, the spokesperson’s credibility and Israel’s world image were severely undermined.
Zilberman was forced to apologize in an effort to restore the foreign media’s trust. He even went so far as to write a letter to the chairman of the Foreign Press Association, where he said, “I apologize for the error. The IDF spokesperson doesn’t engage in psychological warfare, its role is to report nothing but the truth to the public.”
What the IDF spokesperson did not say was that at exactly the same time, soldiers serving in the unit were engaged in a fraudulent and unprecedented operation vis-à-vis the Israeli public. “If Operation #gazaregrets came out of the IDF spokesperson’s office, that’s no less scandalous,” said a senior defense official when shown evidence collected by Haaretz. “Something like that shouldn’t have happened.”
Despite Zilberman’s assurance that the IDF Spokesperson’s unit did not take part in psychological warfare, a Haaretz investigation found three months later that the army had retained Gilad Cohen – who operated the Abu Ali Express Telegram channel – as a consultant on “psychological warfare” over social media. The military censor initially barred publication of his name, but reversed the decision after several days.
Abu Ali Express has more than 100,000 followers and has become one of the most influential sources in Israel on issues of defense and the Arab world in recent years. It contains exclusive reports, videos and pictures on which its logo appears, while many journalists use it as a source with direct quotes. More than once, the IDF spokesperson referred journalists asking about what was happening in Gaza to Abu Ali Express, making it clear to them that the news “was not provided by any military official.”
Cohen was named to the position by Herzl Halevi, who was then head of the IDF’s Southern Command and is today chief of staff, when the March of Return began accompanied by clashes at the Gaza border in 2019. Cohen continued to work with Halevi’s successor, Eliezer Toledano. Abu Ali Express did not acknowledge that its manager serves as a paid consultant to the IDF’s Southern Command. Similarly, the IDF did not publicly acknowledge that it collaborates with Cohen.
Writing anonymously, Abu Ali Express often attacked the reliability and professionalism of prominent Israeli journalists who have criticized IDF policies toward Hamas. It also attacked politicians, among them former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who announced he was stepping down from the post after an incident in which an IDF special forces unit was exposed in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. “You really couldn’t have chosen better timing to resign? Hamas has presented its citizens with an incredible achievement, an incident in which Hamas succeeded in overthrowing an incumbent defense minister,” an anonymous post quipped.
At the time, the IDF tried to disavow Cohen’s activities. But after realizing the problem he had created in regard to Israeli citizens, the army announced it had terminated his contract.
