Sexy women, ’missions’ and bad satire: Israeli government app recruits online soldiers in anti-BDS fight
The missions include sharing positive news about Israel, reporting and complaining about designated YouTube and Facebook posts, and even emailing UNESCO’s director general to ask that her organization ’stop their bias toward Israel’
Allison Kaplan Sommer Jun 13, 2017 8
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“Welcome to BDS News! Where we pretend to care about Palestinians, but really just want to see Israel disappear!”
Thus opens one of the videos the Israeli government hopes will go viral in what is billed as a new large-scale “cyber second strike” campaign. Supported and spearheaded by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the campaign enlists Israel’s supporters as foot soldiers against online efforts to “demonize” and “undermine” the country’s legitimacy.
The campaign, branded as 4il.org under the slogan “Stop the Hate,” is being paired with a mobile application developed by a trio of organizations in the U.S. and Israel. Two of them – the Israeli-American Council and the Maccabee Task Force – are nearly solely funded by American Jewish billionaire and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who is also Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s buddy. The third partner is the Interdisciplinary Center in Herziliya, to which Adelson is a major donor.
The app – geared to digitally-aware millennials – turns Israel advocacy into a competitive game in which young defenders perform “missions” on various social media platforms, earning points and badges. The missions include sharing and retweeting positive news about Israel, reporting and complaining about designated YouTube and Facebook posts to the platform’s companies, signing online petitions and even emailing UNESCO’s director general to ask that her organization “stop their bias towards Israel.”
The initiative was unveiled with fanfare last week in New York City at the Salute to Israel Parade by Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan, who promoted the project as being an “Iron Dome of Truth.”