Has the Israeli government funded influencer campaigns for public diplomacy?
Executive summary
Yes — reporting based on Department of Justice (FARA) filings and media investigations shows that the Israeli government has funded organized influencer and digital-rights campaigns as part of an expanded public-diplomacy push, including a named effort often described as the “Esther Project,” contracts with U.S. firms, and broader programmatic spending on digital outreach [1] [2] [3].
1. What the documents actually show: contracts, contractors, and a campaign name
Public filings disclosed to U.S. authorities and reported by multiple outlets indicate that Israeli ministries contracted U.S.-based firms to run coordinated campaigns that included influencer outreach; Bridges Partners (also styled “The Bridges”) appears as a coordinator of an influencer strand dubbed the “Esther Project,” and separate contracts involved firms such as Clock Tower for generative-AI and digital work [1] [2] [3].
2. Scale and budget: government money to expand hasbara
Israeli officials secured a substantial budgetary allocation for global public diplomacy in late 2024 — widely reported as roughly 150 million shekels for public diplomacy — and other reporting and filings reference a broader Project 545 allocation and programmatic spending tied to digital outreach and AI interventions [4] [3] [5].
3. How the influencer strand is described in filings and press reports
The FARA-based disclosures and news investigations describe a phased influencer rollout: a cohort of roughly a dozen to twenty creators, managed by contractors, expected to produce frequent content across platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, with campaign management, content production, analytics and legal compliance budgeted as part of the effort [2] [6] [1].
4. Claims, caveats and disputes over per-post payments
Multiple outlets and analysts publicized a headline figure — roughly $7,000 per post — attributed to calculations around the campaign’s funding, but critics and some reporting note that the FARA filings show aggregate contract amounts and campaign structure rather than line-item payments to named creators, and that definitive proof of uniform per-post fees (contracts, invoices, bank records tied to individual influencers) is not publicly produced in the filings cited [7] [8] [9].
5. Transparency, legal questions and registration concerns
Observers and watchdogs have argued that creators working on behalf of a foreign government should register under FARA, and some reporting highlights that only certain consultants associated with Bridges Partners were registered while named influencers were not publicly listed as foreign agents — a point raised by FARA experts and civil-society commentators quoted in the filings and press accounts [9] [10].
6. Context and competing framings: public diplomacy vs. covert influence
Proponents and some commentators frame these activities as routine government public diplomacy and necessary counter-messaging in an “information war,” while critics depict them as covert or opaque influence operations that risk misleading audiences; outlets such as HonestReporting urge nuance, noting governments often run public-diplomacy campaigns, whereas investigative pieces emphasize the scale, coordination, and the use of contractors and influencers to reach U.S. audiences [8] [11] [12].
7. What remains unproven and reporting limits
The available reporting and FARA disclosures establish that the Israeli government funded organized influencer and digital campaigns via contractors and assigned budget lines, but publicly available documents cited in these reports do not uniformly show named influencer contracts or individual payment records, so precise per-creator fees and the identities of all paid creators remain incompletely documented in the materials reported to date [2] [8] [9].