Israel has contracted at least three public relations companies to bolster its image online and among the United States’ Christian right, filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) show.

According to US Department of Justice records, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs hired the newly established Bridges Partners, the Christian PR agency Show Faith by Works, and the online consultancy Clock Tower X via the European Havas Media Group.

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All of the companies contracted promise to help bolster the country’s online image and restore support among young right-wing and Evangelical US voters that polling suggests is haemorrhaging as a result of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Israel is acutely conscious of the need to control how its war, in which it has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, is perceived by its allies and sponsors in the US.

A study of Israel’s online activity published by the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies in May found a coordinated social media campaign to sway international sympathies in its favour throughout the conflict, which began in October 2023.

But while Israel was able to garner favourable coverage from traditional US media outlets in the early months of the war, it was losing the battle on social media, where videos revealing the mass killing and devastation in Gaza were going viral, and generating sympathy for the Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recognised this, referring to social media as a “weapon” in Israel’s campaign to shore up support in the US – and saying that the purchase of TikTok by a consortium led by pro-Israel billionaires was a “most important purchase”.

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Each of the PR companies contracted through Havas promises a fresh approach in that campaign, targeting key demographics, religious groups and even the way the war is discussed online.

Keeping faith

According to its FARA filing, Show Faith by Works has been hired by Israel to run a $3.2m outreach and digital targeting campaign to foster “positive associations with the Nation of Israel” in churches in the US and portray “the Palestinian population” as “extremist”.

In documents enclosed in the FARA filing, Show Faith by Works also promises Israel that it will conduct “the largest Geofencing and Christian Targeting campaign in US history”.

Geofencing targets and tracks the communication devices of users when they come into proximity of a specific location or area – in this case, Christian universities or churches identified by the PR company.

The company is also planning what it calls a mobile “10/7 Experience” – referring to the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel – which could be taken to Christian colleges, churches, and events.

According to the filings, the experience would include a “VR headset, set pieces, full-length TVs for interactive experience” of the attack, during which 1,139 people were killed and about 250 taken captive.

The company details that it can also offer the participation of “Christian Celebrity Spokespeople” such as actors Chris Pratt and Jon Voight – the latter an outspoken supporter of US President Donald Trump.

Rewriting the present

Clock Tower claims in its FARA filing that it has been engaged to connect with the Gen Z age demographic through social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram and to engage with artificial intelligence (AI) platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok. The activities officially aim to “combat anti-Semitism” – a term often deployed by the Israeli government to counter criticism of its genocidal war on Gaza.

In its filing, Clock Tower promises to use AI modelling to ensure that the Israeli-supervised campaign – and by extension narratives – are prominent online during the course of its war on Gaza.

“If you can create enough online noise, through either social media or highly ranked websites, you’re able to influence AI’s large language models [like ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok],” said Marc Owen Jones, an associate professor of media analytics and an expert in disinformation at Northwestern University Qatar.

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“LLMs [large language models] are trained on a set amount of data, where they scrape large amounts of [historical] information. However, many models such as Grok, ChatGPT or Gemini use what they call retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), where they also pull contemporary data from websites and social media,” Jones said.

“What companies like Clock Tower X are promising is that, if they can flood the information space with sites and content sympathetic to Israel – what’s called RAG poisoning –  there’ll be enough there to at least muddy the waters around what others see as a clear-cut genocide.”

Clock Tower, headed by former Donald Trump aide Brad Parscale, also says that much of this content will be integrated with that of right-wing Christian network Salem Media, which in April announced a strategic partnership with Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.

Anonymous influencing

The campaign promised by Bridges Partners has already become the source of an online meme – but not in the way the company or Israel would have been hoping.

Bridges Partners’ campaign involves an unnamed cohort of between 14 and 18 influencers who would be paid to post in support of Israel. After breaking down the figures included by Bridges Partners in their invoices to Havas, Responsible Statecraft – the Quincy Institute’s online magazine – found that the influencers were likely being paid around $7,000 per post.

The number has been quickly seized upon by detractors of Israel, who regularly post the amount underneath posts they suspect of being part of the pro-Israel campaign, indicating that they believe the poster has been “bought” by Israel.

Responsible Statecraft reported earlier this month that the anonymity of the US influencers, who under the terms of their agreements would post paid pro-Israel content since July, could potentially be illegal if their identities remain undisclosed.

At present, the Bridges Partners filing names only one registered foreign agent: consultant Uri Steinberg, who holds a 50 percent stake in the company.

It is too early to say whether the campaign will ultimately be successful. But the backlash towards the arrangement once it became public illustrates just how difficult the task will be for Israel to change perceptions that have now become deeply ingrained, particularly among younger people.

“No matter what artificial data is produced, it still won’t be enough to counter the volume of factual reporting of the war on Gaza,” Jones said.

“However, there might be enough to promote a sense of ambiguity over it, to present both sides as more equal in the conflict, or to present Israel’s response to the attack of October 7 as more reasonable than some now think it is.”

Al Jazeera has been unable to contact Bridges Partners, Clock Tower X, or Show Faith by Works for comment.

Inquiries to the Israeli chief of staff at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Eran Shayovich, and to Havas Media Group have also gone unanswered.

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In part two of this investigation, to be published on Friday, Al Jazeera will be looking at why Israel is so focused on changing perceptions of it in the United States.