How Israel’s propaganda is trying to influence the public opinion about Israel's war in Gaza

Israel’s propaganda app is currently targeting 20+ news stories about Gaza on Facebook, directing users to “like” pro-Israel statements and providing them with “suggested comments”.

Al Jazeera, the New York Times, the BBC, and other Western media outlets were among the news outlets targeted by the pro-Israel app, Act.il.

Created by the Israeli American Council, a US-based non-profit group that advocates on behalf of Israeli-Americans and the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, a college in Israel, Act.il has the goal of influencing "international public opinion towards the state of Israel via social media platforms".

It also aims to counter the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights, the group says on its website.

In a message sent out to its mailing list on Tuesday morning, Act.il organisers urged users of the app to "take action against anti-Israeli comments by supporting pro-Israeli comments" and thereby ensure that these "top comments" are read by more social media users.

Facebook's algorithms make it so that the most-liked comments will appear at the top of a post's comment section. 

Jeremy Saltteaches in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Ankara and is author ofImperialism, Evangelism, and the Ottoman Armenians