Following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting in New York on Friday with a group of pro-Israel influencers, we learn that Israel is likely paying them a whopping $7,000 per pro-Israel social-media post in a desperate drive to bolster plummeting support of Israel among America's young conservatives. 

That's the conclusion of Responsible Statecraft's Nick Cleveland-Stout, based on analysis of a disclosure filed with the US Department of Justice as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). While pro-Israel lobbying heavyweight AIPAC is notoriously exempt from FARA registration, the social media operation comes under the transparency law's provisions because Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is paying for it. 

The influence campaign is being facilitated by Bridge Partners, a DC-based firm owned by founders Yair Levi and Uri Steinberg. "[Bridge Partners] has also enlisted the help of a former major in the IDF spokesperson unit, Nadav Shtrauchler," writes Cleveland-Stout. "For legal counsel, Levi and Steinberg have turned to Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a firm that previously worked for controversial Israeli spyware company NSO Group."

The current phase of the campaign runs from June to November, with a $900,000 budget for a stable of 14 to 17 influencers turning out pro-Israel content. Taking into account disclosed administrative costs and the campaign's expectation that the group will produce 75-90 posts, Responsible Statecraft estimates each post will earn the influencers somewhere between $6,143 and $7,373. The individual influencers are not identified in the filings. However, given they are being paid by a foreign government to engage in political activity, the influencers seemingly have a duty to register as individual agents of the State of Israel. 

Netanyahu candid public statements to influencers last week raised eyebrows, as they laid bare Israel's drive to control social media discourse in the United States in a bid to shore up American support. "We're going to have to use the tools of battle," said Netanyahu. "Weapons change over time...the most important ones are in social media. And the most important purchase that is going on right now is...TikTok."

After pro-Palestinian content in the wake of the Oct 7 Hamas attacks catalyzed a long-simmering deep state drive to ban TikTok, the ban is being averted via TikTok's transfer of an 80% stake to Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz. The new owners include significant backers of Israel.

The Israeli social media push comes amid cratering support for Israel among Americans. The deterioration is strongest among Republicans who have long represented the cornerstone of Israel's backing in the United States. That trend is even more pronounced among younger Republicans: An August Responsible Statecraft poll found that just 24% of Republicans under age 35 sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians.  

According to the FARA disclosures, Israel refers to the paid-influencer campaign as the "Esther Project." That name closely resembles "Project Esther," the Heritage Foundation proposal for the US government and pro-Israel groups to destroy the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States by declaring activists to be members of a "terrorist support network." and using that as the pretext for deportations, lawsuits, job terminations, school expulsions and exclusion from "open society."

After taking office, Secretary of State Marco Rubio quickly embraced the sinister tactic, using it to arrest and jail international students who'd engaged in pro-Palestinian activism. In the most infamous case, Rubio had federal agents chain and shackle a mild-mannered, female Tufts University child development student and lock her away in a crowded detention center in Louisiana pending deportation -- all for merely writing a calm and measured op-ed in the student newspaper advocating the school's divestment from Israel. In a blistering opinion issued Tuesday, a Reagan-appointed federal judge declared that such arrests and deportations violate the First Amendment and represent an "abuse" of power: "It is hard to imagine a policy more focused on intimidating its targets from practicing protected political speech."

While that ruling is a victory for open discourse, there's no such recourse for a TikTok algorithm that's moving into the hands of Israel advocates.