The battle over Palestine has never been fought only on the ground. For decades, Israel and its powerful political, lobbying and public-relations networks have devoted enormous resources to shaping how the conflict is understood in Washington and across the Western world. But an investigation into an Israeli-funded influence operation suggests that this campaign has entered a new and potentially more consequential arena: the artificial intelligence systems increasingly used by millions of people to determine what is true.
Recent investigations exposed the Hanover Institute for Public Policy as a purported American think tank that appeared to have no real offices, identifiable scholars or meaningful institutional presence. Instead, the institute appears to have been created as a sophisticated propaganda operation aimed at shaping search engine results and influencing the answers generated by AI chatbots.
Documents filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) trace the operation’s funding through advertising and public-relations firms to LaPam, Israel’s state advertising agency. Piro Inc, the New York advertising firm involved, was operating under a $۹۰۰,۰۰۰ digital communications work order on the Israeli account.
What makes the case extraordinary is not simply that an Israeli government-funded operation sought to influence public opinion. Governments have always done that. What is different is the apparent attempt to influence the machines increasingly shaping public opinion.
In just nine days, the Hanover website reportedly produced more than ۵۶۰,۰۰۰ words across ۱۲۴ academic-style reports. The material was structured around questions likely to be submitted to AI systems, including whether Gaza faced a policy of starvation and whether the Israeli military is “the world’s most moral army”.
Piro markets this approach as “AI Story Optimization”, designed to make material highly visible to search engines and easily digestible to large language models. The site also included technical features designed to make its material easier for AI systems to find and process.
The objective, therefore, was not simply to persuade readers. It was to influence the algorithms that increasingly determine what information those readers receive.
That represents a fundamental shift in the propaganda game.
Traditional propaganda can often be identified by its source, tone or obvious political agenda. More sophisticated propaganda is harder to detect because it disguises advocacy as neutral expertise. The Hanover material reportedly employed statistics, charts and graphs, cited legitimate primary documents and adopted the language of academic research while selectively framing evidence and omitting external links.
That is precisely the kind of material that can acquire artificial credibility when consumed by an AI system.
Consider the implications. A student asks an AI chatbot whether Israel has used starvation as a weapon in Gaza. A journalist requests an assessment of Israel’s conduct under international law. A voter seeks a neutral explanation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
If a fabricated research institution has successfully inserted its material into the information ecosystem, an AI-generated answer could reproduce its framing without the user ever knowing the source was manufactured.
That risk is not merely hypothetical: in tests by Politico, both ChatGPT and Perplexity cited Hanover material in response to neutral questions about Gaza, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
The machine does not necessarily understand that an apparently authoritative institute is fictitious. It sees text, citations, statistics and repeated claims. If those materials have been deliberately optimised for discovery and synthesis, propaganda can acquire the appearance of independent knowledge.
That is what makes the episode so disturbing.
For years, Israel and its supporters have fought to shape the vocabulary through which Palestinians are discussed. “Security,” “terrorism,” “self-defence” and Israel’s right to exist have often dominated the conversation, while occupation, settlement expansion, dispossession, blockade and Palestinian self-determination have struggled for comparable political weight.
The digital age initially appeared to offer Palestinians a way around traditional gatekeepers. Social media, independent journalism and videos recorded by Palestinians themselves allowed information from Gaza and the occupied territory to reach global audiences without passing through established media institutions.
The response now appears to be moving deeper: not merely controlling what people see, but attempting to influence the systems that determine what information they receive.
That is a far more ambitious form of narrative warfare.
The FARA disclosures are particularly significant because they demonstrate why transparency requirements matter. Investigators reportedly traced the Hanover operation through documents filed by Piro, which described work on the institute’s website. The trail led through Havas Media’s German operation, reportedly handling a much larger Israeli government account, and ultimately to LaPam.
The paper trail matters because foreign influence becomes especially dangerous when disguised as independent American expertise. Americans are entitled to know when an apparently neutral research organisation is actually part of a foreign government’s communications strategy.
But the incident exposes a vulnerability extending far beyond this particular conflict.
Artificial intelligence systems do not possess an independent window into reality. They depend on information ecosystems created by humans. If governments, corporations or political organisations can deliberately flood those ecosystems with strategically crafted material, they may be able to influence the information from which AI systems construct their answers.
Palestine is an especially revealing testing ground because the conflict already unfolds within an intensely contested information environment. Its documentary record encompasses decades of occupation, settlements, displacement, wars, restrictions, humanitarian crises, diplomatic initiatives and international investigations.
A credible information system should expose users to that complexity. A sophisticated propaganda system seeks to manage it.
That is why the Hanover affair should concern far more people than those who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If a foreign government or its contractors can create a fictitious think tank to influence AI systems today, other governments, political campaigns, corporations and wealthy interest groups may attempt similar operations tomorrow.
The precedent is bigger than Israel.
But Israel’s alleged role makes the episode particularly revealing because it shows how an established lobbying and public-relations infrastructure can adapt to a new technological environment. The battle is no longer confined to Congress, television networks, newspapers, universities or social media.
It is moving into the architecture of knowledge itself.
The question facing AI companies is therefore urgent: Who is teaching the machines what to tell us about Palestine – and about the world?
AI developers need stronger safeguards against coordinated influence operations, fabricated institutions and synthetic bodies of research. Search engines must improve their ability to distinguish genuine institutional expertise from websites created primarily to manipulate algorithms. Journalists and academics should scrutinise authoritative-looking sources that lack verifiable institutional foundations. Governments must enforce foreign agent disclosure requirements when foreign states seek to shape American public discourse.
Most importantly, users must understand that an AI-generated answer is not automatically an independent assessment. It reflects the information available to the system – and that information can be deliberately engineered.
The Hanover investigation should therefore be understood as more than another episode in the long-running struggle over Israel’s image.
It is a warning about the future of the Palestinian question.
For decades, Israel and its supporters have fought to shape the narrative surrounding Palestinians through politics, lobbying, diplomacy and public relations. The new frontier is algorithms.
If the objective is to manufacture an alternative reality – one in which inconvenient facts disappear, contested claims are recast as consensus, and Palestinian experiences are erased or rewritten – the battlefield has become far larger and more dangerous. The most insidious propaganda may no longer be what we recognise as propaganda, but information an AI system confidently presents to us as neutral fact.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
