[News] Google Helped Israel Spread War Propaganda to 45 Million Europeans

[Anti-Imperialist News]

mintpressnews.com
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-europe-youtube-ad-campaign/290163/>
Exclusive: Google Helped Israel Spread War Propaganda to 45 Million
Europeans
Alan Macleod
July 10, 2025
------------------------------

While it continues its conflict with its neighbors, Israel is fighting
another war just as intensely, spending gigantic amounts of money
bombarding Europe with messaging justifying their actions, and
scaremongering Europeans that Iranian nuclear missiles will soon be turning
their cities into rubble.

A MintPress study has found that, since it struck Iran on June 13, the
Israeli Government Advertising Agency has paid for tens of millions of
advertisements on YouTube alone. In clear breach of Google’s policies,
these ads justify and lionize the attack as a necessary defense of Western
civilization, and claim that Israel is carrying out “one of the largest
humanitarian missions in the world” in Gaza.

The countries most targeted by this campaign include the United Kingdom,
France, Italy, Germany, and Greece.
Information War

“A fanatical regime firing missiles at civilians, while racing towards
nuclear weapons. While Iran deliberately targets cities, Israel acts with
precision to dismantle this threat.” Thus starts one Israeli government ad
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fEvA3mpJWQ> that hundreds of thousands of
YouTube viewers in Europe have been compelled to watch.

“Terror architects behind the elimination of Israel plan: eliminated.
Israel targets only military and terror sites, not civilians. But the
threat remains,” the voiceover continues, over ominous music and high-tech
graphics. “We will finish the mission for our people, for humanity. Israel
does what must be done,” it concludes.

“Iran’s ballistic missile program isn’t just a threat to Israel, it is a
threat to Europe and the Western world,” another
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afNKPV52Ayo>, seen by 1.5 million viewers
in just three weeks, claims. “Iran is developing missiles with ranges of
approximately 4000 km. That places Europe within the regime’s striking
distance,” it adds, as graphics show virtually the entire continent turning
blood red, signifying a nuclear attack. “This isn’t tomorrow’s threat. It
is today’s reality. The threat posed by the Iranian regime must be stopped.
Israel does what must be done.”

Ominous messages like these, translated into multiple languages, have
reached tens of millions of people across Europe. Other Israeli government
ads take a different tack, attempting to present Israel as a virtuous
victim and an unwilling participant in war. As one commercial
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6cSEwIfcw8> notes:

Imagine this: you are holding your newborn in a hospital room. Then the air
raid sirens go off. Iran fires ballistic missiles at hospitals, at innocent
Israelis. Patients, doctors, newborn babies: deliberately targeted. While
Iran aims at families and children, Israel responds with precision,
striking military sites. This is not a war of choice. Those who target
civilians and hospitals become the target.”

The claims made in such videos are often highly questionable. For example,
around 935
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/935-people-killed-israeli-strikes-iran-iran-judiciary-spokesperson-says-2025-06-30/>
Iranians were killed in Israeli strikes, compared to just 28
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/these-are-the-28-victims-killed-in-iranian-missile-attacks-during-the-12-day-conflict>
Israelis, suggesting Israel is far less careful to avoid civilian deaths
than its opponent. Indeed, since October 2023, Israel has repeatedly and
deliberately targeted hospitals. The World Health Organization has
documented
<https://www.who.int/news/item/22-05-2025-health-system-at-breaking-point-as-hostilities-further-intensify--who-warns>
at least 697 Israeli strikes on medical facilities.

Ninety-four percent of Gaza’s hospitals have been destroyed or damaged, and
more than 1,400 medical personnel have been killed
<https://www.map.org.uk/news/archive/post/1736-1400-healthcare-workers-killed-in-israelas-systematic-attacks-on-gazaas-health-system>.
This includes Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, head of orthopedics at al-Shifa Hospital,
who was reportedly raped to death
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/24/dying-in-hell-palestinian-medics-jailed-by-israel>
by Israeli prison guards. According to UNICEF, Israel has killed or injured
over 50,000
<https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unimaginable-horrors-more-50000-children-reportedly-killed-or-injured-gaza-strip>
Palestinian children. An American nurse who worked in Gaza told
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/gaza-hospitals-nurse-testimony-shooting-boys-genocide/289919/>
MintPress News that IDF soldiers regularly shoot boys in the genitals to
prevent them from reproducing.

Despite this, Israeli advertising presents the country as the savior of the
Palestinian people. One Ministry of Foreign Affairs video
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjljCurJ0IU>, set to epic, inspiring
music, describes Israel as undertaking “One of the largest humanitarian
operations in the world right now.” “This is what real aid looks like.
Smiles don’t lie. Hamas does,” it concludes.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the Occupied
Palestinian Territories, called the commercial “scandalous” and directly
challenged <https://x.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1933173821009228035> YouTube:
“How can this be allowed?” The video has been translated into Italian,
French, German, and Greek, and has been viewed by nearly seven million
people on YouTube alone.
Transparently Inorganic

All referenced videos appear in the Google Ads Transparency Center
<https://adstransparency.google.com/?region=anywhere&format=VIDEO> as paid
content from the Israeli Government Advertising Agency, and there is strong
evidence that few, if any, of their millions of views are organic. The five
versions of the “Gaza Humanitarian Aid” video, for example, collectively
have only a few thousand “likes”—barely 1% of what would be generally
expected of videos with this amount of views—and only two comments in total.

The difference between organic and paid content is clearer in videos that
Israel has not promoted. Other videos on Israel’s Ministry of Foreign
Affairs YouTube channel <https://www.youtube.com/@IsraelMFA> receive only
tens of views per day, not millions, which strongly suggests that close to
100% of their traffic is paid advertising.

The scale of this public relations operation is difficult to overstate.
Even as the Israeli government hikes taxes and slashes domestic spending,
its foreign PR budget has grown
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/foreign-ministry-to-receive-massive-budget-for-public-diplomacy-abroad/>
by more than 2,000%, the Foreign Ministry receiving $150 million more for
public diplomacy.

Much of that money is evidently being spent on ads. In the past month, the
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has uploaded videos that have topped 45
million views on YouTube alone. The countries most targeted include the
United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, and Greece.

Greece is a particularly noteworthy case. Over the past 12 months, the
Israeli government advertising agency has funded 65 separate YouTube ad
campaigns targeting the country.

The Greek version <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1dkovyunXM> of a recent
ad <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpyA62DDruY>—titled “An efficient
system is in place, delivering aid where it’s needed”—presents Israel as a
benevolent bringer of life to Gaza and has garnered over 1 million views in
just four days, equivalent to nearly 10% of Greece’s entire population. The
video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1dkovyunXM> currently has no
comments and fewer than 3,000 likes.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs uploads its videos in English,
French, German, Italian, and Greek. Countries that do not speak these
languages—such as Slovakia, Denmark, and the Netherlands—are still
targeted, though users there generally receive the English version.

Israel has avoided targeting nations whose governments have formally
condemned its actions, such as Ireland or Spain, spending nothing to reach
those populations. The Netanyahu administration, evidently, has decided to
attempt to shore up support in allied countries, even as their populations
increasingly turn
<https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Topline_Eurotrack_May25_w_gugbx3J.pdf>
against Israel.

While many of these figures might shock readers, this investigation only
examined the advertising campaign of a single organization, the Israeli
Government Advertising Agency, and on a single platform, YouTube. It does
not include other Israeli government and non-governmental groups, nor the
myriad organizations collectively comprising the pro-Israel lobby in the
West.

Israel has also attempted to influence the debate on other platforms,
including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. What is presented here
is merely the thinnest slice of a much broader operation.
Israel and Silicon Valley

Some videos the Israeli government has released attempt to portray Israel
in a positive light, but instead perpetuate racist stereotypes about
Western civilization and its supposed superiority. In one ad, Benjamin
Netanyahu states (emphasis added):

I want to assure the *civilized *world, we will not let the world’s most
dangerous regime get the world’s most dangerous weapons. The increasing
range of Iran’s ballistic missiles would bring that nuclear nightmare to*
the cities of Europe and eventually to America*.”

Thus, the Israeli prime minister implies that Iran’s threat matters only if
it endangers the so-called “civilized world,” that is, Europe and North
America. “Never again is now. Today, Israel has shown that we have learned
the lessons of history,” Netanyahu continues, directly comparing the 12-Day
War (which Israel started) to the Holocaust. “When enemies vow to destroy
you, believe them. When enemies build weapons of mass death, stop them. As
the Bible teaches us, when someone comes to kill you, rise and act first.”

Google’s advertising rules
<https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6008942> explicitly prohibit
commercials that “display shocking content or promote hatred, intolerance,
discrimination, or violence.” Yet many of the ads described here explicitly
justify Israeli aggression.

MintPress News contacted Google to ask how much the Israeli government’s
advertising agency spent on ads, how many impressions those ads generated,
whether the company had a response to Albanese’s comments, and whether the
videos violated its policies.

Google did not answer the first three questions and reiterated that it has
“strict ad policies that govern the types of ads we allow on our platform.”
“These policies are publicly available, and we enforce them consistently
and without bias. If we find ads that violate those policies, we swiftly
remove them,” the company added, implying that it does not consider the ads
a violation of its standards.

Few who have studied Google’s connections to the Israeli government will be
surprised that the Silicon Valley giant grants enormous leeway to the
Netanyahu administration. Former CEO Eric Schmidt is known as one of
Israel’s most vocal supporters. Google has been financially invested in
Israel since at least 2006, when it opened its first offices in Tel Aviv.
In 2012, at a meeting with Netanyahu himself, Schmidt declared
<https://mondoweiss.net/2021/12/how-google-advances-the-zionist-colonization-of-palestine/>
that “the decision to invest in Israel was one of the best that Google has
ever made.”

Company co-founder Sergey Brin has also come to the defense of Israel,
denouncing
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/08/sergey-brin-united-nations-gaza-israel/>
the United Nations as “transparently anti-Semitic” and telling Google staff
that using the word “genocide” to describe Israeli actions in Gaza is
“deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides.”

Earlier this year, with the Israeli economy in dire straits following its
18-month campaign against its neighbors, Schmidt’s company came to the
rescue, injecting
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/oogle-wiz-cybersecurity-data-deal/289413/>
billions into Israel in a record-setting acquisition. Google purchased
local cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion. The monumental sum
paid—equivalent to 65 times Wiz’s annual revenue and boosting the Israeli
economy by 0.6%—left some analysts wondering
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/oogle-wiz-cybersecurity-data-deal/289413/>
if the deal had more to do with underwriting the Israeli economy than
making a shrewd business investment.

It also raises questions about the safety of Google users’ most sensitive
personal data, given that Wiz was founded and continues to be staffed by
former Israeli spies from the intelligence group, Unit 8200.

Google has a long history of working closely with Israeli intelligence. A
2022 MintPress News investigation
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-former-israeli-spies-working-top-jobs-google-facebook-amazon/282413/>
identified at least 99 former Unit 8200 agents employed by Google.

Among them is Gavriel Goidel, head of strategy and operations for Google
Research. Goidel joined Google in 2022 after a six-year career in military
intelligence, during which he rose to become Head of Learning at Unit 8200.
There, he led a large team of operatives who sifted through intelligence
data to “understand patterns of hostile activists,” according to his own
account
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-former-israeli-spies-working-top-jobs-google-facebook-amazon/282413/>
.
The Turning Tide

Google is far from the only tech giant recruiting Israeli spies to run
their most politically sensitive departments. The same study found
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-former-israeli-spies-working-top-jobs-google-facebook-amazon/282413/>
that hundreds of former Unit 8200 intelligence agents are employed at
companies such as Meta (formerly Facebook), Microsoft, and Amazon. And a
significant amount of what America reads about the Middle East is also
written by ex-Israeli spies.

A MintPress investigation
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-israel-unit-8200-spies-american-media/288457/>
from earlier this year uncovered a network of Unit 8200 alums working in
top newsrooms across America.

Wikipedia is another key theater of war for the Israeli state. A project
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-editing-zionist-groups>
overseen by future Prime Minister Naftali Bennett deployed thousands of
young Israelis to monitor and edit the online encyclopedia, removing
troublesome facts and framing articles more favorably in Israel’s favor.
Those who made the most edits would receive rewards, including free hot air
balloon rides.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also launched
<https://truthout.org/articles/israel-has-formed-a-task-force-to-carry-out-covert-campaigns-at-us-universities/>
a campaign to harass and intimidate American students, establishing a “task
force” to carry out psychological operations aimed at, in its own words,
“inflicting economic and employment consequences” against pro-Palestine
protestors. While Foreign Minister Eli Cohen heads the task force, it
stresses that its actions “should not have the signature of the State of
Israel on it.”

Amid mounting criticism, the Israeli government has sought to turn the tide
by inviting influencers for direct talks with Netanyahu. In April, the
Israeli prime minister met
<https://jewishinsider.com/2025/04/netanyahu-pushes-back-on-anti-israel-trends-in-meeting-with-podcasters/>
face-to-face with conservative internet personalities, including Tim Pool;
Dave Rubin; Sean Spicer; Bethany Mandel; David Harris Jr.; Jessica Krause;
Seth Mandel; and Mollie Hemingway, where they discussed how best to sell
war with Iran to Western publics, and how to counter anti-Zionist sentiment
online.

Other social media personalities report
<https://english.almayadeen.net/news/technology/israels-after-content-creators-offering-5000-sponsorship-dea>
having been offered large sums of money in exchange for a few words of
support for Israel.

In terms of turning the tide of European public opinion, Israel has its
work cut out for it. A recent YouGov survey
<https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Topline_Eurotrack_May25_w_gugbx3J.pdf>
found the country was widely reviled across the continent. More than 20
times as many Italians, for instance, hold “very unfavorable” (43%) views
of Israel than “very favorable” ones (2%).

Even in Germany, where popular support for Israel is highest, only 21% said
they hold favorable opinions of the state (including only 4% highly
favorable), with 65% displaying open opposition (including 32% who strongly
dislike it).

A massive plurality of Britons, meanwhile, agreed
<https://antisemitism.org/new-polling-shows-extent-of-sympathy-for-hamas-and-frightening-trends-of-radicalism-among-young-britons/>
with the statement: “Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated
the Jews.” Forty-eight percent answered in the affirmative, as opposed to
just 13% who disagreed. This is despite European governments offering
full-throated support to Israel, and even criminalizing pro-Palestine
protests and persecuting
<https://diem25.org/how-the-eu-is-using-anti-russia-sanctions-to-criminalise-journalism/>
journalists
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/raid-asa-winstanleys-home-deemed-unlawful-court-ruling>
who oppose Western support for Tel Aviv.

The government of Israel is spending millions of dollars daily on gigantic
advertising campaigns aimed at turning the tide of public opinion. To that
end, it is developing a PR network as sophisticated as the advanced weapons
systems it uses on its neighbors. On YouTube alone, its paid advertising,
translated into five languages, has reached at least 45 million people in
the past month. Whether this strategy will ultimately prove effective
remains unclear. After all, it is difficult to convince the public to
support a genocide.

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

*Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his
PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From
Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting
<https://www.routledge.com/Bad-News-from-Venezuela-Twenty-years-of-fake-news-and-misreporting/Macleod/p/book/9781138489233>
and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent
<https://www.routledge.com/Propaganda-in-the-Information-Age-Still-Manufacturing-Consent-1st-Edition/MacLeod/p/book/9781138366404>,
as well as a
<https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/65/56>
number
<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306396818823639#articleShareContainer>
of <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/blar.12940> academic
<https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00064/full>
articles <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0896920518820934>.
He has also contributed to FAIR.org
<https://fair.org/author/alan-macleod/>, The Guardian
<https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alan-macleod>, Salon
<https://www.salon.com/writer/alan-macleod>, The Grayzone
<https://thegrayzone.com/author/alan-macleod/>, Jacobin Magazine
<https://jacobinmag.com/author/alan-macleod>, and Common Dreams
<https://www.commondreams.org/author/alan-macleod>. Follow Alan on Twitter
for more of his work and commentary: @AlanRMacLeod
<https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod>.*

* Republish our stories! * MintPress News is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
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