Transcription
fighting a losing battle and throwing good money after bad. Israel keeps boosting its propaganda budget, but judging from the polling numbers overseas, the return on that investment just isn't there.
In journalism, there's libel and then there's blood libel. A New York Times report on Israeli soldiers using sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners has not been well-received in Tel Aviv.
and artificial intelligence and the environmental cost which is all too real. The price people are paying to make way for the data centers that power AI.
For decades, Israel has relied on a familiar media playbook to sustain its reputation: aggressive messaging spread through some sympathetic news coverage and a political narrative rarely challenged in the Western, especially American mainstream. Now, with an uneasy standoff in Iran, Israel violating the ceasefire in Lebanon, failing to adhere to it in Gaza, and settler violence intensifying in the occupied West Bank, that messaging machinery is proving ineffective, and Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to change that.
The first step, an appearance on CBS News's 60 Minutes, where mostly unchallenged, Netanyahu was out to stop the sharp decline in support among Americans for Israel. The second, longer-term strategy, an unprecedented expansion of Israel's husband, the huge amount of money it's now pouring into influencers, digital and media campaigns aimed at reversing the country's collapsing public image abroad. But in an age in which genocide, war crimes, and devastation are all live-streamed, Israel's PR spin is up against something it cannot control: what audiences can see with their own eyes. There is a reputational problem that no amount of money or messaging can compete with.
If Benjamin Netanyahu was looking for a safe space on the American airwaves for his first interview there since the start of the Iran War, he could have done worse than CBS News. Its reputation has taken a pounding since it sailed to pro-Trump billionaire Larry Ellison and his decision to put a self-described unhinged Zionist fanatic in charge.
"Mr. Prime Minister, good to see you."
Netanyahu went on CBS's flagship program, 60 Minutes, to shore up support for Israel, which the polls say more and more Americans see as a moral and economic liability. He played the blame game and turned his interviewer's phone into a prop to make his point.
"This is yours, right?"
Netanyahu spoke about social media being the eighth front that through social media, you can manipulate, you can make people believe Israel is attacking civilians and so on. You can penetrate this machine and I can paint you as a monster. And if I say it often enough, enough people will believe it.
"Of course, completely lies, but it's a narrative we hear again and again from Israeli officials."
"Their strategy seems to be social media uh posts are for young people and network TV is for the older generation. And that's why Netanyahu went on CBS news because the older generation is now uh starting to to turn on Israel as well. Whereas like the youth are already gone."
"We have seen the deterioration of the support for Israel in the United States."
"Pro-Israeli uh opinion makers are very frustrated that there are other players in the field competing for the narrative. And so it's not just the idea of fake news spreading misinformation about Israel. The point is we are not the only player anymore shaping opinion."
"The truth matters."
In response, the Israeli government is injecting more money into its hasbara budget. Hasbara is a Hebrew word, a shorthand term Israelis use for their government's propaganda efforts fought through public figures, online influencers, and bots.
"Fortunately, when the media is spreading one narrative, it's hard for the rest of the world to understand that."
For late 2024 and 2025, Israel's annual hasbara budget was roughly $150 million. That was jacked up this year to almost 3/4 of a billion. That investment does not seem to have paid off. More than 60% of Americans, again, according to the polling, now have an unfavorable view of Israel. A recent study by an Israeli security institute warned of diplomatic isolation and a creeping boycott. And much of the money the government throws at hasbara goes to waste when Israeli soldiers, be they in Gaza or now Lebanon, proudly post videos, many of which show them committing war crimes.
"MOTHER."
"The problem has appeared in the last three years when the Israeli government and its military arm started using social media in an attempt to change public opinion. But what they've been sharing and disseminating included evidence of Israeli war crimes. Israeli hasbara cannot do what it wants to do because people see the actual realities of what the Israelis are conducting and so it is actually shooting itself in the foot and frankly I'm thrilled about it because it's more money that they're flushing down the toilet because clearly their social media strategy is not working. No one buys it. So, it's great for me because I get to keep doing this podcast uh debunking Israeli propagandists. Welcome to Bad Hasbara, the world's most moral podcast."
"Israel has been at war."
Emily Schrader is an Israeli American journalist working for an online Israeli channel, ILV. "The involvement of the Israeli government in the social media front is vastly overestimated. Uh I myself have never received any money whatsoever from the Israeli government. I don't know anyone who's accepted money from the Israeli government. The way that it's framed as if it's some sort of grand conspiracy is just simply not the reality on the ground. In fact, I wish that the Israeli government would take this issue more seriously uh and come up with a strategic plan, but we don't see that."
Some key mainstream media outlets are now inching towards acknowledging the truth about Israel and its actions. Case in point, the New York Times. The Times has a long track record of defending or ignoring some clear-cut Israeli war crimes. We asked the paper about that and received no reply. But this past week, the Times published a piece by an op-ed writer, Nicholas Kristoff, that documented 14 cases of sexual assault against Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers and settlers. The examples included systematic cases of rape in prisons, sometimes through the use of dogs and the sexual abuse of Palestinian children.
Israel's foreign ministry then attacked the Times, calling the story one of the worst cases of blood libel to appear in the modern press. Then it announced the Israeli government would sue the paper over that op-ed. Whether it makes good on that threat or not remains to be seen. But between the government's reaction and the hostility that Israelis are directing at the Times on social media, the relationship between Israel and America's newspaper of record appears to be at an all-time low.
"I love when Zionist Twitter goes crazy. People forget that there was a time in which it was pretty normal to have an article in the New York Times that was, you know, moderately critical of Israel. Things have just gotten so censorious lately. And it would be good to get back to pre-October 7th Times, but you know, truly, it is still not a free media. And I wouldn't hold my breath for, you know, whether or not the New York Times is going to do a pro-Palestine heel turn."
"When it comes to the New York Times article by Nicholas Kristoff specifically, I think there are major sourcing issues uh that come with this report. The fact that Nicholas Kristoff wrote this article as an opinion piece instead of writing this as a thorough news investigation, which the New York Times has the ability to do, is very problematic. And I really believe that the issue of sexual assault generally, no matter who is the perpetrator or who is the victim, is something that should be above that. And so I'm disappointed as a journalist that I believe Kristoff didn't do his job."
Like the Times, the UK's publicly-owned broadcaster, the BBC, has been severely criticized throughout the Gaza genocide, for repeatedly failing to hold Israel to account.
"Dr. Smith, you'll understand that. But I will have to say Israel will refute the use of that word genocide."
That came back to bite the network this past week when a documentary that it had commissioned but then refused to broadcast, "Gaza Doctors Under Attack," won a major award, a BAFTA, as the best British documentary of 2025. In accepting that award, the program's executive producer called out the BBC.
"Just a question to the BBC. Given that you dropped our film, will you drop us from the BAFTA screening later tonight?"
Despite all the help from the Western mainstream media, international support for Israel keeps on tanking. Opposition to it keeps growing, and the best the Israeli authorities can come up with is to keep pumping more money into their forever war of propaganda.
"They understand they're losing in this battle. And it doesn't matter how much money you invest in the end of the day when a person in the US in Europe sees a live from Gaza sees bloggers or influencers his age from Gaza talking about their horrific reality they go through the killing the hunger the living conditions the people they lost. You cannot compete with it and they were kind of fighting a lost battle."
"Every generation has its historical moment that expresses a particular shift."
"What do you want? We know about the Vietnam generation radicalized by the Vietnam War."
"And Eastern Europe, the fall of the Soviet Union. We know now that the genocide in Gaza is the war of this generation."
"Stop their gues."
"They know that they want to be on the right side of history. And I think it's part of what explains shifts among the New York Times and other shifts that we will see very soon."
Going back to that New York Times piece on sexual violence against Palestinians. Israeli officials have characterized it as a malignant lie. That coming from a country where on the airwaves the abuse of Palestinian prisoners is often cause for celebration. Nick Murehead is here with more.
Blood libel is how Israeli officials have described Nicholas Kristoff's reporting in the New York Times. But you don't have to look hard to find the claims in that report being openly discussed in the Israeli media. Among the horrific accounts in Kristoff's piece, a Gazan journalist who said that he was sexually abused by a dog. Hard to fathom. But then you see interviews like this one with an Israeli soldier and his dog and what it did to alleged Hamas fighters inside the Tze'elim military prison. The same prison where video emerged of a Palestinian captive being led away and allegedly raped by Israeli guards. They denied the allegation, but the captive was later hospitalized with internal injuries. Despite the video evidence, the Israeli military acquitted the guards involved and approved them for duty. When the charges were dropped, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called them heroic fighters and said the blood libel had come to an end. During the trial, most of the guards concealed their identities except one who has been treated as some kind of celebrity on the Israeli airways. Despite the mounting evidence, the Israeli prison service still denies the sexual abuse of Palestinians. But there have been calls by Israeli journalists to legalize it. And one last point on Kristoff's piece, he acknowledged that some would suspect that the accounts were fabricated to defame Israel. He called that far-fetched. Why? Because according to Kristoff, he found the Palestinians interviewed in the piece, not the other way around. So, it's either a case of a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist reporting for a historically pro-Israel news outlet engaging in an act of blood libel, or it's true. Thanks, Nick.
The explosion of generative AI has ushered in a new era of technological innovation and with it, a massive expansion of infrastructure: the facilities storing the equipment that powers it, data centers. At the forefront of this boom is Aragon, an underpopulated region in Spain where the government has encouraged the expansion of data farms for companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and others. Those giant structures are sucking up natural resources while profiting off of communities and taking advantage of some bureaucratic legal loopholes. But the local government wants to tell a different story, one of progress, investment, and a region on the cusp of a digital transformation. Much of the local media is happy to go along with that version of the story. But who really profits from this supposed progress and at what cost? The listening posts Electra Screvo now from Aragon on the sprawling new data centers there and the gap between narrative and reality.
In Aragon, northeastern Spain, roads can stretch for miles with no sign of a single human being. One of the country's largest regions, it is sparsely populated. Vast swathes of deserted land have made it a major hub for renewable energy. Wind turbines are common here. Aragon has also turned into an attractive destination for a new kind of modern infrastructure that is reshaping the landscape: data farms. They are colossal in scale. And while the government has welcomed the companies behind them, little is known about how they operate.
"Local and regional authorities are actively facilitating the arrival of these companies. There is a strong desire to attract these companies and turn this into a political win. The public administration rolls out the red carpet for those technology companies. They shamelessly say so themselves, making everything easier for them. They help with administrative procedures, tax avoidance, and many other advantages. Meanwhile, the data farms operate with complete secrecy. They're like fortresses. We know almost nothing about them. It's astonishing that after four years of data center expansion in Aragon, there hasn't been a broad public debate."
"Data centers are at the foundation of the future, the foundation of AI and an industry that will undoubtedly shape the future of technology. Aragon views the development of this industry as an opportunity. It positions us at the forefront of a new sector that without a doubt will transform our region economically and socially."
In its quest to turn Aragon into a data hub, the government has fast-tracked the regulatory approvals process for tech companies using a legal mechanism known as PIGA, or Project of General Interest. One major beneficiary: Amazon. It plans to have 60 operational data centers by 2036. The equipment stored in these facilities relies on heat-emitting chips that require an immense amount of energy and water to function.
"I went to one of Amazon's data centers with Alonso Urente, a journalist investigating their impact on the environment in Aragon, which has a population of 1.35 million. It's estimated that when Amazon and Microsoft centers are fully operational, they will consume twice as much electricity as Aragon currently consumes. The water issue is even bigger because there's no transparency about the real numbers. During all these years, all the political parties have been part of the Aragonese government. We've even had recent elections and there hasn't been any debate about data centers. There's been debates about renewables. The local media here is very dependent on technology companies. One family, the Yarza family, controlled the largest and most widely circulated newspaper, Heraldo de Aragon, and the largest information and communication technology company, Iberus. It's not a criticism of journalists per se, but my colleagues are clearly well-informed and aware of the problem seen in other countries with data farms. The lack of media scrutiny has made it easier for the government to promote a narrative unchallenged that equates digitalization with progress."
The president of Aragon, who has made technological innovation a hallmark of his administration, has branded the region the "new Virginia," a reference to the American state with the highest number of data farms in the world. To push that message home, Ascon went on a PR trip to Virginia to visit some of the most prominent players in the global data space.
"We have this constant clickbait here in Aragon that the data centers are going to put us on the world map. Now they're talking about the European Virginia. The government's narrative is that that is going to be the future of Aragon. There's going to be a lot of growth. They're flooding the zone with constant media coverage of millions in investments. Like it's a mantra. President also puts out two-minute videos like an influencer with very positive and emotional messages."
While As visited Virginia, the environmental impact assessment for Amazon's expansion was greenlit, followed by a cascade of PIGA approvals. So when he returned, he could say, "I've seen it with my own eyes." The trip was essentially exploratory. The goal was to learn, explore, speak with local residents, and get to know the industry that grew around data centers. It allowed us to verify much of the information we read and sometimes questioned. The conclusion was unanimous: positive.
That unanimously positive outlook is echoed in local media, which forefronts a corporate message that highlights the upsides of data farms. If you don't question what's being presented, what you're really doing is constantly reinforcing the narrative, validating the idea that huge investments are coming, that this will transform everything. Almost every week there's news in Aragon claiming that artificial intelligence will solve something. At the same time, there's this validation of the broader AI discourse, technological solutionism, and the amplification of stories that greenwash or launder the reputations of large tech companies.
I question whether the government really knows all the details about the need for resources, water, energy, and land. These large tech companies have more power than some countries in the world. I've spoken with local authorities, mayors, and heads of government in those municipalities. They've been asked to sign confidentiality agreements. Their hands are tied when it comes to sharing information, sensitive or not.
I asked Marvo about the secrecy and opacity surrounding big tech. "For projects to be classified as regionally relevant, we have to thoroughly examine the various reports prepared by the relevant departments. The process is very rigorous in regards to environmental impact to ensure that the new infrastructure doesn't pose a risk to water resources." However, a recent inquiry led by Investigate Europe revealed that Microsoft and a major tech lobbying firm have secured an EU law that keeps key environmental information related to data centers hidden from the public. And this modus operandi, where big data relies on pliant governments to cut red tape, avoiding public scrutiny by pushing media-friendly narratives about technological progress, is being replicated far beyond that, around the world.
The explosion of colossal, resource-hungry data centers will have implications for us all. It's important to understand that since the explosion of generative AI, these tech companies require enormous amounts of often scarce natural resources to function. They're becoming more like extractive companies, behaving in ways previously associated with sectors that have far worse public images, such as the tobacco and fossil fuel industries. And if you go out on the ground and talk to the people who live near these large complexes, they barely have a say when it comes to deciding if and how the data center should be built.
And finally, the Eurovision Song Contest and the effect that Israel's participation has had on this year's competition. Eurovision got its start 70 years ago in 1956. It attracts singers from dozens of countries who perform and compete for votes from viewers. And it can get political. Russian musicians have been banned over their country's invasion of Ukraine, but Israel's have not, despite everything it's done. Amnesty International says that by allowing Israel to compete, the European Broadcasting Union is betraying humanity. And public broadcasters in Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Iceland, and Slovenia have all boycotted this year's event. In Vienna, where the Israeli contestant's performance was met with disruption inside the arena. An investigation by the New York Times found that since 2018, the Israeli government has funded campaigns to boost votes for Israeli contestants and is still doing that through Benjamin Netanyahu's overseas propaganda office. And that Israeli contestant, he knew what he was in for. He said that in preparing for his performance, he had practiced singing to a booing crowd.