Inside Israel's shadow campaign to win over American media

Back in March 2011, the Israeli consulate in New York City had a problem. A group of soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were coming to the U.S. on a PR trip, and Israeli officials needed help persuading influential media outlets to interview the delegation.

Luckily for the consulate, a new organization called Act For Israel, led by Israeli-American actor Noa Tishby, was prepared to swing into action. “[I]n mid March 2011, the New York Consulate requested our assistance,” Tishby’s organization wrote in a document revealed in a recent trove of leaked emails.

“Act For Israel quickly arranged seven interviews with the top ranks of U.S. blogs and radio shows,” the document explained, highlighting that their efforts helped promote “Israel’s narrative” in Red State, which it described as the “most read blog by US Senators and Congress representatives.”

The previously unreported campaign appears to have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which mandates that American citizens and organizations publicly disclose any work that seeks to influence American politics on behalf of a foreign power. “That sounds like a slam-dunk case of activities that should have required FARA registration,” said Ben Freeman, a FARA expert at the Quincy Institute, which publishes RS.

The leak provides a rare window into how some pro-Israel activists have skirted rules aimed at providing transparency about foreign influence over American politics — a practice that has helped obscure the scale of Israeli propaganda efforts in the United States. In public, Act For Israel appeared to be no more than a group of pro-Israel Americans advocating for a stronger U.S.-Israel relationship. But the leaked emails and documents show that representatives of the organization sought to shape U.S. public opinion while boasting privately of their intimate collaboration with the Israeli government.