I would love to meet the genius who came up with this idea.
Let’s flood Americans with SMS messages. Let’s ask them the most burning question we need answered. This question will help solve the depths of despair Israel has sunk to in American public opinion. And the question was (drum roll please): “How do you think the peace talks with Iran will influence world security?” (I am paraphrasing as I did not receive said SMS).
As reported in The Wall Street Journal, Israel signed a nearly $50 million contract for a United States influence campaign. Now this should not concern anyone who cares about Israel’s standing in the world. Not because Israel should remain silent – or that governments should never advertise, use technology or attempt to influence public opinion. Not because Israel’s enemies have somehow stopped investing enormous resources in shaping the international conversation. My concern is fundamental: Israel continues to treat a crisis of relevance and trust as though it were primarily a problem of message distribution.
According toWSJ (https://www.wsj.com/politics/israels-50-million-experiment-to-change-u-s-public-opinion-253b3b70), the Israeli government funded a broad American influence effort using AI-generated text messages, conservative media, online personalities and other digital strategies. A reported $45 million contract that included millions of AI-driven messages sent to American cellphones through an organization called Friends for Peace. The company producing the texts has reportedly received at least $6.5 million.
That is not merely an SMS campaign. It is part of a much larger and more expensive attempt to reverse Israel’s deteriorating reputation in the United States.
The motivation is understandable. Israel is losing ground (some rightfully argue its already lost it) among Americans at an alarming rate. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in March 2026 found that 60 percent of American adults held an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53 percent in 2025 and 41 percent in 2022. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, the unfavorable figure had reached 80 percent. Even among Republicans under the age of 50, a majority viewed Israel negatively.
Israel clearly has a problem. But millions of text messages are unlikely to solve it.
The Problem Is Not That America Has Not Received Israel’s Message
For decades, Israel has approached public diplomacy through a relatively simple assumption: If people understood Israel better, they would support it more.
When international opinion declined, the prescribed response was usually more information, more spokespeople, more talking points and more explanations. Israelis told themselves that Israel’s policies were misunderstood. They complained that the media were unfair. They argued that Israel had failed to “get its message out.”
Sometimes those criticisms were justified. Israel certainly faces misinformation, deliberate distortion and campaigns that deny its history, legitimacy and right to defend its citizens. But the uncomfortable truth is that Americans are not suffering from a shortage of messages about Israel.
The opposite is the truth. They are surrounded by them.
Israel is discussed constantly on television, social media, university campuses, in churches, in political campaigns and around family dinner tables. Younger Americans encounter a continuous stream of content about Gaza, settlements, war, occupation, antisemitism and Palestinian suffering. The challenge is no longer simply getting Israel into the conversation. Israel is already in the conversation. The challenge is what Israel means to the people participating in it.
A Text Message Does Not Create A Relationship
A carefully targeted message may attract attention. It might influence a search result, reinforce an existing belief or persuade someone to click on a link. But a message arriving unexpectedly on a cellphone is not a relationship.
In an era of spam, scams, political fundraising and automated marketing, unsolicited messages are frequently approached with suspicion. Even when recipients engage with them, they may reasonably wonder who is behind the message, why they were targeted and whether the apparent conversation is authentic.
That is especially dangerous for Israel. At a time when critics already accuse Israel of manipulating the media and buying political influence, an opaque, technologically sophisticated campaign can unintentionally reinforce the very narrative it is intended to defeat.
The more Israel appears to be manufacturing support, the less authentic that support may feel. Trust cannot be automated. Credibility cannot be purchased by the impression.
Israel Is Trying To Market Itself Instead Of Becoming Relevant
The deeper mistake is the assumption that Israel’s reputation can be repaired primarily through more effective marketing.
Marketers always ask: What do we want to tell people?
Narrative intelligence, a phrase I use a lot recently, asks a different question: What matters to the people we are trying to reach, and where does Israel genuinely intersect with their lives?
This distinction changes everything.
A young American concerned about climate resilience may not respond to another argument about Israel’s military conduct. But that person may be interested in Israeli water technologies helping farmers confront drought.
An American living in Chicago may not be waiting for another Israeli government spokesperson to explain the Middle East. But that same person may connect with Israeli and African professionals for example, cooperating on public health, food security or entrepreneurship.
A Latino family may not be moved by geopolitical slogans. But they may care deeply about medical treatments, agricultural innovation, education, economic mobility and community resilience.
A progressive Christian may not want to be lectured about why criticism of Israel is unfair. But that person may be willing to hear from Israelis and Palestinians engaged in difficult, authentic work to build a shared future. And believe it or not, these people do exist.
These are not public-relations tricks. They are points of genuine human connection.
Israel contains thousands of such stories. They exist in hospitals, laboratories, farms, universities, nonprofits, Arab communities, Jewish communities, mixed cities and partnerships around the world.
The problem is not that Israel lacks meaningful stories.
The problem is that Israel has failed to build a disciplined system for discovering them, evaluating them, matching them with appropriate audiences and empowering credible people to tell them.
Artificial Intelligence Used Differently
There is a painful irony in Israel’s reported reliance on AI-generated text messages. Artificial intelligence could play a valuable role in rebuilding Israel’s international standing, but not by generating more SMS messages.
AI can help Israel listen. AI can also help Israel be understood in the world.
AI could identify changes in public attitudes before they become entrenched. AI could help determine which communities remain open to engagement and which subjects resonate with them. AI could distinguish between audiences seeking information and audiences that have already disengaged. AI could help find authentic voices whose lives have been positively affected by cooperation with Israelis.
AI could match particular stories with particular demographic groups.
AI could evaluate whether a campaign is strengthening trust, merely reaching people who already agree, or inadvertently deepening opposition. It could also identify stories that should not be promoted because they appear exploitative, politically tone-deaf or disconnected from an audience’s concerns.
That would be a strategic use of technology.
Using AI merely to increase the volume of persuasion, risks automating the same approach that has already failed. The purpose of technology should not be to automate communications. It should be to improve the quality, consistency and explainability of strategic decisions.
Israel Must Also Listen To What Americans Have To Say
There is another danger in reducing Israel’s reputation crisis to a communications failure. It can become a convenient way to avoid discussing Israel’s own policies.
Not every criticism of Israel is antisemitic. Not every unfavorable opinion is the product of misinformation. Some Americans, including Jewish Americans, are reacting to what they have seen in Gaza, to statements made by Israeli ministers, to settlement policies and to an Israeli political culture that can appear dismissive of international opinion. By the way, as for the Jewish community, criticism of Israel does not make them “self-hating Jews.”
A sophisticated national strategy must be capable of holding two thoughts simultaneously. Israel is frequently judged unfairly, subjected to double standards and targeted by organized campaigns that cross the line from criticism into demonization. Israel’s own decisions and political rhetoric have also damaged its standing. No campaign can indefinitely separate a country’s image from its conduct.
Better storytelling cannot be a substitute for better policy. But even when Israel acts responsibly, it will still need a fundamentally different way to communicate, one based on listening, credibility and long-term relationships rather than mass persuasion.
It’s Not Whether Israel Should Spend Money
Israel cannot abandon the international arena while its opponents dominate digital platforms, cultural institutions and public debate. The question is what Israel is purchasing. Is it buying messages, clicks and temporary visibility? Or is it building the infrastructure necessary to understand audiences, develop trusted relationships and demonstrate Israel’s relevance through authentic human experience?
Forty-five million dollars could support an extraordinary network of local partnerships, research, audience analysis, cultural engagement and grassroots storytelling.
It could help Israeli civil society connect with communities that rarely encounter Israel outside the context of war. It could elevate Israelis from every part of society, Jewish and Arab, religious and secular, immigrant and native-born rather than presenting Americans with another centrally manufactured government message.
It could support long-term engagement with the politically homeless middle: Americans who have concerns about Israeli policy but have not embraced the movement(s) seeking to isolate or delegitimize Israel. That work would be slower. It would be less dramatic than announcing that millions of messages had been sent. Its success could not be measured simply by impressions, reach or clicks.
But it might change minds.
Israel Does Not Need a Louder Megaphone
The revelation of this campaign should lead to more than a debate about wasteful spending or questionable tactics. It should force Israel to reconsider the assumptions behind its public diplomacy. Israel does not need another campaign designed around the question: How can we make Americans hear us? It needs a strategy built around different questions.
Who are we trying to reach? What do they value? What do they currently believe? Why have they stopped trusting us? Which Israeli stories are genuinely relevant to their lives? Who has the credibility to tell those stories? And, are we prepared to listen when the answers make us uncomfortable?
Israel has spent decades trying to explain itself to the world. Perhaps it is time to understand the world we are trying to reach. Because Israel’s greatest communications problem is no longer that people have not received our message. It is that far too many people no longer believe the message is meant for them.
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