Over the past couple of weeks, nearly all of my tweets have been responded to - often immediately - with bots.
These bots almost always post in Hebrew, and their accounts pretend to be Israelis their names spelled in Hebrew. Many use names like "Schwartz" and "Cohen" and "Levy" and "Goldstein." The accounts will put lots of Jewish and Israeli symbols on their profiles, and even retweet pro-Israel accounts here and there. But their main thrust is to post Hebrew tweets that try to turn Israelis against the government and the IDF, and indeed against each other.
They claim Hamas is winning the war, showing Hamas videos; or that Israel isn't doing anything to free the hostages; or that Netanyahu must go. The messages are repeated verbatim among different fake accounts.
You can see here a number of bot responses to my "Shabbat Shalom" message on Friday.
And they have hundreds, maybe thousands, of bot accounts. Many were created only this month, but they appear to be related to pre-existing bot accounts that are more generic (no Hebrew names).
Many of the accounts follow each other, giving the impression of being a little less "bot-like."
I've reported and blocked hundreds of them but more are generated every day. Occasionally I'll see that some have been suspended, but it is a tiny percentage.
It costs money to set up a campaign like this. Not a huge amount - it could probably be done for a couple of thousand dollars - but large enough to see that there is an organization, or a government, behind the campaign, and someone who is refining the messages depending on the reactions. Laughable mistakes from two weeks ago are rarely being repeated (like someone with the name "Yaakov Rochel.")
Who might be behind it? I suspect Iran or Iranian proxies, and this article in Hezbollah's Al Madayeen seems to support that theory.
It talks about the importance of using the language of the Zionist enemy, and to understand their mentality, to sway their opinions.
Our tendency as Arabs and as Palestinians, specifically, to learn the Hebrew language is a very important strategy and method of resistance in managing the essence of the long-term Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not only from a military security aspect, but also from cultural, societal and historical aspects, it is necessary to understand the language of our opponent....Just as the resistance in southern Lebanon did in employing the Hebrew language and using it within the framework of the “psychological strategy” that expresses its doctrine regarding “media” and the importance of the cognitive and psychological aspects of the conflict between the resistance and “Israel,” so the Palestinian resistance did in the context of the current ongoing confrontation with the enemy. It seemed that the resistance’s mastery of the Hebrew language goes beyond describing it as a tool for communication and communication, but rather comes within its cultural and cognitive context as a tool for understanding others and their ways of thinking.The resistance today realizes that victory is achieved not only by fighting on the battlefield on the ground, but also in the “media and psychological” battlefield. Propaganda in the “battle of awareness” is what creates victory, and because it is so, it must be managed in an intelligent way to yield the best results. In this context, knowing the enemy's language constitutes a great help in understanding him and identifying his weaknesses or strengths, which makes it possible to exert strong pressure on him...The resistance emphasizes the importance of the “visual medium” that it broadcasts, which affects thousands of Israelis. Therefore, it is keen to film its actions and broadcast them in all available media, accompanied by Hebrew translation, victory music, or poignant comments directed, such as scenes of targeting enemy soldiers and vehicles, and pictures and videos of prisoners, Which the resistance continues to broadcast in parallel with developments in the internal Israeli scene, has a psychological importance that is equivalent to “combat achievement.”
