Israel is losing the smokeless battlefield

In April 2024, the Biden administration pushed through a bill forcing TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell its stake within a year — or face a nationwide ban. What the US government tried to ban a year ago is now being eagerly sought by its strongest ally, Benjamin Netanyahu. And it is not conjecture — Israel’s propaganda machine is pivoting to platforms it once dismissed, chasing the ghosts of influence it has already lost.

In a meeting with US influencers at Israel’s Consulate General in New York, Netanyahu could be seen saying:

“We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields in which we’re engaged. And the most important ones are on social media. And the most important purchase that is going on right now is TikTok. Number one. Number one.”

His words expose the desperation of a state struggling to maintain its narrative supremacy. What Washington viewed as a security threat is now seen as a propaganda opportunity by Tel Aviv.

Senator Mitt Romney, in an interview with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, had earlier explained the rationale behind the US TikTok crackdown bluntly: the platform had become a hub for Palestinian voices. “If you look at the posting on TikTok and the number of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so,” he said, adding that this visibility made the platform a matter of “real interest” for the president, who would have “a chance to take action in that regard.”

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Republican comments on TikTok reveal the underlying logic of control dressed as security. At a No Labels webinar, Representative Mike Lawler explained that campus protests were “exactly why we included the TikTok bill” — because, as he claimed, students were being “manipulated… to foment hate… create a hostile environment.”

The suggestion that anyone unmoved by Israeli propaganda is merely “manipulated” has become a worn-out refrain among Israel and its allies. Despite owning traditional media houses, mobilising lobby groups, think tanks and online shills, dominating the mainstream press, paying influencers up to $7,000 per post, signing a $45 million deal with Google to promote Israeli propaganda en masse and marginalise Palestinian content, operating a military unit called the “Legitimisation Cell” to justify the killing of journalists, and employing algorithmic suppression through Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X — the Israeli hasbara machine has failed.

And it failed precisely because it succeeded — because it succeeded in showing the world, in real time, what brutality looks like. It succeeded in uprooting families from their homes, denying aid, starving civilians, killing journalists and children with impunity, bombing hospitals, erasing neighbourhoods, ignoring ceasefire after ceasefire. It became the first genocide to be live-streamed — documented by victims, witnessed by millions and denied in real time by its perpetrators. And yet, even as the world saw this horror with naked eyes, Israel had the audacity to justify its actions, to play the victim card and to blame it all on Hamas.

Israel’s desperation to own every medium under the sun exposes a deeper truth: governments, along with big tech, seek to control and discipline the minds of citizens. The digital infrastructure — funded by billions in taxpayers’ money — functions to domesticate lives and homogenise opinions to suit dominant power. Technology is not neutral. Tools reflect the intentions of those who make them. They are used by capitalists and the state alike to distort perception and manage meaning. Narratives pushed through black-box algorithms are shaped by what governments deem “showable”. The “For You” page is not for you — it is for compliance.

Israel’s ambitions are laid bare. While it laments losing the global narrative, it does not flinch from its murderous actions. Flooded with billions in US funding, it insists its attacks are aimed solely at Hamas — but in practice, it has manufactured a famine in Palestine, leaving civilians to starve amid rubble and ruin. The dream of its so-called homeland is built upon Palestinian nightmares. Its earliest slogan — “a land without a people for a people without land” — revealed its genocidal blueprint. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is not a tragedy of the past but an ongoing project. Even as it erases life from the map, Israel fears the mirror of truth held up by the digital public. It wants to silence not just Palestinians but the witnesses to their suffering.

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Yet truth persists. Through grassroots media, citizen journalism and global digital resistance, Palestinians — despite scarce resources, frequent blackouts, destroyed infrastructure and unimaginable loss and suffering — kindled the light of truth, and the world’s conscience could not help but catch its flame. They narrated their experiences in the face of annihilation, documented with what little was left, and dismantled the polished lies of power by unpacking and fact-checking the sell-out narratives. The micro-narratives of Palestinians spread organically have brought a significant change in how people perceive Palestine and Hamas on a global scale.

The stories that emerged from phones and ruins have reshaped the global perception of Palestine and of Hamas, igniting empathy and solidarity across borders. According to Pew Research Centre, 59 per cent of Americans now hold an unfavourable opinion of the Israeli government, up from 51 per cent in early 2024. As journalist Chris Hedges notes, “The genocide presages a new world order, one where Europe and the United States, along with their proxy Israel, are pariahs.”

The shift is visible. From street protests and campus movements to state recognitions and diplomatic statements, the world is no longer buying Israel’s story wholesale. There is no turning back from this point. Any effort by Israel to buy new mediums, to channel its lies through yet another platform, is futile. People have witnessed the truth — and they cannot unsee it.

Israel has long celebrated the plurality of its lies and despised the singular truth of Palestine. It has shown zero tolerance for truth — not through facts, but through violence. With every assault more ruthless than the last, it refuses to share even a sliver of narrative space. It seeks not coexistence with the truth, but the extermination of those who carry it.

But falsehood cannot outlast truth. Israel has become its own undoing in the public relations war. When Zionists ask how to improve their image, the answer is simple: stop killing babies, stop erasing lives, stop committing genocide. No amount of strategic storytelling or algorithmic engineering can rescue a state from the moral abyss of its own making.

We have already seen how micro-narratives can change global consciousness. The next step is to transform awareness into action — no matter how small. To keep speaking about Palestine. To donate whatever one can. To boycott, to write in a language not borrowed from the oppressor. To stop questioning resistance as the occupation demands, and instead become resistance itself — for the sake of truth.

Because the truth, as history has shown time and again, always negates falsehood. And no empire, no algorithm and no propaganda budget can outlast that.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.