By: Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Iran, Russia, China and terrorist organizations are flooding social media with anti-Israel content.
About half of the population receives their news from social media at least some of the time. With the current fighting between Hamas and Israel, posts about the war are in overdrive, being viewed billions and billions of times. We’re drowning in memes, posts, TikToks, videos and hashtags.
Overlooked in this social media frenzy is a sobering fact: much of the content related to Israel, Hamas and Gaza is posted by shadowy government agencies in Iran, Russia, and China, and terrorist organizations like Hamas and militant groups in Iraq as well. Each time you consume social media content you’re opening yourself up to being manipulated by hostile states and actors.
Iranian Social Media Campaigns
A principal sponsor of Hamas, Iran has been championing the terrorist organization online. Iranian accounts “have been spreading particularly harmful content that includes glorification of war crimes and violence against Israeli civilians and encouraging further attacks on Israel” since the October 7 Hamas terror attacks that sparked the current war. That’s the conclusion of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank that tracks misinformation and extremism online.