Newly filed documents under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) reveal that Israel’s government has launched a covert influence campaign, codenamed the "Esther Project," through a firm called Bridges Partners LLC, paying American social media influencers up to $7,000 per post to promote pro-Israel content on platforms like TikTok and Instagram from June to November 2025.
The campaign, managed by a German division of the global PR firm Havas, is part of a broader $150 million foreign influence budget secured by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar in late 2024, aimed at countering a significant decline in U.S. public support for Israel, particularly among younger Republicans.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly acknowledged the strategy during a meeting with influencers in New York, stating, “We have to fight back. How do we fight back? Our influencers.”
The "Esther Project" has a total budget of $900,000, allocated from June to November 2025, with payments covering influencer recruitment, concept development, content production, and agency costs. Of this, approximately $552,946 was earmarked for direct influencer payments between June and September, based on projected 75 to 90 posts. The average payout per post is estimated between $6,143 and $7,373.
The campaign is being rolled out in phases, with three to six influencers onboarded at a time, each expected to produce 25 to 30 pieces of content monthly.
Bridges Partners, owned by Israeli consultants Uri Steinberg and Yair Levi, has enlisted a former IDF spokesperson, Nadav Shtrauchler, for the project and is using legal counsel from Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a firm previously linked to the controversial Israeli spyware company NSO Group. The firm has also partnered with Israeli content creators and U.S.-based marketing agencies.
The campaign’s name, "Esther Project," draws a parallel to "Project Esther," a controversial Heritage Foundation proposal to label pro-Palestinian activists as terrorists and justify their deportation and job loss, though no direct link has been confirmed.
This influencer campaign is one component of a larger, multi-million-dollar effort by Israel to dominate U.S. digital discourse. This includes a separate $1.5 million-per-month contract with Brad Parscale, a former Trump campaign strategist, to use AI-driven tools like MarketBrew and GPT-based chatbots to generate thousands of pro-Israel content variations.
While the FARA filings do not disclose the names of individual influencers, several participants were photographed at the September 26, 2025, meeting with Netanyahu in New York. These include Lizzy Savetsky, Ari Acker, Zach Sage Fox, Miriam Ezagui, and Joyce Chabb, all known for pro-Israel content on Instagram and TikTok. The identities of the other influencers involved in the campaign remain undisclosed in the public records.
The campaign is part of Israel’s declared "eighth front" in its current conflict, emphasizing the strategic importance of social media in shaping global narratives. The $150 million budget represents a 20-fold increase over previous hasbara (public diplomacy) spending, reflecting a significant escalation in Israel’s global communications strategy.
The use of FARA-registered firms like Bridges Partners and Havas underscores the formal, though covert, nature of the operation. The campaign coincides with a broader shift in U.S. public opinion, with recent polls indicating that Americans now sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis for the first time in 26 years.
The campaign has sparked controversy, with Israeli critics accusing the influencers of prioritizing self-promotion over solidarity with hostage families who were also in New York during Netanyahu’s meeting.
American critics on social media slam the influencers for prioritizing Israel over their country, with many Christians pointing out that the Israel Defense Force(IDF) is currently committing genocide in Gaza, and that the state of Israel promotes LGBTQ, abortion and other degenerate policies antithetical to the cause of the American conservative movement.
Here are some of the paid influencers and groups
