The Anti-Israel Swarm

Anti-Israel protests are showing up everywhere. Censorship, police crackdowns, and social threats (you won't get a job) aren't working. Here's why.

Israel might think that it is in a war with Hamas. It isn’t. It’s in an online war with a global, networked tribe for its very existence. A war it is losing. See: October 2023

The war in Gaza has;

• stalled, generated high casualties, and exhausted the IDF;

• left Hamas intact, ignited political unrest at home, and didn’t recover the hostages;

• been conducted so poorly that most of the world (the ICJ vote and polling support this) now believes Israel committed genocide and other war crimes; rendered the term anti-semite nearly worthless due to rampant misapplication and overuse.

Additionally, the pro-Israel network is finally realizing they are losing (have lost) the US information war as well.

• Protests. An anti-Israel networked swarm is mobilizing protests to generate the chaos needed for a BLM-style cultural shift.

• Voter unrest. The Democratic party is in full panic mode. Electorally decisive numbers of young voters have demonstrated that they will stay away from the polls due to Biden’s participation in Gaza.

• Negative information flows. The ratio of anti-Israel vs. pro-Israel media packets is running 100 to 1, even with nearly complete control of major media and aggressive censorship on most social networks.

In response, the pro-Israel network is doubling down on attempts to control the situation. So far, this strategy isn’t working.

• Escalate to reframe. Israel attempted to reframe the war’s narrative by attacking Iran. This attempt failed, surprisingly, due to Iranian restraint. Worse, the exchange led to a significant weakening of US power in the region.

• Control TikTok. The pro-Israel network ran a successful political effort — using fear of China as a false flag — to force the sale of US TikTok (a portion of the most heavily used network in the world) to censorship-friendly investors. However, this isn’t effort may still go awry since there are already signs that TikTok will fight this tooth and nail (while ramping up amplification for anti-Israel media packets in the meantime).

• Zero tolerance. The pressure to align Universities with the pro-Israel network and crackdown on anti-Israel protesters is intensifying. This effort isn’t working as expected. It’s generating the opposite effect as intended. Let’s dig into this.

Amplifying the Opposition

The Columbia protest is an excellent example of how the pro-Israel network’s zero-tolerance approach isn’t stopping anti-Israel protests and speech; it’s growing it. Here’s the timeline:

• Aggressive alignment. On April 17th, the President of Columbia University was hauled before Congress and aggressively grilled over a growing criticism of Israel on Columbia’s campus. This coercive alignment effort worked.

• Seeded event. Simultaneous to this testimony, a small group of protesters set up a “Gaza Solidarity” tent encampment on Columbia’s campus (left image below). It was tiny and likely to disperse during finals week or when summer vacation started.

• Mistake. Under pressure to crack down, the University’s president asked the NYPD to arrest the protesters and remove the camp (falsely claiming they were suspended students and thereby trespassing). On April 18th, the NYPD complied and arrested more than 100 protesters, and the University used the trespassing arrest to suspend their student status.

• Self-Harm. These heavy-handed tactics backfired (right image above), and the protest quickly grew in size and support (including a walkout by the University’s professors in solidarity). Moreover, anti-Israel demonstrations spread to other Universities, and with each new attempt to crack down on it, it grew and adapted.

One potential explanation for this outcome is that the pro-Israel network walked into a trap, as Israel did in Gaza (see the report Tactics of Mistake for more). Here’s how this strategy works;