“Its missiles, with a range of approximately 4,000 kilometers, already put Europe at risk. They are now developing missiles with an even greater reach. Why are you investing billions in missiles that can threaten all Europe?”
With messages like this, the Benjamín Netanyahu government carried out an intense propaganda campaign aimed at influencing European public opinion and justifying its military offensive against Iran. Supported by the Google advertising platform and with videos translated into French, German, English or Italian, Israel got at least 37 million impacts with just over a hundred ads that were active during the war.
The campaign concentrated in Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy and France – the greatest economies of the continent – and also extended to Belgium, headquarters of the main institutions of the European Union. It was paid directly by the Israel government advertising agency. In Spain, the ads did not spread, according to the Google ads library.
The propaganda had two main lines. On the one hand, warning of the alleged danger that Iran for Europe represents. On the other, conveying the idea that Netanyahu had no choice but to attack the Iranian regime. It justifies it with various assertions about its missiles, the progress of its nuclear program and bombings against Israeli civilians. “Israel does what should be done,” conclude several of the videos.
A good part of these assertions have not been demonstrated by independent organizations and could be considered misinformation. For example, according to The last report of the Council on Foreign Relations (Cfr) There is no evidence that the reach of the Iranian missiles exceeds 2,000 kilometers, which leaves cities such as Rome, Berlin and Paris, which Israel shows being bombarded in many of their videos.
The video that accumulates more visualizations is a speech by Benjamín Netanyahu presenting the offensive. “In recent years, Iran has produced enough highly enriched uranium to make nine atomic bombs,” says Israeli president. “We will not allow the world's most dangerous regime to obtain the most dangerous weapons in the world. The growing reach of Iranian ballistic missiles could take that nuclear nightmare to the cities of Europe,” he continues.
This extreme is not endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Organization (OIEA). This agency, which is part of the UN, has warned that the regime has accumulated enriched uranium at 60%, well above the limit of 3.67%necessary for civil use – and close to the 90%arms degree -, but not that it is already able to manufacture weapons or complete nine nuclear eyelaces, as Netanyahu states.
Another of the assertions that Israel translates into multiple languages is the disparity between the objectives of both war contenders. “Israel attacks military threats. The Iranian regime attacks civilians while bombing Iranian cities, attacking families and children,” says one of them.
However, according to land or UN organizations, both contestants have reached civilians in their attacks. Iranian missiles, of which only one in 20 has come to impact Israeli soil, have killed 28 of their citizens. According to the Iranian Ministry of Health, Israeli aviation bombings would have killed 610 people, while multiple international institutions qualify their operation in Gaza as a genocide.
eldiario.es has contacted Google to ask for this campaign. The multinational has removed some of the ads referred to by this newspaper. However, he has refused to give details of how many ads has eliminated or the reason to deactivate each of them, just mentioning that he has a “misrepresent policy” (against unreliable statements), another of “dangerous and derogatory content” (against the promotion of hatred for reasons of race and religion) and a last “shocking content” (which blocks violent images).
“Have policies of very strict ads that govern the types of ads that we allow on our platforms. These policies are public and we apply them consistently and without biases. If we find ads that violate them, we eliminate them quickly. After our review, we have retired several of the ads that violated our policies, ”said a spokeswoman in an official statement.
However, all the ads indicated by Eldiario.es had already been deactivated before by Israel, which stopped his propaganda campaign in Europe when he agreed to high the fire with Iran. This implies that the systems that Google indicates did not detect them in time to prevent their dissemination among European citizens.
Google also properly labeled some of the ads. Instead of being framed in the category of “law and government” that the multinational has for this type of content, they were in “art and entertainment.” It is a key detail because websitors and advertising services that work with their advertising platform can choose the categories of ads that appear in their pages and the second has much less restrictions than the first.
Google does not report yet of the total scope of the campaign in its advertising transparency tool. However, much of the campaign was developed on YouTube from videos uploaded to the Israeli Foreign Ministry channel, the sum of visualizations of these videos shows that at least 37 million of times have been shown.
According to the specialized media Indicatorthe ads also appeared in all types of web pages, media, blogs and online streaming platforms of the countries to which it was directed. One even “appeared on a mini cheese cake recipe in a kitchen blog,” says the factchecker Alexios mantzarlis.
Google does not include information about which audiences directed these ads or how he segmented them. The multinational advertising tools allow to define audiences based on criteria such as location, age, language, interest or navigation history, but do not make public details in their transparency center.
The European Digital Services Law (DSA), in force since 2024, forces the large online platforms to make public their ads, with the aim of improving the transparency of commercial communications. The regulations prohibit directed advertising based on sensitive data such as religion, gender or sexual orientation, and requires platforms to evaluate and mitigate systemic risks such as misinformation. However, the DSA does not establish a specific distinction between commercial and state propaganda, applying the same principles of transparency and veracity to both types of messages. Platforms such as Google do not include special notices for messages sponsored by a state.
Criticize the UN refugee agency and win Eurovision
It is not the first time that Israel uses Google ads as a platform to distribute its propaganda worldwide. Last year he carried out another intense campaign to discredit and get the withdrawal of the international financing of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), in which he claimed that the agency is a “a facade for Hamas”, of not investigating its facilities in search of abuse by extremists, and of impeding peace by protecting the terrorist organization.
“This campaign is greatly damaging the reputation of UNRWA, currently the largest supplier of humanitarian aid for the population of Gaza who suffers a terrible war,” regretted the organizationqualifying as “misinformation” the Israeli assertions. “These ads can put the life of UNRWA's personnel in serious danger,” warned the international agency.
This propaganda offensive did appear in Spain, but it barely had an impact, according to the data of the library of Google ads. However, the campaign that did have much more tour was the one he made to support his candidate in Eurovision. Israel paid for spreading 19 different ads, some with several versions.
The European Broadcasting Union (UER) would later recognize it in a report published after the event following the controversy: “The Advertising Agency of the Israel Government, which works with institutions and public companies in the country, propagated ads through Google products in the days prior to the final of the festival held in Basel (Switzerland)”. The ads went to 35 countries and contained “instructions on how to vote for Yuval Raphael.”
Campaigns as they show that Netanyahu has understood the potential of the propaganda of the 21st century with the tools of the digital age. His government not only designed a strategy in several languages to justify his offensive against Iran, but also directed it to the main European audiences with messages designed to mold his perception about his military actions.
