Israeli Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Pakistan of operating bot farms and fake social media accounts to erode United States (US) public support for Israel and fracture the US-Israel alliance.
During an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, he alleged that several countries have been running coordinated campaigns to manipulate social media, and pointed to Pakistan as a specific example.
“We have several countries that basically manipulated social media with bot farms, with fake addresses, to break the American sympathy to Israel, to break the American-Israeli alliance,” Netanyahu said.
He went on to describe how such operations work, mimicking what he claimed were fake messages designed to look like they came from ordinary Americans.
“You hear a text message, ‘I’m a red-blooded Texan. I always supported Israel. But I can’t stand what they’re doing. I’m turning against Israel.’ And then you trace the address to some basement in Pakistan,” he said, adding that “that’s something that has hurt us badly”.
Netanyahu told the programme that while Israel was fighting on seven military fronts simultaneously, it was left exposed on what he called an eighth front, the social media war. “We have been busy so we have not seen that while they have been attacking us,” he noted.
Netanyahu did not single out Pakistan alone. He referenced “several countries” involved in such activity, using Pakistan as one example among others.
