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Act.il (Act-il.com in the U.S.) is a mobile app that serves as a platform for uniting, organizing, training and deploying international Hasbara.

Through the app, 12,000 pro-Israeli “volunteers” worldwide (but mostly in the U.S.) receive marching orders — or “missions” — from Israeli agents and operatives located at its headquarters in Herzliya, Israel. The app users’ missions are covert, vary widely in scope and include both online and offline tactics.

For completing missions, Act.il’s volunteer users get points and badges. Top-ranked users complete five or six missions a day, The Forward reports, and win prizes, receive a congratulatory letter from the Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs or a doll of Israel’s founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.

“But not everyone on the app was a mere volunteer,” The Intercept reports. A security flaw in the app that was exploited shortly after its launch exposed the email addresses of all of its registered users. A review of the email addresses by The Intercept revealed that dozens of the Act.il’s earliest users have connections to “organizations that funded or developed the app. That means Act.il, which purports to be a grassroots campaign, was essentially seeded with paid activists.”

Act.il’s stated goal is to push back against the BDS Movement; however, descriptions of its missions reported by media seem to indicate it’s going after any sort of discourse critical of Jews or Israel, as well as encouraging political action among voters of foreign governments such as the U.S.

The Forward reports Act.il is “a joint project of two Israeli not-for-profits, it is led by former Israeli [army] intelligence officers and has close ties to Israel’s intelligence services, its Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the late American-Jewish casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson.”

Act.il is a “new entry” into the “propaganda war” that boasts “thousands of mostly U.S.-based volunteers who can be directed from Israel into a social media swarm.” It’s CEO, Ben Yosef, himself an eight-year veteran of Israeli army intelligence, described the propaganda operation’s association with Israeli intel agents to The Forward: “We know each other …. We talk with each other. We work together.”

Act.il’s ‘Missions’

Israeli’s military and its domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet, direct Act.il volunteers to get Facebook to remove videos “that call for violence against Jews or Israelis,” The Forward reports. (Um, I have seen videos that challenge their narrative, but have never seen videos on Youtube that called for violence against Jews or Israelis. Have you?)

In the news and social media space, Acti.il directs its hasbara-troll users to employ a tactic called “flooding,” which involves blasting a large amount of content at a particular news article or thread to distract the reader and dominate any discussion. For example, when something is identified as unflattering, Act.il will ask its volunteers to “leave a comment to uncover biased reporting” and “feel free to like other comments you agree with,” The Forward reports. It also provides users sample text to leave in comments section. Targets of Act.il flooding tactics have included RT, ABC News, The Kuwait Times and The Telegraph.

Unfathomable Chutzpah

Ironically, the new Israeli-intel app that trains American hasbara to perform covert propaganda ops against fellow Americans was launched with great fanfare in broad daylight on June 4, 2018 in New York City as part of the Celebrate Israel Parade.

Governor Andrew Cuomo served as honorary grand marshal of the parade and marched alongside Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan, who touted Act.il as part of the “Iron Dome of Truth” campaign with parent organization 4IL. (The video of Erdan’s speech in New York has been removed from Youtube.)

Free speech is paramount to preventing oppressive regimes and dictatorships. Attempts by foreign agents to thwart free speech and dissent in America is akin to an act of war on Americans and American democracy. Any American who participates in or defends such activity should have their citizenship revoked.

If Congress can tell Americans it’s illegal to organize dissent against Israel via BDS, and it’s acceptable for foreign Israeli intel agents to train Americans to suppress the speech of their fellow citizens and propagandize them, then we have truly become an Israel First nation. And then where does it stop?

There is a way the Internet community can help thwart this covert operation: Sign up to be a Act.il volunteer, get access to its “mission” list and then alert the public that a source is under attack by covert hasbara and Israeli intel operatives. By raising awareness of Act.il’s activities, the operation loses its “protective edge.” It would no longer be able to feign the appearance of general public support for Israel’s agenda. It would expose this operation for what it is: an online propaganda war launched by Israeli agents against Americans.

Israel's new Hasbara app

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYzVOlcENZ4