Carefully constructed misinformation videos boost viral anti-Israel TikTok presence
Can using Taylor Swift songs help pro-Israel creators win over Gen-Z and escape ‘swarms’ of haters while bypassing TikTok’s ‘mysterious’ – and allegedly biased – platform algorithm?


NEW YORK — In between sleeping and serving with his reserve artillery corps unit, Adiel Cohen, 25, battles enemies of the Jewish state on TikTok.
Originally from Tel Aviv and currently stationed near one of Israel’s borders, Cohen started creating content for TikTok in 2020.
“The amount of gaslighting is really something I’ve never experienced,” said Cohen, referring to TikTok creators whose videos have glorified Hamas and demonized Israel following the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7.
Almost immediately after Hamas sent 3,000 terrorists into southern Israel on a horrific rampage killing some 1,400 and taking another 240 hostage, TikTok became the major source of information on the conflict for millions of 18 to 24-year-olds, the Chinese-owned platform’s key demographic.
On Wednesday, a group of high-profile TikTok creators teamed up to demand the platform, founded in 2016, take responsibility for perpetuating antisemitism. Around the world, government leaders and top financiers are calling for bans on TikTok due to “rampant” antisemitism. (India already banned the social media platform in June 2020 over security concerns.)
“Simply put, TikTok lacks critical safety features to protect Jewish content creators and the broader Jewish TikTok community, leaving us in digital and physical danger,” read the “Dear TikTok” statement, whose signees included creators Amy Schumer, Isaac Mizrahi and Debra Messing.

According to a recent Harvard CAPS Harris poll, 51% of young adults can “justify” the massacres perpetrated by Hamas, in part because their main exposure to Israel since October 7 came from TikTok videos.
News site Axios reported this week that since October 16, there have been 210,000 posts using the hashtag #StandwithPalestine and 17,000 using the hashtag #StandwithIsrael throughout the globe. Citing TikTok’s data, the news site stated that 87 percent of the audience makeup for #StandwithPalestine posts is under the age of 35, compared to 66% of the audience makeup for #StandwithIsrael posts. There are over 1 billion TikTok users worldwide.
“Now we are seeing levels of antisemitism and violence that we’ve never experienced,” said Cohen, referring to TikTok videos that celebrate the massacres using graphic footage captured by Hamas terrorists on their phones.
@adielofisrael This is NOT what retaliation looks like. This is T3RROR. H*m*s IS ISIS. #israel #palestine #jewish #indigenous #fyp
On Friday, TikTok responded to global criticism by reporting that 925,000 antisemitic videos were removed by the platform since October 7.
Promising to invest in additional “moderating capabilities,” the platform pushed back on media reports of TikTok fueling anti-Israel sentiment since the Hamas massacres.
“Over the last few days, there has been unsound analysis of TikTok hashtag data around the conflict, causing some commentators to falsely insinuate TikTok is pushing pro-Palestine content over pro-Israel content to U.S. users. That’s simply false. In fact, since Oct. 7 in the U.S., the hashtag #standwithisrael has gained 1.5x more views than #standwithpalestine: 46.3M views compared to 29.4M views,” read Friday’s statement.
‘A completely twisted idea’
Fernanda Jampolsky, 24, feels like a refugee in her own country.
Having made aliyah to Israel three years ago, the October 7 massacres prompted Jampolsky to fly back to family in San Paolo, Brazil. While there, Jampolsky continues to create pro-Israel Tik-Tok videos that regularly generate more than 200,000 views each, she told The Times of Israel.
Immediately after October 7, said Jampolsky, “everything changed online.”
Jampolsky is one of hundreds of Israel activists associated with the advocacy organizations Israel-Is and TalkIsrael. Two months ago, the groups trained a cohort of social media activists, including Jampolsky, to “change the narrative about Israel on TikTok,” she said.
The central problem confronting Israel activists on TikTok is the “algorithm’s completely personalized nature,” said Jampolsky. “It’s kind of insane,” she added.
Jampolsky was referring to TikTok’s ability to “feed” specific videos to people based on what they have already viewed or reacted to on the platform, which is valued at $5 billion.
“For Generation Z, the Gaza videos they are seeing on TikTok is their first exposure to Israel,” said Jampolsky. “They get a completely twisted idea of what the country is about,” she added.
Tellingly, most of the Arab creators in her network “did not have difficulty condemning the Hamas massacres,” she said. “It was very easy for them to condemn Hamas because they know what Hamas means.”
But both Jampolsky and Cohen pointed to “misinformation” as the major problem associated with TikTok’s algorithm, which not only “hyper-personalizes” each creator’s content, but simultaneously blocks opposing viewpoints.
“It has felt like getting swarmed by all these creators who hate Israel this past month,” said Jampolsky.
‘Immediately removed’
On the night of October 7, while Hamas terrorists were still on the loose, Cohen was drafted and went to his base. Immediately, he started working on his unit’s vehicles and tools.
“I’ve been trying to juggle between what’s going on with social media and actively fighting in the war itself, so it’s quite a challenge mentally, this massacre that took place on October 7 was really, really traumatic,” said Cohen.
“In the first two weeks of the war, I had nightmares. I was here, serving. Sleeping in my sleeping bag under the tent, I started crying because of the footage and images,” said Cohen, who has 63,000 followers on TikTok.
His journey to TikTok activism came from an earlier crisis: During the COVID pandemic, Cohen started to see “more and more antisemitic content online,” alongside little being done to combat it, he said.
Initially, Cohen made TikTok videos that “responded” to creators of videos advocating for the BDS movement against Israel. His strategy evolved to focus on videos that either educate people or “debunk” videos of anti-Israel creators, he said.
@adielofisrael #stitch with @Aurora Bird (Birdy) LAND BACK✊???? (unless you’re Jewish) #israel #palestine #gaza #indigenous #landback
The anti-Israel propaganda filling TikTok is difficult to block, said Cohen, in part because the videos are “masked as human rights or social justice, so TikTok wouldn’t ban these creators as easily as they would ban neo-Nazis,” he said.
However, said Cohen, the platform’s “block” feature is also “one of the main challenges we face, especially when things escalate, it becomes a trend,” said Cohen, who also generated pro-Israel on TikTok during the IDF’s Gaza operation “Guardian of the Walls” in 2021.
“Whoever is in charge of the algorithm, they are hyper-focused on us, the creators who make this content,” said Cohen.
In other words, TikTok differs from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, all of which are — broadly speaking — online versions of community bulletin boards. On TikTok, however, “going viral” is not about how many followers or likes you earn on your virtual wall, but about how many millions of people share a video you created.
“The most viral pro-Israel videos are not nearly as viral as the pro-Palestinian videos,” said Cohen. He said this is a reflection of how vastly pro-Israel activists are outnumbered on TikTok.
Since October 7, Cohen has had videos “immediately removed” by Tiktok because “the algorithm itself can go against you, in terms of the words it hears,” he said.
Prior to the Hamas massacres, TikTok notified creators of specific rule violations each time it removed videos. Since October 7, however, these “block” notes from TikTok no longer cite specific violations, said Cohen.
Videos that celebrate and justify the Hamas massacres, by way of contrast, have been viewed by millions of young adults around the world, Cohen alleged. There are not enough pro-Israel creators to take on the swarm, he said.
“The ease in which these videos just go viral and spiral all around the world is frightening, while pro-Israel creators are struggling to get their content seen by an international audience,” he said.

In a sense, said Cohen, the TikTok algorithm is like a global schoolyard: If many bullies attack pro-Israel creators simultaneously, the algorithm reflects that hate back to creators in the form of even more extreme videos, helping the audience become self-radicalized.
“It’s a mystery I can’t really explain other than bias of the platform itself or the people,” said Cohen of TikTok’s algorithm.
‘From the river to the sea’
There’s more to Taylor Swift than meets the eye, said Jampolsky.
Specifically, the iconic singer’s hits provide Jampolsky with frameworks for her TikTok videos and a “link” to young people around the world, she said.
Another challenge of creating pro-Israel TikTok content is that videos made in the Mideast generally do not “go viral” as easily as videos made in the US, said Jampolsky. Since October 7, however, it’s become easier for both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to “go viral” globally, or “break the wall,” as Jampolsky called it.
“History and lectures are not going to get views,” Jampolsky said. “I’m trying to put things in a more human perspective,” she added, referring to a video she created of running to a Tel Aviv bomb shelter with her dog.

Since last month’s massacres, millions of TikTok creators have viewed videos of the chant, “From the River to the Sea,” which refers to eliminating the Jewish state from within any borders, said Jampolsky.
“They share ‘From the River to the Sea,’ but when you ask them what that means, the majority don’t know,” Jampolsky said. “They are not really investigating the deep causes of the conflict,” she said.
If the pro-Israel community seeks to counter anti-Israel distortion on TikTok, “we need to take a lot of steps back, like 300 steps back, because we are just so involved and close to the issue,” said Jampolsky.
Again citing “misinformation” — as opposed to antisemitism — as the main threat posed by TikTok, Jampolsky shared the thought process of a “typical” Gen Z creator.
“Palestinians don’t deserve to die. I cannot support kids dying. So Israel is the one to blame,” she said. “And Jews are white supremacists who it’s hard to feel emotionally connected to,” said Jampolsky.
“Our challenge is to break this idea on social media,” Jampolsky said.
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