Netanyahu acknowledges Israel losing online ‘propaganda war,’ should be doing more

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he and United States President Donald Trump have not spoken since the security cabinet approved a plan last Thursday to take control of Gaza City, but that he plans to speak with him soon.

“I haven’t spoken to him since last Thursday…I intend to speak with him very soon,” the premier says in response to a reporter’s question at his press conference about whether the two have discussed the plan since its approval.

Turning to a second question from the same reporter about “the propaganda war” Israel faces against anti-Israel media content, Netanyahu says: “I think that we’ve not been winning [the propaganda war], to put it mildly… There are vast forces arrayed against us.”

He describes a “big issue we have to contend with,” as “the algorithms of the social network that are driving a lot of everything else.”

“People who really know — they’re the foremost people in this field in the world — they’re telling me that about 60% of the responses on the social media are bots… They’re bots that, especially in America, want to attack the support that Israel has from the Republican side,” he says. “They describe themselves as homespun southerners, except that they’re writing from Asia somewhere.”

Netanyahu adds that “We also have to stand up and tell the truth, probably at a greater frequency than we’re doing now.” That, he says, is his purpose in the press conference.

He further says, “If you want to win this war, end it speedily. Expose the lies as much as you can… You win the war, the propaganda will die.”