W0W: Google and YouTube signed $45 million deal with Israel to run propaganda ads related to Gaza.
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Google signed a $45 million contract with the Israeli prime minister’s office to run a global digital advertising campaign promoting Israeli state messaging during its ongoing genocide in Gaza. The contract, first reported by Drop Site News, includes advertisements placed on YouTube and through Google’s Display & Video 360 platform, explicitly described in government documents as part of Israel’s propaganda war.Signed in June 2025, the contract with Google—covering YouTube and Display & Video 360, the company’s digital ad service—authorised an extensive propaganda campaign labelled explicitly as hasbara, a Hebrew term denoting state-backed propaganda, often deployed to whitewash Israeli military actions.The campaign was launched as international condemnation grew over Israel’s decision to cut off all food, fuel and humanitarian supplies to Gaza on 2 March, triggering what UN agencies describe as a man-made famine.One of the most widely viewed outputs of the campaign was a YouTube video by Israel’s foreign ministry, falsely claiming, “There is food in Gaza. Any other claim is a lie.” The ad was viewed over 6 million times, heavily boosted through paid promotion under the government contract.According to internal Israeli records, the initiative was coordinated through the Israeli Government Advertising Agency (Lapam), a department reporting directly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.As part of the broader campaign, Israel also spent:$3 million on advertising with X (formerly Twitter)$2.1 million with French-Israeli platform Outbrain/TeadsAn undisclosed amount promoting Israeli-aligned content across Meta’s platformsOther ads published under the contract targeted international institutions and NGOs. Several attempted to delegitimise United Nations Relief and Works Agency, accusing the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency of “deliberate sabotage” of aid delivery.
can't find any legit sources to confirm this, but doesn't matter since I never see Youtube ads anyway.
Google fires 28 workers for protesting $1.2 billion Israel contract
Workers staged sit-in protests at the company’s offices in Seattle, New York and Sunnyvale, California, over Project Nimbus, a joint contract to provide the Israeli government and military with cloud and artificial intelligence services.
www.nbcnews.com
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