Netanyahu claims social media manipulation hurt Israel’s image in the US

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed on Sunday on “60 Minutes” that the dramatic change in public opinion about his country could be attributed to the rise in social media.

“Israel has gone to incredible lengths to keep innocent civilians out of harm’s way,” Netanyahu said. “We’re sending them millions of text messages; we’re making millions of phone calls to them, brochures, pamphlets, you name it, okay? We’ve seen almost a worsening of support for Israel in the United States — I would say that’s almost 100% correlated with the geometric rise of social media.”

He continued, “And that’s not the only thing that’s causing this. And I don’t believe in censoring them or anything like that. But I’ll tell you what happened. We have a number of countries that are basically manipulating social media. And they’re doing it cleverly. And that’s something that hurts us a lot.”

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Netanyahu acknowledged that Israel made “mistakes” in its war against Hamas, but emphasized that these were not deliberate actions.

“Israel is besieged on the media front, on the propaganda front, and we haven’t been very successful in the propaganda war,” he said.

Netanyahu stated that even his host, Major Garrett, would not be immune from negative propaganda if there was enough pressure against him.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised President Donald Trump’s actions against Iran but said the war “is not over.” (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

“I could paint you as a monster,” Netanyahu said. “And if I say it often enough, enough people will believe it.”

An NBC News poll in March found that only 32 percent of Americans viewed Israel favorably, while 39 percent viewed Israel unfavorably. The change was much more pronounced among Democrats and independents; Republicans, however, were still largely sympathetic to the Jewish state.

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This change of view came in the wake of Israel’s war with Gaza, as well as US-led military strikes against Iran.

During the interview, Netanyahu stated that despite significant successes, the war with Iran is “not over” yet.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talked about the war with Iran on the “60 Minutes” program. (Andrew Cabellero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

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Netanyahu said, “I think it has achieved a lot, but it is not finished, because there is still nuclear material, enriched uranium, that needs to be removed from Iran. There are still enrichment facilities that need to be dismantled. There are proxies that Iran supports. There are still ballistic missiles that they want to produce. Now we have degraded most of them. But they are all still there and there is work to be done.”