September 5, 2025 | 10:47 am
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Google is in the middle of a six-month contract worth US$45 million, or around Rp740 billion, with the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to promote government messages and downplay the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. This was revealed in a report by Drop Site News on Wednesday, September 3, 2025, as quoted by Anadolu on Thursday, September 4, 2025.
The contract, signed at the end of June 2025, the media reported, depicts Google as a "key entity" in supporting Netanyahu's public relations strategy.
The campaign started days after Israel blocked food, medicine, fuel, and other humanitarian supplies from entering Gaza on March 2, 2025.
Israeli parliament members asked officials if the government was prepared to deal with the public relations fallout. “I began with the example of the cessation of humanitarian aid—did you prepare for this thing this morning?” asked Knesset member Moshe Tur-Paz, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee in the Israeli parliament.
Avichai Edrei, spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces, who was asked a similar question later in the session, assured legislators that work was underway, stating, “We could also decide to launch a digital campaign in this context, to explain that there is no hunger and present the data.”
Since then, Israeli government ads denying hunger in Gaza have been widely circulated, including a YouTube video from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs claiming there is food in Gaza. "Any other claim is a lie.”
The clip has been viewed more than 6 million times, mostly driven by paid promotion. According to the report, the ads were managed through YouTube and the Google Display & Video 360 platform, referred to as 'hasbara' in government documents—a Hebrew word often translated as 'propaganda.'
Records show that Israel also spent US$3 million on ads with U.S. social media company X and US$2.1 million with the French-Israeli platform Outbrain/Teads.
The Gaza Health Ministry said on Tuesday, September 2, 2025, that 185 people, including 12 children, died from hunger in August 2025. This is the highest monthly figure recorded since the Israeli genocidal war in the enclave began almost two years ago.
The ministry cited that 70 deaths occurred after the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) hunger monitoring system formally declared Gaza famine last month.
Health officials reported that more than 43,000 Palestinian children under the age of 5 suffer from malnutrition, in addition to 55,000 pregnant and lactating mothers.
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