He walked onto the stage at Utah Valley University on September 10, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA who had made his name on American campuses. Before the day was out, Charlie Kirk had been shot during the event and later died at a nearby hospital.
In the stunned hours that followed, some claimed he was no longer pro-Israel, while allies published messages that disputed it. As reported by The New York Post, Kirk had in fact written to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May, warning that Israel was losing the “information war” among young Americans and urging a communications intervention.
Kirk’s letter is the right starting point because it sketched a battlefield that looks very much like the one Israel is fighting on now.
He described a feed where accusations move faster than context and called for rapid response, first-person testimony, and younger Israeli voices who can speak in TikTok’s vernacular rather than in the cadence of a press room.
He also warned that relying on American surrogates to defend Israel would not be enough. The world he outlined is the one that now dominates the headlines, and it is the world the Israeli government is moving to address.
According to filings and corroborating press accounts, Israel’s Foreign Ministry is turning to professional political communicators in the US to help prosecute that fight.
As reported by Responsible Statecraft, invoices and scopes of work show a program managed by Bridge Partners that assembled a cohort of 14 to 18 American creators and paid roughly $6,000- $7,000 per post to produce dozens of pro-Israel items over several months, with total billings around $900,000.
That same reporting notes Netanyahu telling supporters, “our influencers, they are very important,” a phrase that captures the shift from podiums to feeds. The approach that began as a plea in Kirk’s memo has become a checkbook strategy that rents reach from those who already command it.
Running alongside that work is a separate agreement with Brad Parscale’s firm, Clock Tower X LLC. As reported by O’Dwyer’s, the Foreign Ministry signed a four-month, $ 6 million deal that requires at least 100 creative assets per month and proposes up to 5,000 monthly variants tailored to different audiences.
According to Responsible Statecraft’s review of the plan, at least 80% of the content is aimed squarely at Gen Z across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts, with a target of 50 million impressions per month and syndication into friendly broadcast networks. The logic is simple to state and harder to execute: Be present where young people actually spend their time, and do it at scale.
What is new is not only the money but the promise to shape how artificial intelligence (AI) talks about Israel. As reported by Responsible Statecraft, the Parscale scope includes building new websites that “deliver GPT framing results” in chatbot conversations and deploying predictive SEO tools to influence what generative systems ingest and echo back to users.
In one light, this looks like the next version of search engine optimization. In another, it looks like an attempt to launder talking points through knowledge systems that users assume are neutral. The tactic may prove technically clever, but it raises questions that go beyond communications and into trust.
The ethical risk is not hypothetical. As reported by The Verge, social platforms previously disrupted a covert network linked to Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry that used fake American personas and AI-generated posts to lobby US lawmakers about the Israel-Hamas War.
The dangers of treating authenticity as a hurdle
Even if the new push is more transparent, it will be judged in the shadow of that history. When a government treats authenticity as a hurdle rather than a design principle, it pays a reputational tax in the very communities it hopes to persuade. Young audiences who have lived through a decade of sponcon and disinformation are quick to notice seams.
The target is Gen Z because the polling is very clear. According to a Gallup measure cited in the Parscale filing, only nine percent of Americans aged 18 to 34 supported Israel’s military campaign at mid-year. Broader favorability among under-30s lags older cohorts by wide margins over the past two years.
Those numbers are a warning that donor enthusiasm and congressional votes can outpace the affections of the generation that will soon dominate the electorate and the culture.
The same cohort organizes differently. According to a United Way National Capital Area survey, about one-third of Gen Z reports regular engagement in activism, more than half have participated in rallies or demonstrations, and roughly two-thirds say their activism is primarily digital.
The same research suggests moral motivation, rather than party loyalty, is the dominant trigger for action. These are not audiences waiting to be sold a slogan. They interrogate messengers, they reward candor, and they tune out messages that feel scripted or transactional.
The question, then, is whether money can buy what presence must earn. As reported by The Daily Dot, even relatively small micro-grants to pay students to attend a pro-Israel rally in Washington drew accusations of astroturfing and turned the debate into a quarrel about optics, rather than meaning.
Paying influencers is not inherently disqualifying. Creators disclose sponsors every day and keep credibility when the voice and editorial control remain their own. The danger grows when payments intersect with geopolitics and disclosure is uneven, or when the message begins to sound like a release dressed in creator clothes.
There is a better path, and Israel has already taken parts of it. As reported by TalkIsrael’s program materials, the Creator Council and Creator Lab offer stipends, training, mentorship, and community to young creators in the US and Israel who want to tell their own stories over months, not news cycles.
The intention is to build a pipeline rather than rent a moment. The open question is whether this slower, quieter method will get the patience and investment it needs while flashier metrics soak up headlines. Kirk’s letter is a map, and the point is to let twenty-something creators take the mic.
There are also lessons from movements that actually move people. In Egypt and Morocco, youth initiatives that began as testimony and conversation grew into advocacy because they were rooted in lived experience and invited participation.
As reported by UN-affiliated coverage, Egypt’s Speak Up platform amplified survivors of harassment in their own words and forced institutions to respond; in Morocco, workshops turned skeptics into advocates because participants felt seen rather than targeted. The model is to empower ordinary people, accept complexity, and connect stories to everyday life.
There is something to learn, too, from the architecture that Charlie Kirk helped build. As reported by Education Week, Turning Point USA scaled by building chapters, assigning organizers, distributing repeatable “activism kits,” and treating media as a daily product rather than an afterthought. You can dispute the content and concede the scaffolding.
A pro-Israel equivalent would look less like a factory and more like a federation. It would create campus and city chapters, pair young leaders with mentors, and lower the cost of participation with simple toolkits for respectful debates, local projects, and persistent dialogue. What should not transfer is the habit of turning confrontation into entertainment; the audience Israel most needs to reach is the movable middle, not the extremes.
Measurement must evolve alongside method. Impressions are easy to count and easy to buy. Persuasion is harder. A credible dashboard would track sentiment among neutral and skeptical cohorts, message recall a week later, opt-ins to deeper learning, volunteer hours, event attendance, and the temperature of campus climates over time.
According to Responsible Statecraft’s summary of the Parscale scope, the plan promises 50 million impressions per month; those numbers will not mean much if minds do not move with them. The results that matter look more like relationships than like reach.
Transparency should be a feature. If a post is sponsored, say so. If a clip contains an error, correct it publicly. If a tactic crosses a line, retire it and explain why. The paradox of a feed culture that prizes perfection is that admitting imperfection often persuades better than polish.
As reported by The Verge, platforms are more likely to cooperate with communicators who err on the side of disclosure, and audiences are more likely to keep listening to voices that show their work.
Kirk wrote as a practitioner who had spent years testing what lands with young audiences. His argument was not that Israel needed a new slogan. It was that Israel needed new habits, speed, presence, humility, and the courage to let young Israelis speak first about the lives they lead and the hopes they hold.
According to Responsible Statecraft and O’Dwyer’s, the checks are written, the briefs are drafted, and the dashboards are ready. What happens next will tell us whether Israel treats Kirk’s letter as a to-do list or as a warning.
If the coming months bring disclosures about paid posts paired with visibly independent voices, if they bring live dialogues with critics, serial stories from medics, teachers and families, and patient investment in chapters rather than single-serve virality, the needle will start moving toward the right direction.
If, instead, the news is about impression targets and clever ways to make chatbots sound friendly, the numbers on the dashboard may rise while the numbers that matter, trust and curiosity, continue to slip. The letter that opened this column was very direct, because its author could feel the ground moving under his feet.
The ground is still moving. The choice now is whether to sprint after the algorithm or to help a new generation hear human voices again.