The French newspaper Le Monde reveals details of a three-year propaganda campaign targeting Qatar, Muslims and immigrants An investigation published by the newspaper "Le Monde" revealed an extensive propaganda campaign targeting Qatar, Muslims and immigrants, especially in France, around the elections, amid signs of Israeli influence on public opinion. The campaign received at least 830 million views on YouTube, TikTok and Facebook, and its budget was estimated at more than 10 million euros. The purpose of the campaign was to spread racist and hostile feelings towards Islam and to attack the state of Qatar. The content of the campaign was varied, including satirical ads inspired by the famous video game "Grand Theft Auto" in which a man dressed in Gulf clothes buys European properties to turn into mosques, and an ad in Doha was labeled "support for terrorism" by Le Monde. The campaign continued despite clear violations of the platform's rules and repeated complaints, as TikTok and YouTube's censorship systems failed to block her content and accounts were deleted but reinstated in less than 24 hours. Descriptive data showed that the editorial team worked according to the local Israeli time zone, and the manipulation extended to the Wikipedia encyclopedia through fake accounts in Israel, combined with critical publication of Iran and Hezbollah, without negative mention of Israel. The research links the project to people involved in a previous project calling for a boycott of Qatar that was launched after the events of October 2023, Haaretz reported, as the project was launched through a newsroom that included political marketing experts and was abruptly stopped after the reports were produced.

The French newspaper Le Monde reveals details of a three-year propaganda campaign targeting Qatar, Muslims and immigrants An investigation published by the newspaper "Le Monde" revealed an extensive propaganda campaign targeting Qatar, Muslims and immigrants, especially in France, around the elections, amid signs of Israeli influence on public opinion. The campaign received at least 830 million views on YouTube, TikTok and Facebook, and its budget was estimated at more than 10 million euros. The purpose of the campaign was to spread racist and hostile feelings towards Islam and to attack the state of Qatar. The content of the campaign was varied, including satirical ads inspired by the famous video game "Grand Theft Auto" in which a man dressed in Gulf clothes buys European properties to turn into mosques, and an ad in Doha was labeled "support for terrorism" by Le Monde. The campaign continued despite clear violations of the platform's rules and repeated complaints, as TikTok and YouTube's censorship systems failed to block her content and accounts were deleted but reinstated in less than 24 hours. Descriptive data showed that the editorial team worked according to the local Israeli time zone, and the manipulation extended to the Wikipedia encyclopedia through fake accounts in Israel, combined with critical publication of Iran and Hezbollah, without negative mention of Israel. The research links the project to people involved in a previous project calling for a boycott of Qatar that was launched after the events of October 2023, Haaretz reported, as the project was launched through a newsroom that included political marketing experts and was abruptly stopped after the reports were produced.