Back In mid-January, Mara Kronenfeld was googling the name of the nonprofit she runs, which raises money in the US on behalf of the leading humanitarian aid provider in Gaza. Atop the search results for her organization—UNRWA USA, partner to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—she saw a surprising ad. It read like a promo from the UN agency, but the link directed to an Israeli government website. Kronenfeld says she had found the beginnings of a months-long online advertising campaign by Israel to discredit and defund UNRWA.
About the time Kronenfeld encountered the ads, Israel had accused 12 UNRWA staffers of participating in the deadly attack by Hamas extremists on Israel last October. Israeli officials described UNRWA as a front for Hamas and urged governments such as the US to stop funding the agency. Kronenfeld’s impression was that Israel also wanted to tarnish, and cut off donations to, UNRWA USA.
In part due to UNRWA USA’s own Google search ads, donations to the organization had skyrocketed after Israel launched a full-scale war in Gaza to defeat Hamas, in the process triggering a food and shelter crisis. Kronenfeld says her organization raised over $32 million from about 73,000 donors in 2023, up from about $5 million from nearly 5,700 donors the year before.
By buying ads for searches for “UNRWA” and “UNRWA USA,” the Israeli government now appeared to be aiming to draw potential donors to a webpage full of allegations about why the UNRWA couldn’t be trusted. The page claims the UN agency has not declared whether employing members of Hamas would violate its neutrality and that the agency doesn’t investigate its facilities for abuse by extremists. In fact, UNRWA does require independence from military interests, and an outside review found evidence of facility inspections, though it suggested the checkups happen more frequently.
After seeing the ads—paid for by the Israeli Government Advertising Agency, according to details shown when clicking on the menu button beside them—Kronenfeld and her staff of seven quickly appealed to Google for help fighting what they viewed as a misinformation campaign.
What has happened since shows the delicate relationship Google has kept with its advertising client, Israel, and the limits of the company’s policing of alleged misinformation in ads. Several current and former Google employees tell WIRED the anti-UNRWA campaign is just one volley of ads that Israel has orchestrated in recent months that have drawn complaints both inside and outside of the company. The ads about UNRWA and another campaign targeting the Middle East have not been previously reported.
From May through July when users queried over 300 terms related to UNRWA, the Israeli ads came up 44 percent of the time that both they and UNRWA USA ads were eligible to appear, according to analytics from UNRWA USA’s Google Ads account. Meanwhile, UNRWA USA ads showed up in just 34 percent of eligible circumstances.
Kronenfeld says the impact of Israel’s campaign is difficult to measure. Her nonprofit has spent tens of thousands of dollars, in addition to staff time, attempting to outbid Israel for the Google search ad slots. However, UNRWA USA raised as much money in the first half of this year as it did in all of 2023, she says. Its 78,000 donors this year are a record for the organization, founded in 2005.
What Kronenfeld says truly worries her is that Americans are being exposed to Israel’s propaganda while trying to understand UNRWA’s role in the ongoing crisis. Beside the search ads, Israel has aired video ads in the US through Google that say “UNRWA is inseparable from Hamas” and that it “keeps employing terrorists.” Public misunderstanding could further jeopardize support from the US government, which until the war had been the largest donor to UNRWA.
“There is an incredibly powerful campaign to dismantle UNRWA,” Kronenfeld says. “I want the public to know what’s happening and the insidious nature of it, especially at a time when civilian lives are under attack in Gaza.”
Google spokesperson Jacel Booth tells WIRED that governments can run ads that adhere to the company’s policies and that users and employees are welcome to report alleged violations. “We enforce them consistently and without bias,” Booth says of the rules. “If we find ads that violate those policies, we take swift action.”
The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs in New York acknowledged but did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story over the past four months.
UNRWA Takes Action
Using nearly $1.5 billion annually in donor support, UNRWA employs about 30,000 people to educate, feed, and provide care for millions of Palestinian refugees in Gaza and neighboring areas. UNRWA supporters say Israel doesn’t like that the agency preserves Palestinians’ refugee status, which arguably gives them a better shot at reclaiming occupied land someday.
Israel for decades has accused UNRWA of standing in the way of lasting peace by protecting Hamas and enabling the US-designated terrorist organization to indoctrinate generation after generation with hateful ideology.
The agency has acted in response to Israel’s accusations. UNRWA this year has fired 13 employees, including nine whom an oversight body determined may have been involved in last year’s Hamas attack based on evidence provided by Israel. The US has paused funding to UNRWA since January, while other countries that cut off dollars to the agency this year, including Germany and Switzerland, pledged to reopen the spigot.
UNRWA’s commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, has said that his organization plays a neutral and vital role in the region and that it engages in screening and training to keep Hamas sympathizers out of its ranks.
Kronenfeld, who is Jewish, says Lazzarini’s transparency and good-faith efforts have left her feeling comfortable about her role. She joined UNRWA USA in 2020 because her grandfather had escaped Nazi Germany and instilled in her that no one should be brutalized ever again based on where they were born. Among her initiatives was ramping up online advertising, with the aim of bringing in at least $3.90 for every $1 spent.
Driven by the war, the return on investment has been $25 on every $1 spent this year, but the competition from Israel on Google has meant UNRWA USA is winning fewer advertising auctions and likely getting its message shown to fewer users.
After Kronenfeld and colleagues complained to Google in January about Israeli ads featuring headlines such as “UNRWA for Human Rights,” they say a company representative told them, without providing a reason, that the ads in question had been removed. Google’s Booth says there was no policy violation.
By May, per screenshots seen by WIRED, Israel was back to promoting the same content but with tweaked verbiage—“UNRWA Neutrality Compromised,” “Israel Unveils UNRWA Issues,” and “Israel Advocates for Safer, Transparent Humanitarian Practices”—that more clearly previewed what users would get if they clicked.
The revised ads, which linked to what UNRWA USA views as deeply dishonest distortions, have run across the US and Europe and continue to appear on Google as of this month despite additional UNRWA USA complaints, Kronenfeld says. She alleges these ads violate Google’s policies against “making claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process.” She also believes the ads go against Google’s policy barring the use of someone else’s trademarks “in a confusing, deceptive, or misleading way.”
Google denied a trademark complaint that UNRWA lodged in May on the basis that it hadn’t obtained a trademark in Jordan, where its ad account is registered, according to the agency.
It’s difficult to get a complete view of the breadth of Israel’s campaign because the search ads aren’t appearing in Google’s Ads Transparency Center, which leaves out some ads due to a number of technical and policy limitations. Google’s Booth says examples of Israel’s anti-UNRWA ads from January and May, which were shared by WIRED, do not violate company policies.
Complaints about rivals’ ads showing up in searches for a particular company or organization are nothing new for Google. Businesses end up spending vast sums to ensure they aren’t boxed out by rivals in the promoted links at the top of search results for their own name. In a study published this year on such competition, university researchers estimated that about $50 billion annually, or roughly a third of Google’s search ad revenue, comes from ads on queries in which users are looking up a specific website or brand. Google declined to comment on the research.
“I suspect Israel is paying a significant amount to make those ads show up consistently,” says Christo Wilson, a computer scientist at Northeastern University who coauthored the research. Given that Google seems unlikely to sacrifice sales by taking action on the issue, Wilson suggests the organizations being outbid stop trying to advertise for their name. “A massive pull-out would impact Google’s bottom line,” he says. “I understand that would be a very hard pill for a chief marketing officer to swallow when someone is saying your product isn’t good or that you’re a corrupt nonprofit.”
Google blocks certain ads from showing on search topics it considers “sensitive,” a designation it has employed during the 2020 US election, the Covid pandemic, and the ongoing war in Gaza, according to the company. But a Google employee not authorized to speak to the media says the company has chosen not to take action on searches for “UNRWA” and related terms despite their connection to the war. This person alleges Google is worried that overly strict enforcement against Israel might risk future business with the country. Google’s Booth disputes that policy decisions are affected by commercial considerations.
Middle East Targeting
Employees at Google have publicly raised concerns about Israel’s use of a number of Google technologies, such as cloud computing and Photos, as well a perceived bias among management at its YouTube unit toward favoring Israel on content and monetization policies. “We’ve seen Israel creatively weaponize a lot of Google services,” says Josh Marxen, a Google Cloud software engineer who has protested his division’s contract with Israel, a deal known as Nimbus.
While Nimbus has drawn more widespread and public protest, some employees say they have fumed within Google about Israel’s ad campaigns in part because users have complained about them.
In October, Google removed about 30 Israeli ads containing violent imagery following an investigation by Politico and also drew criticism for graphic Israeli ads that were shown in kids’ gaming apps. It wasn’t the first time that Israeli advertising had breached the company’s rules. For similar reasons, YouTube in May 2021 reportedly banned an Israeli ad that said the country would defend itself against Hamas.
This past April, users such as Nora Ahmed Shaheen, an artist in Egypt, started complaining on social media about what several people describe to WIRED as shocking ads from Israel interrupting their YouTube viewing. The ad Shaheen saw is in Arabic and describes Hamas as having the ability to end the war by releasing hostages and ceding control over Gaza. She flagged it in the YouTube app as problematic. “It’s a disgrace that YouTube is providing its platform for a government to force their sick ideologies into my account,” Shaheen tells WIRED, adding that she felt the ad tried to unfairly justify Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
Through Google’s advertising network, the ads also appeared on the websites of news outlets and other publications in the Middle East and North Africa. Some of the publishers complained to Google about the ads pushing Israeli political interests, according to two sources at the company.
Several major publishers in the Arab countries where the ads appeared, including United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain, did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment. Google’s Booth says publishers can block political ads and specific advertisers.
One of the sources within Google says the ads were notable because they were the first known example in many years of the Israeli government targeting political ads in Arab countries. The ad campaign appeared to stop around May, when WIRED began asking Israel’s foreign ministry and Middle East publishers about it. It’s unclear whether the ads are still airing in some form; Google’s Booth says the company does not have a specific policy regarding Israel running ads outside its borders.
The Google employees WIRED spoke with say they are concerned about the company profiting off what they view as Israel’s efforts to pin blame on organizations such as UNRWA and draw attention away from its own role in the Gaza crisis. “You shouldn’t be taking that money,” one of them says.
UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma says Israel’s ads and its broader campaign on social media and other platforms have severely hurt the agency’s reputation. “These ads are destructive to people,” she says. “They should stop, and those responsible for this sabotage should be held accountable. There should be a lot of follow up with companies like Google once the war is over. There’s a lot to answer to.”
