Can you get $7000 per propaganda post?

IS THE STATE of Israel paying $7000 per social media propaganda post? Readers familiar with Betteridge's Law - “any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word ‘no’ ” - will be unsurprised to learn this is not quite what the evidence shows.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (front, centre) meets with 20 pro-Israel American influencers at the Israel Consulate of New York on 26 September 2025

Photo by Avi Ohayon for Israel's Government Press Office (GPO)

Responsible Statecraft located a document filed under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA), detailing payments by the state of Israel, via Havas Media Group of Frankfurt, Germany, to Bridges Partners in Washington DC to “assist with promoting cultural interchange between United States and Israel” in support of something called the “Esther Project”.

As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency puts it in a comprehensive piece, it is unclear whether there is any link to “Project Esther”, a “plan to combat antisemitism” by the Heritage Foundation, an American right-wing think tank.

Responsible Statecraft - an arm of a think-tank called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft - headlined the report by Nick Cleveland-Stout “Israel is paying influencers $7000 per post”. Does this add up?

In the document is an order including $900,000 to cover social media work in June to November 2025. The order suggests that this will have covered recruiting around 18 influencers, producing between 100 and 120 posts.

But the payments are for “influencers and production” and Bridges Partners is operating as an agency and it would be extraordinary if it were not taking a cut. It is invoicing for $50,000 in the month of November to wrap up, with no mention of influencer payments. If that were its administration fee for each of the six months covered, that would suggest that the maximum that Bridges Partners is due for posts would be $600,000, or up to $6000 each. It's anyone's guess how much they would rake off for “production” but the Freelance would be surprised if it were less than half.

All that said, by the pricking of the Freelance thumbs that order is stuffed with, to use the technical accounting term, makey-uppy numbers.

Disclosure requirements

A Twitter post labelled to comply with the US Foreign Agents Registration Act: expand

In a follow-up report Nick Cleveland-Stout quotes Ben Freeman, the Director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute: “If you're being paid by a foreign government to influence the American public on that government's behalf you should register under FARA.” A lawyer who wanted to remain anonymous said that “Anyone who is distributing material propaganda and other informational materials aimed at the United States audience on behalf of a foreign government agency would need to be disclosed somewhere, including potentially by filing a short form registration.”

Ben Freeman adds that such posts should be clearly labelled - see the example pictured. There is a question over whether penalties apply to influencers who are genuinely not aware of the source of their payments.

The direct equivalent UK legislation is contained in Part 4 of the National Security Act 2023, which came into force on 1 July 2025. This set up a Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.

Under that “recognised news publishers” are exempt from registration. The Freelance is still trying to work out whether there are requirements on individual journalists; we may have to wait for a court case. Certainly, any organisation that signs a contract with a non-UK government to.organise an event that seeks to influence UK policy should register.

In the UK, the requirement to label posts would seem to be primarily imposed by the Advertising Standards Authority: see here.

© Mike Holderness

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