In January, Mara Kronenfeld, who runs UNRWA USA—a nonprofit that helps raise money for Palestinian refugees—was shocked by what she found online. When she Googled her organization’s name, she saw ads that looked like they came from the UN, but when she clicked on them, they led to an Israeli government website. It turned out that Israel was running a secret online ad campaign to discredit UNRWA, the organization UNRWA USA supports.
This ad campaign started around the same time Israel accused several UNRWA staffers of being involved in a deadly Hamas attack. Israel claimed that UNRWA was too close to Hamas and urged other countries, like the US, to stop funding it. Kronenfeld believed that this campaign was also aimed at reducing donations to UNRWA USA.
Interestingly, donations to UNRWA USA had soared after Israel’s recent actions in Gaza. In 2023, the organization raised over $32 million from about 73,000 donors, compared to $5 million from 5,700 donors the previous year. This surge was partly due to their own Google ads promoting their work.
But Israel’s ads were showing up prominently in Google search results for UNRWA and UNRWA USA. These ads tried to convince people that UNRWA was corrupt and untrustworthy. Despite UNRWA’s efforts to keep its operations neutral and transparent, the ads claimed otherwise. Kronenfeld and her small team were alarmed and complained to Google, but the issue continued.
From May to July, Israel’s ads appeared 44% of the time when users searched for UNRWA-related terms, compared to 34% for UNRWA USA’s own ads. This meant that more people saw Israel’s negative ads instead of UNRWA USA’s positive messages. Kronenfeld and her team spent a lot of money trying to outbid Israel for ad space but struggled to keep up.
What worried Kronenfeld the most was that American and European audiences were being misled by these ads. They saw messages claiming that UNRWA was linked to terrorism and not properly checking its facilities. This could lead to a loss of support from the US government, which had been the largest donor to UNRWA before the war.
UNRWA, which uses nearly $1.5 billion each year to support Palestinian refugees, has faced ongoing criticism from Israel. The agency has fired employees who were allegedly linked to Hamas and tried to prove its neutrality. Despite these efforts, Israel’s campaign aimed to paint UNRWA as biased and ineffective.
Google, which profits from ads, has been criticized for not taking stronger action against these ads. Some Google employees and users complained about the ads, but Google maintained that they did not violate its policies. Critics argue that Google’s reluctance to act might be due to its business relationship with Israel.
The situation has led to a complex and contentious battle over how information is presented and who gets to control the narrative in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. As Israel’s ads continued to run, UNRWA USA faced an uphill struggle to maintain its reputation and funding while dealing with this high-stakes online campaign.
