Inquiry exposes massive Israeli media manipulation campaign in US

Files declassified in America have revealed the covert public relations and lobbying activities of Israel in the US.

The National Archive made the documents public following a Senate investigation. They suggest Israel has been trying to shape media coverage of issues it regards as important.

The files can be downloaded from the website of the Institute for Research on Middle Eastern Policy.

Alison Weir of the Council for National Interest in the US, an advocacy group on Middle East policy, said this information was not a surprise for her, as she did her own studies on this subject.

She believes Israeli influence is corrupting the American media, which no longer represents the views of the country's people.

“Part of their agenda is to make Americans fear and hate Arabs and Muslims and also, I fear, to make Muslims and Arabs fear and hate Americans,” Weir told RT. “This is very troubling and going on day by day.”

Grant F. Smith, who is a director of the institute in Washington, explained to RT what had been uncovered.

“These files are from a sealed Senate investigation which was the result of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the US Department of Justice looking into groups that brought $36 million into the US to plant stories in the US media and promote Israeli foreign policy objectives in the US,” he said.

“They are extremely relevant, because they reveal, for example, a vast effort to divert US attention from the Israeli Dimona nuclear weapons facility by saying it was merely a research center," he added. "They carefully tracked how that story was playing in the US media.”