Documenting a Multimillion-Dollar Disinformation Operation in Lebanon: But Who's Really Behind It?"
What appeared to be a grassroots movement quickly unraveled into a multimillion-dollar disinformation operation, raising urgent questions about its true origins and potential to destabilize Lebanon
In Oct 2023, Billboard emerged across Lebanon with the slogan “Lebanon does not want war.” While seemingly neutral on the surface, the campaign was part of a multimillionaire dollar info op designed to frame Hezbollah as chief antagonists (as opposed Israel)
The campaign was attributed to an anonymous "coalition of Lebanese youth and businessmen". The only name that could be connected, was one Gina Al Khazen, working out of the UAE (According to SharqAlAwsat). Some of the billboards bore the branding 'One Peace Global'
But OPG was a front. The OPG Facebook page ran over 87 ads, pushing its 'peace' narrative. OPG claimed activities in Ukraine and Africa but lacked any substantial proof. The page even attempted to backdate its posts to make it look active in 2022 #Lebanon
As hashtags like #LebanonDoesNotWantWar spread, they overlapped with other campaigns, such as #NoToTheIranianOccupation and #2006WarWillNotBeRepeated. All these campaigns connected to 'groups' that ran ads on FB paid for in Vietnamese Dong and had websites on Hostinger
Another group, 'Shia Against War', part of the same network, targeted Lebanese Shia communities, rallying them against Hezbollah and Amal. Shia Against War ran FB ads promoting Tahoror - a Shia anti Hezbollah and anti Amal movement.
MEMRI, a propaganda website set up by former Israeli intelligence officials, tried to forge a link between Shia Against War and Taharor. However, in an interview with Al Modon Tahoror denied being associated with the Shia against War FB page or movement 🤔
This suggests either deception, or whoever running the info op was trying to promote anti-Hezbollah Shia groups. Shia Against War spent at least $6,300 on ads across platforms. The content spread across all these accounts was designed to vilify Hezbollah (not Israel)
Then the FB page of one of these anti Shia pages “War of 2006 is Remembered and Will Not Be Repeated” was changed to a FB page that linked to a network running anti-Muslim, anti-Immigrant, anti-Qatar disinfo—an odd but telling link to a MUCH wider influence op.
Meanwhile, further investigations on FB ad archives uncovered dozens more suspicious pages - some targeting Lebanon, such as: Sauvons le Liban (Save Lebanon) These pages ran hundreds of ads, with overlapping infrastructure. #Disinformation #Lebanon
Initially, Sauvons le Liban was a call to save Lebanon from war, and seemed to focus on Lebanon's Christian communities. However, it soon shifted to targeting Hezbollah and Iran exclusively, mostly sparing other actors in the region from critique.
Taken together the campaign sought to position Hezbollah and Iran as the chief threats to Lebanese security. However, the broader campaign is positioning Islam as the biggest threat to the West. It is clearly targeted at the Western and European right/far right.
At times the campaign promoted Shia political parties opposed to Hezbollah, while positioning itself as a sort of pro-Western/Christian campaign. But this could be pure dissimulation, and it would be rash to assume a clear link to any Lebanese party
As of now it is unclear who is behind this campaign. Sohan Dsouza and I worked on this investigation, along with Anuj Chopra at AFP, for over six months. It has ran ads in Time Square, been promoted by people like Rev Johnnie Moore, and even featured at CPAC .
One Redditer even claimed all these anti-Hezbollah 'Israeli' ads were ruining his masturbation sessions by appearing on porn sites. Unsurprising, as it was likely a multi-millionaire dollar operation
What we do know about the FB campaign, is that whoever ran it spend at least 1.2 million US dollars on thousands of ads. This was revealed by FB a month after Sohan DSouza and I released our big report. You can read our whole investigation here
The Qatar Plot Read the Reporthttps://sites.google.com/view/theqatarplotreport/home
Most of the assets were removed or suspended soon after we released our report, but OPG still seems active, and is mirroring Israeli propaganda about Lebanon (Hezbollah missiles in houses).
