Coffee Break: Hasbara Ain’t Cheap, Musk, Ellison, Saudis, All Tapped

The practitioners of Hasbara are desperately ratcheting up their control of American corporate and social media and are reportedly seeking funding from the Arab Gulf states to help.

The MAGA/MIGA conflict that is splitting Trump’s Republican coalition is one factor stressing zionist narrative control, but fundamentally fallout from Gaza is driving the desperation.

The increasingly precarious state of the AI bubble that’s been propping up Silicon Valley and the entire American economy is putting more pressure on the financial underpinnings of Hasbara, Inc.

Holocaust Education Sending Wrong Message?

Former Obama, Clinton, Kerry and Gore speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz perhaps spoke more truth than she meant to when speaking (video) at the The 2025 General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America.

Hurwitz starts with a pretty standard condemnation of 21st Century communications, blaming social media, although it is interesting to note her definition of “mainstream” as not expressing “extreme anti-Israel views.”

I think that since October 7th, but really before then, there have been huge shifts in America on how people think about Jews and Israel.

And I think that is especially true of young people.

So, we are now wrestling with a new, I think, generational divide here.

And I think that’s particularly true in that social media is now our source of media.

It used to be that the the media you got in America was American media and it was pretty mainstream. It generally didn’t express extreme anti-Israel views. You had to go to a pretty weird bookstore to find global media and fringe media.

But today, we have social media, which is a global medium. It is shaped, its algorithms are shaped by billions of people worldwide who don’t really love Jews.

And so, while in the 1990s, you know, a young person probably wasn’t going to find Al Jazeera or someone like Nick Fuentes, today those media outlets find them. They find them on their phones.

It’s also this increasingly post-literate media, less and less text, more and more videos. So, you have Tik Tok just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza.

And this is why so many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews because anything that we try to say to them, they are hearing it through this wall of carnage.

So I want to give data and information and facts and arguments and they are just seeing in their minds carnage and I sound obscene.

It’s also noteworthy that she does not see video evidence of mass murder as something that should be weighed equally with “facts and arguments.”

But the novel thing she said regarded “Holocaust education” which she characterizes as “a very smart bet that made” “in this new media environment” but is now worried that it “may be confusing some of our young people” into thinking that “anti-Semitism is like anti-Black racism” and “the lesson of the Holocaust is that you fight Israel.”

I’m quoting this section in full because it’s the kind of thing that would have been dismissed as anti-Semitic conspiracy theory if said by Lyndon Larouche in the 1990s.

And you know, I think unfortunately the very smart bet that we made on Holocaust education to serve as anti-Semitism education in this new media environment, I think that is beginning to break down a little bit because, you know, Holocaust education is absolutely essential, but I think it may be confusing some of our young people about anti-Semitism because they learn about big strong nazis hurting weak emaciated Jews and they think, ‘Oh, anti-Semitism is like anti-Black racism, right? powerful white people against powerless black people.’

So when on TikTok all day long they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising that they think, ‘Oh, I know the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big powerful people hurting the weak.’

Caitlin Johnstone titled her response “Zionists Are Freaking Out About Losing Control Of The Narrative” and I’ll quote a key passage:

It’s just so fascinating to see a former White House speechwriter making so many of the points that anti-Zionists have been making for years, but taking the exact opposite meaning from them.
…
Hurwitz isn’t denying Israel’s abuses or framing its genocidal atrocities as the problem, she’s just coming right out and saying that people obtaining information and moral clarity about those abuses is the problem. The atrocities aren’t wrong, what’s wrong is people seeing those atrocities and calling them what they are.

I love the way she complains that she looks “obscene” for trying to lay out arguments and narratives justifying the Gaza holocaust for people who’ve seen the “wall of carnage” from the genocide. I mean, yes. Yes obviously you’re going to look obscene if you try to tell someone why raw video footage of massacres, mutilated children and emaciated bodies is actually showing something that is justifiable and acceptable.

You can’t stand in front of a pile of child corpses justifying their murder and then whine when people ignore your spinmeistering and keep staring at the tiny bodies. That’s like murdering an entire family and then telling the cops, “But you’re not listening to my reasons for killing them!” They’re doing the normal thing while you are being obscene.

So yea, there’s that.

Now that we’ve set the context and shown the panic driving Israel’s quest for total narrative control, let’s look at some of the tactical aspects of that quest.

Taking Hasbara to Church and ChatGPT

Haaretz dropped a blockbuster report ten days ago that reveals the aggressive and ambitious nature of Hasbara in 2025:

The Israeli government has signed contracts worth millions of dollars in recent months to rehabilitate Israel’s standing in American public opinion, both online and offline. Amid a sharp drop in support from the conservative right, Israel has hired firms to conduct not just “hasbara [public diplomacy] campaigns” but also campaigns targeting millions of Christian churchgoers, bot networks to amplify pro-Israel messages online, and efforts to influence both search results and the responses given by popular AI services like ChatGPT.

Among the experts recruited is a former campaign manager for Donald Trump and many of the other firms are linked to the Republican party or Evangelical communities, indicating that Israel is focusing massive efforts on communities once considered automatically pro-Israel. Among the campaigns’ goals is fighting antisemitism, which has risen alongside the decline in support for Israel. Together, these campaigns signal a new phase in Israel’s post-war public diplomacy strategy, and a shift in the way it uses agents – both AI and human influencers – for hasbara abroad.
…
Payments are routed through Havas Media Germany GmbH, a subsidiary of the international advertising and public relations giant Havas. In practice, Havas serves as an intermediary, executing contracts with U.S. firms on Israel’s behalf. The documents show that since 2018, the company has received at least $100 million to promote Israeli tourism campaigns in the United States and it also works with other countries, including several in the Gulf, on similar projects.

The largest of the new hasbara contracts was signed in August with a firm called Clock Tower X, owned by Brad Parscale, who played a lead role in Trump’s digital campaigns in 2016 and 2020. The $6 million, four-month contract – signed between his firm and Havas Media on behalf of the Israeli government – calls for “strategic consulting, planning, and communications services to develop and execute a broad U.S. campaign to combat antisemitism.”

According to the filing, Parscale’s company will produce “at least 100 core pieces of content per month” – including videos, audio, podcasts, graphics and text – and “5,000 derivative versions” monthly, aiming for 50 million impressions a month. Eighty percent of the content will target young Americans on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Campaign messages will be distributed via Salem Media Network, a conservative Christian media group that owns more than 200 radio stations and websites. Parscale was appointed this year to lead Salem’s strategy.

Lucrative work if you can get it and don’t mind a little blood on your fangs hands.

The American Conservative has more details on the Salem Media aspect of this caper:

Salem Media, one of America’s largest conservative media conglomerates, may have already begun integrating paid-for Israeli government narratives across its extensive network of platforms. The arrangement, formalized through a seven-figure contract, raises significant questions about the intersection of foreign influence on an increasingly fracturing conservative media environment. Salem did not respond to The American Conservative’s request for comment.

In September, the Israeli government retained Salem Media’s chief strategy officer, Brad Parscale, to advocate for Israeli interests through a $6 million financial arrangement. The contract filed with the Department of Justice explicitly outlines the “integration of narrative messaging into Salem Media Network properties and aligned distribution channels” as one of its key deliverables.

Salem Media operates 82 radio stations across the United States and manages high-profile websites like Townhall and RedState that serve as influential platforms in shaping conservative discourse. Salem also hosts multiple podcasts featuring prominent voices in the conservative movement. Among those programs are The Charlie Kirk Show, The Dinesh D’Souza Podcast, The Josh Hammer Show, and The Right View with Lara Trump.

According to company data, the network generates 80 million monthly website page views with 37 million monthly app visits. Salem’s newsletter operation reaches 4 million active subscribers, delivering 310 million newsletters every month, and also touts 44 million “fans” on Facebook.

Parscale now serves dual roles: advancing Salem’s business interests while simultaneously working as a registered and compensated foreign agent for Israel. The implications extend to Salem’s roster of prominent commentators, particularly Dinesh D’Souza and Josh Hammer, who have become central figures in an escalating debate within conservative circles about America’s relationship with Israel and role in the Middle East policy more broadly.

But Parscale can’t do it all alone.

Musk’s X No Longer Translating Hebrew

Clearly this is a time to leave no stone unturned for Team Hasbara, so they mopped up an embarrassing detail this week, or maybe Elon Musk did it all on his own out of his sincere concern about anti-Semitism.

I’ll let Grok explain:

Translation from Hebrew was disabled because it often amplified inflammatory or policy-violating content, like calls for violence, to a global audience via inaccurate or literal renditions. X prioritizes free speech for opinions but limits features that exacerbate harm without…

— Grok (@grok) November 16, 2025

As to why Elon Musk might think this was necessary, here’s one example translated from the Hewbrew:

pic.twitter.com/yDseDDhbg2

— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) November 19, 2025

TikTok Is Now a Zionist Free Speech Zone

While it’s not entirely clear that a new ownership consortium including Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Rupert Murdoch, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz have completed their takeover of TikTok (based on I don’t believe anything Trump 2.0 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant says and he’s the one saying the deal is done), what is clear is that their new Public Policy Manager, Hate Speech, Erica Mindel is on the J-O-B.

Before we look at Mindel’s work, let’s review what’s been reported about the new owners, via Forbes:

Software giant Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake and MGX, an AI-focused investment firm established by the government of Abu Dhabi, are expected to own around 45% of the new TikTok.

Silver Lake also has significant ties to the Gulf States with Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co. owning 5% of the VC firm.

But let’s get back to Erica Mandel and her work at Tik Tok, via Mel the Village Crazy Lady:

Remember that time that Congress held a billion hearings on “antisemitism on TikTok” because people were sharing videos from Gaza?

Well now that Zionists own the platform, this is what their spaces sound like: https://t.co/cH2hE2pSyK pic.twitter.com/jRJqFT5EUp

— Mel (@Villgecrazylady) November 18, 2025

Both videos feature a man identified as “Older Millennial” who is indulging in grossly eliminationist rhetoric like “if we leave a scrap of Palestinian DNA in Gaza…”, “if we destroy everything in Gaza what will be the loss to mankind”, and in the top video he proposed issuing “hunting licenses” to those wishing to murder Palestinians in Gaza.

Cleansing Tik Tok of Pro-Palestinian Voices

Lest you think Mindel has been idle, since she came on board Tik Tok no longer serves up anything in response to searches for Nick Fuentes, and is “banning users from calling the IDF “terrorists” and rolling out automated moderation that retroactively wipes posts. Users report “Free Palestine” comments disappearing in real time and Israeli war-crimes videos taken down” per Drop Site News.

Glenn Greenwald spoke to Guy Christensen, an American advocate for Gaza and Tik Tokker with 3.5 million followers on the platform about the new Hasbara regime on the site.

The 19-year-old Christensen explains that prior to October 7, 2023, he was a non-political poster on the platform with over 2 million followers when “my feed was flooded with pro-Israel propaganda dehumanizing Palestinians. And me having no prior knowledge about Israel was shocked. I was disgusted by what I was hearing, not like not knowing anything. And, that shock provoked me to dig into the reality of Gaza.”

Christensen was “disenrolled” from Ohio State University in May after completing his freshman year.

The univeristy claimed it “received ‘myriad communications’ from ‘members of the university community’ expressing their ‘fear of violence and for their personal safety based on (Christensen’s) social media posts.’

Christensen blames Attorney General Pam Bondi and Democratic Congressman Richie Torres, among others, for driving his expulsion. The ACLU has taken up Christensen’s cause in a lawsuit.

But back to our topic, regarding the new Tik Tok policies Christensen says:

They mandate that people have to condemn terrorist groups designated by the US State Department, when mentioned in any videos, even when mentioned in a neutral, investigative context.

They opened the door to classifying anti-Israel speech as hate speech based on their new clause about national origin. They ban the reading of manifestos. They restrict videos from the feed that show videos from war, aka Gaza. And so I’ve been forced and other people have been forced to stop showing real footage, real imagery from the destruction of the Palestinian nation in the Gaza Strip.

As soon as these uh changes went into effect, my videos started getting banned or removed from the recommendation feed left and right.

And to kind of put this into perspective, over the last, you know, almost 2 years before these changes, as I was posting consistently about Palestine every single day, there’s only been a handful of videos that I’ve ever gotten removed.

I looked and over the last year prior to September 13th, it was one or two that you could even count.

So very quickly (after the new policies were implemented) I racked up about 10 violations either (videos) removed completely without any recourse to appeal or they were shadowbanned.

I would get like um 100 views from people who only went directly to my profile to view it and my fellow collaborators fellow people in the movement on TikTok, I reached out to them and they reported back the same exact thing.

Many accounts other than Christensen’s, including Breaking Points Krystal Ball, have been throttled, banned, or shadowbanned on Tik Tok since Mindel took over “hate speech” on the platform.

No one is even bothering to pretend that Chinese manipulation of the algorithm, the ostensible reason the platform was banned by the U.S. Congress, was really a concern.

Rather the Washington Post handwrings about the 17-to-1 preponderance of pro-Palestinian videos vs pro-Israel videos on the platform.

The hasbara happens out in the open now.

The Ellisons Have Been Busy Hasbara Elves at Paramount

Since I last updated about David Ellison (Larry’s nepo-baby) and Paramount, the team has been busy cracking down on free speech.

Per Variety:

An Oct. 29 round of roughly 1,000 layoffs hit women in high-profile roles hard. Among the 14 reported TV executives who received a pink slip — spanning CBS, BET and MTV — 11 were women. Over at CBS News, some cuts — like Tracy Wholf, a senior producer of climate and environmental coverage — were viewed as Trump-friendly moves. One staffer says that the ax conspicuously fell on those whose reporting featured an anti-Israel bent, including foreign correspondent Debora Patta, who had been covering the war in Gaza for the past three years.
…
Paramount’s leadership has not shied away from making its views on the war in Gaza public. In September, it became the first major studio to denounce a celebrity-driven open letter signed by A-listers like Emma Stone and Javier Bardem that called for a boycott of Israeli film institutions implicated in “genocide and apartheid” against Palestinians. (Warner Bros. followed, but cited legal reasons for its decision.) And sources say Paramount maintains a list of talent it will not work with because they are deemed to be “overtly antisemitic” as well as “xenophobic” and “homophobic.” Whether the boycott signatories are on that list is unclear.

[Update, Nov. 7: Other sources intimately familiar with Paramount said that while an itemized list does not exist, the management team shares a set of values and has no desire to work with anyone who expresses hate in public and damaging ways].

Bari Weiss’ takeover at CBS News is also getting press, from Puck at the end of October:

she has had real discussions about the feasibility of their transfer. Her targets have included Fox News anchors Bret Baier, Bill Hemmer, and Dana Perino, as well as CNN analyst Scott Jennings; and, as I reported earlier this week, she has also discussed expanding Anderson Cooper’s role at the network beyond 60 Minutes.

In an industry where talent acquisition has its own set rules of engagement, Bari’s instinctive and freewheeling approach has struck many as unorthodox. To many TV news veterans, it is also seen as a sign of her inexperience and lack of managerial finesse. Network executives lock their talent into yearslong contracts—Anderson’s runs through 2026, Bret’s into 2028, and Dana’s into the 2030s—and include specified negotiation windows that don’t open until the final three to six months of the agreement.

Savvier network leaders tend to re-up their stars before that window ever opens. Getting out of these contracts isn’t impossible, of course, but it doesn’t happen on a whim—and it usually requires quite a bit of discretion.

The casual, D.I.Y. approach is very on brand for Bari, and presumably one of the reasons that David Ellison brought her in to disrupt the business. In her very first days at the network, she made an impression on staff by personally texting major guests—Bibi Netanyahu, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Hillary Clinton, Condi Rice—to book them for segments on the Israel-Gaza conflict. (On Friday, Trump sat down with Norah O’Donnell for his first interview on the network since he sued 60 Minutes.)

Paramount Alone Isn’t Enough

But Paramount is small beans in the overall media picture, which explains the Ellisons’ drive to acquire WBD (Warner Bros Discovery).

Keep in mind, streaming has completely upended the American media business. The lumbering titans that bought up most of the nation’s TV networks and movie studios are getting pwned by Netflix and Alphabet’s YouTube.

pic.twitter.com/fqYJtLxYmu

— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) November 19, 2025

Let’s hear from The New York Times regarding Paramount’s efforts to acquire WBD:

Over the course of four weeks, Paramount made three offers to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, ratcheting up the financial stakes of a deal that would reshape the media landscape.
…
The move essentially kicked off a public frenzy of interest from other potential suitors this week, including Comcast and Amazon. If they bid, that could pressure Paramount to further increase its offer.

Warner Bros. Discovery said on Tuesday that it was initiating a sale because of “the unsolicited interest of multiple parties” for both some parts and all of the company.

Paramount’s first bid was for $19 a share, before moving up to $22 in late September.

Paramount’s latest bid was delivered on Oct. 13, offering to pay the company’s shareholders $23.50 a share in cash and stock, according to the letter. That offer represented an 87 percent premium to Warner Bros. Discovery’s share price before its intent to make a bid for the company was first reported on in early September. On Wednesday, Warner Bros. shares closed at $20.53.

A takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount would be a tectonic shift for the media industry. It would combine two of the largest Hollywood studios, Warner Bros. and Paramount, granting huge clout at the box office and putting CNN and CBS News under the same corporate umbrella, which would give the new company enormous sway over the news industry. It would combine Paramount+ and HBO Max, two of the biggest streaming services, bringing the company’s movies and shows into hundreds of millions of living rooms.

According to Variety (in a report which Paramount denies), Paramount is “putting together a $71 billion bid for WBD in conjunction with funds from three Arab countries: Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA).”

Regarding Paramount’s denial, one media insider reports:

Sources familiar with the talks say the connections behind that capital did not appear on their own.

Ari Emanuel has long standing ties across Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi, and he publicly supported Ellison’s previous Paramount effort.

Paramount issued a denial, but multiple industry sources confirmed that a holding company structure allows outside capital to participate without ever appearing on Paramount’s balance sheet.

I’ve previously posted on Ari Emanuel’s involvement in the Ellisons’ acquisition of Paramount.

Yahoo Finance had more on the wheeling and dealing going on in the Trump White House this week while the POTUS is hosting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (and cutting some private Trump organization deals of their own):

Elon Musk, Tim Cook, golfer Bryson DeChambeau and other notables will join Ellison at a black-tie dinner held in the Saudi royal’s honor, a person familiar with the guest list tells Deadline. Earlier Tuesday, Trump met with Cristiano Ronaldo, the soccer star who recently re-upped his $200 million-a-year contract with Saudi club Al-Nassr. Ronaldo was also on the guest list for the dinner.

A Variety report, citing anonymous sources, said a coalition involving Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar, had formed in support of a forthcoming $71 billion bid by Paramount for WBD, which would be a notch higher than prior bids in the $60 billion-plus range.

Now why would David Ellison need to go to the Gulf States to fund his hasbara?

Maybe Daddy’s company Oracle is having some financial issues?

Oracle Doesn’t Have Infinite Money

CNBC reports that Oracle has lost one third of its market cap since September and is issuing $38 billion in debt to “finance its AI buildout”.

Reuters is reporting that investor sentiment on that Oracle debt is bearish:

Oracle bonds have taken a hit in recent days following a report that the cloud and artificial intelligence service provider plans to add another $38 billion to its heavy debt load to fund its AI infrastructure, according to analysts and investors.
…
“What’s interesting is most of the (major tech) companies are trying to sustain their (stock) buyback programs at the same time that they’re spending on capex currently and to do that, they’re actually borrowing and so they’re using debt,” said Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.

The price of Oracle’s bonds maturing in 2033 with a 4.9% coupon has dipped, pushing yields up more than three basis points over the last two weeks, while the yield on its newer bonds maturing in 2032 with a 4.8% coupon has risen almost two basis points in one week, according to market participants.

And The Financial Times put out a doozy of a report asserting that “Oracle’s net debt is already at 2.5 times ebitda, having more than doubled since 2021, and it’s expected to nearly double again by 2030. Cash flow is forecast to remain negative for five straight years.”

The piece included several charts, including this particularly brutal one:

pic.twitter.com/TTs0b2Q1Hw

— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) November 19, 2025

Time will tell if the Ellisons’ hasbara-promoting media empire will grow even larger, but at the moment it appears to be on the proverbial knife’s edge.

Related Posts:

• Trump Makes an Example Out of Paramount
• Larry Ellison + Oracle + AI + Paramount + Trump = Total Info Control
• Delusion, Deception and Dipshittery: Hasbara on the 8th Front
• Bari Weiss Will Run CBS News for the Ellison Hasbara Empire
• Hogs at the AI Slop Trough, Gulf States, UFC Edition