Israel–UAE influence networks under scrutiny as $8.2 million anti-Muslim propaganda campaign spreads across 30 countries

Dark Box | Special Investigative Report

November 4, 2026

1. The Israel–UAE connection: A global machinery of anti-Muslim propaganda

A massive international disinformation operation has exposed an industrial-scale campaign to spread hatred against Muslims, migrants, and selected Middle Eastern countries, with $8.2 million in estimated advertising expenditure and approximately 800 million advertising impressions across 30 countries. Researchers traced the campaign’s production infrastructure to Israel-based networks, while its messaging exploited Gulf political rivalries, including narratives involving the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Iran. The findings place renewed attention on the strategic relationship between Israel and Abu Dhabi and raise urgent questions about whether Emirati-linked influence organizations participated in financing, facilitating, or amplifying the operation. The published evidence establishes the Israel-based production trail, but does not establish direct UAE–Israeli coordination in this particular campaign.

For Dark Box, the investigation exposes a broader problem: international propaganda networks can use enormous advertising budgets, commercial intermediaries, and sophisticated digital production to turn anti-Muslim hatred into a coordinated political communications operation.

2. The $8.2 million campaign: How anti-Muslim hatred became a global advertising operation

The operation ran from October 2023 to October 2026.

Researchers Marc Owen Jones and Sohan D’Souza documented its activities in Manufacturing the Great Replacement, describing an exceptionally large and sophisticated influence campaign.

The investigation identified:

● 1,473 Facebook advertisements.

● 189 YouTube videos.

● 359 TikTok advertisements.

● 105 additional videos published through TikTok accounts.

● Approximately 800 million estimated advertising impressions.

● Around $8.2 million in projected advertising expenditure.

● Distribution across 30 countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East.

The campaign used paid advertising, artificial intelligence, fabricated videos, manipulated footage, music, and video-game parodies.

Its messages portrayed Muslims as invaders, migrants as demographic threats, and Muslim-majority countries as forces supposedly working to undermine European societies.

This was not ordinary political debate. The material repeatedly relied on racist conspiracy narratives and deceptive visual content to manufacture fear.

3. The Israeli production trail: Digital evidence behind the propaganda network

The researchers traced the campaign’s early operations to entities operating from Israel through intermediary companies in Vietnam.

Their findings included technical indicators linking parts of the production process to Israeli-based activity.

The campaign also showed connections to networks previously associated with Israeli influence operations.

These findings provide a concrete basis for examining the Israeli commercial and political infrastructure surrounding the campaign.

After Meta disrupted the operation in May 2024, it resurfaced in November of the same year.

Later phases shifted toward commercial entities operating through Brazil.

The network’s ability to survive enforcement actions demonstrated how coordinated influence operations can move between accounts, platforms, and jurisdictions without abandoning their underlying messaging.

The researchers did not identify the ultimate financiers or establish direct Israeli government command.

Nevertheless, the Israel-based production evidence remains central to understanding how the operation was organized.

4. Abu Dhabi enters the picture: Gulf political rivalries and the UAE–Israel relationship

The UAE dimension deserves particular scrutiny because the campaign incorporated narratives involving Emirati wealth, Gulf political influence, and Qatar.

One advertising sequence depicted Emirati investors purchasing European buildings and converting them into mosques.

The imagery was designed to portray Muslims and wealthy Gulf investors as participants in a supposed campaign to transform European society.

Other advertisements claimed that Qatar was financing the Islamization of Europe.

These messages combined anti-Muslim prejudice with specific regional political themes.

The UAE and Israel have substantially expanded diplomatic, economic, technological, and security cooperation since the Abraham Accords.

That relationship creates an important investigative context for examining whether commercial influence networks connected to either country intersected with the campaign.

However, the depiction of Emiratis as a supposed threat in some advertisements is not evidence that Abu Dhabi sponsored those advertisements.

The critical investigative question is whether the organizations that produced and distributed the material had financial or operational relationships with UAE-linked clients or intermediaries.

Answering it requires identifiable contracts, transactions, ownership records, or communications.

5. Qatar and Iran: Political targets inside an anti-Muslim campaign

The campaign repeatedly targeted Qatar and Iran while circulating broader anti-Muslim and anti-migrant messages.

Researchers identified campaign brands including Grand Theft Qatar, Qatar’s Behind This, Stop Qatar, and Qatar Is Responsible.

Some advertisements depicted Qatar as the hidden financier of Muslim migration into Europe.

Others used fictional scenarios and manipulated footage to suggest that Muslim communities were participating in a coordinated demographic takeover.

The narratives echoed the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which falsely claims that white European populations are being deliberately replaced through immigration.

The selection of Qatar and Iran as prominent targets gives the operation a distinct geopolitical dimension.

It also raises questions about whether the campaign’s sponsors sought to influence international perceptions of those countries while intensifying hostility toward Muslims more generally.

Political alignment between a campaign’s messaging and a government’s interests, however, cannot by itself identify that government as the sponsor.

6. Artificial intelligence and the industrial production of Islamophobia

The operation used an extensive range of digital formats to package discriminatory narratives for different audiences.

Some videos resembled television news reports.

Others adopted the style of entertainment clips, video games, music videos, or online documentaries.

Artificial intelligence and manipulated footage made it possible to produce dramatic scenes without authentic supporting evidence.

The campaign repeatedly depicted European cities as being overwhelmed by Muslim migration.

It used religious imagery, fabricated scenarios, and emotionally charged language to portray ordinary Muslim communities as a collective danger.

The strategy was to make discriminatory claims appear familiar through constant repetition.

Paid advertising ensured that the messages did not depend solely on organic social media engagement.

The operators could purchase exposure and repeatedly place their content in front of targeted audiences.

7. The advertising infrastructure: Vietnam, Brazil, and the survival of the network

The campaign’s operational structure extended beyond Israel.

Researchers identified intermediary companies in Vietnam during its early phases.

After platform enforcement disrupted part of the network, the operation resurfaced under new identities.

Later activity involved commercial entities in Brazil.

This changing infrastructure allowed the campaign to continue despite attempts to remove coordinated accounts.

The operation demonstrated how political advertising can be distributed through complex arrangements that obscure the ultimate sponsor.

A company purchasing advertisements may not be the organization that commissions the messaging.

Likewise, a production contractor may not be the entity providing the money.

Tracing the entire operation therefore requires examining the relationships between advertisers, production companies, intermediaries, and the organizations that commissioned the content.

8. The financial questions facing UAE-linked influence networks

Abu Dhabi maintains a substantial international political communications presence through lobbying, public-relations, and advisory relationships.

Its expanded partnership with Israel makes the relationship between the two countries’ commercial and political influence ecosystems a relevant subject of investigation.

Dark Box’s UAE-focused inquiry centers on several questions.

Did any UAE-linked organization maintain financial relationships with the campaign’s identified intermediaries?

Did consultants working for Emirati clients also provide services to the companies producing or distributing the anti-Muslim material?

Were any campaign expenditures connected to companies receiving money from UAE-based entities?

Did any organization with documented Emirati relationships participate in selecting the campaign’s political targets?

These questions cannot be answered merely by identifying a shared political interest.

The published investigation does not document UAE funding of the $8.2 million operation.

The next step is to trace the money through advertising invoices, company ownership records, contractual relationships, and payment documentation.

9. How the campaign exploited anti-Muslim prejudice

The researchers analyzed 406 comments on Facebook advertisements targeting audiences in the United Kingdom during 2024.

They found that 61 percent expressed support for anti-Muslim views.

That result reflects the analyzed comments, not the views of everyone exposed to the campaign.

It also does not prove that the advertisements created those attitudes.

Nevertheless, it demonstrates that the material attracted supportive responses from some users expressing hostility toward Muslims.

The campaign’s wider danger lies in its capacity to repeatedly distribute discriminatory narratives through paid advertising.

By presenting manipulated content as news, entertainment, or political commentary, its operators blurred the boundary between information and propaganda.

The resulting messages portrayed Muslims not as individuals or communities, but as a collective political and cultural threat.

10. The failure of social media oversight

Meta acknowledged that an early phase of the operation spent approximately £900,000 on advertising across its platforms.

The company disrupted the network in May 2024.

But the campaign subsequently returned through different identities and commercial arrangements.

This persistence raises serious questions about advertiser verification, platform accountability, and the ability of social media companies to identify coordinated influence operations.

The researchers called for stronger regulation and more effective systems for tracing advertisers.

The case demonstrates that removing individual accounts is insufficient when the organizations behind them retain access to advertising budgets, production capabilities, and replacement intermediaries.

11. Israel, Abu Dhabi, and the unresolved question of who financed the campaign

The investigation establishes three important facts.

First, a major international propaganda campaign spent millions distributing anti-Muslim and anti-migrant content.

Second, researchers traced important production and operational connections to Israel-based entities.

Third, the campaign incorporated regional political narratives involving the UAE, Qatar, and Iran.

These findings make the broader UAE–Israel influence relationship relevant to further investigation.

They do not establish that the two governments jointly organized the campaign.

The identity of the ultimate sponsors remains unresolved.

Determining whether UAE-linked actors participated requires direct evidence connecting them to the operation’s financing, production, or advertising infrastructure.

That is the distinction between examining a political network and identifying the people responsible for a specific operation.

Conclusion: The money behind a global anti-Muslim propaganda machine

The findings of Manufacturing the Great Replacementexpose a sophisticated international operation that transformed anti-Muslim prejudice into a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign.

Its content reached audiences across 30 countries.

Its production trail pointed toward Israel.

Its infrastructure extended through commercial intermediaries in Vietnam and Brazil.

Its messaging exploited regional rivalries involving Qatar, Iran, and the UAE.

And its ultimate financial sponsors remain unidentified.

Dark Box’s central investigative focus is the potential intersection between Israel-based influence contractors and Abu Dhabi’s international political communications networks.

The documented operation is already a serious example of industrialized disinformation. Identifying its financiers and decision-makers is essential to determining whether the campaign was commissioned by private political interests, state-linked organizations, or a combination of actors.

The public deserves to know who paid millions of dollars to spread hostility toward Muslims—and who stood to benefit from that investment.

Dark Box | Special Investigative Report | November 4, 2026