A new academic investigation has identified the origins of a significant anti-Muslim propaganda campaign targeting the United Kingdom, tracing its production back to Israel. Researchers Marc Owen Jones and Sohan Dsouza revealed that the operation was at its peak in the months preceding the 2024 general election and the subsequent wave of anti-Muslim riots that swept across the country.
The campaign utilized a high volume of paid advertisements that warned the British public of an impending Islamic takeover orchestrated by Qatar. According to the researchers, their analysis recorded over 154 million exposures to British-targeted material between 2024 and 2026. The initial wave of advertising appeared in the lead up to the 2024 general election and intensified during the winter and spring periods before the riots that followed the Southport murders.
In July 2024, violent disorder erupted in various cities and towns across Britain, with Muslims and ethnic minorities frequently targeted after three young girls were killed in Southport by Axel Rudakubana. The propaganda campaign falsely claimed that Rudakubana was a Muslim, a narrative that fueled social media disinformation. This digital agitation was considered a major factor in the unrest, leading then Prime Minister Keir Starmer to warn major technology firms about allowing hate speech to flourish on their platforms.
Financial records indicate that Facebook pages spreading these messages spent more than £500,000 on advertising in 2024 alone. The academics described this as the largest covert influence operation targeting the UK by recorded reach and expenditure. The campaign continued through 2025 and into 2026, expanding its presence across Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.
The advertisements featured alarming imagery and claims, including AI-generated images of a giant mosque adjacent to the Houses of Parliament and a Qatari flag positioned in front of Big Ben. Mini-documentary series were also produced, with one episode alleging that the city of Bradford in West Yorkshire was occupied by Muslim immigrants. After October 2024, a series of videos and ads aimed at Britain reportedly garnered over 25 million views.
The investigation pinpointed the editing work for the campaign to a fixed-line internet address in Israel. Metadata embedded in 78 video files recovered from the campaign's Telegram channels revealed Hebrew names, nicknames, and words in folder structures and editing projects. Additionally, a Windows account export recorded a time zone shift from UTC+3 to UTC+2 between October 22 and 27, which aligns with Israel's return to winter time. While Lebanon and the Palestinian territories also adjusted their clocks that weekend, the combination of the working pattern, narrative, IP address, and Hebrew labels pointed strongly to Israel.
Although the evidence does not suggest direct involvement by the Israeli government, several Israeli ministers have aligned themselves with far-right British figures to promote anti-Muslim narratives. Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli has promoted far-right activist Tommy Robinson, also known as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and invited him to Israel. In a podcast interview last summer, Chikli stated that radical Islam interests the average European and American far more than antisemitism, suggesting that this sentiment needed to be leveraged.
The New York Times reported in June 2024 that Chikli's ministry had paid two million dollars for an influence campaign targeting Americans with pro-Israel messaging. In August 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the UK as the Islamic Republic of Britain, predicting it might be the first Islamic republic to acquire a nuclear weapon. Shortly after, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that Britain was a country conquered by radical Islam.
The research found that the campaign was not limited to the UK but also targeted other European nations and the United States with anti-migrant and anti-Qatar views. Advertising in France ran through the months before the June 2024 European Parliament elections, while UK buying ceased on May 17, 2024, just days before the general election was called. The authors noted that Qatar was cast in the role typically assigned to George Soros in antisemitic narratives, depicted as a hidden power directing Muslim immigration to Islamise Europe.
