Anti-Muslim influence campaign targeting UK traced back to Israel

Anti-Muslim influence campaign targeting UK traced back to Israel

Submitted by Imran Mulla on Mon, 11/09/2026 - 14:11 Large numbers of paid advertisements warned of a Qatar-backed Islamic takeover of Britain in run-up to 2024 election and riots
Far-right rioters hurl projectiles at police in Bristol, UK, on 3 August 2024 (Justin Tallis/AFP) Off

A new investigation has traced a major anti-Muslim propaganda campaign targeting Britain back to Israel.

The campaign, uncovered by academics Marc Owen Jones and Sohan Dsouza, was at its height before the UK's 2024 general election and the anti-Muslim riots that raged across the country later that year.

It involved large numbers of paid advertisements warning of an Islamic takeover of Britain masterminded by Qatar.

"Between 2024 and 2026, our investigation recorded more than 154m exposures to its British-targeted material," Jones and Dsouza wrote in an article published by The Nerve. 

"Its first wave of British advertising ran in the months before the 2024 general election. The ads were also hammering the UK in the winter and spring leading up to the anti-Muslim riots that followed the Southport murders."

In July 2024, violent disorder raged in cities and towns across Britain, targeting Muslims and ethnic minorities, after the murder of three young girls in Southport by Axel Rudakubana. 

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The campaign promoted after the killings falsely claimed that Rudakubana was a Muslim. 

"Social media disinformation was viewed as so important to fuelling the riots," the academics write, that then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer "issued a warning to big tech firms for allowing hate speech to be whipped up on their 'premises'".

Facebook pages spreading anti-Muslim messages spent more than £500,o00 ($670,000) on advertising in 2024, which the academics describe as "the biggest covert influence operation targeting the UK by recorded reach and ad spend".

"The campaign kept going through 2025 and 2026 on Facebook, YouTube and TikTok."

The campaign involved adverts warning of an "invasion" and alleging that "Qatar is Islamising England", as well as AI-generated images showing a giant mosque next to the Houses of Parliament and a Qatari flag in front of the Big Ben being blown up.

It also involved several mini-documentary series, including an episode about Bradford, which said the city in West Yorkshire was "occupied by Muslim immigrants". 

Campaign traced to Israel

After October 2024, a series of adverts and videos aimed at Britain as part of the campaign reportedly received more than 25 million views.

In February 2026, YouTube videos claimed with no evidence that Qatar was behind a Muslim independent candidate standing in the May local elections.

The investigation traced editing work done for the campaign back to a "fixed-line internet address in Israel".

'The ads were also hammering the UK in the winter and spring leading up to the anti-Muslim riots that followed the Southport murders'

- Marc Owen Jones and Sohan Dsouza

Embedded metadata in 78 video files recovered from the campaign's channels on social media platform Telegram "revealed Hebrew names, nicknames and words in folders, drive labels and editing projects, alongside usernames and Mac model identifiers".

Moreover, a "Windows account’s exports recorded a shift from [Arabia Time Zone] UTC+3 to UTC+2 between 22 and 27 October, consistent with Israel’s return to winter time. Lebanon and the Palestinian territories also changed clocks that weekend, but taken together with the working pattern, the narrative, the IP address, and the Hebrew labels, the evidence points to Israel."

There is no evidence that the Israeli government itself was involved in the campaign, but Israeli ministers have allied with far-right British figures and spread anti-Muslim narratives about Britain.

Israeli Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli has promoted far-right activist Tommy Robinson - whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon - and invited him to Israel.

Chikli said this past summer in a podcast interview: "Antisemitism doesn't interest the average European or the average American. Radical Islam interests them very, very much. And therefore we need to take advantage of this."

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The New York Times reported in June 2024 that Chikli's diaspora affairs ministry had paid $2m for an influence campaign targeting Americans with "pro-Israel messaging".

In August 2026 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu branded the UK the “Islamic Republic of Britain”, saying it could be the “first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon”.

Then in September, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich proclaimed that Britain was "a country conquered by radical Islam".

The investigation by Jones and Dsouza found the campaign also targeted other countries in Europe, as well as the US, with anti-Muslim, anti-migrant and anti-Qatar views.

"Buying in France [of social media advertisements] ran through the months before the June 2024 European Parliament elections, and UK buying stopped on 17 May 2024, days before the general election was called," according to the investigation.

"Qatar takes the role that antisemitic versions give to George Soros: a hidden power directing Muslim immigration to ‘Islamise’ Europe," the authors wrote.

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