Bots from Gaza trying to delegitimize Israel, inflate hostility, ministry says – Strategic Affairs Ministry highlights surge in fake tweets over annexation and ICC probe in June; ministry says it’s shifting its focus away from battling BDS | Timesofisrael

Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs released a report on Tuesday that it said revealed a network of 170 inauthentic social media profiles trying to “stir anti-Israel sentiment online.”
The report, based on research done between June and August, cited a spike in inauthentic Twitter activity in late June 2020, when the International Criminal Court was deliberating whether to investigate Israel for alleged war crimes and when Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was gearing up to annex up to 30 percent of the West Bank including all of the settlements. (The annexation plan was indefinitely suspended in August, as a condition of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE.)