Last September, an obscure California public relations firm called Show Faith by Works, LLC quietly registered with the Department of Justice as a foreign agent for the government of Israel. Its mission was not to lobby Congress or buy television ads. Instead, it proposed to use sophisticated technology to digitally target millions of Americans at their houses of worship with pro-Israel messaging—funded by a foreign government.
The plan was part of a multi-pronged influence campaign aimed squarely at evangelical Christians in the American Southwest, a core component of Donald Trump’s coalition. It marked a new phase in the Israel government’s influence campaigns in the US, one that fuses state-funded public diplomacy with data-driven tools and artificial intelligence.
So far, there are at least three major components to the operation financed by the Netanyahu government. Show Faith by Works is designed to bring his government’s messaging directly to the sanctuaries and parking lots of American megachurches. The 1000 Pastors project offered 1070 American evangelical clergy an expense-paid trip to Israel in December to equip them to serve as “ambassadors for Israel” on their return, and proposes to invite thousands more in the coming year. The third component, Clock Tower X, is a social media campaign run on Artificial Intelligence and headed by Brad Parscale, who has run various digital media operations for Donald Trump and his campaigns since 2011. Together, they represent a dramatic expansion of the alliance between the Christian Zionists of the Religious Right, MAGA media operatives, and the Israeli government. Foreign governments routinely engage in public diplomacy, but it is unusual to encounter the scale, religious targeting, and technological sophistication of this campaign. Still, the projects have not always run smoothly, and in some instances they’ve veered abruptly along the way.
The campaign has been under discussion for well over a year. On July 24, 2024, the JNS (Jewish News Syndicate) reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had met with some 15 to 20 American evangelical leaders the previous day in Washington, D.C. to discuss how to amplify their support. The gathering included Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, televangelist Paula White, and Texas pastor John Hagee, founder and chair of Christians United for Israel (whose support for Israel incorporates the prediction that come Armageddon, Israel will be covered in “a sea of human blood”).
Other notable participants included Ralph Reed, head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a key partner in the operations; Mat Staver, head of Liberty Counsel; and Jack Graham, pastor of the Prestonwood Baptist Church (who counts White House chief of staff Susie Wiles as a friend and the daughter of a congregant). The pastors were greeted by US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who proclaimed that he also serves as “an ambassador for the kingdom [of God].” Reed and Staver are members of the Board of Governors of the Council for National Policy, the influential right-wing coordinating body whose members have played a crucial role in Trump’s rise to power. Graham and Huckabee, friends of the organization, have spoken at various CNP events.
That meeting contributed to a larger project organized by Mike Evans, the head of The Friends of Zion Heritage Center in Jerusalem, a longtime convener of American evangelical leaders in Israel. Evans, the son of a non-practicing Jewish mother from the Soviet Union who converted to evangelical Christianity, has long served as a bridge between Israeli officials and American Christian Zionists. Netanyahu, Evans told JNS, “is the leader of the evangelical movement of the world. He has more support among the evangelicals globally than even Donald Trump. There’s no person on the planet that is more respected by evangelicals than Benjamin Netanyahu, and part of it’s because he understands us and he’s been an advocate of close relations with us from the very beginning.”
Following the Netanyahu meetings in Washington, Israel intensified its public relations efforts by launching a major persuasion campaign directed at hundreds of American churches. On September 27, Show Faith by Works, LLC (listing its address at a co-working space in San Diego) filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) disclosing its role as a foreign agent on behalf of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The official registrant, Chad Schnitger, also serves as the head of the California chapter of Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition.
The filing listed an ambitious range of activities:
Christian outreach through various grassroots and digital targeting of Christians in the western US. We will create a mobile museum to display at churches, Christian colleges, and Christian events. We will target and distribute pro-Israel information online and through targeted geofencing and digital online tools. We will have teams of people reaching out to Churches and Pastors and possibly even Christian social media influencers. Some of this is still undecided and fluid, but there are the outlets we have planned and proposed.
The document offers further details:
Targeting Geofencing: Largest Geofencing and targeted Christian Digital Campaign ever. Geofence the actual boundaries of every Major church in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado and all Christian Colleges during working times. Track attendees and continue to target with ads…
SEO Optimization and web-use maintenance for 2 years: Redirect nearly all web traffic to friendly sites based on key terms, ensure that website is the top of all search results, prioritize our information to key demographics.
“Geofencing” as referenced in this filing is a method of digital capture that uses virtual boundaries to trigger actions when cell phones and other digital devices enter or exit a given area. It’s widely employed in marketing and retail, allowing stores to target customers upon arrival to prompt personalized offers or discounts.
The use of geofencing for political purposes is more controversial. In 2015 Ted Cruz’s team launched a suite of smartphone apps developed by Vladyslav Seryakov, a graduate of a Soviet military university (See Nelson, Shadow Network). The Cruz team began by using the app to help his supporters to connect with each other, then experimented on members of the National Rifle Association, testing messaging psychology at a national meeting. In the 2020 campaign they made waves by extending its use to a CatholicVote campaign targeting Catholic voters attending Mass in the swing state of Wisconsin.
National Catholic Reporter Heidi Schlumpf described its workings in an interview for NPR:
If your phone is on and you have an app open in which you’ve allowed the sharing of location data, the geofencers can capture your IP address and other data from your phone. And then they can target ads directly to that device. But they can also cross-reference that data that they’ve acquired with other data sets, so in this case, probably voter rolls. And already we have this conservative Catholic organization that’s doing exactly that to try to target Catholic voters.
The proposed use of geofencing was just one of the persuasion techniques described in the listing. Others included deploying a “mobile museum” or “October 7th Experience” exhibit with a trailer equipped with virtual reality headsets; distributing “Pastoral Resource Packages” by mail and recruiting pastors to write op-eds; employing student liaisons on campuses; and deploying messaging strategies to link “the Palestinian population with extremist factions.”
The Show Faith by Works filing includes a list of over 900 targeted churches in four states (including the swing states of Arizona and Nevada), along with their membership figures. Among these are 303 megachurches with a “targeted Christian population of 3,899,925,” 60% of them within major population centers: Southern California, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, and Denver.
Many of the denominations listed on the Show Faith by Works filing, such as the Southern Baptists and the Pentecostals, are familiar to students of the Religious Right. But it also listed less predictable denominations, including, for example, the United Methodist Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Churches of Christ, and the American Baptist Churches USA.
Some representatives of these denominations have already publicly objected to the project. In December Colleen Moore, the director of Peace with Justice for the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, told the Methodist News Service that the project was “a dangerous campaign that undermines efforts to educate United Methodists about the situation in the Holy Land….Targeting United Methodist churches with anti-Palestinian ads explicitly goes against our Social Principles that encourage dialogue and responsible political action.” All of the Methodist churches listed in the filing were located in Texas; some Texas Methodists cast doubt on the project, while others declined to comment.
The Methodist News Service also noted that the Baptist General Convention of Texas, a network of independent Baptist churches, also took exception. Its Christian Life Commission has asked church leaders to sign a letter urging the Department of Justice to prohibit foreign governments from using tracking technologies to send targeted messages to worshippers in U.S. churches without their consent. They wrote that houses of worship historically have been “protected spaces where Americans gather freely to practice their faith without government surveillance or foreign interference.”
But declining to participate in the project could require pastors to pass on some financial incentives for pastors and social media influencers to “increase positive associations with the Nation of Israel.” The Show Faith by Works firm will direct funds from the Israeli government to church leaders to “counter new and evolving pro-Palestinian messaging as the global narrative shifts.” The filing’s pitch deck proposes to offer stipends for “individual guest pastors, bilingual pastors, or pastors who match target demographics to record messages based on content creation targets.” (The cities named in the filing include large Hispanic populations.)
The Public Affairs Office of the Israeli Embassy did not respond to requests for comment.
The backlash from churches and other critics has led Show Faith by Works to implement a sharp pivot, at least with regard to its publicly stated plans. On November 25, Christianity Today reported that Schnitger regretted the wording of the original FARA filing, and was now focusing on “grassroots educational efforts” in place of geofencing. While the original pitch deck aimed to “distribute pro-Israel information,” Schnitger was quoted as stating that the organization’s revised goal was “to educate the Christian church and to equip them with the tools to think critically about the conflicts in the Middle East and about our ally Israel.”
In an email response to questions from The Washington Spectator, Schnitzer explained, “We have developed an effective outreach strategy to the Christian Evangelical community to educate the next generation of Christians on the biblical case for supporting God’s chosen people in the face of unspeakable evil and persecution.” He said that had a fairly long list of churches willing to host the project who were not the churches in the filing, which represented “a pilot project.”
“If you are not a believer or churchgoer (not always one and the same),” he added, “this program is not meant for you. We use biblical sources, verses, church history, and commentary from Christian leaders to remind the Evangelical community of what they have known and believed for decades.” He added that the project would consist of a “grassroots roadshow of resources”—and that the geofencing portion of the project “was scrapped.”
Regardless of the approaches deployed by Show Faith by Works, it is sharing in substantial funding committed by the Israeli government to the broader campaign. On October 4, The Times of Israel reported that the Foreign Ministry had budgeted as much as $4.1 million for the project. “The initiative is designed to reach churchgoers with digital ads that are explicitly pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian,” it stated. “The campaign adds a new prong to Israel’s US communications blitz, complementing a $1.5 million-per-month contract for AI-driven social media activity with former Trump campaign strategist Brad Parscale and a contract with a firm called Bridge Partners to create an influencer network called the Esther Project.”
(Project Esther was launched by the Heritage Foundation in 2024, with the support of the Family Research Council and the Faith and Freedom Coalition, and conflates support for Palestinian human rights with antisemitism. It links Columbia, Princeton, and other universities; the Open Society Foundations, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund with “Hamas Support Organizations,” and takes direct aim at George and Alex Soros and Jewish members of Congress. No major Jewish organizations have endorsed Project Esther, and many have actively condemned it as an effort by Christian Nationalists to co-opt efforts to counter anti-Semitism. Several Jewish organizations listed as supporters, including the World Jewish Congress and the Zionist Organization of America, have distanced themselves or disavowed the project.)
Parscale’s new AI project, dubbed Clock Tower X LLC, is of special interest given his professional history. He began designing websites and digital strategies for the Trump Organization in 2011. He served as digital media director for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and was elevated to campaign manager for the 2020 campaign in February 2018. But in July 2020, following the failed Tulsa campaign rally, he was dismissed from the campaign. He remained active in Republican Party digital operations, and embarked on a new path as a specialist in Artificial Intelligence.
Parscale was named Chief Strategy Officer of the Salem Media Group in January 2025. A Salem press release stated:
Parscale’s life has been transformed by his faith following his baptism and a renewed dedication to Christ in recent years. This journey has fueled his commitment to championing causes that defend freedom, individual liberty, and self-governance. In 2024, his platforms—Campaign Nucleus and EyesOver—were instrumental in Donald Trump’s historic presidential victory and numerous down-ballot races. By streamlining campaign operations and enhancing voter engagement through real-time sentiment analysis, Parscale’s innovations continue to shape the future of political and commercial landscapes.
Parscale registered under FARA as a foreign agent for Israel on September 18, 2025. His filing proposed to push content “combating antisemitism” at a “minimum of 50 million impressions per month.” Its Statement of Work declares that “at least 80 percent of content is tailored to Gen Z audiences across platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, and other relevant digital and broadcast outlets.” It will provide “monthly search engine optimization (SEO) using the MarketBrew AI platform to improve the visibility and ranking of relevant narratives”—in other words, advancing many of the digital innovations he developed for the Trump and down-ballot campaigns. The filing specifies “integration of narrative messaging into Salem Media Network properties and aligned distribution channels.”
Salem Media has long served as the core media distribution channel for the Religious Right and Council for National Policy partner organizations. Its co-founder, the late Stuart Epperson, served as CNP president, and former CNP president Tony Perkins, head of Family Research Council, hosts a weekly Salem radio and television program called “This Week on the Hill.”
According to The Times of Israel, the Show Faith by Works initiative corresponds to the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s $150 million 2025 budget to sway global public opinion—described by Netanyahu as Israel’s “eighth front.” But the 2025 budget was only the beginning. In December the Israeli cabinet approved a 2026 budget that includes a massive increase for global advocacy campaigns, boosting it to some $630-730 million (depending on the rate of exchange). A government statement declared that the budget will be used to fund social media campaigns and bring delegations of leaders, elected officials, influencers, and others to Israel, among other purposes. The budget will need to be passed by the Knesset before it becomes law.
The 2025 Israeli public relations funding made headlines in US evangelical circles in the first week of December with the Friends of Zion Ambassadors Summit, an all-expense paid trip to Israel for “1000 pastors” from the United States, financed by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (The actual number of participants was 1070, but the number 1000 was chosen for its biblical resonance.)
In a press release, Friends of Zion founder Mike Evans described how his organization and the State of Israel joined forces to advance “one of the most significant mobilizations of American church leaders to Israel.” The trip offered the pastors “an immersive, state-level experience” with meetings with Israeli civilian, military, and intelligence officials, as well as a briefing by George Barna, the favored pollster of the Religious Right. On the final day, attendees received certificates designating them as “Friends of Zion Ambassadors.”
Pastor Dewayne Howard of Transformation Ministries International and Graceway Church of Plant City, Florida proudly displays his Ambassador certificate.
It fell to Evans to express a pivotal message of this trip, challenging one of the Trump administration’s core stances in the region, as recently articulated by J.D. Vance. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel… But there’s something you have to understand. Yeah. The policy of the God who birthed America, and the policy of the God who gave these people this land is, in fact, that Judea and Samaria is Bible land.” (See video, Christian Broadcasting Network CBN)
The “1000 pastors” event was widely publicized across the media platforms of the Religious Right. In a May 2025 statement to CBN Evans laid out the broader plan: “[Friends of Zion] has become an embassy,” he said. “We are embraced now by the Foreign Ministry…. We have been approved by the prime minister to commission ambassadors to the State of Israel, now. Pastors and young pastors will come and be commissioned by the State of Israel as ambassadors.” The project includes plans to bring 10,000 pastors to Israel at government expense in 2026.
The Department of Justice and the Foreign Agents Registration Act require anyone acting as an “agent of a foreign principal” to a) file a registration with the US Department of Justice within ten days of agreeing to act on behalf of a foreign principal, b) disclose activities and budget, c) file updated reports every six months and d) label “informational materials” to show they are offered on behalf of the government in question. The law allows foreign governments to conduct political and public advocacy campaigns providing they comply with FARA regulations.
FARA’s definition of “informational materials” is broad, including any audio, visual, and digital communications conveyed to two people or more, thus covering the lion’s share of the Show Faith by Works proposal. It further requires the registrant to identify themselves and their foreign principal, and for the material to be clearly submitted to FARA within 48 hours, after which it is published on the DOJ website. Failure to comply can result in a $5000 fine, a six-month prison sentence, or both.
Show Faith by Works’ FARA application includes extensive plans to distribute informational materials in various settings, including Christmas messaging. The filing included an invoice for a list of items that included “Targeted Media Budget,” the final installment of which was dated December 26, 2025. (See page 70.) A review of the Justice Department’s FARA database did not show any informational materials posted by Show Faith by Works over the period covered by its invoice, though the filings indicate that such materials were planned. By contrast, this was not the case for Brad Parscale’s Clock Tower X LLC project, which has listed links to over a hundred pieces of informational materials from September through December.
Parscale’s filing states that the “Registrant shall provide strategic communications, planning, and media services in support of Havas’ engagement by the State of Israel to develop and execute a nationwide campaign in the United states to combat antisemitism.” (Havas is a global communications firm that offers integrated services in advertising, media, and other forms of marketing. The Israeli government engaged its German division in Frankfurt, which retained both Clock Tower X LLC and Show Faith by Works LLC as subcontractors.)
It is useful to note that despite Clock Tower X’s stated goal of “combatting antisemitism,” its updated filings include many materials that have little or nothing to do with the subject, such as the “Feeding You Fiction” sheet, which states: “The press isn’t telling the truth about Gaza. Instead of exposing Hamas, too many outlets amplify its lies. Hamas feeds you fiction. While Hamas steals aid, tortures, and murders Palestinians, the media looks the other way.”
A YouTube video distributed by Clock Tower X under the account @AlliesforPeace asks: “What if the Gaza narrative is manufactured? Bombs. Famine. Staged posts. Fabricated and coordinated by foreign governments to deceive Americans and hide the real victims. Don’t fall for pro-Hamas propaganda. Demand the Truth.” Another promotes “United States and Israel, partners in peace.” None of these makes any direct or indirect reference to anti-Semitism.
The information campaign comes at a critical period for the conflict in the region, but it relies heavily on the historical relationship between the state of Israel and Christian Zionists, rooted in their belief that the modern State of Israel is the precursor of the Second Coming of Christ and the Apocalypse (which foretells a Great Tribulation for the Jews of Israel). It builds on a shared vision that has led to extensive economic investments from evangelical churches, donors, and business interests, including funding for Jewish settlements on the West Bank, religious tourism, and millions of dollars in charitable donations.
But the movement is facing growing headwinds, especially among younger audiences, who have been shocked by imagery of civilian casualties of Israeli attacks in Gaza in their social media feeds, and argue that the foreign aid budget to Israel would be better spent here at home. A March 2025 Pew poll found that half of the Republicans under the age of 50 surveyed have a negative view of Israel, compared to 35% in 2022 – a 15-point shift. This includes the Gen Z audience that Parscale’s Clock Tower X project proposes to address.
This tension was on full display at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest, held recently in Phoenix from December 17 to 20, where a shouting match over Israel eclipsed the regular program on traditional issues. Some evangelical pastors, like J. Chase Davis, a Southern Baptist pastor in Colorado, resent the intrusion of global politics into theology. Davis has worried that the pastors program confuses Christians “about how Christians should think about nation-states… A lot of American evangelicals have been kind of fed a strange contortion of scripture regarding how the nation state of Israel and God’s redemptive purposes and plans for the world play out today.” (See video at 53:00)
These operations raise unresolved questions about how foreign-funded influence campaigns intersect with U.S. election law, particularly when the contractors and media platforms involved also work on domestic political campaigns. Although It appears there have been no regulatory challenges, that risk extends to interactions with media organizations which have a heavy MAGA partisan lean—such as the Salem Media Network, which has hosted a Trump rally and maintains close ties to his administration.
As Israel’s influence campaign unfolds, American social media is sure to be overflowing with targeted Israeli messaging, joining the flood of digital content unleashed by other foreign interests. But it will be American clergy and the churches themselves who determine whether their houses of worship—or their media—can serve as “protected spaces where Americans gather freely to practice their faith without government surveillance or foreign interference.”
Nelson is the recipient of the Livingston Award for International Journalism and a Guggenheim Fellowship for historical research. The Guys, Nelson’s prize-winning play about the 9/11 attacks, has been produced for the stage in 15 countries and was made into a feature film starring Sigourney Weaver. Red Orchestra, her book on the German anti-Nazi resistance, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her non-fiction book Suzanne’s Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris is being developed as a two part series for French television by the writer/director of A French Village. Anne Nelson was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 2024.