Post-Election Hangover: Israeli Influence Before and After the Midterms
Israel’s government has called the battle for public opinion abroad its “eighth front,” and it is spending heavily to win it. That effort ranges from an expansive anti-Muslim ad campaign across Europe to influencing the AI tools millions of people use every day to hiring well-connected political operatives who worked on campaigns during the US midterms. Who is running these operations, how are they funded, and what do they mean for American democracy and foreign policy? And what could the recent elections in both the U.S. and Israel mean for these influence operations?
Join the Quincy Institute for a conversation with three researchers and reporters who have exposed different parts of this machinery. Jacqueline Sweet is an investigative journalist who covered the money and pro-Israel influence in the midterms for The Guardian, Drop Site, The Intercept, and more. Nick Cleveland-Stout is a research associate at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, where he authored the paper “The Eighth Front: Inside Israel’s $1 Billion Influence Campaign” and broke several major stories about Israeli influence operations. Marc Owen Jones is an associate professor at Northwestern University in Qatar and an expert on disinformation and digital propaganda. His latest investigation with Sohan Dsouza, featured in Le Monde, documented a covert ad campaign with forensic links to Israel that reached hundreds of millions of people across Europe and the United States. Eli Clifton, senior advisor at the Quincy Institute, will moderate the conversation. Clifton is coauthor of the just released book, Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power (Simon & Schuster, 2026).
The conversation will take place on Tuesday, November 24th from 12:00 – 1:00 PM ET.
Panelists
Jacqueline Sweet
Jacqueline Sweet is an investigative journalist who covered the money and pro-Israel influence in the midterms for The Guardian, Drop Site, The Intercept, and more. She has reported extensively on election finance, the Epstein files, FBI monitoring of climate activists, pro-Israel digital influence firms, and regional crime and public health matters
Nick Cleveland-Stout
Nick Cleveland-Stout is a research associate in the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He investigates foreign influence, think tank funding, and war profiteering. Previously, he conducted research on US-Brazil relations as a Fulbright fellow at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. Nick is also a former Marcellus Policy Fellow with the John Quincy Adams Society, where he authored “The Case for a ‘Green BRAC.’” His work has appeared in Responsible Statecraft, The Nation, The Intercept, The Brazilian Report, Drop Site, and The Hill.
Marc Owen Jones
Marc Owen Jones is an associate professor of media analytics at Northwestern University in Qatar. His research and teaching examine disinformation, digital authoritarianism, and political repression, with a particular focus on how transnational influence operations, harassment campaigns, and digital control mechanisms emerge from—or target—the Middle East. He is the author of two single-authored monographs: Political Repression in Bahrain (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation, and Social Media (Hurst / Oxford University Press, 2022), the latter named among Foreign Affairs’ 2023 Books of the Year.
Eli Clifton
Eli Clifton is cofounder and senior advisor at the Quincy Institute. An investigative journalist, he focuses on money in politics and U.S. foreign policy. He previously reported for the American Independent News Network, ThinkProgress, and Inter Press Service. Clifton is coauthor of the book, Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power (Simon & Schuster, 2026). He is also coauthor of the Center for American Progress report “Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.” Clifton has been a fellow at The Nation Institute and Type Media Center.