Britain’s Parliament Sounds the Alarm on State-Sponsored Antisemitism and Disinformation

From Hebrew-language Russian propaganda networks to Iranian Holocaust denial on social media, a new UK report maps the infrastructure being used to manipulate Jewish communities worldwide

A major new report from the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has concluded that Russia, Iran, and China are running sophisticated, government-funded disinformation campaigns targeting Jewish communities, Israeli audiences, and democratic institutions across the Western world — and that Britain is dangerously underprepared to fight back.

The report, titled Disinformation Diplomacy: How Malign Actors Are Seeking to Undermine Democracy, was published on March 27, 2026. It draws on seven oral evidence sessions, 55 written submissions, and visits by committee members to countries including France, Belgium, the United States, Romania, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Germany.

Russia Built a Hebrew-Language Disinformation Network

Russia’s Doppelgänger operation — the most documented state disinformation network in the world — operates in nine languages. One of them is Hebrew.

The network, which the report traces to Russian state-funded agencies including the Social Design Agency and Structura National Technologies, works by cloning the websites of trusted news outlets like The Guardian, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel, then publishing fabricated stories under those mastheads. These fake articles are designed to advance Kremlin narratives, undermine support for Ukraine, and sow division inside Western democracies.

The fact that Hebrew is among the nine target languages is not incidental. It means Russian intelligence has assessed Jewish and Israeli audiences as a strategic target worth investing in — and has built an infrastructure specifically to reach them with manipulated content.

Example Doppelgänger spoofing of the Guardian website falsely stating the UK helped stage a false flag operation in Bucha, Ukraine. Credit: UK Gov Report

The network consists of more than 228 domains and 25,000 coordinated fake accounts. It has already been used to spread disinformation about the Princess of Wales’s cancer diagnosis, to interfere in German elections, and to generate thousands of fake articles claiming the UK and France were planning to supply nuclear weapons to Ukraine.

Iran Ran a Fake Scottish Independence Operation to Build Pro-Khamenei Audiences

The report includes one of the most remarkable domestic examples of Iranian influence operations seen in Britain. More than 1,300 X accounts presented themselves to British users as young, pro-Scottish independence activists. They had been viewed over 224 million times. Then, after the United States and Israel conducted joint strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in 2025, the accounts suddenly switched from posting Scottish independence content to endorsing Khamenei — before switching back.

The implication is significant. Iran was not simply spreading propaganda about the Middle East. It was building credible-seeming Western identities with loyal audiences that could be activated for pro-Iran, anti-Israel messaging at moments of crisis. X took action only after media reporting, including from Jewish Onliner, drew attention to the network.

Credit: Jewish Onliner

Russian Disinformation Is Being Used to Smear Ukraine’s Jewish President

The report documents a sustained Russian campaign to portray Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, as secretly Nazi-aligned. Russian state media and affiliated networks have repeatedly circulated false claims that Zelenskyy purchased Hitler's tearoom, the Eagle's Nest in Bavaria, as well as other Nazi artefacts.

This is a deliberate strategy, according to the report. By associating Ukraine’s Jewish head of state with Nazism, Russia attempts to justify its invasion and hollow out Western sympathy for Ukraine. The committee notes this as one of the clearest examples of how disinformation exploits and corrupts history for geopolitical ends — in this case, using antisemitic tropes as a weapon against the very people they target.

Iran Has Been Spreading Holocaust Denial Across British Social Media

Evidence submitted by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate confirmed that Iranian state-controlled outlet Press TV has been spreading content that includes outright Holocaust denial, attacks on minority rights, and what the report calls “hateful conspiracy theories involving Jewish people.”

Although Iran’s broadcast licence was revoked in the UK years ago, Press TV continues operating freely across social media. The Antisemitism Policy Trust submitted formal evidence to the inquiry flagging this specific threat. The committee concluded that banning a state propaganda outlet from the airwaves means little when its content lives on unchecked across platforms like X, YouTube, and Facebook.

The committee explains that Iran views disinformation as a central pillar of what it calls its “Forward Defence” strategy, aimed at projecting pressure beyond its borders. The late Supreme Leader Khamenei personally directed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and state media to conduct psychological warfare against Iran’s “ideological enemies” — a category that explicitly and repeatedly includes Israel and Jewish communities worldwide.

British Law Is Not Equipped to Deal With These Threats

The committee is direct about the inadequacy of existing UK legislation. The Online Safety Act 2023 has no specific provisions against disinformation unless it crosses into directly illegal content. Social media platforms are allowed to set their own moderation standards at whatever level they choose, and can lower or change those standards at any time without consequence.

The foreign interference offence in the National Security Act 2023 is described by the committee as “unworkable in practice” because prosecuting it requires proving that content was posted at the behest of a foreign government — a near-impossible standard given how deliberately these operations are concealed. The chief executive of Ofcom, Britain’s media regulator, told the committee that the legal threshold for requiring platforms to act was, as a result, extremely high.

The committee is calling for an urgent government review of both pieces of legislation, mandatory algorithmic transparency from social media companies, and the creation of a new National Counter Disinformation Centre modelled on France’s VIGINUM and Sweden’s Psychological Defence Agency.

The Bigger Picture

The report paints a picture of a coordinated, well-funded assault on democratic norms, with Jewish communities and Israel among the identified targets. Russia alone plans to spend approximately 1.5 billion euros on state propaganda this year. Iran, for its part, built a global disinformation infrastructure that operated across dozens of countries. China’s Spamouflage network generates hundreds of posts daily across multiple platforms.

Against this, the British government’s response is fragmented across seven departments with no single body in charge. The BBC World Service, which reaches 13.5 million Iranians and nearly 5 million Russians despite active blocking in both countries, is being underfunded at precisely the moment it matters most.

For Jewish communities watching the online environment grow darker and more hostile, this report is important reading, and ostensibly confirms what many have long suspected: These are not random trolls or fringe activists. They are governments, with budgets and strategies and country-specific plans, targeting Jewish audiences with content designed to manipulate, divide, and deceive.