The Cognitive Ring of Fire Threatening Jewish Communities
Germany: Mourners Gather At Israeli Embassy In Berlin Following Deadly D.C. Shooting | Photo by REUTERS
Before bullets fly, before embassies are targeted, before slogans turn violent, and before a lone gunman echoes a viral slogan, there is a surge of digital influence: relentless, anonymous, and algorithmically amplified. We are now in an era where ideas are weaponized, anger is engineered, and the battlefield is your social feed brought to life. And one of the most dangerous fronts in this war is a shadowy network most people have never heard of—but must. It is called ISNAD, and it is not just a propaganda machine; it is the prototype for a new kind of decentralized, cross-border cognitive warfare that Israel and Jewish communities around the world are not yet prepared to confront. ISNAD is a decentralized influence network rooted in the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and based primarily in Turkey. It mobilizes large numbers of volunteers to produce and distribute content, while relying heavily on a wide array of generative AI tools for content creation, coordination, and translation. On peak days, ISNAD is responsible for an astonishing 8–10% of all Hebrew-language Twitter (X) activity. Because ISNAD’s training and operational coordination take place via an openly accessible Telegram channel, researchers have been able to study the network’s strategic messaging, its recommended tools, and its volunteer mobilization patterns.
Over the past year and a half, the ISNAD network has made itself known inside Israel—pumping out hundreds of thousands of social media posts in fluent, emotionally resonant Hebrew, impersonating local users, adopting the language of protest, and even mimicking solidarity with Israeli hostage families.
But last week, ahead of the fatal shooting in Washington DC, something shifted. The network posted a message in Arabic on its Telegram channel calling explicitly for attacks on Jews and Israelis abroad. “Our enemy understands only one language,” it declared. “The language of bullets, blood, and skulls.” They attached a recruitment link to a private channel and asked followers to join.
Let me be clear: ISNAD is no longer simply a social media phenomenon operating inside Israel’s digital discourse. It is now actively extending its influence beyond Israel’s borders—with dangerous implications for Jews around the world.
Following the deadly attack on Israeli Embassy staff in Washington, the group responded with a celebratory message: “This is a historic day… It seems that calls for violence are beginning to bear fruit.”
This isn’t just about disinformation. It’s about infrastructure. ISNAD is a loosely coordinated network of ideological volunteers, many of whom are aligned with Muslim Brotherhood and pro-Hamas narratives. It deploys civilian influence tactics: fake accounts, AI-generated personas, recycled slogans, and stealthy use of Google Docs, Telegram bots, and VPNs. Its goal is not to persuade—it’s to overwhelm, confuse, mimic, and erode social cohesion.
ISNAD is part of what we can call a Cognitive Ring of Fire: a multipronged digital strategy designed to encircle Israel and Jews worldwide with constant cognitive and emotional destabilization. Just as Israel faces a physical ring of fire—from Iran to Hezbollah, from the Houthis to Hamas—it now faces a cognitive one, aimed at reshaping public opinion, undermining the social contract, and deepening interpersonal polarization.
The Cognitive Ring stretches far beyond the Mediterranean. It includes the infiltration of Qatar-funded media outlets across the western world. It includes university campuses radicalized by manipulated narratives and well-funded research centers that now operate as ideological hubs hostile to the Jewish people. It includes inauthentic and coordinated operations on social media and peer-to-peer platforms, calling for lone-wolf attacks. It includes decentralized propaganda campaigns—some of which, disturbingly, receive indirect support from government-backed budgets within Israel itself. The lines are blurred, the actors are diverse, and the message is coherent: Jews, not just Israelis, are now the enemy.
Last week’s tragic shooting in Washington might not have been directly ordered by ISNAD. But it didn’t have to be. In cognitive warfare, incitement does not follow chains of command. It operates like fog—diffuse, ambient, and ever-present. It saturates meaning. It turns slogans into signals and chaos into climate.
And here’s what’s most urgent: global Jewish communities are not ready for this.
They are used to fighting antisemitism through legal recourse, education, or media advocacy. But the battlefield has changed. When actors like ISNAD gamify incitement, manipulate emotional language, and build global momentum through encryption and anonymity, traditional defenses fall short.
We need new coalitions—not only between Jewish organizations and governments, but across technology, intelligence, and civil society. We need to recognize this threat not as “social media noise” but as a coordinated campaign. And we need to act accordingly.
This is a call not only to Israel but to Jewish communities worldwide: build cognitive defenses now.
Track the networks. Educate the public. Pressure platforms. Collaborate across borders. Because this isn’t just a threat to online discourse. It’s a threat to physical safety.
You can’t fight fire with hope alone.
And the cognitive ring is already burning.
This op-ed was published in the Times of Israel