I used to own a small business that required me to spend lots of time and effort on marketing. One of my strategies was to run Google ads for people searching for the name of my business that brought them straight to a webpage where they could make a purchase.
Imagine my surprise when I learned that a competitor was running Google ads targeting people who searched for my business. He was paying Google to show my potential customers an ad that said his business was the best in town with a link to buy from him! As frustrating as this was, not only does Google have no policy against this, but these types of ads seem to also be a major source of Google’s revenue. There was absolutely nothing I could do.
I thought of this when reading a recent report about how Israel’s government has been purchasing Google ads targeting people who search for the UNRWA USA, the American partner of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Israel’s ads bring them to an Israeli government website containing detailed information on links between UNRWA and Hamas.
UNRWA USA cried foul, complaining bitterly to Google that it should refuse to run Israel’s ads. But there is no policy against governments buying ads on the search engine. So the complaint became that Israel’s ads violate restrictions against making claims that are “demonstrably false.” However, while there is disagreement regarding the connection between Hamas and UNRWA and some may dispute the conclusions on Israel’s website, it’s hard to see why this should apply. For that matter plenty of people would say that the information on UNRWA’s website is what is false.
Also, Israel is hardly the only one trying to steal away people looking for UNRWA. For example, I ran a search for UNRWA USA which turned up a paid ad by a nonprofit called Mercy Corps. They also claim to provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza and are evidently hoping that prospective UNRWA donors will support them instead.
I found other news sites and nonprofits running ads using “UNRWA” as a keyword. One is the Better World Campaign, an organization devoted to promoting a stronger partnership between the United States and the United Nations. Their advertisement leads to a page containing a lengthy endorsement of UNRWA, labeling Israel’s accusations “myths” and claiming their positive views of UNRWA are “the truth” instead.
All of this may certainly be confusing to people who are doing keyword searches, and it drives up costs for everyone. UNRWA USA complained that the efficiency of its fundraising has gone down as it has had to spend more money to outbid others targeting its keywords. But the organization’s biggest frustration seems to be that Google’s policies and algorithms aren’t giving them the right to decide what shows up when people search for their name.
That’s a good thing as Israel’s accusations against UNRWA are extremely serious. In addition to the fact that some UNRWA employees participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, Israel says that more than 10% of senior UNRWA educators in Gaza are members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. More than 30 UNRWA facilities in Gaza have been found to contain terror infrastructures such as tunnel shafts, showing that the humanitarian status of these facilities is abused for terrorist purposes. Hamas operated a high-end server farm directly under UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters, with communication and electricity cables connecting both compounds. Isn’t this something potential UNRWA donors looking to help alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians should be aware of?
A well-known problem of the internet is that it pushes people into silos where they only hear variations of their own views. With its ads, Israel is reaching people who may only be familiar with the Palestinian narrative and showing them another perspective. This, of course, infuriates organizations that raise money by portraying Palestinians as victims and blaming Israel for all their suffering. But spreading information is what the internet is for, and even though it gets UNRWA supporters upset, Israel has valid and important information to share.
I sure would have liked Google to stop my competitor from trying to steal away customers, and I believe the competitor’s claims about being better were way off-base. But I didn’t get to decide what ads people see online, and I didn’t have the right to stop people who disagree with me from making their case. UNRWA USA doesn’t either.
