World Echo

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday admitted there was a decrease in popularity of Israel and his administration among the American public, blaming the change on social media. Public opinion toward Israel in the US has grown increasingly negative, according to several recent polls, reflecting mounting concern over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. One July survey by the Pew Research Centre found that Americans have become more critical of both the Israeli people and government in recent years. The poll said that in 2026, 42% of Americans viewed the Israeli people unfavourably, up from 28% in 2019. Favourable views of the Israeli government fell to 32% from 41% over the same period. Also Read: IRGC vows to carry out attacks on ‘aggressor’ after US struck Iran overnight In an interview with ABC News released on Wednesday, Netanyahu said “there's been a change because of the proliferation of social media, and the fact that sov...

Beijing's embassy in New Zealand said it had raised an official complaint Thursday after top diplomat Winston Peters told a lawmaker of Chinese descent to "go back to your own country". Populist NZ First leader Peters was asked by China-born Green Party member Lawrence Xu-Nan: "Are you vaccinated?" during a heated debate about New Zealand's response to the Covid pandemic on Wednesday. In response, Peters said the lawmaker, who was born in the Chinese city of Tianjin but grew up in New Zealand, had "come here five minutes ago". "Go back to your own country. That's where they lie like a flatfish, but they don't lie like that here," Peters said. "This is called a democracy, unlike what you're used to. Go back to where you've come from, you loudmouth." The comments sparked a rare intervention from the Chinese ambassador to New Zealand, Wang Xiaolong. Wang said on X on Thursday that while he preferred to st...

As the US and Israel went to war on Iran this year, a transformative moment seemed to have arrived for Reza Pahlavi, son of the autocratic shah who was overthrown in 1979. Despite not having set foot in Iran in almost half a century, Pahlavi had been actively campaigning in the US and Europe, giving speeches about a bright new future for his homeland, raising money and meeting elected officials. “The Iranian people have called on me to lead the transition after the regime is gone,” he declared on X shortly after the war began in late February. “I have accepted that responsibility.” In Texas this March, Pahlavi received one of the most enthusiastic receptions at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). As he took the stage, staunch supporters of President Donald Trump and a large contingent of Iranian Americans, many draped in the pre-revolution Iranian flag that flew during his father’s rule, lavished him with a 45‑second standing ovatio...

US President Donald Trump said late on Tuesday his meetings with Ukrainian ​President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were positive. Netanyahu and Zelenskiy were in Washington to attend a memorial service for Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who died earlier this ​month and was an influential advocate for Israel and Ukraine. In separate ​short posts on Truth Social, Trump said he discussed ⁠various topics with them, without giving specifics. "Had a very good ​meeting! Obviously, many important subjects were discussed," Trump wrote on meeting ​Netanyahu. Trump voiced irritation with Netanyahu ahead of the meeting, complaining that details of Netanyahu's planned talking points on Iran had surfaced publicly. Read: Trump to host Netanyahu, Zelenskiy as Ukraine, Iran wars reach critical stages The US and ​Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Tehran respond...

An Iranian military official on Wednesday denied Tehran's involvement in projectiles launched from Iraq toward Saudi Arabia, rejecting accusations that Iran was behind recent attacks on the kingdom. Responding to a statement by the Saudi defence minister, the official told Iran's state broadcaster IRIB that attributing attacks against United States interests in the region to Tehran was "a grave mistake stemming from ignorance of the situation in the region." The official also "strongly denied any connection between projectiles fired from other countries toward targets in Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran." The remarks came after Saudi Arabia's Defence Ministry said its air defenses intercepted and destroyed several drones that attempted to target petroleum facilities in the kingdom's Eastern Province. صرح المتحدث الرسمي باسم وزارة الدفاع اللواء الركن تركي المالكي أنه إلحاقاً للبيانين الصادرين من وزارة الدفاع يومي الاثنين (١٣ صف...

Israel spent tens of millions of dollars on a digital influence campaign designed to shape how artificial intelligence systems respond to questions about the Gaza war, according to a report published Tuesday by Drop Site News. The report alleges that Brad Parscale, President Donald Trump's former campaign manager, and his firm, Clock Tower X, built a network of websites under a $46.5 million contract with the Israeli government to promote Israeli narratives and influence AI platforms including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. According to documents cited by Drop Site, Clock Tower X produced hundreds of articles across multiple websites covering the war in Gaza, Israel's military operations and US-Israel relations. The report said the campaign aimed to influence responses generated by large language models (LLMs) by creating content designed to be indexed by search engines and incorporated into AI systems, a practice sometimes referred to as "LLM poisoning....