In New York City in June 2017, the Israeli minister of strategic affairs Gilad Erdan stood in front of a crowd celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the annexation of East Jerusalem. Addressing his mostly Jewish-American audience, he declared “our cell phones are the number one weapon against us.”

With the rising visibility of Palestinian solidarity, and especially the growth of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS), pro-Israel actors have increasingly depicted social media in the terms of a battlefield, in which the spread of “lies” against Israel is regarded as a serious threat on par with rockets from Hamas. To meet this challenge, Erdan announced a new initiative he referred to as an “Iron Dome of Truth” — an app — that promises to intercept and neutralize offending content.

With the mobile application and online platform Act.IL, Israel aims to recruit a mob of slacktivists and trolls to join their war against the most insidious forms of violence: pro-Palestinian tweets and Facebook posts.