On the sixth day of the war, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to Benjamin Netanyahu and the formation of an emergency government filled the news, roughly 30 people were assembling in a WhatsApp group with a narrower purpose: to build an international pressure campaign against Qatar and force Doha to move on the hostages.
The group, described in an investigation published by Haaretz, brought together senior campaign operatives, advertising professionals, government officials and specialists in influence work. The tone in the early messages was urgent and improvised. "Does anyone know how much Qatar gives Hamas every year?" one participant asked. Another supplied what became the organizing line: "Qatar, the hostages are on you."
They moved at the speed the moment seemed to demand. Within hours the slogan "Hamas is ISIS" had been adopted and pushed onto profile pages and social accounts. Within days there were foreign-language websites, social media presences, presentations and volunteer-run fundraising. Participants split into research, creative and communications teams and met nightly on conference calls. They worked lawmakers in the United States and France, foreign correspondents, and even figures from the anti-government protest movement. A week in, the group presented American journalists with a plan to publicly shame companies in which Qatar held investments, alongside a proposal for a global opinion survey.
It was a recognizable artifact of that period, one of many civilian war rooms that appeared after October 7 to fill the space left by the state's own public diplomacy apparatus. Almost everyone involved was a volunteer.
About a month after it started, it stopped. The websites came down. Traces were removed from search engines. According to Haaretz, no explanation was given to the roughly 30 people who had built it, and no advance notice. "They approached with enthusiasm and disappeared," participants said.
The state eventually formalized this kind of work, routing millions through the Diaspora Affairs Ministry and later consolidating influence operations in a dedicated body. But that came afterward, and it does not account for why this particular effort was terminated without a word to the people running it.
