In our last article, we discussed a YouTube video “Israelis are Colonizing the World” that bizarrely claims that all Israelis, when they step outside Israel, are trying to become settler-colonialists everywhere else. It already has 415,000 views in four days.
Most of the videos on that YouTube channel, Uncivilized, are either explicitly anti-Israel or throw in anti-Israel components even when the topic is something else entirely. Some of the slickly produced videos are also pro-China and pro--Iran.
It is perhaps not surprising that Uncivilized is based out of Qatar according to its YouTube registration. Qatar is an absolute monarchy that criminalizes homosexuality, restricts press freedom, and built much of its World Cup infrastructure on a migrant labor system that drew years of international criticism. That’s not proof of anything by itself, of course, but Qatar would not allow any media outlet to publish things that its king opposes.
More interesting is the person who founded Uncivilized. That person is Salem Barahmeh.
Barameh is not some guy in his basement using AI. He has a professional career in state-run propaganda. He advised Dr. Hanan Ashrawi at the PLO Executive Committee, worked with the Palestine Investment Fund, and served at the Palestinian Mission to the United States. At Portland Communications in London, he worked as a Policy and Public Affairs Advisor to Gulf governments — the same firm reported to have done paid Wikipedia-editing work for the government of Qatar. He then founded and served as executive director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD), an organization whose stated purpose is training journalists in how to write about Israel, before moving on to build Uncivilized full time.
Barameh may be the most important anti-Israel propagandist you’ve never heard of.
