Posts promoting the "Zionist Occupied Government" conspiracy theory rose by 217.6 percent following the start of U.S.-Israel-Iran military operations on February 28, 2026. Fighting Online Antisemitism (FOA) recorded 3,138 such posts during the conflict period, compared with 988 in the preceding baseline window.

The organization analyzed two 38-day periods to measure the shift in online discourse. The baseline ran from January 21 to February 27, while the war period extended from February 28 to April 6. During the baseline, 485 of the 988 identified posts were explicitly ZOG-related, accounting for 49.1 percent of the sample. In the war period, 1,977 of the 3,138 total posts were ZOG-related, representing 63 percent of the dataset.

Engagement with this content increased during the conflict. Conspiracy theory posts, including those with ZOG references, received twice the number of likes and ten times the number of shares compared to pre-war levels. FOA stated that within 48 hours of the initial military strikes, broad anti-establishment targets in online posts were replaced by localized labels including "Zionists," "Mossad," and "Jewish control."

The "Zionist Occupied Government" conspiracy theory falsely claims a secret Jewish or Israeli cabal controls global institutions and sovereign governments, particularly the U.S. government. This narrative originated in white nationalist circles in the 1980s and has been adopted by far-right and antisemitic groups in the U.S. and Europe.

The organization reported flags for explicit ZOG violations to Meta and X. FOA stated that Meta's automated systems failed to remove 70 percent of the reported ZOG content. The agency conditions its ban on ZOG to instances where the term is "clearly" used as a proxy for Jewish people. X did not respond to the findings.

FOA, founded in 2015, has developed partnerships with organizations like the Action and Protection Foundation (TEV) to monitor antisemitic content. The group urged social media platforms to provide priority queues for verified civil society organizations during active geopolitical crises. Reports from these organizations should bypass automated bots and go directly to human moderators for review within a 24-hour window, the group suggested. It also urged platforms to instantly demonetize accounts in creator revenue-sharing programs on X and YouTube if they leverage explicit or coded antisemitic frameworks to drive engagement during international conflicts.

FOA said that rather than relying exclusively on traditional forms of hate speech, antisemitic narratives increasingly embed themselves within broader political debates, attaching themselves to discussions of foreign policy, national sovereignty, institutional trust, and international conflict. The organization concluded that the data demonstrates the adaptability of contemporary antisemitism. It said geopolitical crises, like the US-Israel-Iran conflict, act as catalysts that rapidly unite fragmented extremist communities around this framework. The group added that this process mainstreams fringe neo-Nazi rhetoric, weaponizing legitimate foreign policy debates to drive systemic antisemitism online.