The Israeli regime’s “recognition” of Somaliland is a case study in digital manipulation, political desperation, and the cynical weaponization of sovereignty claims — complete with fake TikTok videos, manufactured news cycles, and the ever-present shadow of Palestinian displacement.
In December, posters started appearing across Hargeisa, Somaliland, promising that a “big announcement” related to the recognition of Somaliland was imminent.
Many assumed that this was related to the United States administration, especially since Texas Senator Ted Cruz had written to President Trump in August 2025 that granting recognition would be to the “greatest benefit to American national security interests”. In June 2025, another Republican Senator, AIPAC beneficiary Scott Perry, had introduced the Republic of Somaliland Independence Act, which proposed for the US to adopt as official policy “that all territorial claims by the Federal Republic of Somalia over the area known as Somaliland are invalid and without merit”.
Instead, on 26 December, the morning of Jumu’ah, the leader of the breakaway Muslim region posted the most humiliating of announcements: a post on X accompanied by video footage of a FaceTime call with international fugitive and murderous war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. Was this what the people had waited for?
In the age of instant news, videos of Israeli flag wavers in Hargeisa saturated TikTok, the most popular platform with the younger generation in Somaliland, and quickly became viral, not least with horrified diaspora communities abroad. TikTok was recently acquired by Larry Ellison, the US billionaire and largest ever donor to the Friends of the IDF “charity”. Ellison once offered Benjamin Netanyahu, one of his “closest friends”, a directorship of his Oracle company, which he stated is on a “mission to support the State of Israel”. Last July, TikTok hired Erica Mindel, a former IDF soldier, as Public Policy Manager of Hate Speech. When the fugitive Netanyahu met with pro-Israeli social media influencers in the US in September, he stated that the forced takeover of TikTok was “the most important purchase going on right now”. Hargeisa, then, was the Israeli government’s mission to “reclaim the narrative” in action.
The dangers of AI were also on display, with reality quickly blending with falsehood. Local imams began to refute fake videos circulating of themselves wrapped in blue-and-white flags upon minbars, and an outlandish story of the world’s first “marriage” between an Israeli man and Somali woman was locally confirmed to be a fabrication — the husband was actually a British Muslim.
Initially, there was a widespread optimism that other countries would follow the lead of the Zionist settler colony. On the ground, after decades of having their aspirations to statehood ignored by neighbouring Arab and African countries, there was a feeling that the Israeli state, however criminal or morally abhorrent, had an influence on the global stage that would be impossible to ignore. However, these sentiments almost immediately collided with an increasingly multipolar geopolitical reality, as 21 Muslim-majority nations came together to condemn the Israeli regime’s “recognition”, affirm their support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Somalia as a whole, and reject “any potential link between such measure[s] and any attempts to forcibly expel the Palestinian people out of their land.”
Despite the resounding statement, rumours of further recognition announcements persisted in January. The majority of these stories were misinformation driven by Israeli accounts, particularly on Elon Musk’s X, purchased in 2022 with Larry Ellison’s financial assistance.
Take, for example, Niv Calderon, who studied at Tel Aviv University and, according to his LinkedIn profile, spends his time “Building Playbooks for Partnerships, Growth & US Market Entry”. On 5 January, Calderon tweeted to his almost 19,000 followers: “#BREAKING 5 countries will recognize Somaliland tomorrow.” The post was viewed 276,000 times, and the “news” spread rapidly in Hargeisa. I searched online and spoke to friends in the city, but one thing was consistent. Every single report had a single source: Niv Calderon. The “story” was a fabrication.
The Somaliland government has been desperate to burnish their pro-Western credentials in recent weeks — even issuing an official statement in support of the US abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at the beginning of January. But what began as a declaration of independence has turned into humiliation.
The day after Calderon’s fake announcement, I was sitting in a café within walking distance of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs when I heard that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar had landed in Hargeisa on a privately-owned Romanian jet. At first, grainy videos of heavily secured convoys were all I could find, but by the evening, official footage of a press conference had been released. Somaliland President Irro presented Sa’ar with a “ceremonial gift” and promised to visit the settler state. In return, Sa’ar, deliberately glancing at Irro as he gestured with air quotes, told the cameras: “Unlike Palestine – ‘Palestine’ – Somaliland is not a virtual state.”
For the Zionist regime, it is always about the Palestinians. In March 2025, US and Israeli officials briefed the Associated Press on proposals for a “mass transfer” of Palestinians from Gaza, with Somaliland specified as one of their targets for resettlement. The Somaliland government has always denied that any such agreement exists, as well as dismissing widespread claims that Israel will be allowed to establish a military base at the key Red Sea port of Berbera, overlooking the Bab al-Mandib. But the alternative story — that the child-killer Netanyahu has recognized Somaliland out of the kindness of his heart — is far less believable.
Jody McIntyre is an independent journalist and political analyst. His investigations can also be found at jodymcintyre.substack.com.
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