In large part, yes. There is also Trump, Republicans and their drive to carve out a bigger conservative-space in a liberal-dominated media landscape. There is Silicon valley, the rising digital-military-industrial complex, the china hawks, the intelligence apparatus and the security state, and the usual self-interests of the billionaire class. All of these forces are currently colluding to control the narrative (i.e. minds) in their favor. But I will argue the Israel angle is a big part of it which is being under-reported on ( by design).

Trump went after TikTok in his first presidency but was ultimately unsuccessful. It was the Biden government that successully banned TikTok last year in a bipartisan bill. What was the impetus then and why did it succeed? Listen to Charlie Kirk's personal take[1] on why Tiktok got banned (and how the right capitalized on it) :

  [..] the buried lede of the October 7th was that it it got TikTok banned and remember the Tiktok ban stalled based on just China concerns, but TikTok was the the hub of a lot of the anti-israel sentiment that was brewing with Gen Z and all of a sudden the TikTok ban got resurfaced. Mitt Romney said at a security conference "we are Banning Tik Tok because it is sowing anti-israel sentiment in the United States."   

Multiple congressman and representatives have cited anti-israel sentiment as their reason [2].

Tiktok recently hired Erica Mindel - an instructor in the Armoured Corps in the Israeli army’s spokesperson’s unit - to lead the company’s hate speech policy. The potential hiring of Bari Weiss to head the CBS news division reveals a similar underlying motive. One which is laid out by the CEO of the ADL, in his address to the Israeli Knesset[3] :

  "Pushing extremists off Wikipedia might not seem equal to the challenge of pushing Hezbollah to north of the Litani River; capturing TikTok might seem less meaningful than holding on to Mount Hermon (A mountain peak in Syria which Israel conquered in their undeclared invasion of Syria late last year); libelous tweets certainly might seem less deadly than missiles from Yemen but this is urgent because the next war will be decided based on how Israel and its allies perform online as much as offline. Make no mistake it's real we saw that in the propaganda that anti-israel groups pushed out in America on October 7th accusing Israel of committing genocide."

[1] - https://x.com/DelGroyp/status/1856577467596845279 https://xcancel.com/DelGroyp/status/1856577467596845279

[2] - https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/tiktok-ban-israel-palest... https://archive.is/20250918033631/https://theintercept.com/2...

[3] - https://x.com/infolibnews/status/1968177947724198243 https://xcancel.com/infolibnews/status/1968177947724198243

[4] - https://jewishinsider.com/2025/07/tiktok-hate-speech-manager... , https://www.middleeasteye.net/trending/tiktok-hires-ex-israe...