Poppy Press

The firm SKDK registered as a foreign agent for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the end of February. They crafted UCLA’s media responses to the encampment, strikes, and other demonstrations.

Documents acquired via the California Public Records Act (CPRA) show that UCLA has been employing the firm SKDK, a registered foreign agent of Israel, to counteract pro-Palestine messaging and discredit students, faculty, and staff fighting the university’s support for genocide. Based on a contract UCLA held with a similar firm, it is reasonable to believe UCLA has paid SKDK upwards of $100,000 for their services.

SKDK was employed during the encampments, Sukkot protests, UAW strikes, and other demonstrations. They actively provided UCLA with messaging assistance, from contacting news outlets on UCLA’s behalf to shaping their response narrative.

SKDK handles media outreach and image for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which forced it to register as a foreign agent at the end of February 2025.

According to the document outlining SKDK’s registration as a foreign agent of Israel, the firm has pitched to the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, NBC, ABC, and NewsNation, among others, on behalf of Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

SKDK have worked with Israel’s Foreign Ministry on the 10/7 project, an initiative that aims to attack journalists and get them fired when they do not align their reporting with Israel’s narrative of the genocide. This project, launched by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-genocide organizations, seeks to shut down opposition to the genocide of Palestinians, and make Israel’s unpopular genocide more palatable to Americans.

Several SKDK staff members were also formerly employed by the Biden administration’s State Department as spokespeople who concealed Israeli crimes and lied about the ongoing genocide. This includes Vedant Patel, one of the most ardent faces of the Biden administration’s narrative, serving as assistant White House Press Secretary. He is now a SKDK senior vice president.

Credit: San Jose Spotlight

SKDK is an organization deeply committed to the narrative that pro-Palestine protests are antisemitic, the exact narrative that the 10/7 project and AIPAC seek to push. In updates to the UCLA administration on news reports made about campus, SKDK would group antisemitism and protests together, as if they were one and the same, even branding the Sukkot protests, led by Jewish students, as antisemitic. SKDK has a goal beyond helping UCLA shape their response narrative, and that is to paint pro-Palestine protestors as antisemites through channels that give them legitimacy, such as the university.

In an email sent within administration after a Daily Bruin article about a meeting between the DB and administration was published, a Media Relations official said, “The Daily Bruin has just published their article based (on) last Friday’s editorial board meeting. All the responses hew closely to the main points we covered in our briefing book, and I found no red flags or surprises.”

This shows that on at least one occasion, the Daily Bruin regurgitated admin, and likely SKDK, talking points with no meaningful pushback or questioning of the authenticity of the university administration’s answers.

In their capacity as UCLA’s PR managers, SKDK has helped UCLA paint peaceful anti-genocide protests as violent anti-semitic mobs. They spread the falsehood that student protesters blocked Jewish students from accessing campus, a lie that was echoed by members of Congress during congressional hearings.

UCLA’s employment of SKDK proves what was already known: UCLA, as an organization, is deeply committed to the Israeli genocide in Palestine and refuses to acknowledge the demand to divest. The university administration will not tolerate opposition to this genocide, and will do anything, including hiring foreign agents of Israel, to discredit and defame the students, faculty, and staff fighting against the university’s support of genocide.