A new super PAC with ties to Republicans is sending contradictory messages in ads about Vice President Kamala Harris and her record on Israel — in what critics from both parties have described as a cynically motivated effort to independently target key voting blocs.

On one hand, the recently created group, Future Coalition PAC, has been running digital ads touting Harris as a stalwart supporter of Israel amid its war with Hamas. The spots, which are airing in heavily Arab and Muslim communities in Michigan, seem designed to sway voters in the battleground state who have expressed anger with the Biden-Harris administration over its approach to the conflict in Gaza.

Meanwhile, the super PAC, which has not yet publicly disclosed its donors, released a new slate of ads on Wednesday that invoke the opposite message — accusing Harris of “pandering to Palestine” while calling on her to “stand with our ally Israel.” The videos are running in Pennsylvania, another crucial battleground home to a sizable population of Jewish voters who could help swing the election, according to Facebook’s ad library.

The mixed messaging represents what is perhaps the starkest example of a new front in microtargeted campaign ads about Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza — a uniquely divisive issue that has threatened to fracture parts of Harris’ coalition in a tightening race. The ads from Future Coalition — which has spent nearly $530,000 this election cycle — seek to exacerbate those tensions as Harris has walked a delicate rhetorical line in addressing the conflict.

In fact, the group’s attack ads in Pennsylvania draw directly on the Harris campaign’s own recent digital ads in Michigan designed to specifically target Arab and Muslim voters. The ads, which began running earlier this week, spotlight her critical comments on Israel’s conduct of the war — including remarks in which she has vowed to “not be silent about human suffering in Gaza.”

It is unclear if Harris’ Gaza-related ads have meaningfully influenced any skeptical voters in Michigan. In advance of a campaign event in the state on Thursday, the Uncommitted National Movement that had encouraged voters to oppose President Joe Biden in the primaries said it would not endorse Harris, citing her refusal to discuss its demand for an arms embargo on Israel — which she does not support.

Political strategists say that microtargeting and other sleights of hand are by no means unusual in campaign advertising. “The false flag is distasteful, but speaking on behalf of political consultants everywhere, we all do this,” Adrian Hemond, a strategist in Michigan, told Jewish Insider on Thursday. He cautioned, however, that there is “some danger in tactics like these, especially when you’re campaigning at scale and when you’re trying to say different things to different audiences.”

The new efforts from Harris and Future Coalition — about which little is known — have faced heightened scrutiny, underscoring the polarizing nature of the issue in a close election.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), a Jewish Democrat running for Senate in Michigan, has also engaged in such tactics amid pressure from anti-Israel activists to stake out a more critical position on the war with Hamas. In some recent Facebook ads, her campaign has targeted users who have expressed interest in such subjects as “Islamic studies,” the “Gaza Strip” and the “State of Palestine,” while excluding those interested in “Jewish studies,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The Trump campaign has been seeking to attract Arab voters as well as Jewish voters disillusioned by the far left’s hostility to Israel as it fights Hamas and other Iran-backed proxies in the region. Even before Harris entered the race, allies of former President Donald Trump were weighing running ads in Michigan communities with large Arab populations thanking Biden for supporting Israel. 

But some pro-Israel Republicans expressed discomfort with the mixed messages from Future Coalition, which has also been accused of invoking antisemitic tropes about Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish. 

“I’m not a big fan of this strategy,” said Jason Roe, a Republican strategist in Michigan, though he noted that Democrats used similar tactics last cycle to boost extreme GOP candidates in the primaries. “I think it’s manipulative. Even if this might benefit my team, it’s not exactly the most honest way to run an advertising campaign.”

He also suggested the ads in Michigan could backfire if seen by voters who are outside the group’s target audience. “If what they’re doing is to alienate Muslim voters, I think it’s a pretty good strategy, but you have a risk of reaching pro-Israel voters,” he told JI, noting that he had seen the ads himself. “If they’re serving me OTT ads saying she’s good on Israel,” he said of Harris, “then they missed the mark on this one.”

Eric Levine, a prominent fundraiser who sits on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said the super PAC’s approach was “not his first choice how you’d go about doing this,” raising similar concerns that the positive ads about Harris could give some Jews “license to vote for her when they might have had reservations.”

“I think Donald Trump would be best served, and would help himself win, if he would emphasize the huge success of his Middle East policies,” he told JI on Thursday, in contrast with what he called Harris’ “abysmal” record on Israel. “We wouldn’t have to go through these microtargeting efforts if Trump were to make that point.”

But Larry Ceisler, a veteran Democratic operative in Pennsylvania, where new polling shows Harris in the lead, said the Future Coalition ads were unlikely to meaningfully impact the election, noting that the targeted groups already “have a good sense of what they are going to do on Election Day.”

“Obviously, Palestinian Americans know Kamala Harris’ husband is Jewish,” he told JI in an email. “They also know where she stands on Israel. They don’t need a GOP operation to inform them of those facts. This is just the game now as it is played.”