Israel Cranks Up the PR Machine

[Jos]

It’s deploying all its resources to fight the growing world movement against the occupation.

Popularly known as BDS, the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israeli institutions involved in occupation has generated shock waves in international pro-Israel circles and within the top levels of Israel’s military-intelligence apparatus. The government-linked Reut Institute has designated BDS as a key national security threat and produced a blueprint for sabotaging Palestine solidarity networks around the world.

While paranoia mounts inside Israeli policy circles about the rising tide of nonviolent global resistance, Netanyahu has grown obsessed with Israel’s withering image in the West. Under his guidance, the term “delegitimization” has become a household word signifying BDS and nearly everything done in the name of exposing Israel’s violations of international law. And thanks to Netanyahu’s instigation, Barack Obama has become the first American president to explicitly pledge to battle the pressure campaign.

Groping for a convenient solution to its public relations problems, the Israeli government has turned to hasbara. The literal meaning of this Hebrew word is “explanation,” but when put into practice, most informed observers recognize it as propaganda. The more the State of Israel relies on force to manage the occupation, the more it feels compelled to deploy hasbara. And the more Western media consumers encounter hasbara, the more likely they are to measure Israel’s grandiose talking points against the routine and petty violence, shocking acts of humiliation and repression that define its treatment of the Palestinians.

Under the leadership of Netanyahu—a professional explainer himself, who spent the early years of his political career as a frequent guest on prime-time American news programs perfecting the slickness of the Beltway pundit class—the Israeli government has invested unprecedented resources into hasbara. Once the sole responsibility of the foreign ministry, the task of disseminating hasbara now falls on a special Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, led until 2013 by Yuli Edelstein, a right-wing settler and government minister who has called Arabs a “despicable nation.” (Edelstein is now speaker of the Knesset.)

Edelstein’s ministry boasts an advanced “situation room,” a paid media team, and coordination of a volunteer force that claims to include thousands of bloggers, tweeters and Facebook commenters who are fed the latest talking points and then flood social media with hasbara in five languages. The exploits of the propaganda soldiers conscripted into Israel’s online army have helped give rise to the phenomenon of the “hasbara troll,” an often faceless, shrill and relentless nuisance deployed on Twitter and Facebook to harass public figures who express skepticism about official Israeli policy or sympathy for the Palestinians. These efforts have been complemented by the office of the prime minister, the IDF spokesperson’s unit, and the ministry of tourism and culture, each of which hosts newly created hasbara units. Even the Jewish Agency, a state-funded para-governmental organization primarily engaged in absorbing and settling new Jewish immigrants, employs a full-time social media operative named Avi Mayer, who spends his days on Twitter attacking Palestine solidarity activists with usually baseless claims of anti-Semitism and deception.

Whether they like it or not, every Jewish Israeli citizen is a potential recruit for the national hasbara brigade. While Tel Aviv University sends hasbara delegations to campuses across Europe and the United States, the National Union of Israeli Students offers Israeli college students $2,000 to spread propaganda “from the comfort of home.”

Israel Cranks Up the PR Machine | The Nation

They try to buy more time before the fall of the Zionist regime

 

[toastman]

Fall of the Zionist Regime lol !!!

Just make sure you're around next year when I start the next Happy Birthday Israel thread

 

[Jos]

Melody Sucharewicz is the winner of the second season of Israel's popular TV show, The Ambassador,[1] a reality series resembling Donald Trump's The Apprentice TV format, though instead of business its theme is public diplomacy and political PR.[2] Elected among hundreds of candidates.

The aim is to choose, amongst several thousands of young professionals, a spokesperson for Israel. Rhetoric and diplomatic skills, social competence, coping with hostile media, and skills in creative political PR of 14 final candidates were tested throughout a series of international challenges

Melody Sucharewicz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Jos]

Fall of the Zionist Regime lol !!!

Just make sure you're around next year when I start the next Happy Birthday Israel thread

Next year in Al-Quds?

 

[toastman]

Call it by it's real name, Jerusalem

The Muslim claim to Jerusalem is made up, kind of like how the Palestinians made up Nakba

Which btw makes me realize that in my last post in the holocaust award thread, I said Muslims haven't contributed nothing. I was wrong !
Muslims have contributed many techniques on how to re-write history

 

[Sunni Man]

The zionist juden learned from their nazi mentors the art and value of a strong propaganda offensive.

And now are using the exact same techniques to bolster their own fascist regime. .

 

[Sweet_Caroline]

There is a thread somewhere around on the forum asking how intelligent are Muslims. Judging from the Muslims that type on here, I would say not that intelligent at all.

 

[toastman]

There is a thread somewhere around on the forum asking how intelligent are Muslims. Judging from the Muslims that type on here, I would say not that intelligent at all.

Over one billion of them in the world, and they've contributed close to nothing to our planet .
That definitely says something about their intelligence level

 

[Jos]

If I needed your opinion Sweaty_Caroline, I could scrape it off my shoe

 

[toastman]

Hmm, looks like Caroline poked another one of Jos's nerve

 

[Sweet_Caroline]

If I needed your opinion Sweet_Caroline, I could scrape it off my shoe