Positive Views of Israel, Brought to You by Israelis
By Ethan Bronner
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/world/middleeast/18israel.html
Published: February 17, 2010
JERUSALEM — The Israeli government, deeply worried about the country’s declining international image, began a campaign on Wednesday to turn every Israeli — and ultimately every Jew — into a traveling public relations agent.
With a Web site backed by an advertising blitz, the Information and Diaspora Affairs Ministry began issuing Hebrew-language pamphlets to passengers on Israeli airlines and offering coaching courses to groups heading abroad. The message: “Are you fed up with the way we are portrayed around the world? You can change the picture.”
The information minister, Yuli Edelstein, said in a statement that a poll he had commissioned found that 91 percent of Israelis believed that their country had a poor image and that the vast majority wanted to play a role in improving it.
“To counter the big money invested by Arab states in propaganda against Israel, we have to mobilize our human capital, meaning the residents of Israel,” Mr. Edelstein said.
The new Web site presents a conservative interpretation of the issues over which Israel is most often criticized abroad — its settlements in the West Bank and its treatment of Palestinians, including the war in Gaza a year ago. But it also seeks to puncture what the ministry considers common myths about Israel — that it is a big and primitive country, that its food consists of little more than hummus and falafel, and that Israelis as a group do not seek peace.
On the Web site, fake news clips show a British television journalist asserting that in Israel the camel is the main means of transportation and a Spanish reporter claiming that Israelis grill meat outdoors because they lack kitchens. A French news anchor is seen saying that life here is a series of endless explosions.
The beginning of the campaign coincided with a growing controversy over the killing of a Hamas official in Dubai. Many Israelis have wondered whether the assassination was the work of their Mossad spy agency, especially because a number of the false identities used by the killers were of Britons who had immigrated here.
One main message of the campaign is that Israel is a technically advanced and diverse society and that its government policies are not the source of regional conflict. It notes that a number of important agricultural breakthroughs have occurred here, including drip irrigation and the development of the cherry tomato.
“The campaign stems from a genuine fear that Israel is misrepresented, sometimes in very vicious ways,” said Shlomo Avineri, who teaches political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “On this level it is understandable. But I think it is puerile. Some of the information is ridiculous, and behind it I find a Bolshevik mentality — to make every citizen an unpaid civil servant for the policy of the government. There is never any intimation that some of our problems have to do with actual policies.”
Mr. Avineri said this was the first time in decades that Israel had had a separate Information Ministry, and its existence, in his view, was a sign that the government was approaching the issue without sophistication.
Eytan Gilboa, director of the Center for International Communications at Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv and a longtime advocate of improved public diplomacy for Israel, said that some of what the ministry published was fine, but he added that he did not believe that the country’s poor image had to do with a misperception that it was primitive.
“This country’s main challenges are the false comparison people make with an apartheid state and the questioning of its right to exist,” Mr. Gilboa said. “And the pamphlets don’t deal with those.”
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The Foreign Ministry presents: talkbackers in the service of the State
By Dora Kishinevski
Calcalist
5 July 2009
http://www.calcalist.co.il/internet/articles/0,7340,L-3319543,00.html
Translated for Occupation Magazine by George Malent
After they became an inseparable part of the service provided by public-relations companies and advertising agencies, paid Internet talkbackers are being mobilized in the service in the service of the State. The Foreign Ministry is in the process of setting up a team of students and demobilized soldiers who will work around the clock writing pro-Israeli responses on Internet websites all over the world, and on services like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. The Foreign Ministry’s department for the explanation of Israeli policy* is running the project, and it will be an integral part of it. The project is described in the government budget for 2009 as the “Internet fighting team” – a name that was given to it in order to distinguish it from the existing policy-explanation team, among other reasons, so that it can receive a separate budget. Even though the budget’s size has not yet been disclosed to the public, sources in the Foreign Ministry have told Calcalist that in will be about NIS 600 thousand in its first year, and it will be increased in the future. From the primary budget, about NIS 200 thousand will be invested in round-the-clock activity at the micro-blogging website Twitter, which was recently featured in the headlines for the services it provided to demonstrators during the recent disturbances in Iran.
“To all intents and purposes the Internet is a theatre in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must be active in that theatre, otherwise we will lose,” Elan Shturman, deputy director of the policy-explanation department in the Foreign Ministry, and who is directly responsible for setting up the project, says in an interview with Calcalist. “Our policy-explanation achievements on the Internet today are impressive in comparison to the resources that have been invested so far, but the other side is also investing resources on the Internet. There is an endless array of pro-Palestinian websites, with huge budgets, rich with information and video clips that everyone can download and post on their websites. They are flooding the Internet with content from the Hamas news agency. It is a well-oiled machine. Our objective is to penetrate into the world in which these discussions are taking place, where reports and videos are published – the blogs, the social networks, the news websites of all sizes. We will introduce a pro-Israeli voice into those places. What is now going on in Iran is the proof of the need for such an operational branch,” adds Shturman. “It’s not like a group of friends is going to bring down the government with Twitter messages, but it does help to expand the struggle to vast dimensions.”
The missions: “monitoring” and “fostering discussions”
The Foreign Ministry intends to recruit youths who speak at least one foreign language and who are studying communications, political science or law, or alternatively those whose military background is in units that deal with information analysis. “It is a youthful language”, explains Shturman. “Older people do not know how to write blogs, how to act there, what the accepted norms are. The basic conditions are a high capacity for expression in English – we also have French- and Swedish-speakers – and familiarity with the online milieu. We are looking for people who are already writing blogs and circulating in Facebook”.
Members of the new unit will work at the Ministry (“They will punch a card,” says Shturman) and enjoy the full technical support of Tahila, the government’s ISP, which is responsible for computer infrastructure and Internet services for government departments. “Their missions will be defined along the lines of the government policies that they will be required to defend on the Internet. It could be the situation in Gaza, the situation in the north or whatever is decided. We will determine which international audiences we want to reach through the Internet and the strategy we will use to reach them, and the workers will implement that on in the field. Of course they will not distribute official communiqu_s; they will draft the conversations themselves. We will also activate an Internet-monitoring team – people who will follow blogs, the BBC website, the Arabic websites.”
According to Shturman the project will begin with a limited budget, but he has plans to expand the team and its missions: “the new centre will also be able to support Israel as an economic and commercial entity,” he says. “Alternative energy, for example, now interests the American public and Congress much more than the conflict in the Middle East. If through my team I can post in blogs dealing with alternative energy and push the names of Israeli companies there, I will strengthen Israel’s image as a developed state that contributes to the quality of the environment and to humanity, and along with that I may also manage to help an Israeli company get millions of dollars worth of contracts. The economic potential here is great, but for that we will require a large number of people. What is unique about the Internet is the fragmentation into different communities, every community deals with what interests it. To each of those communities you have to introduce material that is relevant to it.”
The inspiration: covert advertising on the Internet
The Foreign Ministry admits that the inspiration comes from none other than the much-reviled field of compensated commercial talkback: employees of companies and public-relations firms who post words of praise on the Internet for those who sent them there – the company that is their employer or their client. The professional responders normally identify themselves as chance readers of the article they are responding to or as “satisfied customers” of the company they are praising.
Will the responders who are hired for this also present themselves as “ordinary net-surfers”?
“Of course,” says Shturman. “Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the policy-explanation department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis. They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the Foreign Ministry developed.”
Test-firing in the Gaza War
According to Shturman, although it is only now that the project is receiving a budget and a special department in the Foreign Ministry, in practice the Ministry has been using its own responders since the last war in Gaza, when the Ministry recruited volunteer talkbackers. “During Operation Cast Lead we appealed to Jewish communities abroad and with their help we recruited a few thousand volunteers, who were joined by Israeli volunteers. We gave them background material and policy-explanation material, and we sent them to represent the Israeli point of view on news websites and in polls on the Internet,” says Shturman. “Our target audience then was the European Left, which was not friendly towards the policy of the government. For that reason we began to get involved in discussions on blogs in England, Spain and Germany, a very hostile environment.”
And how much change have you effected so far?
“It is hard to prove success in this kind of activity, but it is clear that we succeeded in bypassing the European television networks, which are very critical of Israel, and we have created direct dialogues with the public.”
What things have you done there exactly?
“For example, we sent someone to write in the website of a left-wing group in Spain. He wrote ‘it is not exactly as you say.’ Someone at the website replied to him, and we replied again, we gave arguments, pictures. Dialogue like that opens people’s eyes.”
Elon Gilad, a worker at the Foreign Ministry who coordinated the activities of the volunteer talkbackers during the war in Gaza and will coordinate the activities of the professional talkbackers in the new project, says that volunteering for talkback in defence of Israel started spontaneously: “Many times people contacted us and asked how they could help to explain Israeli policy. They mainly do it at times like the Gaza operation. People just asked for information, and afterwards we saw that the information was distributed all over the Internet. The Ministry of Absorption also started a project at that time, and they transferred to us hundreds of volunteers who speak foreign languages and who will help to spread the information. That project too mainly spreads information on the Internet.”
“You can’t win”
While most of the net-surfers were recruited through websites like giyus.org, which was officially activated by a Jewish lobby, in some cases is it was the Foreign Ministry that took the initiative to contact the surfers and asked them to post talkbacks sympathetic to the State and the government [of Israel] on the Internet and to help recruit volunteers. That’s how Michal Carmi, an active blogger and associate general manager at the high-tech placement company Tripletec, was recruited to the online policy-explanation team.
“During Operation Cast Lead the Foreign Ministry wrote to me and other bloggers and asked us to make our opinions known on the international stage as well,” Carmi tells Calcalist. “They sent us pages with ‘taking points’ and a great many video clips. I focussed my energies on Facebook, and here and there I wrote responses on blogs where words like ‘Holocaust’ and ‘murder’ were used in connection with Israel’s Gaza action. I had some very hard conversations there. Several times the Foreign Ministry also recommended that we access specific blogs and get involved in the discussions that were taking place there.”
And does it work? Does it have any effect?
“I am not sure that that strategy was correct. The Ministry did excellent work, they sent us a flood of accurate information, but it focussed on Israeli suffering and the threat of the missiles. But the view of the Europeans is one-dimensional. Israeli suffering does not seem relevant to them compared to Palestinian suffering.”
“You can never win in this struggle. All you can do is be there and express your position,” is how Gilad sums up the effectiveness so far, as well as his expectations of the operation when it begins to receive a government budget.
* “department for the explanation of Israeli policy” is a translation of only two words in the original Hebrew text: “mahleqet ha-hasbara” – literally, “the department of explanation”. Israeli readers require no elaboration. Henceforth in this article, “hasbara” will be translated as “policy-explanation”. It may also be translated as “public diplomacy” or “propaganda” – trans.
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Anti-Defamation League joins YouTube to fight online hate
By Haaretz Service
Source: http://www. haaretz. com/hasen/spages/1046428. html
Last update – 13:55 16/12/2008
The widely popular video sharing website YouTube has reached out to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for its expertise in dealing with hate on the Internet.
As a result of this partnership, the League is now a contributor to YouTube’s newly launched Abuse & Safety Center, where users are empowered to identify and confront hate, and to report abuses.
The YouTube Abuse & Safety Center features information and links to resources developed by ADL to help Internet users respond to and report offensive material and extremist content that violates YouTube?s Community Guidelines on hate speech.
“YouTube is an incredible tool for sharing videos and giving individuals an opportunity to broadcast themselves, but like other social networking sites it can be abused or used for sinister and dangerous purposes,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “There are those who may try to exploit the technology to spread racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of hate.
”“We commend YouTube for their efforts to provide users with access to important information from those with expertise, such as ADL and others, on how to effectively respond to hate on the Internet and to report abuses,” Foxman said.
“Obviously, the industry has a vested interest in providing a safe online experience for the community of users, but they cannot go it alone. Maintaining a prejudice-free zone on the Internet means constant vigilance on the part of everyone. Parents, educators, industry, government and nonprofit watchdogs must work together. The bigots can only be sidelined if people of good will are actively reporting abuses, so that the Internet service providers can take action,” the ADL chief added.
Since the launch of the Internet, ADL has played a leading role in working to combat hate on the World Wide Web through education and advocacy. The League monitors extremism and hate on the Internet and works with major service providers, including Google, to identify and respond to offensive content.
Last year, the League launched a major initiative to counteract cyberbullying by providing access to educational resources and information to parents, teachers, students and caregivers. ADL also serves as the U.S. representative to the International Network Against Cyber-Hate (INACH).www. adl. org/Internet.
More information is available on the League?s web site atThe YouTube Abuse & Safety Center was unveiled on December 11 at the annual conference of the Family Online Safety Institute in Washington D.C.http://help. youtube. com/support/youtube/bin/request. py?contact_type=abuse. A link to the Center is also available at the bottom of every YouTube page.
and can be found atThe Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world?s leading organization in fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.
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“Through its 31 offices across the country, the ADL monitors school curricula, library acquisition lists, and public conferences and symposiums, working behind the scenes to stifle intellectual freedom.” -Robert Friedman, The Jewish Thought Police: How the Anti-Defamation League Censors Books, Intimidates Librarians, and Spies on Citizens, The Village Voice, July 27, 1993.
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More on Zionist so-called “Tolerance(c)” of free speech on the internet…
Israel Shamir Exposes the Zionist Censors Infesting Wikipedia!
Posted By site admin On 5/15/2008 @ 12:30 am
Source: <a href="http://www.msplinks.comhttp://www. davidduke. com/general/israel-shamir-hammers-the-zionist-censors-infesting-wikipedia_3835. html/print
Wiki, the Chaos Controlled
By [1] Israel Shamir
In the art of surveillance, there is a cunning ploy, familiar to the readers of Le Carre: the target is followed by a clumsy gumshoe; he discovers he is being tailed, easily shakes the tail off and goes on, feeling secure and unobserved. Unbeknownst to him, there are other detectives who stick to him like glue and follow him to his perdition. Professionally it is called a “double tail”.
Apparently, some of us were duped by such a ruse in the peculiar affair of a Zionist plot to infiltrate Wikipedia. This powerful online encyclopaedia is ostensibly free and open: everyone can be an editor, add or edit any entry. Editors remain anonymous; their true identity is hidden behind a nickname. This rule has a serious drawback: using this anonymity, a dedicated group may infiltrate the system by stealth, distort reality and create a false picture of the world in the eyes of billions. Apparently this script has been recently enacted.
Conspiracy? Yes. Jewish conspiracy? You bet! The damning email exchange was intercepted and [2] published, revealing a radical Zionist plot to bend “Wiki.” A moderate leftist (some would call it ‘tame’) US-based pro-Palestinian site [3] EI revealed that the radical-extremist Zionist organisation CAMERA called for “volunteers who can work as ‘editors’ to ensure” that Israel-related articles on Wikipedia agree with their right-wing-Zionist agenda. This effort was to be kept secret from the media and the public. Stealth and misrepresentation were presented as the keys to success. A CAMERA official advised the volunteers to sign up as editors for Wikipedia and afterwards to avoid editing Israel-related material for a while, in order to “avoid the appearance of being one-topic editors”. The orchestrated effort was to appear as if it were the work of unaffiliated individuals, and for this reason the editors were to avoid picking a user name that marked them as pro-Israel, or that let people know their real name. The emails taught Zionist apprentices how to act in the interests of Israel while using neutral language. The emphasis was on the long run side of the operation: “This is a marathon not a sprint”, a Zionist instructor nicknamed ‘Zeq’ taught his apprentices in the email exchange.
The EI article about this revelation was quite sycophantic towards Wikipedia. It presented Wiki as an objective source at loggerheads with Zionist infiltrators, and even bordered on advertising: “Openness and good faith are among Wikipedia’s core principles. Any person in the world can write or edit articles, but Wikipedia has strict guidelines and procedures for accountability intended to ensure quality control and prevent vandalism, plagiarism or distortion. It is because of these safeguards that articles on key elements of the Palestine-Israel conflict have generally remained well-referenced, useful and objective. ”
Still, it was not enough, and on the next day, 22 April 2008, EI updated this article with a triumphal and calming statement: “a plan by the pro-Israel pressure group CAMERA to skew Wikipedia in a pro-Israel direction appears to have collapsed after it was exposed by EI”. Zeq was dismissed, and anyway, fewer than a dozen of Camera moles were active at the time EI exposed the scheme. In short: everything is fine, Wiki is functioning well, and the Zionist scare is gone, thanks to fearless EI. And anyway, it was only a small operation by the enemies of freedom, and it is over.
Excuse me, is this an article, or a paid advertisement for Wikipedia? Did EI receive on evening April 21st an offer they could not refuse from the owner of Wiki? Only a Zionist can think that Wiki “articles on key elements of the Palestine-Israel conflict have generally remained well-referenced, useful and objective.” On the contrary, they are biased in the extreme; just read, for instance, an exceedingly hostile entry on Hamas, including its Talk, i.e. discussions of editors, deletions and corrections. It defines Hamas as “… best known for multiple suicide bombings and other attacks directed against civilians [known to whom? To me it is best known as the ruling party of Palestine, and secondly, as grassroots mutual assistance movement – ISH]… Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of the State of Israel [while all prominent Israeli parties joined in destruction of Palestine – ISH] … the organization is described by many as antisemitic.” Is that objective? Further the entry says, inter alia: Hamas is considered by the US a terrorist organisation. This is true, but not the whole truth. I personally added: However, Russia refused to consider Hamas a terrorist organisation. My addition was immediately removed by ever-watchful Zionist case-officer. Hamas is terrorist, full stop.
Only a dishonest fool, or a man who never used Wikipedia, may think that plan of the Lobby “to skew Wikipedia in a pro-Israel direction appears to have collapsed”. The clumsy gumshoe was shaken off, for Camera is but a bunch of amateurs, extreme Jewish nationalists with some nuisance value. They do not represent the Jewish mainstream; but they do play a useful part: they make the mainstream appear moderate. Being hassled by Camera is like being hassled by the Klan – it proves nothing. They hassle everybody, even moderate Zionists and other fellow-philosemites whom Camera fanatics consider insufficiently zealous, such as [4] Johann Hari, an English professional philosemite who recently boasted: “I have worked undercover at both the Finsbury Park mosque and among neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to expose the Jew-hatred there; I went on the Islam Channel to challenge the anti-Semitism of Islamists, I received a rash of death threats calling me ‘a Jew-lover’’. Later he strayed farther afield and wrote about Israeli sewage pouring all over Gaza. Afterwards, he complained, “Camera said I am an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels.
”Now, when the amateurs are disgraced and gone, the professionals remain. Wiki is as partial to Jews as the Jewish Chronicle. The picture of the world it offers is being edited and shaped in full accordance with general Jewish world view thanks to a group of permanent and devoted editors and arbiters.
Freedom to add and edit is just a bait attracting millions unpaid contributors. If Wiki were truly free, provided that “ordinary people’ are in vast majority, we could expect to find a democratic world view, not one not perverted by a biased minority, but the real Wikipedia does not work that way. The apparent chaos of Wiki is strictly controlled by a hierarchy of Agents Smith, who secure the Wiki matrix. They delete references to Jewish misdeeds, but emphasize every good deed by a Jew. Israel/Palestine is just one area in what is truly universal agenda. For instance, they block and remove attempts to mention the Jewish origin of the founder of Satanist movement, one La Vey (originally Levy), though this explains his hatred towards Christianity. They insist on inferiority of Poincare versus Einstein, of Jung versus Freud or Proudhon versus Marx. Every act against Jews is recorded; every act of Jews against goyim is blotted out from this organised memory of our generation. These editors can manage just fine, thank you, without amateur infiltrators.
Zeq has been banned for his indiscretions, but the man he wrote of so admiringly, whom he described as their role model to his apprentices (“work with him and learn from him”), an ideal,. effective Zionist Wikipedia editor called Jayjg, is still there. Jayjg is not just an editor; he is an arbiter, what passes for a judge on the Wikipedia. He was appointed to that position by the site owner himself. He is an Agent Smith of the Wiki matrix. One may see his work in many, many entries: clever and unscrupulous, he is a master of the subterfuge and deceit.
Another, superior Agent Smith is Cberlet or John Foster (Chip) Berlet, the scourge of the web. He is [5] acting under many names. He is a collaborator with the ADL, the Jewish thought police. Though he previously denied having any relationship to ADL, he admitted to Israeli Foreign Affairs that he “had had quite a cordial professional relationship with the ADL” and “had been doing research in cooperation with ADL”. The New York City Jewish newspaper “Forward” reported that Berlet transferred information from FBI anti-Communist informer directly to ADL. [6] Ace Hayes wrote: “John Foster “Chip” Berlet has been involved, over the past half decade, in attacking virtually every independent critic of the Imperial State that the reader can name.” His operation is financed by [7] Ford Foundation. Michael Collins Piper in his monumental book on the Kennedy assassination, Final Judgment, asserts that Chip Berlet is a CIA agent. Naturally, his own entry in Wiki is protected from editing. The Arbitration committee (those who hold the reigns of power on the Wiki) “admit to hero-worship of Cberlet’, as I was informed by a prominent insider.
These men are discreet, they won’t babble about their devotion to the Jewish cause; they hide it under the veil of bureaucratic expressions and abbreviations. Their supporting cast includes some Jewish “antizionists” like RolandR. This is actually a British Trotskyite trade union apparatchik Roland Rance, who does not mind to cooperate with convinced anti-Communist, CIA and ADL agent Berlet and with zealous Zionist Jayjg. So much for his antizionism and his socialism! He, and thousands of smaller wanna-be Agents Smith did not need the starry-eyed arch-Zionists of CAMERA, they are already in.
The “revelation” of EI is nothing but a subterfuge, a “double tail” executed to increase our trust in Wiki. A similar “double tail” operation was performed last year, when Wiki [8] announced it had found CIA-made edits on a few pages. Careful reading of that “revelation” was even more disappointing than that of EI. The worst discovered CIA edit of President Ahmadinejad entry was ‘added exclamation “Wahhhhhh!”, while “other changes that have been made are more innocuous, and include tweaks to the profile of former CIA chief Porter Goss and celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey.” This is ridiculous: the US secret services spend many billions per annum in their drive for domination of the Web. A recent [9] report speaks of $30 billion allocated by the Pentagon for an “electronic Manhattan Project” in order to fight the Web. And they want us to believe that all these billions produced an exclamation “Wahhhhhh!”? Alas, it is just another “double tail” sting by the usual suspects.
The Wiki entries on Palestine/Israel are far from “well-referenced, useful and objective” as the dupes of EI claim. On the second thought, are they dupes, or willing collaborators? The top man in EI is Electronic Ali, as Ali Abunima is nicknamed, the man who began the witch hunt against “Shamir the antisemite”. He is the Arab front for various exclusively Jewish organisations for Palestine, who rather promote the Jewish cause and fight antisemitism. Such Jewish bodies like to have a compliant shabbesgoy (as Rosa Luxemburg called these guys) for a front, and Ali fits the bill perfectly. Even this article on Wiki has some reference to ‘evil antisemites’.
In his attack on me, Electronic Ali acted together with the execrable Hussein Ibish, but since then, the thieves have fallen apart.[10] [1] Another prominent EI person is, or was, Nigel Parry, a British antisemitism-fighter, their webmaster and probably also their case officer. Nigel Perry is an enforcer of Political Correctness and is Gatekeeper General of the permitted discourse on Palestine, keeping it between hard Likud and the soft Peace Now. He proudly mentions many years of involvement with the Palestinian cause. Well, such guys are a reason why the Palestinian cause looks the way it does.
Why, we could have One State, a single unified state in Israel/Palestine by now, but for these guys. Looking back, it was a possible development in 2001, sometime before 9/11, when my call for One State was heeded by many Israelis and Americans, and supported by major American newspapers. Then these men began their campaign to denigrate me and scared the supporters away. “Shamir is discredited and marginalised”, they wrote with satisfaction. For them, it did not matter that together with me, they discredited and marginalised the idea of One State — the only possible peaceful solution to our conflict.
The final battle was fought on the Wikipedia site, where Ali-Ibish-Parry provided ammunition to Zionist Agent Smith Jayjg and ADL’s own Barlet, with the ADL-sponsored block of “antifascist” e-zines: British Searchlight, Norwegian Monitor, Swedish Expo, American Trotskyite Socialist Viewpoint et al. These formidable forces were counteracted by our wonderful friend Joh Domingo, a South African fighter against apartheid, and our French friend Omnivore.http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Talk:Israel_Shamir. They decided to make me a Swedish neonazi impostor, instead of the Israeli writer I am.
You can read the protocols of the battle on [11]All the time this battle was going on, I lived in my Jaffa house, receiving endless visitors, giving numerous interviews, going to work, seeing people – but I might as well have been dead. I felt like Doc Daneeka, a character in Joseph Heller’s witty Catch-22, who was declared dead as the plane he was supposed to fly was downed. “I am alive!” he shouted. “Here we have a paper saying you are dead”, they replied. His wife “inherited” his property, he was stricken from the lists, they stopped serving him food, and even his friends and comrades looked askance when he appeared. This is the power of an official-looking document – or a webpage blue with hyperlinks. Thus I have learned the dreadful power of an encyclopaedia: it does not reflect the world, but rather creates the world.answers. com or at an Arab English-language site, you’ll be led to Wiki with its lies.
Wiki is linked to thousands of sites; whether you look atIf an encyclopaedia said I am a Swedish neonazi antisemite, nothing could change it. I could scream all day long: “Look, here I am, in Jaffa” but they would reply: “Here we have an official paper saying that you are not”. I am very grateful to Joh Domingo for his superhuman efforts, but he could not overcome the Agents Smith. Neither could I. If tomorrow they decide to make you a little green man from Mars, they will succeed, too. And then, even your friends will look behind you for your flying saucer.
A few days ago, I spoke to a group of Indian intellectuals in Delhi, and afterwards I received this touching letter from Come Carpentier, a French expat writer living in the Indian capital.
He wrote: “I meant to thank you for these enlightening, balanced and always objective yet passionate words you spoke that evening…Listening to them dispels even better than reading you the reputation that you have been given by you-know-who as a firebrand defamer of Israel, holocaust denier, Nazi apologist and so on and so forth… Not to mention the rumours about your being a clandestine Swedish Far Right-winger infiltrated in the Holy Land by the international Islamo-Fascist Cabal!”In a way, pro-Jewish bias of Wiki is unavoidable bearing in mind Jewish positions in Western discourse, media and universities. Jews – even people of Jewish origin – are likely to correct discourse in a flattering for them way. They did it hundred years ago, and five hundred years ago. Provided they do it in one direction, they constitute the only entity (besides the undermined Church and its Orders) capable of a marathon (in words of Zeq) – of sustaining a long-run operation.
A hundred years ago, a New York lawyer Samuel Untermeyer financed the first Scofield Reference Bible; since then, the Scofield Bibles are being republished in newer even more pro-Jewish editions and they bring in millions of Christian Zionists.
Joachim Martillo writes in his [12] Judonia: “Jewish efforts benefit from organizational memory that does not exist in other lobbying situations. The longevity of Jewish Federation organizations can give Israel Lobbying efforts a generational aspect not seen elsewhere. For example, Israel Advocacy organizations worked for fifty years to delegitimize Arabists in the Foreign Service and State Department, and replace them with Israel-sympathetic personnel”.
Martllo erroneously connects this result with some specific pro-Israel organisation. Success of Zionism (and incidentally its crimes) is just the strawberry on top of the Jewish success cake. The Jews are engaged in advocacy of Jews, and consequently they delegitimize Arabists, or priests, or independent historians who do not subscribe to the notion that Jews are special in consistently beneficial way. Zionism is a result of Jewish pruning of history, and this pruned history is what we were taught.
There are no Arab sheiks or Russian oligarchs or American oilmen ready to finance anything long term of no immediate relevancy. They do not understand that practically every entry of encyclopaedia, every textbook influence future generations. A correct entry on, say, Poincare or monotheism or Persian invasion could save potential Zionists from their delusions of grandeur.
Wikipedia is a great idea for Jews: people of all nations from all over the world contribute of their knowledge, and then this Summa is pruned in the way acceptable to the pro-Jewish gardeners. Despite its “free” image, Wikipedia is part and parcel of the immense Judaised media holding, and thus is as biased as any other publication of the group from the New York Times (owned by Sulzberger) to Liberation (owned by Rothschild) to hundreds of Murdock papers.
Conclusion
Wikipedia is an important asset, like the New York Times, but both are in the hands of enemies of freedom. Sometimes good and truthful articles or entries are to be found in both, but these are specks of gold dust placed there to salt the dud mine. We certainly want to democratise both; to make both really democratic and accessible. Until this is done, we should explain that both are tools of mind control not to be trusted or taken at face value. If Wiki wants to preserve some of its reliability, it must get rid of its Zionist enforcers. Not only of the CAMERA bumpkins, but of the hard men in black suits, the Agents Smith.
[13] [1] In an [14] article by Osamah Khalil of Berkeley EI deservedly took Ibish to task for his “defense of Abbas’ strategy of deference and obsequiousness to the US and Israel. According to Ibish’s issue paper, Abbas’ problem is not that he is a failed, corrupt and ineffectual leader who appears to Palestinians as an eager American tool, but that he is “uninspiring” and “lacks the charisma that many politicians rely upon, and is not an emotive speaker.” Ibish’s screed, continues EI, “deliberately ignores a thugocracy in Palestinian politics as embodied by Mohammad Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub and their ilk.” His idea of an independent secular Palestinian state is a US-backed government of thieves and their enforcers… Ibish derides reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas as “utopian”, as for him there is no alternative to Abbas’ rule, American hyperpower, and Israel’s military and economic dominance in the Middle East.
”Article Source: [15] IsraelShamir. net
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More regarding the A.D.L. , as described below by Noam Chomsky in his book Necessary Illusions (1989):
“The leading official monitor of anti-Semitism, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith, interprets anti-Semitism as unwillingness to conform to its requirements with regard to support for Israeli authorities…. The logic is straightforward: Anti-Semitism is simply opposition to the interests of Israel (as the ADL sees them)… The ADL has virtually abandoned its earlier role as a civil rights organization, becoming “one of the main pillars” of Israeli propaganda in the U.S., as the Israeli press casually describes it, engaged in surveillance, blacklisting, compilation of FBI-style files circulated to adherents for the purpose of defamation, angry public responses to criticism of Israeli actions, and so on. These efforts, buttressed by insinuations of anti-Semitism or direct accusations, are intended to deflect or undermine opposition to Israeli policies, including Israel’s refusal, with U.S. support, to move towards a general political settlement [with Palestine].
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Israel backed by army of cyber-soldiers
From Yonit Farago in Jerusalem
From The Times
July 28, 2006
WHILE Israel fights Hezbollah with tanks and aircraft, its supporters are campaigning on the internet.
Israel’s Government has thrown its weight behind efforts by supporters to counter what it believes to be negative bias and a tide of pro-Arab propaganda. The Foreign Ministry has ordered trainee diplomats to track websites and chatrooms so that networks of US and European groups with hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists can place supportive messages.
In the past week nearly 5,000 members of the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) have downloaded special “megaphone” software that alerts them to anti-Israeli chatrooms or internet polls to enable them to post contrary viewpoints. A student team in Jerusalem combs the web in a host of different languages to flag the sites so that those who have signed up can influence an opinion survey or the course of a debate.
Jonny Cline, of the international student group, said that Jewish students and youth groups with their understanding of the web environment were ideally placed to present another side to the debate.
“We’re saying to these people that if Israel is being bashed, don’t ignore it, change it,” Mr Cline said. “A poll like CNN’s takes just a few seconds to vote in, but if thousands take part the outcome will be changed. What’s vital is that the international face of the conflict is balanced.”
Doron Barkat, 29, in Jerusalem, spends long nights trawling the web to try to swing the debate Israel’s way. “When I see internet polls for or against Israel I send out a mailing list to vote for Israel,” he said. “It can be that after 15 minutes there will be 400 votes for Israel.
“It’s very satisfying. There are also forums where Lebanese and Israelis talk.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry must avoid direct involvement with the campaign but is in contact with international Jewish and evangelical Christian groups, distributing internet information packs.
Amir Gissin, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s public relations director, said: “The internet’s become a leading tool for news, shaping the world view of millions. Our problem is the foreign media shows Lebanese suffering, but not Israeli. We’re bypassing that filter by distributing pictures showing how northern Israelis suffer from Katyusha rocket attacks.”
HASBARA
Stop being manipulated. Some people earn their livelihood off of your ignorance. Wars and occupations cannot be fought without consent, and consent (especially nowadays) is rather easy to win. While the majority are said to rule, little attention is paid to the few who shape the opinions of that majority. Reclaim your mind and stop supporting heinous action in this world. -W.
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Truth vs hasbara
by Sonja Karkar
November 19, 2009
Source: http://australiansforpalestine.com/karkar-the-truth-does-not-need-hasbara
Hasbara is the Hebrew word for “explanation” and is used by Israel and its supporters to describe their efforts to re-shape public opinion and build up Israel’s image abroad. In fact, it is simply a euphemism for propaganda.
Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza and the shockwaves reverberating around the world from the extent of its savagery has caused a drastic re-think in Israel of how to shape its image in the wake of such sudden uncensored exposure. There was no doubt that Israel had a public relations disaster on its hands and spokespersons appeared almost robot-like as they tried to make their carefully crafted hasbara credible against the images emblazoned on front pages, the nightly television news and the spread of YouTube videos capturing the sickening detail of the death and destruction that Israel’s military arsenal rained down on the Palestinians.
Israel thought it had learned from its 2006 scorched-earth bombardment of Lebanon when it was having to explain away attacks on UNIFIL observer posts, Red Cross ambulances, TV transmitters, mosques and civilian areas. This time, it calculated, no effort or expense would be spared to anticipate criticism and challenges once the military machine rolled into Gaza. Eight months earlier, Israel had set up a National Information Directorate, which coordinated messages locally and around the globe. By the time the bombs were falling, Foreign Affairs ministry spokesman Andy David told Forward “the aim is to change the reality.” (1) Such similar newspeak employed by a letter writer to The Guardian had Israeli Professor Avi Shlaim responding and calling it “truly Orwellian”.(2)
It seems Israel is the victim of its own chutzpah, so used is it to believing that it can fool all of the people all of the time. The reality which Israel faces is the awakening of consciousness in a new generation… Controlling and manipulating the mainstream media is one thing, but the soft power of internet use in individual hands is almost impossible to control. Aware that it is in danger of losing public opinion, Israel is spending some of its Foreign Ministry budget this year to establish a team of talkback writers who will flood the websites with pro-Israel messages. Ilan Shturman who will supervise the “Internet Combat Campaign” says that “the internet is an arena in every way in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must act here or otherwise we lose.” (3)
Every possible method of communication has been in play with teams of spokespeople, bloggers and diplomats all relaying the same message. None of that helped though, as the number of dead rose dramatically over those three weeks in January and especially when some 40 Palestinian civilians were virtually obliterated in a school compound. Israel’s hasbara became meaningless as thousands of images of human suffering flooded cyberspace. Even CNN anchors were shocked into admitting that Israel had broken the ceasefire, and the normally pro-Zionist Time magazine published a front cover showing the Star of David overlaid with barbed wire and the heading “Why Israel Can’t Win”.(4)
Israel had barred international journalists from the Gaza Strip, but the truth got out from that besieged stretch of land anyway. Palestinian journalists, bloggers and eyewitnesses inside Gaza found themselves inundated with requests for stories and photos and the electricity restrictions imposed by Israel on the beleaguered population only served to heighten the drama as reports were dashed off before power cuts intermittently interrupted communications.
Whatever the pros and cons of the internet’s Facebook, YouTube and now Twitter, in this case, these networks had a way of exposing the truth that trumped the most artful sophistry as Israel’s propagandists found out to their chagrin. For all the successes on Facebook of QassamCount which allowed some 70,000 members to get updated messages on where rockets landed in Israel (5) and the 76,000 members who joined the I support the Israel Defense Forces in Preventing Terror Attacks from Gaza group, (6) it was the appeal to users to support the Palestinians in Gaza that saw the biggest response with over 531,000 signatures. (7)
Never before has the world been more available to the Palestinians. If Israel can use Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, so too can the Palestinians and their supporters. The internet is the perfect medium for Palestinian stories, photographs and videos and the place to network a global movement against Israel’s lies and disinformation. Already, the increasing acceptance of Palestinians into social circles and communities when Palestinians were once barely recognised, has Israel so worried that it has even set up an international educational organisation – StandWithUs.com – that is disseminating information in schools, universities, churches and libraries and facilitating conferences and missions to Israel.
But, people are not buying Israel’s narrative like they once did out of guilt… Nor are they attracted to the pioneering image that had Jews and non-Jews spend time on a kibbutz in search of some socialist utopia. Under-estimating people’s intelligence and ability to make their own judgments on issues is a common error in this era of instant news and knowledge on tap. Israel’s hasbara worked in the past because people generally could not be bothered looking for alternative views. This phenomenon was observed by economist and social theorist J A Hobson in the editors of jingo journals writing on the Boer War who “felt quite safe in continuing to repeat the most audacious falsehoods long after they have been exposed, simply because they knew that their readers, though perfectly aware that journals existed which gave another side, would not look at papers which opposed the war.” (8)
However, information today is no longer something for which we have to go looking and it is very difficult to ignore a truth that is self-evident. That is precisely where new technology has been able to turn public opinion even amongst people who have the greatest affinity with Israel. It is why we are seeing so many Jews worldwide speaking up against Israel’s apartheid policies and practices.
People who accept Israel’s unbridled use of military power are being dishonest if they choose not to see the Palestinian narrative. Whether out of expediency, empathy with Israel, or still clinging to the last vestiges of imperialism, they have compromised themselves and the very way of life they claim to defend if they do not make an informed judgment.
The genie is out of the bottle and governments may try to force it back in, but instant information is too alluring for people to accept a return to life without it. No matter how sophisticated Israel’s information technology or how slick its public relations, Palestinians and their supporters have a chance now to even up the score in the public opinion stakes. Unlike the Israeli government-funded hasbara brigade, people advocating for Palestine do not need to be paid to defend human rights and justice. Israel may have the military power, but it is unlikely to ever control the “soft” power of truth.
Notes:
1.“Learning from Lebanon, Israel sets up press operation” by Nathan Jeffay, FORWARD, published 31 Dec 08, issue of 09 Jan 09
2.Professor Avi Shlaim in response to a letter by Uri Dromi “This Hamas Hallucination” (23 Jan 09), The Guardian, 26 January 2009
3.Israeli Foreign Ministry Presents: Talkbacks in the Service of State” by Dora Kishinevski, The Alternative Information Center, 16 Jul 09
4.Time Magazine Cover: “Why Israel Can’t Win”, 19 January 2009
5.“Gaza war also being waged in cyberspace” by Shashank Bengali/ McClatchy Newspapers, 13 January 2009
6.Ibid.
7.Ibid.
8.J A Hobson, “The Psychology of Jingoism” London, 1901, p101
Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine and one of the founders and co-convener of Australians for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia. She is also the editor of http://www.australiansforpalestine.com and contributes articles on Palestine to various publications regularly.
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On media occupation. Watch the rest of this documentary HERE.
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