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Hasbara

frogwoman

frogwoman

No amount of cajolery...
I was just wondering whether we could discuss the true extent of this phenomenon, obviously there are people who are paid to put Israel's case on social media sites etc but to what extent is this actually happening as opposed to people who actually believe their propaganda? And additionally given the response of public opinion this time it doesn't seem to have much in the way of an effect?
 
I suspect that there are not much more than 100* or so people heavily engaged in this activity living in the UK, factor in international (mostly Israeli and American individuals) and it might seem like a lot but really it is a tiny number. It is easily accounted for in terms of political sympathy rather than hired propagandists.

*I will stand corrected on this if I see evidence that the phenomenon is of greater scale, but I keep seeing the same names and the same individuals pushing this stuff and the crowd seems to be thinner and more nutty with each act of aggression.
 
Knotted said:
I suspect that there are not much more than 100* or so people heavily engaged in this activity living in the UK, factor in international (mostly Israeli and American individuals) and it might seem like a lot but really it is a tiny number. It is easily accounted for in terms of political sympathy rather than hired propagandists.

*I will stand corrected on this if I see evidence that the phenomenon is of greater scale, but I keep seeing the same names and the same individuals pushing this stuff and the crowd seems to be thinner and more nutty with each act of aggression.
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100 working full time are more than enough to flood every UK newspaper's comment sections and have a bit left over for social media sites.
 
Like many others I respond to and attack the IDF twitter account and there are new sock accounts having a go back at me every time. So there's quite a few out there on Twitter. I don't bother reading comments of newspaper sites or youtube precisely because they are full of these people.
 
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Israel itself is a well connected country with a lot of Internet access, and there are a lot of people around the world that would do this sort of thing for free, because they believed in it. Targeting your PR so that it gets people doing this is much more efficient that funding a troll brigade - the Bush regime worked this out.

To take a more domestic example, I don't think anyone actually thinks that UKIP has an official team of people who troll comments, but the unofficial one is bloody everywhere.

Doubtless Israel has a media strategy including the net, which it will provide "talking points" and general direction for (a la Bush) but more than that is reaches diminishing returns very quickly.
 
FridgeMagnet said:
Targeting your PR so that it gets people doing this is much more efficient that funding a troll brigade - the Bush regime worked this out.
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I think that most Hasbara is about keeping the faithful faithful and the rest is about offering a narrative to Israel's allies. I don't think you are supposed to be convinced by it.
 
Knotted said:
I think that most Hasbara is about keeping the faithful faithful and the rest is about offering a narrative to Israel's allies. I don't think you are supposed to be convinced by it.
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The official output is certainly about that yes - giving people reassurance that their position is right with counter-arguments (and these don't need to be very good, people will believe a lot to avoid cognitive dissonance, if that isn't an overused term which it is) and also suggesting attack points. It's not to win converts. But that's all - I don't see any reason to believe they do much more than that.
 
I'm looking at the various Hasbara blogs and websites and they are overwhelmed. They have a few annoying gnat type things about eg. it's been claimed but not proven that Jon Snow has tweeted an image from Syria thinking it was from Gaza, and there's various quibbles over the Guardian's inevitable mistakes. They have various IDF videos to circulate which supposedly prove various talking points (surprisingly few of these though). They promote tired and discredited and easily disproved North Korean style propaganda and demand that the liberal media publish them. And they're up against a flood of images and atrocity stories. I've got to say that many of those countering them are idiots (I've just been reading Guardian and Mail comments and had to give up as I was losing the will to live), but they still wipe them out. I notice most of the Hasbara trolls give up in practice and just say, "tough, Hamas shouldn't fire rockets." They really like that word. "Tough".
 
Urban 75 to its great credit has been free of Hasbara or so it seems. Used to post on Guardian Talk years ago but it was overwhelmed by them and it's successor NottheTalk has become a cess pit of the most foul anti Arab and Muslim hatred.

Edit: this is what posters get banned for on the aforementioned site:

The deep-lying racism fuelling the Israeli onslaught

"Referring to the creation of Israel in 1948, Meir declared: "It was not as if there was a Palestinian people in Palestine and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." Or: "How can we return the occupied territories? There's nobody to return them to."

This is the ultimate in dehumanising people whose identity you have to deny in order to justify your actions towards them. It is a modern adaptation of the doctrine of terra nullius – empty land – which English colonists invoked to rob Australia from those who had lived there for 50,000 years. Meir and Captain Cook are sister and brother under the skin.

Her views are not unrepresentative: deputy Prime Minister Yitzhak Katzir – "We will keep them on their knees. We will follow them all over the world and kill them"; defence minister and chief of staff minister Moshe Dayan – "Jackals"; Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir – "Grasshoppers"; Prime Minister Menahem Begin – "Two-legged vermin"; defence forces chief of staff Rafael Eitan – "We need to keep Palestinians like drugged roaches in a bottle."



"None of these statements, or the leaders who made them, has ever been disowned by Official Israel."

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnis
ts/eamonn-mccann/the-deeplying-racism-fuelling-the-israeli-onslaught-30433885.html

Thank God for Urban75 and their honest moderation.
 
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there are a number of sites sponsored by the Pakistani Army that are almost entirely racist attacks on anyone who is not Pakistani, including a very large contingent of posters from the UK
Bizarrely, I was only allowed one post - well mild by any normal standards - before I got banned.
Wont give the link here, in case any one is tempted to post there too
They are well keen on counter battery attack
 
To be perfectly frank unfortunately racism does exist in the Desi community be that Muslim or Hindu, Gay or Straight, male or female.

Islam in UK is heavily influenced by the South Asian community and should not be taken as representative of Muslims throughout the world.

My apologies but it needs saying.
 
Idris2002 said:
They're losing the fight. I'm seeing people in my facebook links who would never previously have posted stuff about Gaza or Palestine putting up some really brutal stuff.
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Ditto. Including Jewish Americans with Zionist tendencies who are still holding the anti-Palestinian line, but are now openly criticising israel
 
Manter said:
Ditto. Including Jewish Americans with Zionist tendencies who are still holding the anti-Palestinian line, but are now openly criticising israel
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I think something has changed noticeably in terms of the media and public opinion this time around.
 
I don't know about people being paid to post pro Israel comments but I have come across plenty of Americans whose pro Israel lines are extreme, and who seem to be posting in their own time.
 
Indy this morning has an article about the Israel Project's 'Global Language Dictionary', a propaganda playbook dating back to Operation Cast Lead, which tells Israeli propagandists how to spin their war crimes for gullible Americans.

How about the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled in 1948 and in the following years, and who are not allowed to go back to their homes? Here Dr Luntz has subtle advice for spokesmen, saying that "the right of return is a tough issue for Israelis to communicate effectively because much of Israeli language sounds like the 'separate but equal' words of the 1950s segregationists and the 1980s advocates of Apartheid. The fact is, Americans don't like, don't believe and don't accept the concept of 'separate but equal'."

So how should spokesmen deal with what the booklet admits is a tough question? They should call it a "demand", on the grounds that Americans don't like people who make demands. "Then say 'Palestinians aren't content with their own state. Now they're demanding territory inside Israel'." Other suggestions for an effective Israeli response include saying that the right of return might become part of a final settlement "at some point in the future".

Dr Luntz notes that Americans as a whole are fearful of mass immigration into the US, so mention of "mass Palestinian immigration" into Israel will not go down well with them. If nothing else works, say that the return of Palestinians would "derail the effort to achieve peace".
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http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...hat-helps-israelis-to-hide-facts-9630765.html

Here's the document itself itself.

http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.newsweek.com/media/70/tip_report.pdf
 
That Indy article makes sense, I have seen a lot of pro-Israel people below the line of articles invoke the idea of the Palestinians being a big, swarming and subversive mass by comparing the situation to that of Latin American immigrants to the US
 
J Ed said:
That Indy article makes sense, I have seen a lot of pro-Israel people below the line of articles invoke the idea of the Palestinians being a big, swarming and subversive mass by comparing the situation to that of Latin American immigrants to the US
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Little bit racism.

Its unbelievable isn't it?

I have noticed the coverage of the mainstream media noticeably different this time though (apart from the BBC :mad: )
 
frogwoman said:
Little bit racism.

Its unbelievable isn't it?

I have noticed the coverage of the mainstream media noticeably different this time though (apart from the BBC :mad: )
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Channel 4's coverage has been really positive I think, in contrast to the BBC, they really are on the side of the people who are being attacked. I have been really moved by some of what Jon Snow has said, maybe partly cos it comes from such an establishment figure and I wouldn't have expected it from him http://blogs.channel4.com/snowblog/bring-israelis-palestinians/24316
 
'Pallywood' ugh. I remember being told by someone when I was still a Zionist that Palestinians were making money by selling fake DVDs about what Israel was doing and selling them on markets ffs

People really believe that's what is happening too. They think that the Palestinians are dressing up in Israeli uniforms and pretending to shoot each other to make money :facepalm:
 
I love the BBC's reporting on this. They'll say stuff like "Israel blows up a hospital in its war against Hamas". They make the fullest concession to hasbara that they can get away with and it still sounds like a humanitarian catastrophe instigated by Israel. Watching the BBC on Gaza is to watch hasbara crumble before your eyes. You won't catch me protesting outside the beeb. Long may they continue to sound utterly absurd!
 
To be serious, isn't it better to ridicule the BBC's coverage rather than demand that it abides by its stated commitment to impartiality?

1) What does impartiality mean anyway and is it desirable? When the BBC does documentaries on Apartheid South Africa, it doesn't give equal weight to apologists for the Sharpeville masacre. And this I'm quite glad about.
2) Isn't it better to be educate about the BBC's generally establishment views and biases rather than demanding that they conceal these biases more effectively? Too many single issue people complaining about BBC bias, imo. Isn't it good to point out that the BBC are so blatantly biased on Israel/Palestine when talking about BBC bias on cuts and austerity measures (and visa verse)?
 
Due to the pretty much indefensible actions of the IDF in Gaza Hasbara will probably move to try an promote the belief that there is rampant anti-semitism and multiple attacks on Jewish people in Europe in particular. This will both deflect attention attention from Israel's genocidal behaviour and aim to split the US protests away from their European counterparts.

Already there are signs of this starting.
 
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