With worldwide Palestine solidarity and the BDS movement growing in strength, Israeli propaganda efforts intended to counter the "peace with justice" call have also come under the spotlight. We've seen Reut's "delegitimization" report, crass campus hasbara, and a host of other initiatives (both "engagement" and "offensive").
With that in mind, a new article in The Jerusalem Post makes for interesting reading:
In 2001, IDC [Inderdisciplinary Center] Herzliya students Gur Braslavi and Ariel Halevi won the Oxford Union Debating Competition for teams from foreign countries. Nine years later, their joint company, Debate Ltd., was chosen to carry out the Israeli government’s new public diplomacy initiative.
The company recently took on a contract to conduct 200 workshops in which its instructors teach regular Israelis the arts of rhetoric and persuasion. If the pilot proves successful, it will likely be extended and multiplied. By creating an army of amateur ambassadors, Israel hopes to counter negative media portrayals and improve its image abroad.
A "senior instructor" at Debate, Ran Michaelis, is extensively quoted as he gives his advice on how to defend Israel in discussions abroad. The company's website says that Michaelis has previously spent a year in the UK as an intern for Labour Friends of Israel, as well as two years in Virginia working for the Jewish Agency. Which just goes to show that no matter the hasbara credentials, the end result is wearingly familiar.
Michaelis' advice boils down to the following, well-worn Zionist :debating" strategies:
1. Avoid inconvenient nasty words like "wall" and "human shields".
2. Make irrelevant analogies.
3. Distract attention by talking about anything except Israel/Palestine.
4. Appeal to emotion.
So far, so normal.
The article does, however, offer some useful insights into strategies being deployed against "delegitimization". According to Debate co-founder Ariel Harelvi, the Israeli government is "using regular Israelis as an army of guerrilla advocates":
In an interview for Metro, Ronen Plot, director-general of the [Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs] ministry, laid out his office’s activities and presented its plans for the future.
“Ultimately what we are interested in is that every Israeli who goes out of the country knows how to advocate on behalf of Israel,” said Plot. “Obviously we can’t train all of them to be at the same level, and we can’t expect them to be professional spokespeople overnight, but we can give them the tools to become effective advocates on Israel’s behalf by preparing them for the type of questions they are likely to meet and providing them with talking points that reflect Israel’s positions.”
For that purpose, the ministry has printed hundreds of thousands of small booklets outlining Israel’s position on a wide variety of topics. The booklet is handed out free to passengers flying out of Ben-Gurion Airport, and travelers are urged to read it on the flight.
Then there are the Israeli sports figures, celebrities, artists and business people, who are part of a hasbara "elite unit":
Where the ministry is really focusing its attention, though, is on filling the ranks of Israel’s hasbara army.
“We have created a cadre of 50 notable people, leaders in their field, who have taken upon themselves to help represent Israel proudly,” said Plot. The list includes professional athletes, actors, actresses, successful business executives, artists and other public figures.
Members of the “elite unit” undergo extensive training and are urged to speak about Israel in public when abroad, and meet with groups of incoming visitors, when at home.
“People like Olympic gold medalist Gal Friedman, renowned actress Noa Tishbi and respected businessman Ya’acov Peri were happy to answer our call and enlist in our service,” said Plot. “They understand the relative weight that their word carries, and were kind enough to lend it to the cause.”
And what about tourists coming to Israel? It's another opportunity...
Recognizing that a trip to Israel can do more than anything to shape people’s perspectives of the country, the ministry recently invited a group of 70 licensed Israeli tour guides to take part in one of Debate’s workshops.
“The tour guide workshop was different than the others,” explained Adi Balderman, the head trainer for Debate. “Whereas with most groups we train we have to provide the participants with information on what they can expect to encounter on their visits, the tour guides came to us with a wealth of experience from the field, and with concrete examples of difficult cases they encountered.”
And so it goes on.
Reading an article illustrated by a picture of the illegal Separation Wall about tired arguments dressed up afresh to "improve" Israel's "image", I'm reminded of Mazin Qumsiyeh's remarks about being in the "endgame".
More proof of the impending crisis, everything is pointing in that direction.
As someone said here the other day (Avi, I think), “The dam is cracking”, and they are trying to patch it up as well as they can with the PR, but it will eventually blow. It’s a matter of time.
The “Israel” some people think they know no longer bears any resemblance to reality in some respects, and as long as there are quality media outlets that remain independent (crucial), and free, open discussion, there can be some victories around the corner .
An endgame it certainly is.
By the time Debate, LTD. trains all those drones in the “arts of rhetoric”, the world would have moved on. Plus, these clowns stand little chance in the face of informed people around the globe. You can’t train someone an “art” they can only acquire through practice. Would-be Nascar drivers don’t drive out of the DMV with a Learner’s Permit and head directly to Daytona, now do they?
The evidence of this is clear at this website. Every week we see more eager hasbarists, clutching their list of already-discredited talking points, so confident that they will devastate those nasty anti-Zionists.
The confidence they project makes it all the more humorous, doesn’t it?
More Bernaise Sauce from Israel. Jesus, we’re drowning in the stuff.
(Bernays was Freud’s nephew who employed psy-op propaganda in WWII for the USA military and changed the name afterward to The Office of Public Relations, and started the whole industry. Adam Curtis’ documentary The Century of Self is a devastating look at it…and how easy it is to dupe people…worth any time you spend watching it. Any parent of teenage kids should make sure their kids see this before they leave home.)
In his autobiography, Bernays discusses a dinner at his home in 1933 where, “Karl von Weigand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Weigand his propaganda library, the best Weigand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Weigand, was using my book ‘Crystallizing Public Opinion’ as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign.”
On a related note, Citizen :
Goebbels and his well-known quote :
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Quoted in this article by P. Giraldi about the Iran disinformation campaign :
link to original.antiwar.com
Bernays also created a smoking campaign aiming to sell cigarettes to women. Suffragettes were to light up cigarettes at a parade in New York City as a gesture of freedom (since men were mainly smoking), and Bernays had notified the press this was to occur. When the moment arrived, Bernays was their to provide the press with the infamous phrase, “Torches of Freedom”. Using woman’s oppression, he transformed the cigarette into a symbol of defiance.
link to wordsoffireinkofblood.blogspot.com
“While a cigarette was burning
My heart was burning too
A smoke ring for your finger
A fashion in a blue
While a cigarette was burning
Our smoke dreams all came through
We tried to make them linger
As lovers always do
From foolish dreams we walked
For love’s a choke that goes up in smoke
Now in each cigarette I see you yet
Somehow I shall never forget
While a cigarette was burning
We loved and laughed and learned
That hearts were made for breaking
While a cigarette burned”
For love’s a choke that goes up in smoke! But that’s what happens when you smoke Yenems.
Some links MRW – for the 4 episodes of ‘The Century of the Self’:
Part 1: Happiness Machines
link to video.google.com
Part 2: The Engineering of Consent
link to video.google.com
Part 3: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
link to video.google.com
Part 4: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
link to video.google.com
My father, bless him told me to never ever try and explain a joke, just make it and leave it there. He was considered a very funny man, all my Mom’s lawyers laughed at him.
Jeez, Mooser, do you take nightly bathes in irony fluid? Have an IV permanently stuck in your arm?
Mooser does have a point. Jokes are like frogs, the moment you dissect them, you kill them.
“People like Olympic gold medalist Gal Friedman, renowned actress Noa Tishbi and respected businessman Ya’acov Peri were happy to answer our call and enlist in our service,” said Plot. “They understand the relative weight that their word carries, and were kind enough to lend it to the cause.”
Who has heard of any of these people? FWIW, I haven’t. While Elvis Costello may no longer be an “A list” celebrity, at least a fair number of people know who he is.
I was thinking the same exact thing.
This is not so different from the days of Vietnam. Defenders of the war had be at the debates but once there, it was distraction and irreverance. Sometimes critics of the war were not so great as debaters. It was a learning experience to comprehend that the magnitude of the war was vastly more important than the trivial issue of who was the best debater. Technique is no substitute for substance.
I hate to steal Mooser’s thunder, but there is a Yiddish expression that describes this initiative to a tee: die selbe drek mit andere dekoratzye – the same shit differently decorated.
By the way, I’m pretty sure the line “it’s not about information, it’s about knowledge” in the JPost article is mistranslated, and should read “it’s not about information, it’s about knowhow”.
Shmuel, my strongest point in Yiddish is my regret I didn’t learn more of it while I had such wonderful and unusual opportunities, when I was young. I had relatives who were both fluent and literate in Yiddish and involved in the dieing Yiddish culture in NY. But did I recognise what a valuable resource (besides and in addition to being absolutely wonderful, warm people) that could be? Nope! Not this genius, all I wanted to know from was Rock-unt-Roll and jezz!
Over half the traffic at the neo-liberal Democratic Party shill site MatthewYglesias.com is hasbara debaters. The mildest criticism of Israel stirs up the “anti-Semite!” cockroaches like nothing you’ve ever seen.
Calling Lord Haw Haw, calling Lord Haw Haw. You can fool a lot of people a lot of the time but you can’t fool everybody always.
That cool scar gave him a sort of gravitas. To bad you couldn’t see it on the radio.
They’re training “Israeli sports figures, celebrities, artists and business people” to propagandize for Israel? I think those who are looking for a justification for boycotting all such people when they appear in the US have just found it.
i thought this was the most revealing segment
i’m noticing more and more certain behavior patterns emerging as the debate heats up. authoritative personality types as a trade off for rational argument. repetition was also emphasized in the article.
this all brings to mind a debate i had in junior high school. i agreed to it the week before because no one in the class wanted to take the side arguing on behalf of the criminals so i volunteered. as usual for me growing up i did no research or even bothered opening a book on the topic until the night before. i figured i’d swing into action around 8 o’clock and formulate my argument by 8:30. that night was the first time i became aware of what the holocaust meant.
my point is that even the best debaters have to work within certain parameters of reality. they are selling a stinking fish and it stinks more everyday.
They also, like Witty, have to work within a framework of at least casual racism. There has to be at least an unspoken agreement about who the more deserving people are, you know?
But if you insist on human rights, you become an anti-Semite!
Propaganda is such an ugly word. Why not call it “public diplomacy” – “public” creates associations of democracy, libraries, schools, hospitals, decency and progressiveness; “diplomacy” conjures up images of soft-spokenness, sophistication, excellence, exclusivity, eloquence, red carpets, champagne and fine chocolates. Perfect for the ethnic-democracy, powerful-victim, pinkwashed, greenwashed, whitewashed Altneuland.
I love the name of the company. Debate Ltd. => Debate ‘Limited’
Or, as in de bait is limited?
Shorter Public Image Ltd., Er I mean Debate Ltd. Shovel more horseshit on the pile, hope it obscures the view.
“More proof of the impending crisis, everything is pointing in that direction”
Are you guys channeling Ahmadinejad? I have been hearing that the end is near for ages!
Yes, but the difference, rachel, is you’re used to hearing it whenever you back up toward a crowd.
Boom goes the dynamite! Try the veal…