THE MEDIA MONOPOLY
Source – aljazeera.com
– “…What we’ve seen is another kind of occupation – an occupation of American media and the American mind by a pro-Israel narrative that’s deflected attention away from what virtually everyone recognises as the best way to resolve this conflict: end the occupation and the settlements so that Palestinians can finally have a state of their own”
The Occupation of the American Mind
Despite receiving an overwhelmingly positive response from those who have actually seen it, The Occupation of the American Mind has been repeatedly attacked and misrepresented by right-wing pressure groups and outright ignored by virtually all mainstream media outlets and North American film festivals.
Israel’s ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and repeated invasions of the Gaza strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world – except the United States.
The Occupation of the American Mind takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S.
explores how the Israeli Government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby have joined forces, often with very different motives, to shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel’s favor.
The Occupation of the American Mind (original 84-minute version)
Narrator : Roger Waters
Executive Producer : Sut Jhally
Associate Producer: George Matta
From the U.S.-based public relations campaigns that emerged in the 1980s to today, the film provides a sweeping analysis of Israel’s decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people in the face of widening international condemnation of its increasingly right-wing policies. Featuring Amira Hass, M.J. Rosenberg, Stephen M. Walt, Noam Chomsky, Rula Jebreal, Henry Siegman, Rashid Khalidi, Rami Khouri, Yousef Munayyer, Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Phyllis Bennis, Norman Solomon, Mark Crispin Miller, Peter Hart and Sut Jhally
A look at the information wars waged by Israel and its supporters to win the hearts and minds of the American people
The 2014 war on Gaza saw the Israeli military launch a devastating attack on the Gaza Strip. Over the course of 51 days, Israel dropped nearly 20,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza, killing more than 2,000 Palestinians, wounding tens of thousands and obliterating countless homes. The overwhelming majority of the casualties were civilians.
The attacks sparked mass protests around the world, including a thousands-strong march in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, with a clear divide between anti-war and rightist protesters. However, the American reaction held firm in its support for Israel, in spite of the atrocities taking place on the ground. A CNN/ORC poll conducted in July of 2014 showed that only four in 10 Americans believed that Israel was using too much force against the population of Gaza. The same poll showed that 12 percent of respondents believed Israel was not using enough force.
However shocking, the unrelenting American support for Israel was nothing new. The Israeli perspective dominates the American media and pro-Israel talking points are repeated by the highest government officials and recycled endlessly by the media. How, if at all, can propaganda be uncovered if the mainstream point of view is so dominant?
Zionism, born in the late 1800s, saw the idea of Jewish entitlement to Palestine come to fruition. From an estimated 7 percent, the Jewish population of Palestine grew exponentially to a third of the total population by 1947. The events of World War II and the Holocaust contributed to the number of Jewish settlers arriving in Palestine. It was then that the British colonial government handed matters over to the newly formed United Nations.
UN Resolution 181 awarded the smaller Jewish community a significantly larger percentage of historic Palestine than its Arab population – 56 percent to Palestine’s 44, respectively. Arab leaders rejected the proposal but their protests went unheard as Zionist leaders declared Israel a state under the new UN borders, triggering the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948. A crushing defeat of the military coalition of Arab states – including Jordan (then known as TransJordan), Egypt and Lebanon – saw Israel take control of 78 percent of historic Palestine by the time armistice was declared in 1949.
In 1967, the Six-Day War would see Israel defeat much stronger Arab armies, once again. The state would lay claim to whatever remained of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. In spite of the UN Security Council passing Resolution 242 – a call for Israel to withdraw its armed forces as per international law forbidding the takeover of territory by war – American public opinion of Israeli actions did not waver.
The 1982 invasion of Lebanon, however, saw a change in the favoured tides for Israel. As images of the Sabra and Shatila massacre flooded into American news media, Israel suddenly needed to defend itself.
The war in Lebanon would trigger the need for an official public relations strategy, known in Hebrew as “Hasbara”.
The basic strategy would be to push back with footage of Palestinians fighting against the occupation, highlighting Israel’s role as “underdog” and “victim”.
The war in Lebanon would trigger the need for an official public relations strategy, known in Hebrew as “Hasbara”.
The basic strategy would be to push back with footage of Palestinians fighting against the occupation, highlighting Israel’s role as “underdog” and “victim”.
However, with the internet and the rise of social media “news”, the Israeli government and pro-Israel groups have had a harder time managing American perceptions of the conflict. How can these changes – if any – be sustained in the long-term and will the US government ever manage its media support for Israel’s position in conflict?
Israel: Controlling the media narrative
We look at Israel's crackdown on journalists over alleged media bias, and the directive targeting new media outlets.
Avraham recently issued a directive ordering digital outlets, bloggers and even certain Facebook users to run stories about national security past military censors before publishing or posting.
The directive has alarmed Israeli journalists and non-journalists alike, prompting queries to the Defense Committee to hold hearings on how far the censors can go.
All of this is happening while Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubles up as communications minister, showing how the Likud Party sees controlling the media narrative as critical to the well-being of its government.
Talking us through the story are: Lahav Harkov Levine, reporter at the Jerusalem Post; Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, editor-in-chief at +972 Magazine; Uri Blau, journalist; and Luke Baker, Reuters Bureau Chief and Head of the Foreign Press Association.
With the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an intifada phase, Israel is facing a global image problem - and once again, the state is blaming the media.
With the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an intifada phase, Israel is facing a global image problem - and once again, the state is blaming the media.
Any time that there's significant sort of re-entry into the cycle of violence, Israel starts to look bad and when that happens the easiest place to look, the easiest place to put blame, is the media.- Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, Editor-in-chief, +972 Magazine
With the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an intifada phase, Israel is facing a global image problem - and once again, the state is blaming the media.
Over the past month, the Knesset - the legislative branch of Israel's government - summoned foreign journalists to defend themselves against accusations of systematic bias, particularly in their reporting of the protracted violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank
Source: Aljazeera
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Hasbara
Hasbara (Hebrew: הַסְבָּרָה hasbará, "explaining") refers to pro-Israel propaganda efforts (or similar propaganda efforts promoting Jewish interests more generally).[1][2] The term is used by the Israeli government
and its supporters to describe efforts to "explain" government
policies, to promote Israel, and to counter what they see as
delegitimisation of Israel around the world. Hasbara means "explanation"
but is also a Hebrew euphemism for propaganda.[3][4][5][6]
One prominent goal of hasbara is influencing Wikipedia.
One prominent goal of hasbara is influencing Wikipedia.
Contents
Meaning of the term
While hasbara literally means "explanation", its exact import in its current usage is debated. Gideon Meir has said that there is no "real, precise" translation of the word hasbara in English or any other language, and has characterized it as public diplomacy,[7] an action undertaken by all governments around the world with the growing importance of what Harvard professor Joseph Nye termed soft power. Gary Rosenblatt describes it as "advocacy".[8]
Hasbara has been described as "pro-Israel propaganda,"[9] and "the new user-friendly term for Israeli propaganda"[10] but while "propaganda strives to highlight the positive aspects of one side of a conflict, hasbara seeks to explain actions, whether or not they are justified."[11]
Historian Giora Goodman considers "hasbara" to mean "propaganda" in practice, explaining
The term "propaganda" acquired a pejorative sense during the first half of the twentieth century. Accordingly, British and American propagandists used "information" to describe their work and the positive-sounding word hasbara has generally been preferred in Hebrew. "Propaganda", ta’amula in Hebrew, is mostly reserved for what opponents do, but the term was often used by the Zionist movement to portray its own efforts to influence mass audiences.[12]
History
The early mentions of the term hasbara in English mainstream print media[13] date from the late 1970s and describe hasbara as “overseas image-building.”[14] According to The Washington Post, this work "is called hasbara when the purpose is to reshape public opinion abroad.”[15] In the early 1980s, hasbara was defined as a "public relations campaign,"[16] In Newsweek it was described as “explaining.”[17]
In 1986, the New York Times reported that a program for “communicating
defense goals” was started in the late 1970s, and a 1984 implementation
of a “Hasbara Project” to “train foreign-service officers in
communications by placing them with American companies.” Carl Spielvogel,
chairman of Backer & Spielvogel, traveled to Israel to advise the
government on communicating its defense goals. The trip led to the
Hasbara Project, an internship program established to train
foreign-service officers in communications by placing them with American
companies.[18]
Shmuel Katz's book Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, published in 1973, was described as “an encyclopedic source-book for those involved in Israel's hasbara (public relations) effort.”[19] In 1977, Prime Minister Menachem Begin named Katz "Adviser to the Prime Minister of Information Abroad."[20][21]
In May 1992, The Jerusalem Post reported that American
Jewish leaders hardly reacted to news that the Foreign Ministry's
hasbara department would be eliminated as part of a sweeping
reorganization of the ministry. Malcolm Hoenlein
noted there had been talk of streamlining the ministry's hasbara
functions for some time. He said that merging the hasbara department's
functions with those of the press department did not portend any
downgrading in the priority the Likud government gives to hasbara
abroad. Abe Foxman,
reacted similarly, saying he was "not distressed or disturbed", and
noted that disseminating hasbara has always been the responsibility of
every Foreign Ministry staff officer, especially those working abroad;
if eliminating one department means everyone will assume greater
responsibility for his or her own efforts in distributing hasbara, then
he is all in favor. It also reported that personnel in foreign hasbara
departments would be shifted to press departments, which is where much
of the work currently done by hasbara officials properly belongs. He
explained that Israel's efforts to provide hasbara abroad would focus on
media communications.[22]
In 2001, Shmuel Katz published a retrospective of Israeli hasbara
efforts and said that the task of Israel's hasbara "must be tackled not
by occasional sudden sallies but by a separate permanent department in
the government."[23] Sharon did increase hasbara efforts, but did not create a cabinet-level ministry for that purpose.[24]
Also in 2001, the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry,[7] the diplomatic arm of the Government of Israel, was an original co-sponsor of the Hasbara Fellowships activities of Aish HaTorah. The Jewish Agency for Israel,
Department for Jewish Zionist Education, operates a campaign called
"Hasbara, Israeli Advocacy, Your Guide to the Middle East Conflict".[25]
In 2002, the Israeli State Comptroller's office issued a report
critical of Israel's PR efforts, "A lack of an overall strategic public
relations conception and objective" and lack of coordination between the
various organizations were mentioned. Funding levels are modest; the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spent about US$8.6 million on these efforts
in 2002, and the Government Press Office was only budgeted at
US$100,000.[26]
In 2008, Yarden Vatikay was appointed to coordinate Israel’s domestic and foreign media policy.[27]
In 2009, Israel's foreign ministry organized volunteers to add pro-Israeli commentary on news websites.[28][29][30]
In July 2009, it was announced that the Israeli Foreign Ministry would
assemble an "internet warfare" squad to spread a pro-Israel message on
various websites, with funding of 600,000 shekels (c $150,000).[31][32]
A 2010 report produced for the Israeli cabinet by the Reut Institute, and cited by the newspaper Haaretz, exemplifies the common Israeli view that hasbara efforts are needed to respond to what it describes as a diffuse "delegitimization network" of anti-Israel activists. As Haaretz
put it, "The network's activists - 'delegitimizers' the report dubs
them - are relatively marginal: young people, anarchists, migrants and
radical political activists." The newspaper also cites the report as
saying this network promotes pro-Palestinian activities in Europe as
"trendy," and calls for it to be monitored by Israeli intelligence
services, and for the cabinet to treat the network as a strategic
threat. It concludes that Israel was not prepared to meet the threat
posed by this diffuse network, and that a counter-effort must be more
vigorously undertaken to respond to its activities.[33]
Hasbara advocate Neil Lazarus
says that what he calls "low budget, grassroots Hasbara 2.0" has come
of age, and commends web sites that keep track of what supporters see as
anti-Israel media bias, and that promote e-mail campaigns on behalf of
Israel. He observes that "Israel’s hasbara seems to be becoming more
dynamic, as the Diaspora takes responsibility", and that, "Even day
schools and MASA programs have been conscripted to the task."[34]
Methods
The Israel Citizens Information Council (ICIC) says its purpose is
"to assist efforts to explain Israeli life from the vantage point of the
average Israeli citizen. Towards that end, the ICIC enlists Israelis
from all walks of life to participate in its various projects ... One of
our major activities is the production of special Powerpoint
presentations which we post on our website. These presentations review
specific aspects and issues related to Israel and the Middle East."[35]
Some hasbara experts study methods used by Palestinian
activists and offer advice on how to respond. Describing demonstrators
as "youths," for example, creates a different impression from calling
them "children." They draw attention to the subtle differences of
meaning between words such as demonstration and riot, terror
organization and Palestinian political organization. They advise against
name calling and point scoring.[36]
Edward Said wrote that hasbara methods used during the Second Intifada
included lunches and free trips for influential journalists; seminars
for Jewish university students; invitations to congressmen; pamphlets
and donation of money for election campaigns; telling photographers and
writers what to photograph or write about; lecture and concert tours by
prominent Israelis; frequent references to the Holocaust; advertisements
in the newspapers attacking Arabs and praising Israel.[37]
The Israeli Foreign Ministry has instituted new training on the
appropriate use of social media methods in its hasbara strategy. There
have been multiple instances where embarrassing and inappropriate tweets
and posts by the Israeli Embassies, particularly the one in Ireland
under the leadership of Boaz Moda'i,
have brought international condemnation. In response to such incidents,
Israel's Foreign Ministry updated online social media guidelines for
worldwide representatives of the Israeli government, so that the "combat
doctrine" of the media guide will include appropriate "Do's and
Don'ts."[38]
Hasbara Fellowships is an organization that brings students to Israel and trains them to be effective pro-Israel activists on college campuses.[39] Based in New York, it was started in 2001 by Aish HaTorah
in conjunction with the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The
organization claims to have trained nearly 2,000 students on over 220
North American campuses.[40]
Students in the program have the opportunity to meet high-level Israeli
officials. A sample itinerary given by the organization includes
meetings in Jerusalem with the foreign press advisor to the Prime
Minister of Israel, the mayor of an Israeli city, a member of the
Knesset, and the foreign minister of Israel.[41]
The Israel on Campus Coalition is a pro-Israel umbrella organization founded in 2002 under the auspices of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life.
The organization was created in order "to evaluate the worrisome rise
in anti-Israel activities on college campuses across North America" and
"serves as the central coordinating and strategic body to address campus
issues and intelligently impact a pro-active, pro-Israel agenda on
campus."[42]
Recent developments
A 2013 article stated that "the task of disseminating hasbara now
falls on a special Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs...
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... 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... 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.”[43]
A 2015 article stated that "the education ministry has launched a
compulsory hasbara course for Israeli students travelling abroad. All
youth delegations are now required to learn how to justify to outsiders
Israel’s policies in the occupied territories. According to officials,
the students must challenge those who “seek to delegitimize Israel”....
Some 85 per cent of Israelis tell pollsters they are keen to become
hasbara ambassadors... A hasbara ministry already targets the
international media with good news, while cultural events from food
fairs to Israeli entries at film festivals are designed to prove that
Israel has another, hidden side. For years the Israeli government has
relied on paid workers – and thousands of volunteers in Israel and
abroad – to surf the net posting pro-Israel comments. At Israel’s
international airport, Israeli holidaymakers are offered brochures
explaining the importance of persuading those they meet that Israel is
misunderstood. Advice suggests emphasising successes such as Israel’s
invention of drip irrigation and popular varieties of the cherry
tomato."[44]
Wikipedia
In May 2007, the Hasbara Fellowships asserted that "Wikipedia
is not an objective resource but rather an online encyclopedia that any
one can edit. The result is a website that is in large part is
controlled by 'intellectuals' who seek re-write the history of the
Arab-Israeli conflict. These authors have systematically yet subtly
rewritten key passages of thousands of Wikipedia entries to portray
Israel in a negative light. You have the opportunity to stop this
dangerous trend! If you are interested in joining a team of Wikipedians
to make sure Israel is presented fairly and accurately, please contact
[our] director".[45]
A similar advocacy campaign on Wikipedia was later launched by the CAMERA in May 2008; it resulted in administrative action by the project, and several editors were blocked indefinitely.
In 2010 two right-wing Zionist groups in Israel, the Yesha
Council of Settlements and Israel Sheli, set up a training course to
teach individuals about methods of editing and influencing Wikipedia
content. "In general, it's so important for us to be online working to
defend ourselves and to prove to the world and to ourselves that we are
just and we are right." Of the 80 participants on the course, the
majority were either religious or settlers, or both.[46][47]
In 2012 Haifa University offered elective courses in hasbara which included participating in writing Wikipedia entries.[48]
2014: Wikipedia writing integrated into the Israeli educational system
In 2014 Wikipedia writing was becoming an official concern for the
Israeli educational system in general. "An agreement was met in a
meeting between Rabbi Shai Piron, Israel’s Education Minister, Jan-Bart
de Vreede, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Itzik
Edri, Chair of the Wikimedia Israel Board and Michal Lester, Executive
Director of Wikimedia Israel, regarding a shared cooperation with
Wikimedia Israel in the framework of the ministry’s school curricula in
the coming years. Through the planned cooperation, history, geography
and science teachers will receive special professional training to
instruct students on how to contribute to new or incomplete Wikipedia
articles for which information is lacking or inadequate.[49]
"The Education Ministry will also examine the possibility of
integrating Wikipedia writing assignments in the teaching of research
and community involvement. They will also consider having students who
speak additional languages (primarily English and Russian) write
Wikipedia articles about Israel in those particular languages."[49]
"In the framework of cooperation that is already in place between
Wikimedia Israel and the Ministry of education, several pilot projects
are being conducted. The projects involve teacher training in good
Wikipedia usage, article composition, Wikipedia article writing by
gifted high school students and the teaching of proper Wikipedia usage
to elementary schoolchildren. It is worth mentioning that through
cooperation with academics in a variety of universities and colleges
throughout Israel, hundreds of articles are written each year by
students in courses. Thus students write Wikipedia articles as part of
their degrees, sometimes even in lieu of exams or final papers."[49]
"Survey results published last week as part of Wikipedia Academy
2014 Israel revealed that 84% of the Israeli public relies heavily on
Wikipedia and 74% say that it provides all the information they need.
Over one third of the population expressed interest in learning to write
for Wikipedia."[49]
See also
External links
- Israel to pay students to defend it online
- From Hasbara to Intifada: How Israel's foreign press corps rewrote history
- Israel Cranks Up the PR Machine. The Nation
- Hasbara Propaganda Units Comes to Town
- Hasbara (history)
- Tags:Hasbara
Hasbara and Wikipedia
- Wikipedia's Hasbara
- Wikipedia: All murdered Israeli children are murdered by… Arabs
- Now It Is Official: Israeli Campaign to Control Wikipedia Content
References
- Israel’s Ministry of Education & Wikimedia Israel Agree On New, Unique Initiative https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/06/10/israels-ministry-of-education-wikimedia-israel-agree-on-new-unique-initiative/
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