The Israeli government’s Foreign Ministry is involved in efforts to influence public opinion on the Internet. Israel’s Foreign Ministry orders Internet propagandists, so called “trainee diplomats,” to skew online polls and public forums to conform with the Israeli line.
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Israel's Web propaganda war
Following its invasion of Lebanon this summer, Israel was said to have largely lost the PR battle to Hezbollah, but armed with a major online offensive, it's fighting back
By Stewart Purvis
THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Friday, Nov 24, 2006, Page 9
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2006/11/24/2003337707
Amir Gissin runs what he calls "Israel's Explanation Department." Which is why it is surprising to hear him admit that many Israelis think "the whole problem is that we don't explain ourselves correctly."
Last week, as al-Jazeera launched an Arab view of the world into English-speaking homes worldwide, Gissin was a man under pressure.
At the David Bar Ilan conference on the media and the Middle East, he faced an audience of Israelis who were unhappy about the way the propaganda battle with Hezbollah was fought and lost during the war in Lebanon. They wanted to know how it could be done better next time, because most people in Israel seem to think there will be a next time with Hezbollah soon.
Gissin said the words of his English-speaking spokespeople could not compete with the power of the pictures of civilians killed in the Israeli attack on Lebanese towns like Qana. And the Israeli parliament will not spend the money on an Israeli counterpart to al-Jazeera.
But Gissin was not downhearted. He declared there to be a "war on the Web," in which Israel had a new weapon, a piece of computer software called the "Internet megaphone."
"During the war we had the opportunity to do some very nice things with the megaphone community," he said at the conference.
Among them, he claimed, was a role in getting an admission from Reuters that a photograph of damage to Beirut by a Lebanese photographer had been doctored to increase the amount of smoke in the picture. This was first spotted by American blogger Charles Johnson, who has won an award for "promoting Israel and Zionism."
POWER
To check out the power of the megaphone, I logged onto a Web site called Give Israel Your United Support (GIYUS) on the afternoon of Nov. 15. More than 25,000 registered users of the site have downloaded the megaphone software, which enables them to receive alerts asking them to get active online.
It did not take long for an alert to come through. Kim Howells, a British Foreign Office minister, had issued a press statement condemning that day's Palestinian rocket attack which killed an elderly Israeli and wounded other civilians. GIYUS wanted site users to "show your appreciation of the UK's response."
One click took me to a pre-prepared e-mail addressed to Howells, and a slot for me to personalize my comment. A test confirmed that the e-mail would arrive at his office, as if I had spotted his comments on a news Web site, in this case Yahoo, and sent it to him with a supporting message. In the e-mails, there would be no indication of the involvement of GIYUS, although Howells may have been suspicious that so many people around the world had read the same Yahoo story about him and decided to e-mail him.
The British Foreign Office confirms that e-mails were received on Nov. 15 but will not go into any more detail.
The most popular target of the online activists is the foreign media, especially the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the news organization which they love to hate.
Earlier this year I was a member of the independent panel set up by the BBC governors, the panel of 12 outsiders who regulate the corporation, to review the BBC's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We reported on the high number of e-mails we had received from outside the UK, mostly from North America, and the evidence of pressure group involvement.
A majority of e-mail correspondents thought that the BBC was anti-Israel. However, if the e-mails that could be identified as coming from outside of the UK were excluded, the opposite was true -- more people thought the BBC to be anti-Palestinian or pro-Israel.
The BBC has already had one encounter with GIYUS -- an attempt to influence the outcome of an online poll. BBC History Magazine noticed an upsurge in voting on whether Holocaust denial should be a criminal offense in Britain. But the closing date had already passed and the result had already been published, so the votes were invalid anyway.
success
GIYUS supporters claim success elsewhere in "balancing" an opinion poll on an Arabic Web site by turning a vote condemning Israel's attack in the Lebanon into an endorsement.
For some of Israel's supporters, a primary aim of their war on the Web is an attempt to discredit what they see as hostile foreign media reports, especially those containing iconic visual images.
One particular target has been Charles Enderlin, the respected French television correspondent, whose Palestinian cameraman filmed 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura being shot and killed as his father tried to shield him at the start of the second intifada.
Enderlin accused Israeli troops of shooting and killing the boy. French supporters of Israel went online to claim the report was a distortion based on faked footage.
His network, France 2, responded with legal action and last month, in the first of four individual cases, a French court found the organizer of a self-styled media watchdog Web site guilty of libel.
Another online target has been the TV footage of bloodshed on a Gaza beach earlier this year. A Palestinian girl was seen screaming as she saw the bodies of dead family members killed by what Palestinians allege was Israeli shellfire. When I mentioned the impact of these pictures at last week's conference, members of the audience shouted "staged."
One person came up to me afterwards to suggest that the family had somehow died somewhere else and that later their bodies had been moved to the beach to be filmed. Where, for instance, was all the blood?
I pointed out that I had seen everything that the cameraman had shot and that some pictures were too gruesome to be shown.
It is clear the government of Israel wants to fight back against the impact of foreign media pictures like these. Amir Gissin talked last week of plans to get Israeli video onto sites like YouTube, which he said attracted opinion "shapers."
And his cousin Ra'anan Gissin, formerly Ariel Sharon's media adviser, has endorsed the idea of having picture power at the state's disposal, ready for future conflicts.
Referring to Israel's opponents, he put it in his usual direct way: "You need to shoot a picture before you shoot them."
Last edited by madthumbs on Fri Jul 06, 2007 7:11 am; edited 2 times in total
Have you guys seen that commercial that starts with a quote that says something along the lines of, "for zion's sake, I will fight"?? It has something to do with giving support to the zionist pigs in Israel, giving them the "okay" to keep killing civilians.
I am somewhat neutral about this kind of technology. If it alerts people to votes on msm sites, so what? There is nothing stopping any of us from using their own technology against them -- by using it to alert us to votes in which we will simply vote AGAINST Israel.
Great call Aeon. Everybody download this app, and let it alert you to occasions where you can make your voice heard!
But seriously, the cyberwar must be having it's toll on them if they have organisations and so on baccking it.
Very true!!!! Maybe we are making more of an impact then we think we are
Cheers
chris
Thu Aug 10, 2006 7:12 am
autocannibal
Joined: 10 Jun 2006 Posts: 140 Location: the forbidden zone
Aeon wrote:
I am somewhat neutral about this kind of technology. If it alerts people to votes on msm sites, so what? There is nothing stopping any of us from using their own technology against them -- by using it to alert us to votes in which we will simply vote AGAINST Israel.
if you look at the screenshot on the page, its not asking your opinion. i think it assumes its pro-isreeal cause you downloaded the app. also, did you see all the badges of affiliates at the bottom? top row, all the way to the right. its our arch nemesis i think.
Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 8599 Location: Fingerlakes - NY usa
I've cleaned out a lot of people. Some are obvious and deliberate infiltrators, and some are obviously just trying to do good but misrepresenting and aren't learnable. There are plenty of "free speech" touting forums for them to go to.
The infiltrators aren't always going to attack anti-Zionist views. They'll try discrediting with nonsense like crop circles, chemtrails (most of the propaganda surrounding them is nonsense anyway), reptilians, Rife square wave generator cure alls, etc. I can see making a mistake occasionally, but when people defend this stuff like a religion...
Everyone knows about Wikipedia, a place to go to get the 'real' scoop. How often do you use Wikipedia to look up subjects you know little about? Now imagine how often other people use Wikipedia to look up subjects related to Israel.
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 director@israelactivism.com for details!
The Hasbara Fellowships is a government sponsored program by Israel.
The Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry [3], the diplomatic arm of the the Government of Israel. The Ministry sponsors the Hasbara Fellowships activities of Aish HaTorah. The Jewish Agency for Israel, Department for Jewish Zionist Education, operates a campaign, "Hasbara, Israeli Advocacy, Your Guide to the Middle East Conflict".[2]
