Hasbara booklet: Just lie

The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary is a Hasbara booklet written by a Dr. Frank Luntz that adds on to a rich but unsuccessful literature existing in the field. Why unsuccessful? Let's quote from the author's introduction:

I wrote my first Language Dictionary for The Israel Project in 2003. Since that time, Israel has had three Prime Ministers, several stalled peace initiatives, found itself the victim of attack from its northern and southern borders, and has suffered greatly in the court of public opinion.

Memo to him: the problem is not with his previous booklets, it's with Israel.

Anyway, here's the full text (CLICK ON FULL SCREEN TO ENLARGE, THEN ON CLOSE TO RETURN TO THIS BLOG):


The Israel Project's 2009 Global Language Dictionary -

I see favorably the publication of these hasbara materials inasmuch as they prove that Zionists don't actually believe that the world's negative view of Israel has anything to do with irrational antisemitism (otherwise they wouldn't waste their time trying to convince anyone). Other than that, I expect them to be professionally made and factually accurate. So that I did two searches on subjects the "hasbarization" of which I was curious about.

First, I typed in LOYALTY OATH on the search box. I was surprised to find no result. Mr. Liberman's initiative that Israeli Arabs should take a loyalty oath or be stripped of their citizenship is something an Israel advocate would be asked about, but this booklet offers no recipee to fend the questioner off.

Next, I typed in SETTLEMENTS. I did get a full chapter devoted to them. After listing a few somewhat dated arguments, on p. 63 we get the formula that summarizes it all:

WORDS THAT WORK
Israel does not talk about dismantling Arab settlements within Israel. In a democratic society, Jews and Arabs should be able to live side-by-side in peace. Nobody ever says Israeli territory has to be free from Arabs. One should ask the Palestinian leadership why they always demand land that is free from Jews.

Note the terminology shift currently under way. Just like a few years ago the Jewish immigrants to Israel were suddenly turned into refugees, and voilà, the Palestinian refugees were wiped out from the debate, because they cancelled out with the Jewish refugees, the Arab towns of Israel are now being termed settlements, and voilà, there's no injustice at all: Jewish settlements in the West Bank cancel out with Arab settlements in Israel. I denounce the Israeli checkpoints between Jericho and Ramallah, but why do I say nothing about the checkpoints set up by Arab falafel vendors on the roads of Tel Aviv?

That aside, the Words That Work include something that is not terminological at all, but which is simply a bare-faced lie, namely that the Palestinian leadership "always demand land that is free from Jews."

Up to a very recent time, no one talked about Jews remaining in the West Bank under a two-state solution. Everyone understood that Israeli Jews are deeply and unabashedly racist, and rather than living under an Arab government, they would be prepared to accept the unthinkable: higher taxes in Israel proper. Only very recently has the Hasbara community begun to claim the human right not to be uprooted from where you went to grab someone else's land in the first place. So that the Palestinian leadership had had nothing to say on the issue, because it was not a subject of debate.

Until now. But on Saturday, 4 July 2009, at the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Ideas Festival, in, of all places, Aspen, Colorado, Palestinian primer minister Saleem Fayyad was for the first time ever asked about his views on the subject. His answer:

“In fact the kind of state that we want to have, that we aspire to have, is one that would definitely espouse high values of tolerance, co-existence, mutual respect and deference to all cultures, religions. No discrimination whatsoever, on any basis whatsoever.

“Jews to the extent they choose to stay and live in the state of Palestine will enjoy those rights and certainly will not enjoy any less rights than Israeli Arabs enjoy now in the state of Israel.”

The Zionists went immediately ballistic. They took to the cyberspace to say, zillions of times "if you believe this I have a bridge in Brooklin to sell to you." Others were more straightforward:

don't listen to them! DO NOT BELIEVE THEM!! the arabs are very capable of lying and then making life miserable for the Israelis. and than it might be too late..and they can make horrible laws too. they have ruled Jews before.

Why were they so furious? Because finally Fayyad had learned the Israeli technique of making offers that the other side can't take, so as to appear as very generous when the offer is actually meaningless.

But the Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary chose to ignore this Palestinian display of smartness, and instead instructed the Hasbara gang to lie about it.

Not that the Hasbara gang didn't know that lying is the approach to take when apologizing for Israel, mind you.

Do you believe Netanyahu's dad?

From The Jerusalem Post:

Channel 2 reported Wednesday night that the prime minister had told his father, 100-year-old historian Benzion Netanyahu, that he purposely set the conditions [for a Palestinian State, IIY] knowing that the Palestinians would never agree to them. [My emphasis, IIY.]

"He doesn't support [a Palestinian state]," the father said in a phone interview. "He set conditions that they won't ever accept. That's what he told me. He set the conditions and they won't accept even one of them."

Netanyahu's office responded by accusing Channel 2 of "maliciously tricking a 100-year-old man."

That Bibi should accuse his own father of senile weakness in order to cover his ass is indicative of the principles this man holds. Memo to Obama: that extends to the negotiating table too.

Deliberate, not opportunistic

A few days ago I argued that Israel, while ostensibly opposing the Jewish settlers' expansionist activities in the West Bank, actually encourages them. The mechanism is more or less as follows: Israel gives the settlers carte blanche to build 104 outposts. Then one day the army comes and dismantles 4 outposts in a spectacular move that captures the world's attention. This results in their a) getting a lot of good publicity after their painful concession; and b) retaining 100 of the 104 outposts they had erected on another people's land in the first place.

It is a fact that this happens; that outposts are built at a far higher rate than they're removed by the IDF, the net balance always being overwhelmingly favorable to the Israeli thievery of Arab land. And it is a fact that the occasional removal of scattered outposts is used to make it appear that Israel is returning land, when it actually is giving back only a fraction of a very-recently-stolen land that adds on to all the previously grabbed territories. But is it a deliberate policy, rather than the State cynically taking advantage of the settlers' bad behavior? Where's the smoking gun?

Well, here's the smoking gun:

Ehud Barak understood that he would have a very tough negotiation on the territorial question. When I asked his chief of staff Gilead Sher why the prime minister was building even more settlements than Netanyahu, his answer was "the story of the goat" - meaning it would appear that Israel was making larger concessions than it really was.

Gershon Baskin, It's the occupation, stupid!, The Jerusalem Post, 7 Jul 2009

I think it would be easy to find other similar implicating evidence to confront the Netanyahu administration with, and I sometimes wonder why Barack Obama's advisers don't look for it. I think it's a matter not of laziness, but of unwillingness. With Democratic Congresspeople increasingly nervous about the future of their seats, Obama's ability to confront the Lobby may have found its ceiling.

If Neda had died in Bil'in

The death of Neda Soltan in Tehran, Iran, during the repression of a protest rally is a shocker:



So is the death of Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahmah in Bil'in, the West Bank, in similar circumstances:



So why have you heard so much about Neda and nothing at all about Bassem? I'll make an attempt at explanation towards the end of this post, but drawing a parallelism between the murders of these two young people seems to be in order first.

Of course, I'm by no means the first blogger to note the symmetry between both incidents, and their asymmetrical treatment by the media (see here, here). But I'd like to focus here on what the reactions would be if Neda had been killed by Israeli soldiers in Bil'in, comparing them, when appropriate, with the reactions to Neda's death in Teheran.

1) Initially, it would be claimed that the video of her death is fake (the "Pallywood" argument). The claim would only be dropped when enough Jews showed up confirming her death.

2) She would be described as having been throwing rocks, and it would be stated that those rocks in fact endangered the Israeli soldiers' lives. This defense was put up by Zionists on the few specialized blogs that reported on Bassem's death:

If as reported, they were throwing stones and trying to destroy the fence (collective responsibility works both ways), I can’t get upset that the guy died.

This is striking because the video of Bassem's death, which clearly shows no rock being thrown by the demonstrators, had been pasted on the very same blog where the response above was posted, and because there had been no mention of rock-throwing, other than by Zionist commenters on blogs.

3) It would be asserted that her death in Bil'in was intentionally caused by other Palestinians (Alan Dershowitz's theory that the Palestinians want to maximize civilian casualties on both sides). No one would dare suggest, however, that the Teheran demonstrators killed Neda to produce a martyr for their cause (even if they were as Muslim as [most, anyway] Palestinians, and you know, taqqiya, taqqiya).

4) In the case of Neda's fictional death in Bil'in, it would be stressed that the demonstration in which she died was unauthorized. In the case of her real death in Teheran, on the other hand, it would be considered outrageous to even make an issue of the legal status of the protest she joined.

5) In her Bil'in death, her motives for joining the demonstration would be scrutinized in depth and questioned. Why was she there? Her house was not about to be demolished, she had no relative in jail, she even was overweight. In discussing her Teheran death, however, her belonging to a well-to-do family that owns a travel agency, and the fact that her main problem just before joining the rally was that her car's air conditioning didn't work properly, were not brought up to disingenuously wonder what obscure reasons she might have to oppose a regime that treated her so well.

6) After all of that failed, Israel's announcement that her death in Bil'in will be investigated would be taken very seriously. By contrast, Iran's announcement that her Teheran death would be investigated was quickly dismissed. (And rightly so, some will claim, because democracies produce reliable investigations, and tyrannies don't. But Israel is democratic to Jews and Jewish to Arabs, and it has been exposed as a notorious liar as regards the killing of unarmed Arabs.)

7) Finally, Israel's "finding" that the bullet that killed her in Bil'in had bounced against a traffic-light pole before hitting her would be taken at its word. While Iran's "finding" that the bullet that killed her in Teheran was from a type of weapon not used by Iran's security forces was met with the derision both "findings" deserve.

This is the point where a psychologist would come in handy to explain where these different treatments of information stem from. In the absence of one, I'll put forward a theory both shrinks and ordinary people are welcome to comment on.

Israel enjoys a "credibility capital" that is due not to its record as regards truth-telling and respect for innocent lives, but to the behavior of Diaspora Jews. Few violent criminals are found among the latter (or among French Armenians, Korean Americans, Japanese Argentinians and other financially secure and educated minorities). Therefore, the reasoning goes, Israeli Jews are unlikely, too, to kill defenseless prisoners and such. Little thought is given to the existence of an Israeli Jewish underclass that is simply not there in the Diaspora, and that may lack the restraints that are supposed to come with education.

So when a damning video arises, this presents CNN with a problem: Jews are seen doing what we know they don't do. The solution to this logical dilemma? Not airing it in prime time, or at all just in case. And getting an Israeli to deny it all if a talking head does get around to mentioning the incident.

Explosive meat

Did you know that beef can be used to make bombs and rockets? Neither did I. How else to explain, however, the ban on live cattle imports into Gaza enforced by the Israeli government over the better part of the year to date.

A recent Haaretz story reports the Israeli government's decision to allow 350 heads of cattle into the strip for the first time in nine months. (The Israeli military's "Coordinator of (Israeli) Government Activities in the Territories" (COGAT) has reportedly determined that 300 cows per week are the minimum needed in Gaza in order to avoid malnutrition, and a "humanitarian crisis.") But why was shipment of cattle forbidden in the first place?

This is a case of an idiotic decision by the Israeli government. Unlike in the case of the shooting of children, which is customarily described as a regrettable consequence of the rocks they throw (or is it "hand-propelled mineral devices"?), there's no way the ban on livestock can be rationalized, and it has been met with fierce resistance from within Israel itself. Not because of any humanitarian concern, mind you, but because it hurts the cattle raising industry:

The director of the Livestock Growers Association, Haim Dayan, said that the problem of his colleagues is that even though they now have permission to raise livestock for export to the Gaza Strip, long-term bans prevent them from doing so. As a result, they complain that they are often stuck with large stocks of cattle, something that lowers local prices and can result in enormous losses to the growers.

"If they tell us that the Strip is closed entirely, we will plan accordingly. But the current situation cannot go on," Dayan said.

Another concern that has been raised is that the smuggling of cattle from Egypt through tunnels to make up for the animals that aren't coming in from Israel might result in unhealthy animals being imported that could eventually result in disease spreading to Israel:

Israel's ban on the importation of livestock into Gaza, which has included cattle, sheep and goats, did not succeed in preventing them from being smuggled in. According to Gaza-based sources, hundreds if not thousands of head of livestock were smuggled in from Sinai in recent months, via tunnels.

The veterinary services of the Ministry of Agriculture warned the Defense Minister that the smuggling of livestock originating in countries like Somalia, where inadequate veterinary care is available, may contribute to the outbreak of illnesses, including mad cow disease, foot-and-mouth disease, and Brucellosis, that can also be dangerous for humans.

In summary, Israel has taken an irrational measure that might hurt its own economy and health system, as well as its already tarnished international image. The logic behind such irresponsible behavior is that if Gazans, including young children, are prevented from eating animal protein they will understand how bad Hamas is and eventually topple the regime. In other words, forced infant malnutrition is being used to try and achieve a political result.

What do you call it? I call it terrorism.

Letters to a Zionist friend (1): Natural growth

You, my friend, become somewhat enraged when I say that Israel should stop its policy of unabated settlement enlargement. It is a fact that there are settlers living in the West Bank, you argue. Granted, some of them will have to go when a final settlement (in the other meaning of the word, in this case) is reached. But in the meantime, those people are having children, and those children need day-care centers, playgrounds, schools, universities and, in fact, apartment blocks once they themselves get married and have kids. Why am I against those sons and daughters of settlers -- only because they're Jewish? Do I want to ethnically cleanse them? Or am I perhaps suggesting that Jewish women in the West Bank should be sterilized so that they won't have any more babies?

Rest assured, my dear friend, that I don't want to harm those people who, maybe duped by the Israeli government, have chosen to settle on another people's land. In fact, they would stay put under the solution I envisage for the I/P conflict: a binational state, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, with equal rights for Jews, Arabs, Druze, Samaritans, Armenians, Circassians and none of the above. But since there's little talk of this solution nowadays, and people on both sides insist on a two-state solution, I also maintain that, if the latter were implemented, the Jews in the West Bank, except for those who have repeatedly engaged in unlawful activities, should be allowed to remain there, either as foreign residents or, ideally, as dual Israeli-Palestinian citizens.

That said, I don't find it advisable that new Jewish migrants be settled in the West Bank. If the area is the subject of ongoing negotiations, it is an act of bad faith to bring more and more Jews so as to create Jewish majorities in places traditionally populated by Arabs and lay claim to those areas.

To this, you have answered with your Prime Minister's recent words. Mr. Binyamin Netanyahu has been straightforward and clear, you claim:

"The question of not expanding the territory is different from freezing life. You know, you have children, you have babies born, what are you going to do with them? You have to give them kindergartens, you have to give them schools."

"I don't want to grab new land," the prime minister continued. "But we really want people to have normal lives until that final agreement is reached."

Essentially, Netanyahu tells us it's all about not freezing things, about normal life being allowed to flow.

I seldom use hard words against people or institutions who may be dear to my friends. But in this case you live me with no option: your PM is a liar. It's not true that construction in the West Bank is intended to meet the needs of the already existing population. In fact, a recent Jerusalem Post story reported that:

In 2007, the Jewish population of Judea and Samaria grew by 14,500, or 5.6% - from 261,600 to 276,100 - close to three times the growth rate of Israel's general population, which rose by only 1.8% during that same year.

The "natural growth" was 9,200, or 63.5%, with the remaining 5,300, or 36.5%, constituting migrants.

Now just think for a minute. While the 9,200 "natural growth" new residents are all babies, born to parents who already own a home, the 5,300 migrants must be provided with new apartments -- housing that was formerly not there. So it is safe to assume, my friend, that most of the new construction in the settlements is not intended to accommodate natural growth, but to house the forced growth brought in by migrants who mostly settle there allured by low taxes and inexpensive services, all subsidized by the State of Israel and by rich fanatical Jews from the Diaspora.

Now put your hand on your heart and answer me: isn't the life of a community that has grown by 9,000 babies vibrant enough? Why bring more life from outside? And after investing large amounts of money and effort to help those migrants settle where they don't belong, can Israel be said to do "everything within its reach to secure peace with the Palestinians," as you so often claim?

Israel, Daniella Weiss and the good cop-bad cop game

We all know Israel honors its obligations under the Road Map. Therefore, it doesn't build new settlements in the West Bank, only extensions of existing ones, and then only to accommodate natural growth. What do we antisemites want, to sterilize Jewish women?

In line with that good behavior, Israel cracks down on anyone who tries to illegally build homes outside the legal (under Israeli law) settlements.

Or does it.

No, it doesn't. The Jerusalem Post reports that:

The Land of Israel Faithful group said Monday it has a plan to construct 30 new outposts in the West Bank over the summer, in response to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech a day earlier in which he said that no new settlements would be built and no additional land would be expropriated for settlement development.

Former Kedumim mayor Daniella Weiss, one of the leaders of the Land of Israel Faithful, told The Jerusalem Post her group was recruiting activists for this summer's outpost building.

I.e., this woman is announcing that she'll do something that is illegal under both Israeli and international law. The whole point of the operation is actually not so much to erect new land-grabbing units, but to reinforce the existing ones. Can you imagine? Thirty new outposts are set up; one day the Israeli army comes and destroys them; and the following day the Hasbara brigade appears in the media to announce that, in a painful concession, Israel has dismantled tens of outposts. That way the public will forget about the 100 or so equally illegal outposts that had been previously established, which will then become part of the "facts on the ground." Ms. Weiss explained it much more succinctly than me:

Weiss said she was not concerned that by pushing to build at more sites, the Land of Israel Faithful would weaken those eight outposts it has been trying to establish for two years.

"I have learned from experience that if you create new things, it strengthens the old ones," she said.

In the face of this cynical statement, one would expect the State of Israel to arrest her to show its commitment to the Road Map. Instead, she's allowed to roam the West Bank unmolested "creating things" at will. She doesn't loose sleep over the possibility of ending up in jail. She has "learned from experience" that, in the unlikely event that she's detained, she'll be released within a few hours.

It would be so easy for the Israeli government to shut us all up! Just by cracking down on the few rotten apples in the West Bank it would deprive the Pally-supporting crowd of a talking point. Why doesn't it, if it has repeatedly denounced the illegal outposts?

I won't give a direct answer to that; only remind the reader that in police stations all over the world there exists a game called good cop-bad cop. The bad cop mistreats the detainee; the good cop pretends to care for him. But two rules are inflexible: the good cop, for all his feigned concern, will never do anything concrete to stop the bad cop. And the detainee always ends up beaten to a pulp.