Category: Propaganda

Inside the Lawfare Project

Netanyahu’s Attack on Human Rights NGO’s Hits the States

by Max Blumenthal

As the anti-Goldstone, human rights-bashing Lawfare Project’s opening event on March 11 wrapped up, I asked its chairman, Columbia University Law School Dean David Schizer, for an interview. Schizer, who had just attacked the Goldstone Report from the podium, pointedly refused to speak to me and looked for the exit. As Schizer was leaving, he was politely confronted by Columbia Law School Professor Katherine Franke, who heads the school’s Program in Gender and Sexuality Law.

“Why didn’t you invite any speakers with an alternative perspective?” Franke asked Schizer.

His reply was curt. “We invited one or two but they couldn’t make it,” Schizer claimed before hurrying away.

Schizer was understandably nervous about his exposure. After all, he had just presided over a day-long conference during which Israeli human rights workers were labeled as traitors while Judge Richard Goldstone and human rights groups were compared to “anti-Semitic street gangs.” After several speakers had harshly condemned legal efforts against the construction of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Schizer appeared beside them to lend his credibility to their views.

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So How Do I Look? – Zionist Self-Righteousness in the Face of Delegitimization

Sabra and Shatila / Gaza 2009

In 1982 Ariel Sharon enabled the massacres in refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila. To Israel, this was a disaster. Not because innocent human beings, already victims of a mass ethnic cleansing, were brutally murdered, but because, for the first time, Israel was suffering a major wave of criticism from the international community. How does one untangle from such a nasty debacle? No! One does not apologize, compensate, and bring the guilty parties to justice! Instead, one creates one of the most successful and unscrupulous PR systems in the 20th century.

Lately, however, it seems there are cracks in the system. One might conclude, that Hasbara isn’t as airtight as it used to be, and maybe it needs a bit of a facelift. Either that, or we could say, one may be overlooking some facts. Continue reading “So How Do I Look? – Zionist Self-Righteousness in the Face of Delegitimization”

Defamation: In Search of Antisemitism

From "Defamation"

Last month, PULSE published Yoav Shamir’s film, Defamation. I’ve finally gotten around to  watching it, and just couldn’t help writing as I watched. Aside from the comical Nancy Drew music, I found it at times very hard to watch. Looking in the mirror is never easy.

The Easy Part – The Adults
There’s something pathetic about a grown man living in unsubstantiated fear. Probably the most pathetic statement in the movie is made by the security guy at Crown Heights:

When a black guy sees two people walking down the street, a black person and a jewish person, his choice to attack someone will not be a black person. With a black person, you never know, does he carry a knife, does he carry a gun?..

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Ethan Bronner’s Conflict With Impartiality

by Alison Weir

Ethan Bronner, New York Times Jerusalem Bureau chief

Ethan Bronner is the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief. As such, he is the editor responsible for all the news coming out of Israel-Palestine. It is his job to decide what gets reported and what doesn’t; what goes in a story and what gets cut.

To a considerable degree, he determines what readers of arguably the nation’s most influential newspaper learn about Israel and its adversaries, and, especially, what they don’t.

His son just joined the Israeli army.

According to New York Times ethics guidelines, such a situation would be expected to cause significant concern. In these guidelines the Timesrepeatedly emphasizes the importance of impartiality.

This is considered so critical that the Times devotes considerable attention to “conflict of interest” (also called “conflict with impartiality”) problems, situations in which personal interest might cause a journalist to intentionally or unconsciously slant a story.

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Eyeless in Tehran

Press TV should be ashamed of running such crude and embarrassing propaganda. The channel couldn’t have found a better way to insult its audience. Neda Agha Soltan’s killing was an outrage; to try to cover it up in such a shoddy manner merely adds insult to the injury. Press TV has provided excellent coverage in Gaza and elsewhere. If it is to remain credible, it will have to assert its independence and put a distance between itself and its sponsors.

Peace Camp Man – Profile of a Zionist Pacifist

It's a bird! It's a plane! No! It's Peace Camp Man! (a.k.a Yaron London)

Today I was sent an op-ed, written by celebrated Israeli journalist, Yaron London, titled “The Victory of Cruelty”. In this op-ed, the man, who was apparently once known as the “peace camp man”, calls for another “disproportionate” blow to Gaza and disregard for ‘international public opinion“. The words ethics and morals aren’t mentioned once, the word law appears in regards to that wayward Islamic law (waywardness only implied, this is strictly my own syllogism). So how does it happen that Peace Camp Man stirs bloody violence and unethical criminality? I blame Zionism.

Peace Camp Man and Compassion
London seems to understand the problem and at the time of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war he had written:

Had we not driven out the Arabs who had settled in the Land of Israel, we would not have been able to build a stable country for the Jewish people, however, that’s how we created the Palestinian exile, which is the root cause of our problems.

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Mark Regev and the BBC: It’s a love story

Mark Regev in one of his frequent BBC appearances

Revolted by the BBC’s frequently obsequious attitude toward the Israeli spokesman Mark Regev, Anne Key, a friend of PULSE, sent the following letter of complaint. We encourage readers to also register their complaints (Please copy us in at editor@pulsemedia.org when you write).

Dear Sir, Madam,

I am writing to complain about the BBC’s persistently subservient attitude when interviewing Mark Regev, the spokesman for the Israeli government.

Marking the first-year anniversary of Israel’s war on Gaza (“Operation Cast Lead”), in which 1,417  Palestinians were killed (including 313 children and 116 women), Mr Regev was once again given free reign to “explain” Israel’s motives for Operation Cast Lead. The interviewer barely challenged Mr Regev throughout the interview.

Contrary to what Mr Regev asserts, the Israeli Army did not attack “key Hamas targets”. Conducting an estimated 2,300 air strikes, Israel indiscriminately targeted schools (including a school run by the UN), homes, hospitals, mosques and even flourmills. 8,000 homes were completely destroyed, 33,767 families had their houses damaged, 200,000 people were displaced, among them 112,000 children.

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The So-Called “Concessions” of the Settlement Freeze

Palestinian reduced to biulding settler homes.

Remember the dramatics of the 2005 “disengagement” from Gaza? The emotional open letters, the stories of martyrdom, the binary of “good” and “evil”. This propaganda is standard procedure, in Israel, when it comes to the illegal settlements. It wasn’t enough that Obama caved from “We want to see a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth – any kind of settlement activity” to a 10-month construction freeze, not including “East Jerusalem”, or construction that is “already underway”, or schools, kindergartens, synagogues, or “public buildings essential for normal life in the settlements”. The Israeli government must make sure that this is seen as a “a far-reaching step toward peace”.

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Copenhagen, Danish Hospitality and The Elements

It took some time, almost a whole week, but Danish riot police have finally been given the chance to greet the thousands of climate justice activists visiting Copenhagen with some traditional elements of Scandinavian hospitality – a mass pre-emptive arrest of almost 1,000 people and the ‘kettling’ of hundreds of others, forcing some to “urinate themselves while detained on the ground.” The churnalists who have converged upon Copenhagen seem satisfied too, eagerly engaging in the media ritual of filling the headlines with the standard litany of cliches about “anarchists running street battles with the police“. Sadly, it seems beyond their intellectual capacity to use the occasion to even mention the existence of a parallel People’s Climate Summit – the Klimaforum 09 – taking place in Copanhagen at the moment. But if the arguments and policy alternatives presented by the likes of Naomi Klein (see video below the fold) are too rational for the mainstream press to digest, perhaps they’ll find this wonderful bit of creative subversivness produced by artists at the Klimaforum more palatable.  Here’s episode 5 of The Elements, where our hereos take on the The Paramount Public Opinion Distortion and Confusion Data Processor:

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Preachers & ‘Terrorists’

Aisha Ghani on Overlooking ‘Overlooking’

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announcing on Friday that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would be prosecuted in federal court in New York.

 

Saturday, Nov 14th – Today I learn that conversations in delis are political. All I ordered that morning was a cup of coffee. The guy at the register, perhaps dedicated to the idea of service, gives me that and something I’m still having trouble digesting. He had been talking to customers about Eric Holder’s 9/11 trials announcement.

Addressing me although talking to the customer in front of me, he announces with palpable disdain, “Terrorists don’t deserve a fair trial.” Unable to respond, I hand him cash and receive, once again, surplus. Seventy-five cents and a question directed at me, but not to me,  “What do you guys think?” Sensing that my response would not be the ‘right’ answer, I leave, saying nothing or perhaps everything.

“Terrorists don’t deserve a fair trial.” Six words, delivered with the kind of alacrity that indicates honesty, compel this question: when we are confronted by such a statement, what kinds of things must we negate or ‘overlook,’ in order to enable their coherence? And, importantly, how and why does this overlooking take place?

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