fredag 10 april 2015

Hasbara - Propaganda. - Välavlönade troll säljer in massakrer och folkmord åt Israel på webben

https://twitter.com/charlesfrith/status/588361005639467010
Online posts attacking critics of Zionism may come from this Israeli social media "war room"
Välavlönade nättroll som





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Artikeln publicerades på The Electric Intifada 2014-07-14 under den inledande bombningen av Gaza.
As the death toll from Israel’s savage bombardment of Gaza continues to climb, Israel has once again turned to students to sell the slaughter online.

“Although they haven’t been called up to the army yet, they’ve decided to enlist in a civilian mission that is no less important – Israeli propaganda [hasbara],” Ynet’s Hebrew edition reported about a massive initiative organized by the Israeli student union branch at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC Herzliya), a prestigious private university.

Hasbara war room


Hasbara,” literally “explaining,” is the term used in Israel for government propaganda aimed at overseas audiences.

“The goal is to deliver a very clear message to people abroad – Israel has the right to defend itself,” Lidor Bar David told Ynet.

Bar David, a student, and one of the organizers of the “war room,” adds, “We want people abroad who don’t know our reality to understand exactly what is going on here.”

(Update: In a 15 July report, which also links to this post, The New York Times notes that previously “Bar David was a captain in the Israel Defense Forces, serving in the office of the military spokesman’s unit.”)
At least 168 Palestinians have been killed since Israel massively escalated its attack on Gaza on 7 July.

Eighty percent of the fatalities are civilians, according to the United Nations.

Thirty-six Palestinian children have been killed and more than 1,200 people have been injured. Thousands are fleeing homes fearing escalating Israeli attacks which have so far destroyed or severely damaged 940 homes, as well as numerous mosques, schools, businesses and charities.

A video accompanying the Ynet report shows rows of students beavering away at computers in a hall with a sign on its door saying “Advocacy Room” in English. In Hebrew, it says “Hasbara war room.”


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While Ynet does not reveal specific government ties to this initiative, the National Union of Israeli Students, of which the IDC Herzliya student union is an affiliate, has a history of working on government-funded propaganda schemes, where students are recruited as the country’s “pretty face.”
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“Organized lying”

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Last year a “covert” Israeli government initiative came to light which planned to pay students for spreading propaganda online. “The whole point of such efforts is to look like they are unofficial, just every day people chatting online,” Israel expert Dena Shunra told The Electronic Intifada.

“But in fact, these are campaigns of organized lying, orchestrated with government-approved talking points and crowdsourced volunteers and stipend recipients,” Shunra added. According to Ynet, “The war room was opened in the afternoon of the first day of Operation Protective Edge,” one week ago, by the IDC Herzliya student union, and currently has more than 400 volunteers active in it, all students at the institution.

Focus on Facebook


Yarden Ben Yosef, chair of the IDC student union, is described as the person who initiated the war room. “Yesterday we managed to pull down a whole Facebook page that incited against Israel and called for the killing of Jews,” Ben Yosef claimed. “It had 120,000 followers and Facebook took it down after a lot of activity on our part,” Ben Yosef said. If true, that is in marked contrast to Facebook’s total inaction, despite complaints, to control the pervasive, raging incitement to racism and violence by Israelis on Facebook who support the slaughter of Palestinians.


Student role in government propaganda


Bar David is quoted as saying that “the war room was founded as a continuation from Operation Pillar of Cloud,” Israel’s November 2012 assault on Gaza that killed more than 170 people, again overwhelmingly civilians. Indeed, the effort to recruit students into government propaganda has a well-documented history, as The Electronic Intifada has reported:


With thanks to Dena Shunra for research and translation.
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Hasbara - Propaganda. - Välavlönade troll säljer in massakrer och folkmord åt Israel på webben
   
'Journalism is printing what someone else does NOT want printed: - Everything else is public relations.'

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