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Israel's online media assault on Goldstone report
The Israeli foreign ministry is hauling out all the guns to counter-attack against the Goldstone UN report, which determined that both the IDF and Palestinians militants committed war crimes during the Gaza war. How do I know this? In a very direct, personal fashion. I noticed in the past hour or so a new Google ad being served in my sidebar:
Gaza.
Hamas.
Conflict.Facts!
Click here
Israel's anti-Goldstone hasbara
Notice there is no mention of the word ‘Israel.’ This is of course done deliberately because they seek to pull in as many viewers as possible and adding the word Israel would drive away potential viewers from one camp or another. Only when you click on the ad does it take you to the Israeli foreign ministry’s Gaza fact sheet page (imagine the temerity of the Israeli foreign ministry labelling their information “facts??), whose headline lays its cards on the table and speaks truthfully for once:
Gaza Facts–the Israeli Perspective
The hasbara attack machine is in high gear. I imagine you’ll be seeing full page ads in the N.Y. Times, op eds by the usual suspects (Abe Foxman, etc.), and hearing many lies from what Daniel Levy calls “the smear industry.” I imagine that right now as we speak Gerald Steinberg and Danny Ayalon are desperately seeking to expose a nasty Goldstone hobby. Perhaps (like Marc Garlasco) he collects historical artifacts of the Boer War, bespeaking a sympathy for pro-Nazi Afrikaners?
The truth of the matter is that Israel gradually, inch by inch, is losing the propaganda war. Yes, it has an effective hasbara apparatus that has kept the opposition at bay for years. But the sheer accumulated weight of Israel’s brutal violations of morality and law are sinking its case before the international community. When Bibi comes to New York for the UN General Assembly meeting he’ll be greeted with the same nose-holding as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Muamar Khadafi. Well, not by Malcolm Hoenlein, Marty Peretz or Norman Podhoretz, that’s for sure. They’ll welcome Bibi with open arms. The rest of us will hold our noses.
