Stand With Us just began a national hasbara speaking tour of IDF boosters whose appearances are designed to combat criticism of Israel’s Gaza War. I just found out about the tour today and apparently the soldiers slipped into Seattle barely announced and spoke at the University of Washington. Not even the campus Hillel rabbi or local Jewish newspaper editor knew where they spoke. Alas, I didn’t have an opportunity to give them the truly hospitable Seattle welcome they deserved.
The tour is scheduled for these communities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Wisconsin, Seattle, Philadelphia, Connecticut and San Jose, CA.
One quite interesting fact I learned was that one of the west coast speakers is Lior Prosor. That family name is quite unusual in Israel so I immediately thought he must be at least a relative, if not son of Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the UK. Turns out Lior is Ron’s son. Why am I not surprised that SWU would send out the son of one of Israel’s leading government hasbarists on this tour?
Interestingly, Prosor Sr. has gained a certain level of notoriety in the media recently by refusing to cooperate in the British investigation of the Dubai assassination and Israeli abuse of British passports. Additionally, someone in Prosor’s embassy had the awful taste to tweet that Israel tennis player, Shahar Peer, had put out a “hit” on her Dubai opponent (it was supposed to be funny and not literal). Considering that the bumbling Mossad killers in Dubai had worn tennis outfits to disguise themselves, it was in egregiously poor taste. The tweet mysteriously disappeared a day or so later (why did it take so long for them to discover that this was an atrocious bit of hasbara?).
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These shills will no doubt be showing up at the Friends of IDF gala scheduled in New York City on March 9th at the Waldorf Astoria. $1,200 a plate for this chowfest, it’s a big arm of Hasbara which I think is outrageously inappropriate. Does any other foreign army have a “Friends” organization in the US such as this?
Stand With Us is just another arm of this hideous spider; what do we have to do, to get this crap out of our country? A bash for war criminals in New York City, more of them stumping around everywhere making sure the Palestinian people never see justice, I’m utterly sickened.
When I got the notice last week I went to the SWU website but found no schedule of speaking engagements for these brave ones, only photographs and profiles of all the speakers and an invitation for groups to contact SWU if they wanted to host an event. I still see nothing on the site about dates and venues, and would appreciate knowing when they plan to be in Los Angeles so that Women in Black and others might give them an appropriate welcome. Any information, Richard?
I couldn’t find anything about the tour dates and cities, either. I am wondering if they are being kept secret because of the likelihood of demonstrators (or “hecklers”). Bear in mind the recent Michael Oren speech, for starters.
Roz Rothstein is SWU’s founder & lives in LA so they’ll definitely be there. You could call the JCRC at the Jewish federation if they still have one. Or call Brad who writes The God Blog for the Jewish Journal. He might be able to find out. There’s also the Progressive Jewish Alliance down there to query.