hasbara 2.0

Welcome to the 2010 Hasby

Awards!

With your host,

Elder of Ziyon

People’s Choice Runner Up:

Pilar Rahola

People’s Choice Runner Up:

Israel is under the permanent media magnifying glass and its distorted image pollutes the world’s

brains. And, because it is part of what is politically correct, it seems solidary, because talking against Israel is free. And so, cultured

people when they read about Israel, are ready to believe that Jews have six arms, in the same way that during the Middle Ages people believed all

sorts of outrageous things.

People’s

Choice Winner:

Protest at

Paris Museum

5th Place:

IDF timely footage of Mavi Marmara attacks

5th Place:

4th Place:

Rabbi LIVE exposingHelen Thomas

4th Place:

3rd Place:

Gabriel Latner

By the end of my speech – I will have presented 5 pro-Israel arguments that show Israel is, if not a 'rogue state' than at least

'rogueish'.

Let me be clear. I will not be arguing that Israel is 'bad'. I will not be arguing that it

doesn't deserve to exist. I won't be arguing that it behaves worse than every other

country. I will only be arguing that Israel is 'rogue'.

Gabriel Latner

Runner Up:

Elad Daniel Peleg

We Con The World

And the Winner is:

And the Winner is:

What made these good

hasbara?

•Ironic

•Unexpected

•Humorous

•Timely

•Shocking

Who am I?

Just a guy who runs a blog

◦ 6 years, 9500 posts, made some videos, made

some waves

Historic use of word “Palestinian” – 2005

PalArab self-death count – 2006

Qassam rocket count - 2008

Terrorist “civilians” in Gaza

Marc Garlasco – and Octavia Nasr

Goldstone Report analysis

Gaza Mall video – 70K+ views

Definition of good hasbara

Makes people improve their opinion of

Israel

Accessible to a large audience

Why my blog is not good hasbara

My audience is almost all Zionist already

It can help strengthen the Zionist side,

but it does not reach out to the other

That would require a different name

◦ More serious sounding

◦ Less partisan sounding

It does support the effort, though

The issue at hand

Jews excel at arguing

By any measure, Israel’s cause is just

◦ Historical

◦ Legal

◦ Biblical

The truth is on our side

So why aren’t we doing as well as

we should?

One reason is The Barrier

Everyone identifies

with various groups

They easily accept

arguments from

those within their

group

They are suspicious

of arguments from

outside their group

Granfalloons and other groups

Everyone naturally gives more credence

to arguments from within their group –

even us

◦ What do you think when you read MSM

articles written by people with obviously Arab

names?

◦ Now, what do they think when they see a

Jewish name?

Americans and Israel - then

Traditionally, Americans always identified with Israelis – and with Jews

◦ Pioneer spirit

◦ Reward for hard work

◦ Pilgrims thought of themselves as Jews in the Promised Land

◦ Leon Uris’ Exodus – Paul Newman as SuperJew

So the barrier for communication was almost non-existent

Americans and Israel - now

Still a lot of empathy, but

◦ Palestinian Arabs have taken the “underdog” role

which resonates with many

◦ Constant demonization, in areas of human rights,

makes inroads

◦ Many young Americans don’t identify with the

American work ethic of old – and therefore not

with Israel either

◦ Religion is regarded with suspicion

Result: The barrier has been getting bigger

Americans and Zionism - now

When average, non-Zionist Americans see

a Jew defending Israel, the barrier remains

up

All the logic in the world is useless unless

you have an audience willing to listen to

you

A thought experiment

What was effective about Robert

Bernstein’s NYT article and speech in

November?

Why are people so interested in Gabriel

Latner’s speech?

Imagine if Alan Dershowitz said the

exact same words – would it have been

as compelling?

“Man bites dog” is news

The irony of HRW’s founder attacking HRW is what makes it interesting

The audacity of arguing for Israel in a forum where one is expected to do the opposite is what makes it newsworthy

The audience becomes receptive when it encounters something unexpected and surprising

Only when the barrier is broken can logic then be used effectively

Irony makes news

Which explains the outsized interest in

“Jewish Voice for Peace” or Neturei Karta

And it explains why young Jews are

attracted to anti-Israel movements

We need to turn this around:

Which takes more guts: to be Jewish

and anti-Israel on campus, or to be

pro-Israel?

Hasbara Rule #1: Grab their

attention Irony

Cleverness

Humor

◦ “We Con the World”

Balls

◦ Going into enemy territory, as Daniel did

Any hasbara initiative should have a “hook” to draw the audience in – and break the barrier

Caveat

This only works with someone who is

not emotionally invested in the

opposing position

U. of Mich, study in 2005-6:

◦ When misinformed people, particularly

political partisans, were exposed to

corrected facts in news stories, they rarely

changed their minds. In fact, they often

became even more strongly set in their

beliefs.

Hasbara Rule #2: Make your

time count Arguing

with the

goal of

convincing

anti-

Zionists is a

waste of

time

Choose your venues wisely

Most message boards and YouTube comments are filled with idiots

A well-crafted point will be seen by almost nobody - and then disappear forever

Don’t concede the field altogether, but just hit and run with pithy comments

Don’t get dragged into arguments unless you think there are intelligent lurkers who would read them – very unlikely

Compare

Amazon message boards

• Comments remain for years, available to interested people

• People who buy books are usually smarter

• More intelligent lurkers

• You can recommend good books and criticize bad ones

Yahoo! News

message boards

• Easily accessible

for a short time

• Filled with partisan

people

Hasbara is communication

The same criteria that make effective communication make effective hasbara

What kinds of communication are most effective?

Communication Debate

Emotional communication beats logical arguments almost every time

You can’t argue with someone who is crying over their loss....

Hasbara Rule #3: Appeal to

emotions Appeal to emotions as well as logic

When it comes down to it, Jerusalem and Hebron and the Kever Rochel are primarily emotional issues

We do have a 3000 year old tradition embedded in our psyches – we need to use it more

Why aren’t we crying over the Churbananymore? Our “logic” has all but conceded the Temple Mount!

Jews are lousy at

emotions We think of all problems as

logic puzzles

◦ Blame centuries of Talmud study

But real people don’t relate to logic – they relate to other people!

Logical arguments strengthen already existing opinions – they almost never change minds

Logic is not the only battlefield

People identify more with emotional

arguments

We have, by and large, abandoned that

entire field to the Arab side

Liberals can’t handle extreme emotion so

they give Muslims wide berth

But Jews are expected to be logical – so

Jews need to always be the “adults”

From reading the media…

Who loves the land more?

Who has a bigger emotional connection

to the land?

Who is “indigenous”?

◦ The ones who harvest the olives, of course!

The biggest irony of them all

The people who claim that everyone

should be treated equally are the ones

who treat Muslims/Arabs like mentally

unstable children

Therefore, only one side needs to act

responsibly while the other can be purely

emotional – including threatening the

liberals

This is a huge advantage!

The weapons we don’t use

effectively Religious Jews who are relatable

Jews from Arab lands

◦ If roughly 50% of Israelis are descended from

Sephardim, then aren’t they at least as

indigenous as the Arabs?

◦ But the media only knows about the

European and “Brooklyn” Jews!

Ariel Sharon is more “Palestinian” than

Yasir Arafat was (as well as al-Qassam)

Hasbara Rule #4: Contact the

players Contact the reporters, NGOs and

government organizations that are

displaying anti-Israel bias

From past experience, it is clear that

criticism stings

◦ And sometimes the groups’ response will

make it worse – like HRW sock-puppets.

How to respond to reporters’

mistakes Email the reporter directly, if possible

Be polite, and compliment them on parts

of their coverage you admire

Open a dialogue, and bring the mistakes

to their attention

This is by far the best way to help, because

when you have an established relationship,

you can use that later

How to respond to reporters’

mistakes – plan B If the reporter is belligerent, then start

complaining to their boss

Send your notes to existing watchdog sites (CiFWatch, Reuters Middle East Watch, Biased BBC) – those sites get read!

Don’t forget CAMERA, Honest Reporting, Just Journalism (UK)

Refer to how their lies and bias go against their published policies of being unbiased

Hasbara Rule #5: Go on the

offensive You cannot win by only playing

defense

Israel’s enemies’ human rights records are

abysmal – hammer at them

Emergency Committee for Israel as an

example

Create your own organization!

All it takes is a website and the ability to

write press releases

The other side does this all the time

“Human Rights for Lebanese Palestinians”

Petitions, protests, press coverage

Other pro-active ideas

Translate Israeli videos and newspapers

(Yisroel HaYom, “2 Minutes on the Land

of Israel”)

Create a “good news from Israel” blog

◦ Israel21c, Israelity – but more would be useful

Humorous spoofs of terrorist culture

Create IDF videogame

◦ Kill the bad guys dressing as civilians without

hurting the civilians - or their property

Hasbara Rule #6: Use liberal

terminology Human rights for Palestinians – in Arab lands

Self-determination – for the Jewish nation

Women’s and LGBT rights – for Muslims

Freedom of expression in the territories

Freedom of the press

Don’t let Israel turn into an American right

vs. left issue – liberals should support Israel

wholeheartedly!

Pilar Rahola

Difference between Israeli liberals

and EU/American Israeli liberals, supporters of a two-state

solution, are very skeptical of Arab

“peace” moves

And except for the nutty far left, they

don’t accept a militarized PalArab state

But that message does not reach their

liberal colleagues in Europe and the US

Hasbara Rule #7: Set the

framework It is more than “competing narratives” – it

is the use of a framework

Break out of the Palestinian Arab

framework when making points

Difference between “narrative” and

“framework”

Israeli/Palestinian

Textbook

Page 1

These are competing narratives…

…but they are the Arab framework

The big framework

Modern Israel’s history is simply a chapter of the history of the Jewish nation

If you start Israel’s history in the 19th

century, you have already given away half the argument (“Zionist invaders of Arab land”)

If you look at Arab control over Israel as a 700 year aberration before the Ottomans, then it is similar to Moor control of Spain

Jews may have been the majority before the Muslim invasion!

A smaller example of framework

The very question of the history of

Operation Cast Lead uses a false

framework

◦ Operation Oil Stain

◦ Hamas started the rocket war back in 2004

◦ If you say that the war started on December

27th, 2008, you are implicitly saying Israel was

the aggressor

The consistency framework

Everything Zionists have done for a

hundred years has been to ensure that

Jews can live in security in their homeland

Everything Arabs have done has been to

destroy the Jewish state

*(Recent exceptions: both sides try to please the US)

The human rights framework

It is not an issue of whether Arabs

deserve human rights – of course they

do!

It is an issue of competing human

rights objectives for Arabs and Jews

Jews want to grant the maximum

human rights possible for Arabs –

without compromising their own right to

live in peace

The adversary framework

It is not “Israel vs. Palestinians,” it is “Israel

vs. Arabs”

The Palestinian issue is artificially kept

burning…although we cannot forget that

the people are real

Hasbara Rule #8: Be proud and

be loud Be proud to be pro-Israel

Treat the word “Zionist” as a compliment

Put the Israeli flag on your gravatar or

blog

People gravitate towards confident, proud

people

Hasbara Rule #9: Shame is the

best weapon Shame the other side

Guilt-

cultureOther people believe:

I believe I didn't do it I did it

I didn't do it No problem

I protest my

innocence and

fight the

accusation

I did it

I am expected to

feel guilty

regardless

I am guilty and

am punished

Shame-

cultureOther people believe:

I believe I didn't do it I did it

I didn't do it No problem

I am shamed

and

dishonoured by

their belief

I did it

No-one knows,

so I am not

shamed

I am guilty and

am punished

Expose the facts

that shame them!

Shame works – and it is the only

road to peace Only if they are shamed will the Arab

countries be forced to take responsibility for their role in the “refugee” problem

Shame has worked in the past

◦ Arabic press is rarely explicitly anti-semiticnowadays

◦ Zawahiri shamed Hamas into pretending they are not targeting Qassams at civilians

◦ Al Jazeera was pro-Al Qaeda after 9/11but changed its tune

Hasbara Rule #10: Truth above

all If we lose credibility, we lose everything

If you are not comfortable using a specific

argument, don’t fake it

Try to avoid sweeping generalizations

because a single counterexample ruins

your point – use “most”, “apparently”

“tend to” and similar words

Hasbara Rule #11: Know your

audience Don’t tell a secular audience that “Israel’s

land deed is the Torah”, for example

Insults do not win arguments – in fact, they often lose them

Don’t assume malice when people could be just clueless

Don’t assume the audience knows the minutiae of the argument (Res 242 missing “the”)

Don’t get stuck in the minutiae yourself, or you lose the lurkers – always touch back on the basics

Three stages of Hasbara

Creating

Publishing

Publicizing

How to be a reporter

Everyone is a reporter - and can

broadcast their reports

If the media is not going to look for the

truth, you might as well do it

◦ I am upset that I am a better reporter than

90% of those who get paid to report

So go out there and find the news!

History as a source of news

History is everything in the Middle East

When you can disprove today’s Arab

claims based on their own words 40, 70

or 100 years ago, you can make news

today

Example: Mamilla Cemetery

Muslims claimed that it was hallowed ground and that the Museum of Tolerance cannot be built there

I did a search on “Mamillah” in the Palestine Post and found this article

Busted!

Example: “Buraq Wall”

Muslims claim now that Muhammed

tethered his winged horse at the Kotel

In the 19th century, some surveys of

Palestine identified the spot as Bab an-

Nazir, well to the north of the Kotel

Example: Contemporaneous

testimony Palestine Post archives, American Jewish

Committee yearbooks, and similar items

all reveal how people thought at the time

Historians often (consciously or not) will

gloss over examples that contradict their

themes

Were Jews advocating transfer of Arabs?

Contemporaneous headlines more

effective than dry facts

More recent history

The financing of the Munich Olympic

massacre was none other than Mahmoud

Abbas (Sports Illustrated, 8/20/2002)

He also eulogized the mastermind of that

attack, Abu Daoud, earlier this year

Isn’t that news?

How to be a reporter, part 2

Cheap digital cameras nowadays have HD

video capabilities

Go to anti-Israel rallies, take video and

photos of signs, interview the nutcases

Take video of pro-Israel speeches

If people cannot find it on YouTube, it

might as well never have happened

If you can, write transcripts of the

speeches as well: so they can be

searchable


Look up source materials mentioned in

news articles

◦ Go to original websites (HRW, Amnesty,

organizations, surveys, transcripts from TV

interviews, UN sites)

◦ Check what the original source really said

◦ Subtract the spin

◦ Notice and report on issues that the

media ignored


Keep statistics/databases, become a resource◦ How many rockets shot into Israel today?

◦ How many Palestinian Arabs are killed by their fellows, compared to by the IDF?

◦ How many times is Mahmoud Abbas described as “moderate” and Netanyahu as “hawkish” or “right wing”?

Go through known lists of “evil Zionist quotes” and debunk them

Make a database of members of anti-Israel organizations, cross-check against others, Google them


Learn Arabic/Farsi – or use Google

Translate

◦ I’ve had more scoops in a month than most

reporters in a lifetime

See what is being said that the West

doesn’t notice, and report on it!

◦ Example: Mahmoud Abbas praising the Mufti

Husseini – who cooperated with Nazis


Check facts

Example: PCHR vs. Elder team: How many

“civilians” killed in Gaza during Cast Lead

were really terrorists?


Take ordinary photos in Israel that

Westerners wouldn’t see

◦ Mansions in the West Bank

◦ Luxury cars with Palestinian Arab plates

◦ Jews and Arabs working, shopping

together


Email or call the newsmakers

◦ Or spokespeople

Ask them pointed questions

◦ They will be slippery but even their evasions

are newsworthy

Chris Gunness from UNRWA denying and

downplaying problems


Infiltrate!

◦ Go undercover and join anti-Israel mailing lists, private Facebook groups

◦ “Friend” leaders of anti-Israel and “human rights” groups to see their photos and their friends

HRW’s Sara Leah Whitson had an interesting crowd – I forgot to screenshot it

◦ See what they are saying to each other when the cameras are off

◦ Document everything


When news occurs that involve a specific person or organization saying something embarrassing – take screenshots◦ Octavia Nasr’s tweet

◦ Marc Garlasco’s Nazi memorabilia hobby and HRW sockpuppets

Learn how to use Google’s cache, WaybackMachine (archive.org)


Fisking!

◦ Methodically analyze and demolish anti-Israel

articles or examples of anti-Israel media bias

◦ Requires good writing and analysis skills


Write original pieces defending Israel,

preferably from a fresh perspective

Now that you are a reporter…

…Where can you do your

reporting?

You need to publish!

Blogs

Easy to set up

Tough to get an audience

Almost by nature, partisan – so difficult to

get wide range of readers

Citizen journalism sites

Built-in readers

Articles need to be somewhat better

quality

Advantage: most are already left-leaning

so you can make a bigger splash

Demotix photos get covered in

mainstream newspapers

AlterNet, NowPublic, Examiner.com,

NewsVine

Create your own news aggregator

site If you are a techie and good at design, use

RSS to make an attractive pro-Israel news

aggregator site

But don’t call it “Israel News” – call it

“MidEast News” or similar

YouTube channel

Easy to get into

Takes time to build an audience but a

potentially much bigger audience than

blogs

Requires a little expertise, and a little

money, to do a quality job

Guest-post

Many established blogs will be happy to

publish original material and give full

credit

If you are prolific enough, you could end

up becoming a co-blogger on an

established blog

Now that you have published…

You need to publicize!

Types of Internet users

Creators

◦ People who create content

◦ Reporters, bloggers, podcasters, video

uploaders, organizations, some Facebook

users

Consumers

◦ Everyone who reads, views or listens to

content

How can the consumers help Israel?

There is a third category that everyone

can be a part of:

Amplifiers

Amplifying the message

Consume Amplify

Straight Amplification

FB “likes”

Tweets

Social bookmarking like Reddit, del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon

Posting links in message boards

Email and email lists

Repost on other blogs and comments

All these take little time

Value-Added Amplification

Translate and repost

Comment on post and repost

◦ “Here’s a great example of X”

◦ “Must read article from Y who nails it”

◦ “This video will make you cheer!”

A taxonomy of effective mass

communicationLive events (rallies, plays)

Public multimedia (movies, art)

TV, videogames

Home video/YouTube

Music, audio

Social media (Facebook, Twitter)

Photos, pictures, charts, posters

Books/Ebooks

Newspapers

Blogs

Social bookmarking sites, message boards

Emotional

Payoff

Amplifying to a higher level

Different media have different

emotional payoffs

Raise the message to a higher

level

◦ Illustrate a blog post with a photo

◦ Create a slide show out of an article

◦ Turn dry statistics into a video

◦ Posters for demonstrations

◦ Write an op-ed (helps if you are a

Ph.D. or author)

Meme-busting

The mainstream media and the anti-Israel

crowd all have memes that they rely on

It is a lazy way of reporting but the

memes become believed by repetition

They need to be disproven

Meme-busting example #1

“Pro-Palestinian activists”

◦ They do not exist

◦ If they were “pro-Palestinian” they would be

holding protests outside Lebanese embassies

◦ The are, always, anti-Israel protesters


“Abbas is a moderate/Israel is

intransigent”

◦ Abbas has bragged that he has not moved one

inch from Arafat’s positions – of 1988

◦ Meanwhile, Israel has offered specific peace

plans that would painfully cut out the spiritual

center of the land

◦ Not to mention abandoning Gaza – and its

residents


“Christians are leaving Palestine because

of Israeli policies”

◦ Christians in the West Bank and Gaza are

terrified of Muslim extremists

◦ Christians have been fleeing Bethlehem – but

the Muslim population has gone up

◦ Christian population in Israel has increased

◦ Why are Lebanese Christians leaving?


“The Western Wall is Judaism’s holiest

site”

◦ After people complained, wire services have

actually fixed this meme

◦ Politely pointing out errors in fact makes a

difference!

Other memes….

“Gaza is an open-air prison”

“Humanitarian crisis”

“Arab East Jerusalem”

“Israel ethically cleansed Palestinians in 1948”

“Greater Israel”

“Israel is a colonial state”

“Historic Palestine”

“Illegal Occupation”

“Israel trying to erase Palestinian culture”

“Judaizing Jerusalem”

Doing it alone vs. doing it together

Practically all the ideas given so far can be

done by individuals or very small groups

But people in college have resources that

others don’t have – so take advantage!

Symposia

Sponsor a symposium, together with a

major media player such as Commentary,

on topics of importance

◦ Jews of Arab countries

◦ The Iranian threat

◦ Turkey’s tilt towards Islamism

◦ Media bias

Invite bigshots

These things make news!

Research avenues

Project to digitize historical documents

relating to American Jewry or early

Zionism

Convert early films to digital

Partner with Google Books or YouTube

Create a loose network of skills

Everyone has different talents

Create a mailing list/Facebook group for a

team of people with the talents needed

Then when you need to ask a question or

get something done you have a team that

can help

You can also blast out important news in

multiple venues

Online Hasbara network

◦ Writers

◦ Prominent amplifiers

◦ Historians/ researchers

◦ Graphic designers

◦ Video directors/editors

◦ Techies – database, design, coders

◦ Reporters

•Analysts

•People who know

people

•Fact-checkers

•Gadflies – letter

writers, message

board members

•Translators

•Political junkies

•“Insulters”

Summing up

1. Grab attention

2. Make your time count

3. Appeal to emotions

4. Contact the players

5. Go on the offensive

6. Use liberal terminology

7. Set the framework

8. Be proud and be loud

9. Shame is the best weapon

10. Truth above all

11. Know your audience

Summing up

You can be a reporter and create content

Publish the message

Amplify the message to gain exposure

Move the message to more visceral levels

Go after the false memes

Leverage university prestige and

resources

Brainstorm ideas with a group

Questions?

ElderOfZiyon.com

[email protected]

Facebook: Elder Ziyon

mailto:[email protected]

hasbara 2.0

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