A while back here at Paulitics, I discussed the campaign by the Israel lobby to pay university students to agree with Israel in classroom discussions, university clubs and in rallies.
This programme and the overwhelmingly pro-Israel North American (and, to a lesser extent, European) media coverage were however not enough for the powerful and extremely well organized lobby. The Israeli lobby then created a desktop application called “Megaphone” about which many political commentators still remain blissfully unaware. Megaphone serves as a syphoning tool which has the power to instantly send pro-Israel activists flooding into any online discussion, web poll or other forum where Israel is being discussed in order to grossly unbalance the discussion thus creating the impression among Internet users that Israel’s support is both much wider and deeper than it actually is. However, as frightening and undemocratic as these two operations were, they pale in comparison to what the government of Israel is doing now in terms of making “crimestop” a reality.
The Israeli press is now reporting that, in addition to the considerable influence of the Israeli lobby, the government of Israel has decided to marshal its state treasury to the cause further unbalancing the already obscenely unbalanced debate over Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. The government of Israel will now directly pay pro-Israeli agents and bloggers to infiltrate online discussions, message boards, online newspaper comments et cetera with a ubiquitously pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian message.
In the original Paulitics post on StandWithUs.org, I commented on their Orwellian use of doves and other peace imagery despite the fact that Israel has steadfastly rejected international law which calls for the right of all refugees to return to their homes and the Geneva conventions which proscribe against the acquisition of land through military conquest. I can now without reservation say that I was dead wrong in my initial estimation of the situation. Calling the initial programmes “Orwellian” does a disservice to the now genuinely Orwellian levels of deception and subterfuge being engaged in directly by the state.
On the bright side, however, if all of the favourable and unballanced meainstream media coverage; an impressive array of applications and an intimidating lobby group are together not enough to secure Israel’s outright hegemony, then there surely is hope that the illegal Israeli occupation is unsustainable.
And there’s a book, too!
My take on this is that each side does what it feels it has to do. History will tell which side will have been more beneficial to Humanity. My only beef with them is when they try to shut the other side up. That, I do not like although I realize that that, too, is part of their strategy for overcoming the opposition.
BTW you might be interested with this; you may have seen it already. Sounds interesting.
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