On Jewish Students Hasbara Handbook

On Jewish Students Hasbara Handbook

By Laura Knight-Jadczyk

[excerpt of article]

Being subscribed to dozens of email newsletters, I get lots of interesting news sent to me by compilers of news from various perspectives. The SOTT forum is also a rich source of global news and human doings of various sorts. It was thanks to the forum and forum member a.saccus, that I became aware of the World Union of Jewish Students Hasbara Handbook which you can read HERE. It has also been archived HERE.

This handbook is important for several reasons, the main one being that it demonstrates vividly how the process of "Zionizing" that is going on in the U.S. follows so closely the much maligned and discredited "Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

According to reports we have received from college students, the issue of how those evil Islamists create suicide bombers by indoctrinating children with their evil religion is a topic that receives a lot of attention both on campuses and in the media, whether directly or indirectly. As one individual pointed out, the volume of material propagated about an issue should be an indicator that there is a great deal of effort devoted to "advocating" that issue. And here we mean advocating in the sense of "methinks they protest too much."

The Hasbara handbook is concrete evidence that the Jewish/Zionist reactions to floods of facts are a planned and deliberate strategy for victory in social debate and in shaping U.S. policy favorable to Israel, regardless of that policy's usefulness to the American people. The type of discourse described in this handbook is carried on at every level of American society: in Congress, in the Media, e.g., the recent bashing of President Carter, and most importantly, on school and college campuses across the nation.

a.saccus gives a short review of the Hasbara Handbook in the context of the attacks on Jimmy Carter:

Reading the article, and especially the comments of Abba Eban, a former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., I wondered why it was that pro Israel debaters were so successful. And not only the article, but the comments posted after it here make instructive reading -- and actually led me to an answer.

Albert, December 9, 2006 12:27 PM wrote:
There has been also no such comparable situation to a living President having to introduce in a LA times editorial, the reality of what we are not getting in most of the press - the fact there are few Universities inviting him in, he is being blacklisted. A Nobel Prize really goes far nowadays, unless you speak against the reality of what is going on in regards to Israel and Apartheid Policies.

Earlier in the same comment, Albert had written:

The hysteric, over-the-top comments you've received [referring to another commentor, Bill Pearlman] are wonderful for saving with this file together, for several classroom teaching purposes. And we do use these, believe me.
The comments, the nature of their language and intentions, just hammer the point home as to why we Americans are tired of Israel, the very real Israeli lobby money forcing itself as the sole center of our political rights.

There has been NO comparable historical situation with a living President actually being called out for treason, because he dares to SPEAK ON A SUBJECT! And he disagrees with the power of the Israel lobby.

As I read through the comments, especially those by "Bill Pearlman" (not reproduced here because of their scurillity), it struck me that I had heard similar pro-Israel arguments before; and that the responses were equally stereotyped and mechanically reflex-like. Almost as if there were some kind of manual being referenced.

Sure enough, further down the thread

Alan December 10, 2006 4:39 PM wrote:
As your Hasbara manual declares, when out of your depth and when exposed as a bigot, it's better to leave quietly.[...]

Not knowing what a "Hasbara manual" was, I Yahoogled, and wound up at SourceWatch here.

which spoke of the existence of -- a "Manual"!! And it wasn't a piece of fluff either -- at 131 pages long, it promises to be my bedtime reading for many weeks to come.

You can find the Manual HERE. The emphases in the passage are mine.

Hasbara Manual, page 32:
Seven Basic Propaganda Devices

Propaganda is used by those who want to communicate in ways that engage the emotions and downplay rationality, in an attempt to promote a certain message. To effectively present Israel to the public, and to counter anti-Israel messages, it is necessary to understand propaganda devices.

This article applies a list of seven propaganda devices to the Israeli situation, and by doing so allows an understanding of some of the ways in which public opinion is fought for in the International arena.

Thus what this manual is explicitly (and revealingly) about is ways to help the user win battles, not to find out the truth of the matter.

The seven basic propaganda devices are:

NAME CALLING
GLITTERING GENERALITY
TRANSFER
TESTIMONIAL
PLAIN FOLKS
FEAR
BANDWAGON

Each of the seven is followed by several paragraphs of examples on how the technique is to be applied.

Quite informative reading. This is, without a doubt, a very professional piece of work, and all the more chilling because of that very professionalism.

I will only quote "NAME CALLING" in full, both out of space/time considerations and because it seems to be a technique universally and invariably used; but all the entries are interesting. The emphases in the passage are mine.

Hasbara Manual, page 32-33:
Name Calling

Through the careful choice of words, the name calling technique links a person or an idea to a negative symbol. Creating negative connotations by name calling is done to try and get the audience to reject a person or idea on the basis of negative associations, without allowing a real examination of that person or idea. The most obvious example is name calling -- "they are a neo-Nazi group" tends to sound pretty negative to most people. More subtly, name calling works by selecting words with subtle negative meanings for some listeners. For example, describing demonstrators as "youths" creates a different impression from calling them "children".

For the Israel activist, it is important to be aware of the subtly different meanings that well chosen words give. Call "demonstrations" "riots", many Palestinian political organizations "terror organizations", and so on.

Those opposed to Israel use name calling all the time. Consider the meaning of the word "settlement". When applied to Gilo, a suburb of Jerusalem over the disputed 1967 borders, the word "settlement" creates the unfortunate impression that Gilo is located in the middle of the West Bank, and occupied by religious and political extremists (the image many people have acquired of settlements). That's how the media and opponents of Israel use name-calling. Other examples include referring to the "war crimes" of Ariel Sharon, talking about the "invasion" of the West Bank when an army unit enters territory under PA sovereignty in order to find terrorists, and so on.

Name calling is hard to counter. Don't allow opponents the opportunity to engage in point scoring. Whenever "name calling" is used, think about referring to the same thing (e.g. Gilo), but with a more favorable description (e.g. "suburb"). Consider calling settlements "communities" or "villages". Use the same names back; if somebody talks about Sharon's "war crimes", talk about Arafat's war crimes and involvement in terror.

Try as I might, I couldn't find a map online locating Gilo. But I did find this:

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting wrote:

MEDIA ADVISORY:
Euphemisms for Israeli Settlements Confuse Coverage
June 26, 2002
[...]
The "neighborhood" of Gilo [...]

Looks like somebody's been getting their money's worth out of their Manual again....

Speaking of getting their money's worth in more ways than one, and a consequence of the above type of propagandizing, have a look at the following:

Israeli Map Says West Bank Posts Sit on Arab Land
By STEVEN ERLANGER
November 21, 2006

JERUSALEM, Nov. 20 - An Israeli advocacy group, using maps and figures leaked from inside the government, says that 39 percent of the land held by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians.

The government data indicate that 40 percent of the land that Israel plans to keep in any future deal with the Palestinians is private.

About 86 percent of Maale Adumim, an Israeli settlement, sits on privately held Palestinian property, according to government data. Israel has long asserted that it fully respects Palestinian private property in the West Bank and only takes land there legally or, for security reasons, temporarily.

If big sections of those settlements are indeed privately held Palestinian land, that is bound to create embarrassment for Israel and further complicate the already distant prospect of a negotiated peace. The data indicate that 40 percent of the land that Israel plans to keep in any future deal with the Palestinians is private.

The new claims regarding Palestinian property are said to come from the 2004 database of the Civil Administration, which controls the civilian aspects of Israel's presence in the West Bank. [...]

Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for the Civil Administration, said he could not comment on the data without studying it.

He said there was a committee, called the blue line committee, that had been investigating these issues of land ownership for three years. "We haven't finished checking everything," he said.

Mr. Dror also said that sometimes Palestinians would sell land to Israelis but be unwilling to admit to the sale publicly because they feared retribution as collaborators.

Within prominent settlements that Israel has said it plans to keep in any final border agreement, the data show, for example, that some 86.4 percent of Maale Adumim, a large Jerusalem suburb, is private; and 35.1 percent of Ariel is.

This Shlomo Dror must have read the Hasbara manual. Speaking of which, let's look at a bit more from a.saccus on this great tool that is being provided to Israeli youths so that they can learn to lie and scheme for Israel.

World Union of Jewish Students Hasbara Handbook calls what they’re doing “Israel Advocacy“, but “advocacy" in this context is a blatant misnomer: what they are doing is outright sophistry and rhetorical manipulation; to be used upon those (mainly young people) who believe they’re engaging in a genuine dialogue or debate, but are really being set up and led down the garden path.
When dealing with Zionist Jews, you are dealing with individuals who [are] not seeking the truth of the matter and who will discuss the question fairly with you, but rather with propagandists:

--who have an agenda to push: they call it “Neutralizing Negativity" or “Pushing Positivity“ (see the Hasbara Handbook page 15); in other words, their goal is manipulation, not truth.

--who are “setting the agenda":

Hasbara Handbook page 16: The person who sets the agenda will usually win the debate.[…] activists get to determine what to talk about,[…] Being proactive keeps the right issues in the public eye, and in the way Israel activists want them to be seen. It is much easier to get Palestinian activists defending Arafat against charges of being a corrupt terrorist than it is to explain to disinterested students that Ariel Sharon didn’t kill anybody at Sabra and Chatilla (which of course he didn’t).

That final parenthetical remark always gets me. Even the PTB can’t be sure that such a blatant lie will be believed without constant and mind-numbing reiteration and reinforcing. And just who are those “disinterested students" who suddenly appear? Might they not be people who are actually seeking the truth of the matter? Dangerous hombres those truth seekers...

And notice the concern -- expressed over and over again through the Handbook -- with appearances, with maintaining a façade. You don’t need to do that if you’re telling the truth, now do you?

When dealing with Zionist propagandists you are dealing with individuals who are concerned with scoring points, and learn the best times and the best situations to do this; they are NOT concerned with the truth (page 18); "terrorism" is a big "point" for them (page 94)

When dealing with Zionist propagandists you are dealing with individuals who believe that pictures are more potent than words (page 28); (hence all the YouTubing and VideoGoogling).

When dealing with Zionist propagandists you are dealing with individuals who know the value and the uses of FEAR:

Hasbara Handbook page 35:
When a speaker warns that the consequences of ignoring his message is likely to be war, conflict, personal suffering, and so forth, they are manipulating fear to advance their message. Listeners have deep-seated fears of violence and disorder, which can be tapped into by creating false dichotomies -- “either listen to me, or these terrible things will happen." Listeners are too preoccupied by the threat of terrible things to think critically about the speaker’s message.

That’s as cold and reptilian as they come. And that's the reason for the emphasis on terrorist violence.

When dealing with Zionist propagandists you are dealing with individuals who have a strategy worked out ahead of time for when to stay and when to walk away from a debate (page 41). When your only concern is winning, why engage in a debate which, although it might lead to the truth, won‘t enable you to win? ....I'm sorry, Coach Lombardi, but winning isn't everything.

Do not underestimate the thoroughness and depth of the indoctrination in the Zionists you may encounter: it is nothing less than a complete divorce from reality. Don't take this personally, but fanaticism in the young is always much more potent. Older folks have had more time to mull over the evil consequences of the pathocrat lifestyle, and are less inclined to be so rabid. Or have a chat with a young man who was a volunteer soldier and is now a quadruplegic. Things like losing a few limbs can also mellow one's judgment -- but oh, the cost!

Consider the Hasbara Handbook's suggested response to a not unreasonable justification of Palestinian terrorism:

Hasbara Handbook page 94:
Accusation: The Palestinian use of terror is understandable and legitimate as it is their only weapon against the oppression of Israeli Occupation.

Rebuttal: There can never be any justification for the deliberate murder and threatening of innocent civilians to exact political concessions. The only effective way to combat terrorism on an international scale is to view all terrorists equally and not to differentiate between good and bad terrorists. The biggest success terrorists have had in the twentieth century has been getting people to accept the idea that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

1. “There can never be any justification….? But isn’t that exactly what the Zionists have always been doing, for over a century --justifying? We have a major reality disconnect here.

2. “[…] view all terrorists equally […]? I have no objections to doing this, but this is just an empty promise on the lips of a Zionist Jew. When it comes to applying it, Hasbara would no doubt find a clever reason to make an exception; otherwise los zionistas would be lumped in with all the other terrorists.

3. The fact that the last sentence of the above Hasbara citation must be completely reversed to express the truth gives us an idea of just how deep the illusion is:

The biggest success the Zionists have had in the twentieth century has been getting the American people to accept the idea that “the Palestinian freedom fighters are terrorists."

All in all, the Hasbara manual is quite an interesting find! (Thank you, a.saccus!) It is clearly not about finding and establishing Truth, but is about manipulation. It's rather like "Protocols Lite", only it's not so light.

Of course it is clear that just being Jewish doesn't make one a Zionist or a propagandist or a manipulator. For example:

Hasbara - The Zionist War on Truth

Hasbara spam alert - The hasbara brigade strikes again!
Article from The Guardian on Israel's Foreign Ministry organizing Jewish volunteers to flood news websites with pro-Israeli comments - the world of Propaganda 2.0.

Online battle for Israel’s hasbara
By Eyal Lehmann, Israeli news site YNetNews, September 19, 2013

More on the Internet and Jewish influence, Israeli interference