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most expensive propaganda enterprise ever: On a first level, words, expressions and images
are carefully selected, eliminated and manipulated to give both reporting and commentary a
pro-Israeli spin. This is a very costly and labor-intensive enterprise. Lies do not yet
necessarily appear at this stage, but reality is often bent out of recognition, due to extreme bias
and selectivity. The people carrying out this manipulation are not necessarily being paid by
the Israeli state or by any other Israeli apartheid institutions. Some are even doing it
unconsciously, taking over bits of propaganda directly from Israeli or pro-Israeli spin doctors,
or second-hand, from news agencies and other powerful media, reorganizing them
superficially, and passing them on to the public without even realizing their deep bias. Once
you have seen the same phrase a few times from a small number of trusted sources, you do not
stop to question them any more. That is simply part of common journalistic practice, even if it
goes against the most common journalistic standards. Public relations professionals have
made sure that young, attractive, even sexy, and European-looking spokespersons for the
Israeli army, such as Olivier Rafowic, Sharon Feingold and Jacob Dallal charm journalists and
the public into believing that army operations are necessary and as humanitarian in execution
as humanly possible. Middle-aged, European-looking and conservative government
spokespersons like Avi Pazner, Raanan Gissin, Dore Gold or Daniel Seaman are also made up
in a way for the west to identify with them. Their perfect American or English accents also
help to enable them to speak authoritatively about the urgency of the global threat of terrorism
every time a 12-year-old Palestinian has thrown a stone. The character and extent of human
rights violations perpetrated by Israeli soldiers and settlers and by the Israeli political, judicial
and civilian elites are thus downplayed severely. Violations perpetrated by Palestinians, on the
other hand, are, as we have seen, habitually exaggerated.
Secondly, there is in hasbara a great deal of lobbying, courtship and even bribery of
important information-brokers. The pundits airing ‘analyses’ of news from the Middle East in
the USA are hardly ever academic experts. They are usually members of Zionist thinktanks,
privately funded propaganda groups, usually styled with academic-sounding titles, such as
‘Senior Fellow’, and the like. Not only the media consult them rather than the more objective
academic specialists, various US government agencies do, too, even for basic information. 712
This is also a rather expensive kind of propaganda activity, which the Israelis and their allies
can afford, but the Palestinians and theirs generally cannot.
Thirdly, there are misleading official Israeli statements of denial, suppression of the
truth and downright lies that are spread and upheld as much as possible, and then often again
denied, i.e. the Israelis lie a second time by denying that they ever told the original lie, which
is by now old news. Because of that, journalists are often too confused and weary to follow up
on the story, and media consumers usually too tired or too distracted to follow. Arabs
involved in the conflict also lie to or through the mass media, but nowhere near as
convincingly as the Israelis, and, in my estimation, nowhere near as frequently. 713
Fourth, if they should persist with trying to show the world some of the ugly truths
that define Israeli apartheid – even if unintended – writers, reporters and cameramen are
obstructed, intimidated, threatened, beaten, shot at, often wounded and sometimes killed by
Israeli armed forces, with almost total impunity. Cameras, film, videotapes and other kinds of
records of human rights violations, in particular, are also confiscated and/or destroyed by the
Israeli powers that be. Articles, books and documentary projects are rejected due to their
contents by pro-Israeli editors and publishers. Journalists and academics are harassed,
intimidated and/or fired.
Finally, if all else fails, media hardware and infrastructure, including whole
712 Whitaker: US Thinktanks Give Lessons in Foreign Policy, 2002
713 Van Teeffele: Israelis Better at Manipulating Media, 2003; Löwstedt & Madhoun 2003; Parry June 4, 2004