Activism and BDS Beat 27 June 2013
Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to implement the recommendations of a prominent think tank with regards to countering international “delegitimization” and boycott initiatives.
Speaking at the launch of the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI)’s report, “Israel and the Jewish People: Geopolitics, 2012-2013,” Netanyahu described “a campaign of incitement” targeting “the State of Israel as the Jewish nation state” as a “wave which has been on the rise.” Netanyahu continued:
Throughout a long period, efforts have been made, by the Israeli government as well as NGOs [non-governmental organizations] in Israel and all over the world, to counter this. However, in order to optimize the efforts, we need to improve coordination between various institutions active in this field, through a comprehensive action plan.
The prime minister declared that he had “assigned the overall responsibility for the campaign against delegitimization to the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, including the coordination of efforts with NGOs in Israel and all over the world,” a role which will include “the establishment of a professional special staff for countering delegitimization.”
The JPPI calls itself “an independent professional policy planning think tank” whose mission is “to ensure the thriving of the Jewish People and the Jewish civilization by engaging in professional strategic thinking and planning on issues of primary concern to world Jewry.” It was established in 2002 by the Jewish Agency, and its board of directors is co-chaired by Dennis Ross.
JPPI’s report states that “anti-Israel sentiment on the settlements issue is gathering momentum throughout Europe” and that “the diplomatic stalemate provides a supportive backdrop to the embargo efforts against Israel.” Citing Stephen Hawking’s boycott of the Facing Tomorrow - Israeli Presidential Conference as an example, JPPI notes an “erosion of Israel’s international standing” and that “de-legitimization … remains a major challenge to Israel and to Diaspora Jewry.”
Meanwhile, prominent Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth this week that at the recent Facing Tomorrow conference, “Netanyahu called a meeting with a small group of Jewish millionaires” where “he sought to raise their money and use their connections for the war against the anti-Israel boycott movement.”
News of these new efforts to fight the Palestine solidarity movement comes just weeks after a conference convened by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs advocated a number of tactics to target boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigners and human rights advocates, including the “professional humiliation” of “scholars attacking Israel.”
Comments
Method of manipulation
Permalink N.N. replied on
Example: a smaller, but successful political party. Foreign affairs dept. is occupied by pro-zionists. Everybody with other view gets mobbed out. A person where mobbing out doesn't work becomes dangerous by influence, so they try to expel. Via libel. Took some single words and few parts of sentences out of sophisticated posts and combined them together to a blogpost libelling as antisemitic and holocaust denying. This blogpost was written under name of simple user. Purpose of libelling was hidden and became only known later by a witness. As it did not have the wanted result, it was given to one of the party leaders who surely did not read the original the pieces were taken from. He made it public, also to newspapers. Following big organized shit storm by zionist fans, partly from within, but also outside the party. Led by an IDF-account that provides with propaganda. Next step: cutting off all possibilities to participate and publish in party forums and mailing lists, of cause all against the law. Most people are not educated, do not read sophisticated texts and they rely on the worse features of man, i.e. delight man hunting. This is disgusting for serious people, effect: they leave discussions and with this give free way. Problem occurs when the targeted person is an old experienced fighter, but most time this method will surely work, if not known. Means, person leaves on own will. Know the aim: to capture peoples mind in a way that they take notice selectivly, means take up only what fits into the view zionists printed before. It takes quite a long time to change this step by step and especially at the beginning there is big fear of others to become prosecuted as well. It is a populistic manipulation of peoples mind by calling their negative characteristics, but it can be fought. It would be helpful to collect such methods and to publish how they successfully can be defeated. It's always hardest for the first - but still going strong :-)
Too Late
Permalink Hadeel replied on
It's too late. The rightful damage has been done. Thank God, even Jews stand with us. "Israel" is neither secular, humane, democratic, sane, Jewish (spiritually so), nor is it legitimate. It's days are rightfully numbered, and nothing, not even another false flag attack can stop the clock. People know. The people, all and any people, know who is behind the constant pain, demonization, the false wars, now with one in Syria, and it is this bastard state and it's tyrannical leaders. I pray the people wake up and leave Occupied Palestine, or if they stay, fine, but please, live WITH me and NOT against me. There can be peace. The fanaticism needs to stop. The supremacist, warped religo-ethnic lies need to end. Palestine must return, we must return; all of us, of all religions of the land. These men must be stopped, they are being stopped, and nothing can change that.
In this world, there are slaves and there are free men. Be free.
Israel & the world
Permalink judith l. osterman replied on
1. What does the state of Israel do to assist the the USA in its quest for world dominance? 2. Ditto, to assist world capitalism in its current form? 3. Israel has lost the moral highground because of the publicization of its brutal & murderous oppression of the Palestinians, as well as the leaking of its military actions in support of many dictatorships, e.g. in Central America, and its alliances with the status quo repressive regimes and monarchies in the Middle East and elsewhere 4. The generation that lived in terror of the Nazis has largely been supplanted by one less inclined to automatically go into defensive mode when Israel is criticized. 5. How has Israel been affected by the world economic crisis? By climate change? 6. How extensively does its economy depend upon the insatiable and destructive military-industrial complex? 7. An evaluation of the above factors will lead to a realistic assessment of the chances that a massive propaganda offensive against the BDS movement will succeed.
Dennis Ross
Permalink Carl Zaisser replied on
Wherever Dennis Ross is involved, you can smell a rat. Clayton Swisher (who was on Bill Clinton's team at Camp David in 2000) exposed DR for the very NON honest broker he always has been, after the failure of Israel to step up at CD and accept a division of historic Palestine according to UNSC resolutions. Swisher's book, "The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story of the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process", couldn't make the truth of what happened any plainer than the nose on Ross's face.