The Hasbara Booklet: Just lie.
By Guest Post • Jul 15th, 2009 at 7:17 • Category: Analysis, Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Education, Hasbara Deconstruction Site, Israel, Newswire, Palestine, Religion, Zionism
WRITTEN BY IBRAHIM IBN YUSUF
(photo from The Israel Project Photo Contest)
The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary is a Hasbara booklet written by a Dr. Frank Luntz that adds on to a rich but unsuccessful literature existing in the field. Why unsuccessful? Let's quote from the author's introduction:
Memo to him: the problem is not with his previous booklets, it's with Israel.
Anyway, here's the full text (CLICK ON FULL SCREEN TO ENLARGE, THEN ON CLOSE TO RETURN TO THIS BLOG):
The Israel Project's 2009 Global Language Dictionary –
I see favorably the publication of these hasbara materials inasmuch as they prove that Zionists don't actually believe that the world's negative view of Israel has anything to do with irrational antisemitism (otherwise they wouldn't waste their time trying to convince anyone). Other than that, I expect them to be professionally made and factually accurate. So that I did two searches on subjects the "hasbarization" of which I was curious about.
First, I typed in LOYALTY OATH on the search box. I was surprised to find no result. Mr. Liberman's initiative that Israeli Arabs should take a loyalty oath or be stripped of their citizenship is something an Israel advocate would be asked about, but this booklet offers no recipee to fend the questioner off.
Next, I typed in SETTLEMENTS. I did get a full chapter devoted to them. After listing a few somewhat dated arguments, on p. 63 we get the formula that summarizes it all:
WORDS THAT WORK
Israel does not talk about dismantling Arab settlements within Israel. In a democratic society, Jews and Arabs should be able to live side-by-side in peace. Nobody ever says Israeli territory has to be free from Arabs. One should ask the Palestinian leadership why they always demand land that is free from Jews.
Note the terminology shift currently under way. Just like a few years ago the Jewish immigrants to Israel were suddenly turned into refugees, and voilà, the Palestinian refugees were wiped out from the debate, because they cancelled out with the Jewish refugees, the Arab towns of Israel are now being termed settlements, and voilà, there's no injustice at all: Jewish settlements in the West Bank cancel out with Arab settlements in Israel. I denounce the Israeli checkpoints between Jericho and Ramallah, but why do I say nothing about the checkpoints set up by Arab falafel vendors on the roads of Tel Aviv?
That aside, the Words That Work include something that is not terminological at all, but which is simply a bare-faced lie, namely that the Palestinian leadership "always demand land that is free from Jews."
Up to a very recent time, no one talked about Jews remaining in the West Bank under a two-state solution. Everyone understood that Israeli Jews are deeply and unabashedly racist, and, in order to avoid living under Arab rule, they would be prepared to accept the unthinkable: higher taxes in Israel proper. Only very recently has the Hasbara community begun to claim the human right not to be uprooted from where you went to grab someone else's land in the first place. So that the Palestinian leadership had had nothing to say on the issue, because it was not a subject of debate.
Until now. But on Saturday, 4 July 2009, at the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Ideas Festival, in, of all places, Aspen, Colorado, Palestinian primer minister Saleem Fayyad was for the first time ever asked about his views on the subject. His answer:
“In fact the kind of state that we want to have, that we aspire to have, is one that would definitely espouse high values of tolerance, co-existence, mutual respect and deference to all cultures, religions. No discrimination whatsoever, on any basis whatsoever.
“Jews to the extent they choose to stay and live in the state of Palestine will enjoy those rights and certainly will not enjoy any less rights than Israeli Arabs enjoy now in the state of Israel.”
The Zionists went immediately ballistic. They took to the cyberspace to say, zillions of times "if you believe this I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell to you." Others were more straightforward:
don't listen to them! DO NOT BELIEVE THEM!! the arabs are very capable of lying and then making life miserable for the Israelis. and than it might be too late..and they can make horrible laws too. they have ruled Jews before.
Why were they so furious? Because finally Fayyad had learned the Israeli technique of making offers that the other side can't take, so as to appear as very generous when the offer is actually meaningless.
But the Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary chose to ignore this Palestinian display of smartness, and instead instructed the Hasbara gang to lie about it.
Not that the Hasbara gang didn't know that lying is the approach to take when apologizing for Israel, mind you.
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exactly the reason why inclusivity is more effective than competing identities, and why the one state solution is the ultimate peace offensive
“The Americans were responsible for creation of a gangster state headed by an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders,” – Sir John Troutbeck wrote in his letter to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin on June 2, 1948.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/the-war-on-terror-is-a-zionist-racket-stupid/
Which peace proposals have the Palestinians made that the Zionists haven't agreed to sign on to? For that matter what peace proposals have they made at all? Sure the Jews have always wanted to negotiate and not just accept what was proposed but at least they have agreed to sign on. I don't think the same can be said of the Palestinians. I believe that if the Palestinians were actually interested in peace or state they'd of had it a long time ago.
@kevin –
Kevin
You live in a fantasy world, unable to distinguish between the occupied and the occupier. To the best of my knowledge, no other occupied people have been forced to negotiate an end to their occupation with their occupier. Was Kuwait expected to negotiate with Iraq? For that matter, was France expected to negotiate when it was occupied by Germany in WWII?
Actually, going back to 1988, when Arafat and the PLO formally accepted UNSC Res. 242, they agreed to recognize Israel in accordance with international law (e.g., the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Fourth Geneva Convention, all signed by Israel) within its pre-1967 war boundaries. Israel rebuffed this peace overture as well as others, including the 2002 Arab League's Beirut Initiative, agreed to by the Palestinians. Get educated.
Regarding Fayyad's statement on Jews who become Palestinian citizens with full rights, it's notable that:
a) in 1930, a Palestinian Arab delegation to the British colonial secretary demanded a parliament be set up in Palestine "elected by the people in proportion to their numbers, irrespective of race or creed." The demand was denied by the colonial secretary, basically, because to establish the "national home for Jews in Palestine," i.e. to establish the Zionist colonies in Palestine required helping the Zionists in many ways including giving Jewish colonists superior political power.
b) Establishing a state with equal rights regardless of creed was the PLO stance at least until they agreed to the so-called 2-state solution in 1988.
c) A Jew, Ilan Halevi, served as vice minister of foreign affairs for the PLO delegation to the Madrid Conference in 1991. That's well before any Israeli Arabs served as ministers to any Israeli government.
@lyn –
Hi Lyn
Good comment. It should also be remembered that native Palestinian/Arab Jews, who comprised 10% of all Jews in Palestine in 1948, were vehemently anti-Zionist. Indeed, prior to the massive immigration of foreign Jews (only 30% of whom took out citizenship) under the umbrella of the British Mandate, Palestinian Muslims, Christians, Jews and Druze lived together in harmony and peace. Many Jewish women married Palestinian Muslims and retained their faith. The lies that zionists have spread regarding the status of Jews in the Arab world as a whole is another story that needs to be told.
If you take this oath, can you use the Kol Nidre to get out of it? Or can you say it and know your ass is already covered and it means nothing anyway?
OHHHHH darn! Only Talmudists can use that handy little prayer right? Here is how it reads:
"ALL VOWS, OBLIGATIONS, OATHS OR ANTHEMS, PLEDGES OF ALL NAMES, WHICH WE HAVE VOWED, SWORN, DEVOTED, OR BOUND OURSELVES TO, FROM THIS DAY OF ATONEMENT, UNTIL THE NEXT DAY OF ATONEMENT (WHOSE ARRIVAL WE HOPE FOR IN HAPPINESS) WE REPENT, AFOREHAND, OF THEM ALL, THEY SHALL ALL BE DEEMED ABSOLVED, FORGIVEN, ANNULLED, VOID AND MADE OF NO EFFECT; THEY SHALL NOT BE BINDING, NOR HAVE ANY POWER; THE VOWS SHALL NOT BE RECKONED AS VOWS, THE OBLIGATIONS SHALL NOT BE OBLIGATORY, NOR THE OATHS CONSIDERED AS OATHS." ~ THE KOL NIDRE