We are won over by “words that work” from an Israeli training manual

By Stuart Littlewood

Hasbara has become a dirty word, thanks to it’s dirty practitioners and the dirty job they are trained to do.

It’s Hebrew for Israel’s sophisticated public relations machinery that’s set up to cynically justify the Jewish entity’s crimes and to create for Israel a “brand image” completely at odds with the ugly truth.

Fiction and distortion are among hasbara’s standard propaganda tools used for spinning fairy tales and propagating disinformation. And it is very effective, up to a point. The reason why it will ultimately fail is that it has very poor material to work with. You cannot behave like psychopaths and disguise it forever. You cannot trample other peoples’ rights and freedoms, and destroy their property, and expect to be loved. You cannot keep your jackboot on your neighbour’s neck for 75 years and expect to call yourself civilised and in tune with Western values. You cannot steal his lands, water and livelihood at gunpoint and claim the moral high ground.

And you certainly cannot create a wholesome brand image from bullshit.

I wrote this 10 years ago, and nothing has changed, only got worse.

Israel’s book of lies

The great mystery is why Western politicians and media outlets, after 75 years of Israel’s existence, are still so ignorant about what’s been happening and the countless crimes committed in pursuit of Zionist ambitions.

Israel’s propagandists have a training manual that teaches the art of hasbara – the sugarcoating techniques and downright lying to persuade the gullible to swallow their poison.

Notice how everything Israelis dislike, and everything that thwarts their lust for domination, is now labelled “Iranian-backed” or “Hamas controlled”. They’d have us all believe we are in mortal danger from Iran and must huddle together in a collective act of aggression orchestrated by Tel Aviv, Washington and London.

The 116-page instruction manual, called the 2009 Global Language Dictionary, was produced by The Israel Project (TIP), which says it is “devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel while promoting security, freedom and peace”. It was written specially for those “on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel”.

TIP provides journalists, leaders and opinion-formers with “accurate information about Israel”. Its purpose is to help the worldwide Zionist movement win the propaganda war by persuading international audiences to accept the Israeli narrative and agree that the regime’s crimes are necessary for Israel’s security and in line with “shared values” between Israel and the West. And because God gave them the keys to the Holy Land, their abominable behaviour is deserving of our support.

I suspect Messrs Rishi Sunak, James Cleverly, Kerr Starmer and the rest of Israel’s stooges in Westminster carry this training manual in their pocket, which accounts for the claptrap they constantly spout and their inexplicable infatuation with the rogue state.

The manual teaches the propaganda tricks that Israel’s scribblers and drivelers use to try to justify the slaughter, the ethnic cleansing, the land-grabbing, the cruelty and its contempt for international law and UN resolutions, and make it all smell sweet.

They tell us, for example, how many rockets are fired from Gaza into Israel but never how many bombs, rockets and shells (including the illegal and prohibited kind) Israel’s US-taxpayer-funded F-16s, tanks, armed drones and navy gunboats pour into the densely-packed humanity that is Gaza.

And they are careful not to mention, for example, that Ben Gurion airport, which serves Tel Aviv, was formerly Lydda airport. Lydda was a major Arab town and communications hub during the British Mandate and designated Palestinian in the 1947 UN Partition Plan. In July 1948 Israeli terrorists seized the town, shot it up and drove out the population. Donald Neff reported how the Israelis massacred 426 men, women and children. Some 176 were slaughtered in the town’s main mosque.

Out of a population of 19,000, only 1,052 were allowed to stay. Others who survived the killing spree were forced to walk into exile in the scalding July heat, leaving a trail of bodies – men, women and children – along the way. Israel has no right to Lydda at all – they stole it in a terror raid, just like Najd/Sderot and hundreds of other Palestinian cities, towns and villages.

“Captain of Spin” returns

I’m horrified to see Mark Regev making a comeback to our screens and being interviewed by British media. Regev (real name Freiberg) is an ace propagandist, master of disinformation, whitewasher extraordinaire and personal adviser and spokesman for the apartheid regime’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

While he was ambassador to the UK one of his senior political officers, Shai Masot, plotted with stooges among British MPs and other maggots in the political woodwork to “take down” senior government figures, including Sir Alan Duncan at the Foreign Office. Masot’s hostile scheming was captured and revealed by an AlJazeera undercover investigation and not, regrettably, by Britain’s own security services and press. “The UK has a strong relationship with Israel and we consider the matter closed,” said the British government afterwards.

It should have resulted in Regev being kicked out, but he wasn’t.

Regev is quoted several times in the “Global Language Dictionary” in its attempts to justify Israel’s slaughter, ethnic cleansing, land-grabbing, cruelty and blatant disregard for international law and United Nations resolutions, and to make it all smell sweeter with a liberal squirt of persuasive language. It also incites hatred, particularly towards Hamas and Iran, and is designed to hoodwink all us simple-minded Americans and Europeans into believing we actually share values with the racist regime, and therefore ought to support and forgive its abominable behaviour.

Readers are instructed to “clearly differentiate between the Palestinian people and Hamas” and to drive a wedge between them. The manual features “Words that work” – that is to say, carefully constructed language to deflect criticism and reframe all issues and arguments in Israel’s favour. A statement at the very beginning sets the tone: “Remember, it’s not what you say that counts. It’s what people hear.”

Here’s an example:

Israel made painful sacrifices and took a risk to give peace a chance. They voluntarily removed over 9,000 settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, abandoning homes, schools, businesses and places of worship in the hopes of renewing the peace process.

Despite making an overture for peace by withdrawing from Gaza, Israel continues to face terrorist attacks, including rocket attacks and drive-by shootings of innocent Israelis. Israel knows that for a lasting peace, they must be free from terrorism and live with defensible borders.

Actually, Israel made no sacrifices at all – Gaza wasn’t theirs to keep and staying was unsustainable. Although they removed their settlers and troops, they continued to occupy Gaza’s airspace and coastal waters and control all entrances and exits, thus keeping the population bottled up and provoking acts of resistance that give Israel a bogus excuse to turn Gaza into a prison.

International law regards Israel as still the occupier.

The manual also serves as a communications primer for the army of cyber-scribblers that Israel’s Ministry of Dirty Tricks recruited to spread Zionism’s poison across the internet. It uses some of Regev’s words to provide disinformation essential to the hasbara programme. We’re told, for example, that the most effective way to build support for Israel is to talk about “working toward a lasting peace” that “respects the rights of everyone in the region”.

Here are a few more:

We welcome and we support international efforts to help the Palestinians. So, once again, the Palestinian people are not our enemy. On the contrary, we want peace with the Palestinians.

We’re interested in a historical reconciliation. Enough violence. Enough war. And we support international efforts to help the Palestinians both on the humanitarian level and to build a more successful democratic society. That’s in everyone’s interest.

The central lie, of course, is that Israel wants peace. It doesn’t. It never has. Peace simply does not suit Israel’s purpose, which is endless expansion and control. That is why Israel has never declared its borders, maintains its brutal military occupation and continues its programme of illegal squats, or so-called “settlements”, deep inside Palestinian territory, intending to create sufficient “facts on the ground” to ensure permanent occupation and annexation.

Q: Why did Israel use disproportionate force in Gaza?

A: The devastation in Gaza is heartbreaking. So much suffering that was so unnecessary. And none of it had to happen.

Israel left Gaza – uprooting 9,000 Israeli families, and turned it over, peacefully, to the Palestinians. They had every opportunity to succeed: support from the international community, financial aid from across the globe, and the aspirations of the people.

Israel gave up Gaza with every hope that this was the first step towards peace with the Palestinians, and all they got was rockets in return. Not dozens. Not hundreds. Thousands of rockets. Not monthly. Not weekly. Literally daily. Even since the fighting in Gaza stopped, more than 160 rockets been fired from Gaza towards Israel since Israel stopped fighting.

What would you have done – or wanted your government to do – if you and your family were under rocket attack every day? When will the terrorists in Gaza stop shooting rockets at Israeli civilians?

You and I wouldn’t have been so stupid as to live on land we’d stolen from the Palestinians at gunpoint.

It was the former UN secretary-general, Kofi Anan, that put four benchmarks on the table. And he said, speaking for the international community that

If Hamas reforms itself…

If Hamas recognises my country’s right to live in freedom…

If Hamas renounces terrorism against innocent civilians…

If Hamas supports international agreements that are being signed and agreed to concerning the peace process… then the door is open. But unfortunately – tragically – Hamas has failed to meet even one of those four benchmarks. And that’s why today Hamas is isolated internationally. Even the United Nations refuses to speak to Hamas.

Which of those benchmarks has Israel met, Mr Regev?

Iran must be demonised too, so Regev’s twisted wisdom is used again:

Israel is very concerned about the Iranian nuclear programme. And for good reason.

Iran’s president openly talks about wiping Israel off the map. We see them racing ahead on nuclear enrichment so they can have enough fissile material to build a bomb. We see them working on their ballistic missiles…. The Iranian nuclear programme is a threat, not just to my country, but to the entire region. And it’s incumbent upon us all to do what needs to be done to keep from proliferating.

But how safe is the region under the threat of Israel’s nukes? Why is Israel the only state in the region not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? Are we all supposed to believe that Israel’s 200 (or is it 400?) nuclear warheads pose no threat? And why hasn’t Israel signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, and why has it has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, similarly the Chemical Weapons Convention?

As for “wiping Israel off the map”, accurate translations of that remark by former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are: “This regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” (The Guardian), or “This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history” (Middle East Media Research Institute). Ahmadinejad was actually repeating a statement once made by Ayatollah Khomeini.

And one more:  

When asked a direct question, you don’t have to answer it directly. You are in control of what you say and how you say it. Remember, your goal in doing interviews is not only to answer questions—it is to bring persuadable members of the audience to Israel’s side in the conflict. Start by acknowledging their question and agreeing that both sides – Israelis and Palestinians – deserve a better future. Remind your audience that Israel wants peace. Then focus on shared values. Once you have done this you will have built enough support for you to say what Israel really wants: for the Palestinians to end the violence and the culture of hate so that fences and checkpoints are no longer needed and both sides can live in peace. And for Iran for Iran-backed terrorists in Gaza to stop shooting rockets into Israel so that both sides can have a better future.

A simple rule of thumb is that once you get to the point of repeating the same message over and over again so many times that you think you might get sick – that is just about the time the public will wake up and say “Hey—this person just might be saying something interesting to me!

Why is all this elaborate lying and misquoting necessary? It’s the good old Mossad motto “By deception we shall do war”, ingrained in the Israeli mindset.

And I’m even more horrified to have just seen Trevor Phillips giving Tzipi Livni a platform. This vile woman, Israel’s former foreign minister, was largely responsible for the terror that brought death and destruction to Gaza’s civilians during the blitzkrieg known as Operation Cast Lead. Showing no remorse, and with the blood of 1,400 dead Gazans (including 320 children and 109 women) on her hands and thousands more horribly maimed, Livni’s office issued a statement saying she was proud of it. Speaking later at a conference at Tel Aviv’s Institute for Security Studies, she said: “I would today take the same decisions.”