A plot by Israeli propagandists to cajole, manipulate and even lie to the American tax payer and have them continue to pay for Israel’s colonialist aggression in occupied Palestine has recently been intercepted by Arab-American organizations. The Luntz Research Companies and The Israel Project have procured a 17-page document titled “Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communication Priorities 2003,” replete with Israeli talking points and buzz words for pro-Israel activists to use to verbally assault the Palestinians. It is to be distributed among the dozens of pro-Israeli organizations in the United States.
The main thread that runs through the entire propaganda strategy is to place the onus for the continued conflict on the Palestinians by focusing ONLY on their internal struggle for democratic reform, thereby targeting what is only a symptom, and evading any discussion, of what is the underlying disease: Israel’s 36-year military colonization of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem, and its oppression, unbridled violence and ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s Arab inhabitants, Christian and Muslim é something which has continued unabated for more than 55 years.
Pro-Israel activists are instructed to show false “passion and compassion” toward the Palestinians by recognizing their “plight” é as if Palestinian suffering has occurred in a vacuum and not as a direct result of Zionism’s inherent racism and expansionism é but only as a tool to manipulate the American people’s sense of humanity and justice, not because the Palestinians are deserving of any.
Ironically, while coaching pro-Israel activists to pay some lip service to the “plight of the Palestinian people” and show “a little humanity,” the propaganda tutorial simultaneously indoctrinates the reader on the value of demonizing Palestinian parents wholesale and robbing their brutalized children of their human dignity and any human consideration that would normally be afforded to murdered children. This, of course, allows armed-to-the-teeth Israeli soldiers in tanks to shoot rock-throwing Palestinian kids dead without evoking any sympathy for the child victim or moral outrage against his/her executioner.
Pro-Israel activists are implicitly directed to avoid any mention of what are inarguably the root causes of the conflict. The propaganda document makes no mention of the continued theft of occupied Palestinian land or the construction of illegal Jewish settlements (segregated housing, so blatant a manifestation of institutionalized Israeli apartheid, that the propagandists themselves recognize them as an “Achilles Heel”), or the massive collective violence used by Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers to sustain them. No mention is made of Israel’s violation of 65 United Nations resolutions or its responsibilities as an occupying force under the 4th Geneva Convention. Yet, in classic Orwellian doublespeak, the activists are instructed to say that they do support “peace” and a two-state solution, even as they are programmed on what language to use to advance the policies that negate both.
Their strategy is to completely remove from any context, historical or otherwise, legal or illegal Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonialism and state terrorism, meticulously documented by many human rights organizations over the years, including the Israeli B’etsalem. Therefore, the conflict becomes one of a “democratic” Israel “defending” itself against unprovoked Palestinian violence in a “war on terror,” just like its American ally.
This gives Israel the cover to continue doing what it has done for decades all under the rubric of “security,” which the Luntz PR firm admits “sells.” Hence, the Israeli Occupation Forces in Palestine can continue to confiscate more occupied Palestinian land; build more segregated Jews-only settlements on that land; wage a merciless war of collective punishment on a defenseless civilian population; demolish homes by the thousands; uproot income-producing olive and fruit trees by the tens of thousands; conduct mass arrests against innocent men, women and even children; and bomb, shoot, beat, humiliate, torture and starve anyone who opposes, violently or otherwise, Israel’s brutal colonialism.
The beauty of it all is that Israel’s assault on Palestine can continue to be funded by billions of American tax dollars if pro-Israel activists would just heed the advice of the Luntz PR firm. The key elements of the propaganda strategy are to “Link Iraq with the Palestinians”; link Israel’s institutionalized violence with America’s war on terrorism; extol Israel’s “democracy”; and simultaneously express tacit recognition of Palestinian humanity while supporting and defending Israel’s gross violation of their basic human and political rights. The PR firms strategy can best be summarized with the 4 “Ds”: Disinform, deny, dehumanize and destroy.
Leaked document exposes pro-Israel lobby’s manipulation of US public – by Ali Abunimah
Download “Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communication Priorities 2003” now [PDF format, 40K]
Mr. Victor Lama is a freelance writer and commentator . He contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN) from New York, USA.
