Media Manipulation!!

 “One need not destroy one's enemy. One need only destroy his willingness to engage.“  ~ Sun Tzu ~

This comes I think, from the 'The Art of War', an influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy considered to be a prime example of Taoist thinking.  I've been thinking too .... not about Taoism, but about the  events in Silwan  last Summer and a Stinging Satirical Spoof by Latma.  And  the skewed epistemology whereby the global Media treat 'Palestinian' claims as true until proven false, and Israeli claims as false until proven true, and when the evidence eventually favours the Israelis, they fall silent.  All of which illustrates the ways in which the Media is Manipulated by Arabs.   

Arabs carry on a continuous manipulation, a "war of nerves", cleverly using the Press, the UN and Western gullibility ~ or seminal Anti-Seminism ~ to isolate Israel and weaken it psychologically from within and without. Here's how.

Silwan was not an isolated incident ~ a fatal Israeli-Lebanese border clash occurred last August. In that incident, five  Reuters photographers  and others just happened to be on hand on the Lebanese side of the border when Israeli soldiers doing routine maintenance work hedge cutting came under fire.  This time, the fallout was more than a broken leg.  An Israeli commander, two Lebanese soldiers, and a Lebanese journalist were killed.

In both Silwan and Lebanon, the press was tipped off ahead of ahead of time, but gave the impression that the incidents were spontaneous. They clearly weren't. What happened wasn't news ~  they were staged photo-opportunities.

 I had a lunchtime conversation on precisely this point with a work colleague recently,  (a journalist who shall remain nameless),  whose response was “Oh, they do that all the time, it’s a cultural thing.”   I Absolutely Agree ~ it is exactly Arab Culture,  but what about this journalist’s off-the-record Orientalist indulgence of a Culture   foreign to everything that Western journalism is supposed to be about!!   The acceptance of a practice that has practically become an industry that could rival the creativity of Hollywood ..... Pallywood??

  
The staged stoning at Silwan,  the Lebanese border incident, recent Arab riots on the Temple Mount and inside Jerusalem’s Old City, the Goldstone Report, academic and economic boycotts as well as other tactics are part of the familiar ongoing war against Israel. The Arabs employ a number of psychological techniques to demoralize Israelis in order to convince them that their country has usurped Arab lands, is unjust and morally bankrupt. Their ultimate objective is for Israel to be internationally villified, isolated, and ultimately for it to cease to exist. It is mighty instructive to study their techniques of Media Manipulation.

The Arabs borrow from revolutionaries including Carlos Marighella, a leader of the Brazilian guerrilla organization ALN. Marighella urged his followers to use the mass media, foreign embassies, the UN, international commissions, and Vatican representatives to spread their lies and false rumours in order to discredit the government. Acts of terror, assassination, sabotage and kidnappings further create an environment of uncertainty, anxiety and apprehension.

During the first 'Intifada' (December 1987 to October 1991), the Arabs manipulated the international press by placing individuals affiliated with the PLO and other Islamic political groups into their media bureaux. Rather than hide these connections, the Arabs used them to enhance their attraction to their employers. Developing personal relationships with Israelis who oppose Jewish 'settlements' in Judea and Samaria, meeting with them in Israel and taking them on tours of the refugee camps helped solidify support for the Arabs, and created a sense of guilt among those who know little about the history of the conflict.

Semantics is another weapon used against Israel. Instead of describing insurrections as riots, the Arabs call them demonstrations. This is in keeping, they assert, with their basic right in a democracy to protest against unfair government policies. What they don’t say is that the riots are designed to hasten the demise of Israel. After the Arabs continually used the term “demonstration” members of the media adopted it as their own. When a demonstration becomes violent after the military intervenes to disband the crowd, the Arabs allege that Israelis are committing attrocities. This is after trying to goad the army into committing indiscriminate acts of force, particularly against women and children.

Contrived shootings, protests, arrests for the Western media is another technique Arabs use. Dutch television showed an Arab boy being aggressively arrested by Israeli soldiers while he was walking on the street. To ensure that the TV crew noticed that he was “innocent”  he yelled to them to take notice of what was happening. An investigation later revealed that the youth had purposely violated curfew after seeing the TV crew. He knew he would be apprehended, that his violent arrest would be recorded and the broadcast would help to discredit Israel. This was an isolated event, yet Israeli intelligence claimed that journalists knew how much they would have to pay for a stone throwing or a demonstration. The Arabs instructed the journalists when and where to stand in order to get the best shot.

This was brought to an extreme at the beginning of the second 'Intifada' in 2000. Muhammad al-Dura, a 12 year-old Palestinian boy, was reportedly shot by Israelis in cross fire near the Netzarim crossing in Gaza while being shielded by his father. The episode was filmed and broadcast on France TV 2. This was later shown by Israeli physicist Nahum Shahaf and Frenchman, Philip Craszenty, using IDF and other materials, to be staged and patently false, yet in the Muslim world his name remains an infamous symbol of grievance against Israel.

Historian Richard Landes began investigating the case as a blood libel after seeing this incident as “One Jew allegedly kills a gentile child in cold blood, and all Jews everywhere are responsible. That's the beginning of the wave of anti-Semitism that literally has marked the 21st century, and we have not seen the end of it. This is where cyberspace can play a crucial role.”    Landes coined the phrase “Pallywood” to describe this and other “pernicious productions staged by Palestinians in front of (and often with co-operation from) Western camera crews, for the purpose of promoting anti-Israeli propaganda by disguising it as news.”

While examining footage from another alleged incident, Landes noticed a Palestinian with “blood” on his forehead ostensibly from a head wound running without any sign of trauma. After giving what appears to be a Molotov cocktail to a colleague, the Palestinian darts into the crowd. In the next frame, he is put on a stretcher and taken to an awaiting ambulance, while keeping his head high though allegedly suffering from a head injury. “It’s really obvious that it’s fake” Landes concludes.

In the Gaza beach explosion on June 9th, 2006, eight Palestinians were killed and 30 or more injured. Though very compelling evidence shows they were killed by Palestinian land mines, the Palestinians accused Israel.

The foreign media sided with the Arabs. Landes again noted .... “And herein lies another real tragedy: The eagerness with which the media seize upon anything negative about Israel, and the reluctance with which they reveal anything negative about the Palestinians, have radically skewed the world's view of what's going on here.”

Absolutely!

Propagandists of one kind or another have been spreading lies and false accusations against the Jews for more than 2000 years (read the Roman historian Tacitus for example).

In Rhetoric,  Aristotle claimed that   “Men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth.” ....... When it comes to the Arabs, many in the West and Israel have yet to use that natural instinct.

Or maybe Einstein put it more accurately ~ He stated that two things are infinite, space and human stupidity, but he was not sure about the former!

Below is the Latma Spoof .... Hillarious!!  ... (It's Hebrew with English subtitles, well worth watching!!)