Leaked manual outlines talking points for pro-Israel activists in US
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- Written by Josie Ensor Daily Star staff Josie Ensor Daily Star staff
- Published: 08 August 2009 08 August 2009
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BEIRUT: How can you sell the American public on the idea that Israel has the right to expand Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank? Use positive language, steer away from talk of settlements and toward discussion of peace, and draw parallels between the threat of terrorist invasion from 9/11 and that of mass Palestinian immigration.
These are just three of the recommendations from a leaked hasbara handbook written by Republican political consultant Dr. Frank Luntz for the Washington-based The Israel Project (TIP), distributed to US activists, journalists and policymakers on how to present a pro-Israel message to the public.
The 116-page manual, entitled “2009 Global Language Dictionary,” was commissioned by non-profit TIP to shape the public debate on settlement activity in their favor, with chapters such as “The Language of Tackling a Nuclear Iran,” “Gaza: Israel’s right to self-defense” and “Talking to the American Left.”
The handbook, leaked to Newsweek earlier this week, is based on an internal study for TIP conducted by pollster Luntz and data drawn from focus groups. Luntz outlines the need for their manual in the foreword: “Since [our] first dictionary in 2003, Israel found itself the victim of attack from its northern and southern borders, and has suffered greatly in the court of public opinion.
“On the other hand, the daily suicide bombings have stopped and Hamas and Hizbullah have shown themselves to be the brutal terrorist organizations that Israel has warned about.”
The manual is strewn with bolded examples of “Words that work,” and ones that don’t in the settlement debate and are taken from speeches made by Israeli representatives in the last decade.
It is best not to use words such as “allow,” “permit” and “instruct” when referring to Palestinian settlement growth in the Occupied West Bank. Instead, talk of Palestine as an equal, trusted partner on the path to peace; use words that do not imply subordination and never speak in declarative statements. Remind people again and again that Israel wants peace and remember to concede at least one point to the other side in an interview to seem sympathetic. These are just a few suggestions the manual gives.
If in doubt, TIP offers the mantra: “it is not what you say that counts, it’s what people hear.”
The pro-Israel lobby claim Americans want a team to cheer for and it is their job to let the public know the good things about Israel, such as their “remarkable advances in alternative energy” and the work Israel has done in Arab neighborhoods to raise health care standards. When conducting interviews, the manual says activists should always be answering the silent question in Americans’ minds – “What’s in it for my country and for me to support Israel?”
It emphasizes the need to draw parallels between America and Israel if they are to win the support of those who are neutral. “Israel is an important US ally in the war against terrorism and the ongoing fight against this terror that came from the attack on 9/11 can be likened to the Palestinian threat – What would America do if their neighbors in Canada and Mexico were firing rockets into America?” it asks.
This idea of invasion should be labored to appeal to Americans’ fears: “Thanks to 9/11 and the continuing threat of terrorism, Americans are particularly afraid of the mass migration of anyone,” reads the report. “Comparing the challenges facing Americans in dealing with unrestricted immigration and Israel’s situation will be well received.”
Israel should be presented as an ally among “terrorists” and its “good record for human rights” stressed, “in contrast to those in the Middle East who indoctrinate their children to become hate-mongers and suicide bombers,” the manual proffers. “Israel is the one place in the Middle East where a young girl can grow up to be anything she wants – from a doctor to a mommy, to a businessperson and even a prime minister!”
According to a national survey conducted by Luntz for the manual, almost 40 percent of those asked who their most important ally was in the Middle East gave the answer “Israel,” with 29 percent saying the best reason for the US to stand with Israel was because “Israel is a partner with the US in our fight against terrorism.” And 16 percent answered that they should stand with them because “God gave the land to the Jews who have lived there for thousands of years.”
In response to the question of whether the US should support Israel, 48 percent answered “yes” in the months before the 2006 war on Lebanon, but this figure rose by 23 percent in the weeks after. The rate decreased slightly to 58 percent earlier this year in the wake of the war on Gaza.
Perhaps the most difficult audience to win over, a different linguistic strategy proposed by TIP must be used for liberals: the American left. “Israel may represent the only democratic country in a region dominated by brutal, extremist nations that are entrenched in non-Western doctrine, but the elites on the American Left see Israeli militarism as extreme and unjustified,” the manual reads. A different tack must be taken to get them on side.
In the chapter ‘Talking to the American Left,” TIP explain how many on the left see an Israel v. Palestinian crisis where Israel is Goliath and Palestine David, and in order to win them over they must understand that this is an Arab-Israeli crisis and the force undermining the peace is Iran and their proxies Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Their advice is not to call Hamas just Hamas, but call them what they are: Iran-backed Hamas. “Indeed, if they know that Iran is behind Hamas and Hizbullah, they are much more supportive of Israel.” The manual suggests that it is critical to make sure liberals understand it is a fight between Israel and Iran and its proxies, not just a territorial dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.
The left, the organization says, are also not interested in hearing the “melting-pot argument”– that is making the case that Israel takes in the distressed people of the world. “Today, immigration is a dirty word. This is simply not a strong argument with most Americans right now.”
In a chapter most relevant today with the US in talks with Israel over West Bank expansion, “Lessons to Learn from President Obama’s language,” President Barack Obama’s speeches on settlement activity are described by TIP as templates for how to effectively present a pro-Israel argument. They say Obama’s complete reshaping of American public discussions on the Middle East is based on the same language they have been recommending for use for years.
The administration’s language marks a sharp departure from the previous administration, TIP says, in particular Obama’s words bear close inspection on the issue of the peace process between Israel and Palestinians.
The lessons to be learned from the president’s language are to humanize the issue of settlement activity; stress the conflict is over ideology rather than territory, acknowledge past errors but focus on the future and lastly to make a call for progress.
Shafiq al-Hout: PLO founder member and staunch defender of Palestinian rights
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- Written by Tim Llewellyn. guardian.co.uk Tim Llewellyn. guardian.co.uk
- Published: 07 August 2009 07 August 2009
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PLO founder member and staunch defender of Palestinian rights
Al-Hout was a larger-than-life figure who represented the PLO in Lebanon. Photgraph: Al Quds Al Arabi
Shafiq al-Hout, who has died aged 77 in Beirut, was a founding member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), its representative in Lebanon and a larger-than-life figure who championed the Palestinians' right of return to their homeland and a unified, democratic state there for Muslims, Jews and Christians. He was also a strong advocate of armed resistance.
Al-Hout has died a disappointed and frustrated man, his life's work, for the foreseeable future, buried in a divided and moribund PLO and a Palestinian national movement in the worst straits in its 50-year history.
He once wrote: "If I were asked after all these years, after that evil day I was wrenched from Palestine, if I remained convinced of my right to return, I would never hesitate to say 'yes'. It is not just that I will return to Palestine, but Palestine will return to me and to what it once was." He died still believing that, but the past 15 or so years gave him strong reason to doubt that his dream would be realised soon.
Al-Hout was born and raised in Jaffa, his secondary education at the Amiriyya high school ending abruptly in April 1948, when Jewish irregulars seized the city from under the noses of the British army, forcing most of the Arab population to flee. His own family sailed to Lebanon, from where they originated (though al-Hout never regarded himself as anything but Palestinian).
After a rumbustious five years studying politics at the American University of Beirut, the region's prime academy for Arab nationalists, and taking part in student politics and demonstrations, Al-Hout taught at schools in Beirut and Kuwait, another centre of Palestinian ferment, where he fell in with Yasser Arafat and other adherents of the cause. In the early 1960s he became a journalist on – and later editor of – the radical weekly Al-Hawadith (Events), and also wrote a satirical column for the equally radical daily Al-Moharrer (the Editor), whose days were ended in early 1976 by a bomb planted in its printing shop by Syrian agents.
Al-Hout left journalism for full-time Palestinian politics in 1963, and helped found first the leftist Palestine Liberation Front and then the PLO in May 1964. He was soon appointed full-time PLO representative in Lebanon, a post in which he survived 10 Israeli assassination attempts, the Lebanese civil war, the Israeli invasion in 1982 and the Sabra-Shatila massacre (the subject of the definitive oral and victim-sourced history by his wife, Bayan Nuwayhed). Al-Hout remained in Beirut after the PLO was forced to leave Lebanon in 1982. From 1974, he had also been the PLO's representative at the annual UN general assembly meetings.
He was twice a member of the PLO executive, before Arafat took over from Ahmed Shukairy, from 1966 to 1968, and – appointed by Arafat, who wanted his antagonistic but admired friend inside the tent – from 1991 to 1993. Al-Hout left the executive over what he, like many, regarded as the disaster of the Arafat-orchestrated PLO recognition of Israel under the Oslo accords, and the movement's effective return to the occupied territories under the control and aegis of Israel.
In that great division in the Palestinian movement between the "outside" – the diaspora of the refugee camps and the millions of exiles worldwide – and the "inside"– the Palestinian authority and its constituents – Al-Hout was a devout outsider. He believed that all of Palestine belonged to all Palestinians, in one state. In later years, he remained a member of the Palestine National Council, the parliament-in-exile, but stayed out of politics, writing his memoirs, spreading the word in his articulate and forceful way, in that familiar and formidable deep smoker's growl, usually alongside a rapidly diminishing bottle of Black Label whisky. He viewed recent Palestinian developments with dejection and pessimism, though never despair.
In all those years, from the early 1960s onwards, he was one of those rare senior Palestinian interlocutors who could, and would, make a decent stab at unravelling for baffled outsiders the machinations of Palestinian politics, and he wrote several books on Arab nationalism.
After Al-Hout's death had been announced, a contributor to the Angry Arab website recalled: "He had that voice that betrays long years of smoking and drinking … he was blunt and truthful when lying was a job description in Arafat's apparatus." He was not far off the mark.
Al-Hout is survived by Bayan Nuwayhed, his son, Hader, and his daughters, Hanin and Syrine.
• Shafiq al-Hout, politician and writer, born 13 January 1932; died 2 August 2009
The Long Mile: International Coalition Plans Nonviolent March to Erez Crossing Jan. 1st, 2010
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- Written by www.GazaFreedomMarch.Org www.GazaFreedomMarch.Org
- Published: 06 August 2009 06 August 2009
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www.GazaFreedomMarc
The Long Mile: International Coalition Plans Nonviolent March to Erez
Crossing
WHAT: International march in Gaza to break the siege
WHEN: January 1, 2010
WHERE: Cairo; Gaza; Erez Checkpoint
NEW YORK CITY – On January 1, 2010 the Coalition to End the Illegal
Siege of Gaza will be sending people from around the world to Gaza. They
will march alongside the people of Gaza to break the illegal siege.
This nonviolent action draws inspiration from the rich Palestinian
traditions of nonviolent resistance as well as the Salt March of Mahatma
Gandhi and the Selma March of Martin Luther King.
Gandhi maintained that nonviolence requires more courage and is more
effective than violence. We agree. We are not afraid, we won’t turn
back, we won’t let Gaza die.
The Palestinians have a long and quietly heroic history of nonviolent
resistance. Even as you read these lines, Palestinians in the West Bank
continue nonviolently to resist the encroachments of the wall Israel is
illegally building on Occupied Palestinian Territory. Regrettably Israel
has responded to these nonviolent protests with lethal force.
Were Gazans to march nonviolently across the Israeli blockade a
bloodbath would surely ensue. But if people carrying foreign passports
can bring to bear their unique immunities, then Israel will be less
able—perhaps unable—to retaliate with violence.
The success of our undertaking depends on galvanizing people abroad to
descend en masse on Gaza. Since Israel defies international law
then—just as federal marshals were sent in to enforce federal, U.S. law
against racist southern sheriffs—we must provide nonviolent marshals
from around the world to enforce international law in Gaza.
We take no sides in internal Palestinian politics. We side only with
international law and basic human decency.
“The Israeli attack [on Gaza] came after eighteen months of a crippling
blockade that had already left the Palestinian population hungry, sick,
weak, and suffering from a catastrophic situation,” says Medea Benjamin
of CODEPINK, which is part of a broad coalition that is coordinating the
march. “We must not only provide massive humanitarian aid, but lift the
blockade that is keeping the people of Gaza under siege.”
The march has already been endorsed by a wide range of notables,
including Nobel Prize recipients, renowned authors, and elected
officials.
http://www.gazafree
Israel’s Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups
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- Written by Jonathan Cook Jonathan Cook
- Published: 05 August 2009 05 August 2009
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Israel’s Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups
First Goal: Stop Gaza War Crimes Revelations
By JONATHAN COOK
Counterpunch
August 4, 2009
http://www.jkcook.net/Articles3/0410.htm
In a bid to staunch the flow of damaging evidence of war crimes committed during Israel’s winter assault on Gaza, the Israeli government has launched a campaign to clamp down on human rights groups, both in Israel and abroad.
It has begun by targeting one of the world’s leading rights organisations, the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), as well as a local group of dissident army veterans, Breaking the Silence, which last month published the testimonies of 26 combat soldiers who served in Gaza.
Additionally, according to the Israeli media, the government is planning a “much more aggressive stance” towards human rights groups working to help the Palestinians.
Officials have questioned the sources of funding received by the organisations and threatened legislation to ban support from foreign governments, particularly in Europe.
Breaking the Silence and other Israeli activists have responded by accusing the government of a “witch hunt” designed to intimidate them and starve them of the funds needed to pursue their investigations.
“This is a very dangerous step,” said Mikhael Mannekin, one of the directors of Breaking the Silence. “Israel is moving in a very anti-democratic direction.”
The campaign is reported to be the brainchild of the far-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, currently facing corruption charges, but has the backing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Early last month, Mr Lieberman used a press conference to accuse non-government organisations, or NGOs, of replacing diplomats in setting the international community’s agenda in relation to Israel. He also threatened reforms to curb the groups’ influence.
A week later, Mr Netanyahu’s office weighed in against Human Rights Watch, heavily criticising the organisation for its recent fund-raising activities in Saudi Arabia.
HRW has pointed out that it only accepts private donations, and has not accepted Saudi government funds, but Israeli officials say all Saudi money is tainted and will compromise HRW’s impartiality as a human rights watchdog in its treatment of Israel.
“A human rights organisation raising money in Saudi Arabia is like a women’s rights group asking the Taliban for a donation,” Mark Regev, a government spokesman, told the right-wing Israeli daily newspaper the Jerusalem Post.
HRW recently published reports arguing that the Israeli army had committed war crimes in Gaza, including the use of white phosphorus and attacking civilian targets.
HRW is now facing concerted pressure from Jewish lobby groups and from leading Jewish journalists in the US to sever its ties with Saudi donors. According to the Israeli media, some Jewish donors in the US have also specified that their money be used for human rights investigations that do not include Israel.
Meanwhile, Israel’s foreign ministry is putting pressure on European governments to stop funding many of Israel’s human rights groups. As a prelude to a clampdown, it has issued instructions to all its embassies abroad to question their host governments about whether they fund such activities.
Last week the foreign ministry complained to British, Dutch and Spanish diplomats about their support for Breaking the Silence.
The testimonies collected from soldiers suggested the Israeli army had committed many war crimes in Gaza, including using Palestinians as human shields and firing white phosphorus shells over civilian areas. One soldier called the army’s use of firepower “insane”.
The Dutch government paid nearly 20,000 euros to the group to compile its Gaza report, while Britain funded its work last year to the tune of £40,000.
Israeli officials are reported to be discussing ways either to make it illegal for foreign governments to fund “political” organisations in Israel or to force such groups to declare themselves as “agents of a foreign government”.
“Just as it would be unacceptable for European governments to support anti-war NGOs in the US, it is unacceptable for the Europeans to support local NGOs opposed to the policies of Israel’s democratically elected government,” said Ron Dermer, a senior official in Mr Netanyahu’s office.
He added that many of the groups were “working to delegitimise the Jewish state”.
Jeff Halper, the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, said the government’s position was opposed to decades-old developments in human rights monitoring.
“Every dictator, from Hitler to Milosevic, has said that there must be no interference in their sovereign affairs, and that everyone else should butt out. But international law says human rights are universal and cannot be left to individual governments to interpret. The idea behind the Geneva Conventions is that the international community has a duty to be the watchdog on human rights abuses wherever they occur.”
Mr Halper, whose organisation last year received 80,000 euros from Spain to rebuild demolished Palestinian homes, was arrested last year for sailing to Gaza with peace activists to break the siege of Gaza.
Other groups reported to be in the foreign ministry’s sights are: B’Tselem, whose activities include providing Palestinians with cameras to record abuses by settlers and the army; Peace Now, which monitors settlement building; Machsom Watch, whose activists observe soldiers at the checkpoints; and Physicians for Human Rights, which has recently examined doctors’ complicity in torture.
The government’s new approach mirrors a long-running campaign against leftwing and Arab human rights groups inside Israel conducted by NGO Monitor, a rightwing lobby group led by Gerald Steinberg, a professor at Bar Ilan University, near Tel Aviv.
NGO Monitor has also targeted international organisations such as Oxfam and Amnesty, but has shown a particular obsession with HRW. Mr Steinberg recently boasted that HRW’s trip to Saudi Arabia in May reflected the loss of major Jewish sponsors in the US following the publication of its Gaza reports.
In an article in the Jerusalem Post on Sunday, Mr Steinberg claimed that European governments treated their funding of Israeli human rights organisations “as ‘top secret’, reflecting the realization that such activities lack legitimacy”.
Mr Mannekin said the Breaking the Silence report listed donors on the first page. “We are far more transparent than NGO Monitor. We don’t know who funds them.”
NGO Monitor, which according to its website is chiefly funded by the shadowy Wechsler Family Foundation in the US, is closely linked to Dore Gold, a hawkish former adviser to Ariel Sharon.
Mr Mannekin added: “The government cannot suppress information about what happened in Gaza by shutting us down. You can’t send 10,000 soldiers into battle and not expect that some of the details will come out. If it’s not us doing it, it’ll be someone else.”
The government’s current campaign follows a police raid on the homes of six Israeli women peace activists in April.
The women, all members of New Profile, a feminist organisation that opposes the militarisation of Israeli society, were arrested and accused of helping Israeli youngsters to evade the draft. The women are still waiting to learn whether they will be prosecuted.
A shorter version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
Action: Call your members of Congress over Forcible Evictions of Palestinian Families
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- Written by AUPHR AUPHR
- Published: 04 August 2009 04 August 2009
- Hits: 3778 3778
Dear AUPHR Supporters,
Following is an urgent appeal for justice in response to the ethnic
cleansing of 70 Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem.
Please contact your Senators, Representatives, and Obama. You can go to http://congress.org and type in you zip code to get information about your member of Congress. You can get the local number there as well.
I contacted Merkley's office in Portland about my anger at what
Israel is doing and the receptionist said that the U.S. has no business
meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign country like Israel!
Really?
Despite the $3 billion we give Israel each year, despite the political cover the United States provides for Israel, despite the continuous violations of human rights committed by Israel? See below for contact info, a heartfelt appeal from Samia Khoury, and a press release from The Civic Coalition for Jerusalem.
Sincerely,
Peter Miller
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oregon:
Senator Ron Wyden (D- OR) 202-224-5244 202-228-2717 http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/
Senator Jeff Merkley (D- OR) 202-224-3753 202-228-3997 http://merkley.senate.gov/contact/
Representative David Wu (D - 01) 202-225-0855 202-225-9497 http://www.house.gov/wu/email.shtml
Representative Greg Walden (R - 02) 202-225-6730 202-225-5774 http://walden.house.gov/ContactGreg.Home.shtml
Representative Earl Blumenauer (D - 03) 202-225-4811 202-225-8941 http://blumenauer.house.gov/index.php?option=com_email_form&Itemid=206
Representative Peter DeFazio (D - 04) 202-225-6416 202-225-0032 http://www.house.gov/formdefazio/contact.html
Representative Kurt Schrader (D - 05) 202-225-5711 202-225-5699 https://forms.house.gov/schrader/contact-form.shtml
Washington:
Senator Patty Murray (D- WA) 202-224-2621 202-224-0238 http://murray.senate.gov/email/index.cfm
Senator Maria Cantwell (D- WA) 202-224-3441 202-228-0514 http://cantwell.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
Representative Jay Inslee (D - 01) 202-225-6311 202-226-1606 http://www.house.gov/inslee/contact/email.html
Representative Rick Larsen (D - 02) 202-225-2605 202-225-4420 http://www.house.gov/larsen/IMA/issue_subscribe.shtml
Representative Brian Baird (D - 03) 202-225-3536 202-225-3478 https://forms.house.gov/baird/webforms/issue_subscribe.htm
Representative Doc Hastings (R - 04) 202-225-5816 202-225-3251 http://hastings.house.gov/ContactForm.aspx
Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R - 05) 202-225-2006 202-225-3392 http://mcmorris.house.gov/?sectionid=82§iontree=482
Representative Norm Dicks (D - 06) 202-225-5916 202-226-1176 http://www.house.gov/dicks/email.shtml
Representative Jim McDermott (D - 07) 202-225-3106 202-225-6197 http://www.house.gov/mcdermott/contact.shtml
Representative Dave Reichert (R - 08) 202-225-7761 202-225-4282 http://reichert.house.gov/Contact/ZipAuth.htm
Representative Adam Smith (D - 09) 202-225-8901 202-225-5893 http://adamsmith.house.gov/Contact/
Read more: Action: Call your members of Congress over Forcible Evictions of Palestinian Families