The anti-Israel press lobby

Much stronger than any hasbara attempt ever

Hasbara fails, not because it’s of low quality, but because of the steady, energetic amount and organization of Israel bashing in the media.

Don’t blame the victim: Israel! (First, they kick you, and then, they blame you for bleeding.) Gentiles made the mess; Gentiles need to clean it up.

Antisemitism is not an opinion and is always based on (big and small) lies. Often, the lies are the very opposite of the truth. ‘Jews are murderers.’ Statistically, Jews are among the Nations with the lowest murderers rate.

Similarly, the ‘Jewish conspiracy to impose its reign on the world’ and ‘the Jewish Lobbies hijacking national politics’ are the very opposite of reality.

The Jewish Lobby is not an attempt to ‘get favors for the Jews’ but to counter the existing bias against us.

The re-emergence of a Jewish State has transformed the old, ‘I don’t hate you; you’re my neighbor and friend; I hate the Jews‘ into, ‘I don’t hate our Jews; but I hate Israel, the source of all evil. Not so different from, ‘I don’t hate women; women are my best friends; but I hate feminism.’ It means you like Jews (women) as long as they are subservient and serving you.

Which, again, is not so different from, ‘I love fish’ and then eating it. You actually love the feeling eating fish gives you. If you really loved fish, you wouldn’t eat it. You don’t like the oppressed; you like what they give you.

And so, too, Hasbara tries to offset the lies by international organizations conspiring against the Jewish Nation by a staggering number of people:

UNSC, UNGA, UNICEF, UNESCO, UNRWA, UNIFIL, UNHF, UNHRC, ICC, ICJ.

Many (but not all) Muslim-majority countries. The Pope and the Vatican.

Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch. Jewish Voice for Peace.

Doctors Without Borders. Federation of Medical Students Association. The Lancet. The International Red Cross.

American Historical Association.

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Much of the press is no better. Every self-respecting news organization has its ‘Middle East correspondent,’ almost always someone who hates Jews but talks as if they’re neutral and objective. Rarely do their reports contain a factual sentence. They don’t mean to inform. It’s all smoke and mirrors in a daily attempt to mislead, manipulate, and incite. Many are international press agencies or national press agencies of name that, too, indoctrinate the world on Jews. Many stealth national news distributors do the same.

Here is an incomplete list of daily liars with boundless energy and money:

Haaretz. Self-proclaimed Anti-Zionistic. Rather than reporting, it creates ‘news.’ Its English edition is the favorite among left-wing and right-wing Antisemites around the world. Has standing because produced in Israel.

The BBC. Le Monde. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS. AP, Reuters, AFP, NYT, etc.

Al Jazeera, Chamas. Sheep in wolf’s clothes.

Sensitive terror supporters. Some Antisemites and terrorists are pained when Jews refuse to be exterminated or Christians refuse to bow for them.

NOS (Netherlands’ Other Semites), ANP (Al Jazeera Netherlands Press).

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Unfortunately, many Trumpian pro-Israel outlets are very unreliable, too. They also seem to think that when a text suits you, it’s true and worthy.

Often people ask me what to trust. The best is to read a wide range of publications. But if you want one, I always recommend the Times of Israel—and not because I blog with them. I then add: Consider that they are a bit left-leaning, and I only recommend what they wrote themselves.

If almost every publication in the world says girls are dumber and weaker, that still doesn’t make it true. (Because, if so, how do they live longer?)

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Here is an incomplete list of their tricks to twist reality against the Jews:

● They won’t say, ‘Of course, Jews will be lying.’ That’s assumed to be known. And most people lie to their advantage. Against the background of Jew-hatred, to bring fair news, you need to stress the IDF’s extraordinary trustworthiness. In the international arena, the Jews play an away game.

● They will make two stories. One against Israel and one pro-Israel. That seems even-handed and neutral, but then, mostly, the anti-Israel piece is passed along. (The Times of Israel inserts in every article related to the war in Gaza something like, ‘On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israeli towns, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.)

● They’ll give both parties’ viewpoints, but the Israeli one a token sentence tucked away toward the end, preferably preceded by, ‘They claim.’

● There’s no daylight between Jew-haters and the reporting. It functions as terrorists’, tyrants’, and international Anti-Israel bodies’ spokespersons.

● They might bring sympathetic pieces about Diaspora Jews or Judaism to show how ‘even-handed’ they are.

● They publish scandalous, blatant ‘rumors’ without any caution. Because of the sensation, it’s spread around the globe in no time with great indignation. Some time later, they publish an ‘adjusted’ text that no one will carry because they already talked about it, and it is not sexy anymore.

● They write a nuanced report, but their headline reinforces Antisemitic rants. Most people only read headlines.

● They endlessly repeat untruths until everyone thinks it must be true. The West Bank is occupied territory against international law. There is hunger and genocide in Gaza. The IDF murders thousands of babies in cold blood.

● They hide the obvious, that Chamas are bloodthirsty terrorists whose admitted goals are to annihilate the Jews and make a worldwide Califate.

● They use uneven language. Jews got killed (by no one?), and the IDF murdered innocent … Gazan death numbers are over-reported in every sense of the word. IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians apparently never die.

● They use false equivalences. ‘The cycle of violence should stop.’ (Terrorists murdered, and Israel hunts the murderers.)

● They falsely claim to ‘understand (but condemn)’ the ‘bloodthirstiness’ and feelings of ‘revenge’ of Israel’s Jews, while, even after the war crimes of October 7, 2023, there was no such thing. The IDF waited weeks and made careful plans before entering Gaza to respond to the pogrom.

● They will use classical Antisemitic stereotypes to degrade Israel’s counteractions. They are not for deterrence but for ‘revenge.’

● They will leave out any truth, fact, or credible report clearing Israel.

● They stereotype falsely. The Israeli government is ‘ultra-rightwing.’ It was also termed this before the left bolted the government, a year into the war. Netanyahu is always portrayed as a hawk although, he always had been the first to settle every military conflict with a truce because ‘war is always terrible.’ (Not anymore. We now know that a treaty with terrorists always ends in a bloodbath worse than anything you can imagine.)

● They typify falsely. They write about children but include child terrorists. A 15-year-old with a machine gun is a terrorist, not a child. A ‘terrorist by night, journalist/teacher by day’ is an undercover terrorist, not a civilian.

This is never accidental because it doesn’t happen the other way around!

I once interviewed a US ‘Israel reporter’ who told me, ‘I and several of my colleagues here try to smuggle in the truth between the lines, but often, our international editors in the US take it out or make it say the opposite of what we wrote. And we’re so scared for our jobs.’ In the US, if you’re unemployed, becoming homeless and uninsured are possibilities. This man begged and begged me not to name him or his agency. This was 20+ years ago, so maybe now I can report this without harming him or his colleagues. That press agency is still spreading anti-Israel ‘news’ every day.

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Plenty of honest Israel reporting you may find at the Times of Israel from their own reporters living in the Land, HonestReporting, and at CAMERA.