Jeffrey Heller, propagandist

What is the distinction between persuasion and propaganda?  We all use the former on a daily basis to influence and win others to our point of view.  There's obviously nothing unethical about that.  The propagandist however, goes one step further.  He uses specific rhetorical tricks -- lies, half-truths, omissions, emotionally-charged language -- to short circuit the critical faculties of his audience, to deceive and manipulate them into adopting his message.  That's unethical, particularly so when it's done by a professional journalist who commits to a policy of "integrity, independence and freedom from bias".

It's also what Reuters correspondents writing on the Middle East conflict do regularly.

Take this story by Reuters Jerusalem Editor-in-Charge Jeffrey Heller about today's upcoming speech before Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  Here are some of the rhetorical devices Heller uses to compel his readers to accept and adopt his (Heller's) anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian political plank:

"I will outline a vision for a secure Israeli-Palestinian peace," the right-wing Israeli leader said on Monday about his planned address to a joint meeting of Congress [...]

Heller characterizes Netanyahu as "right-wing", conjuring up images of a politician with extremist views.  Neither Heller nor anyone else at Reuters ever refer to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas nor other Palestinian leaders as "right-wing".  Indeed, Abbas is routinely referred to as a "moderate".  This of a man who is on record as stating: “At this present juncture, I am opposed to armed struggle because we cannot succeed in it, but maybe in the future things will be different".

Obama drew Israeli anger a day earlier when he said a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip should largely be drawn along lines that existed before the 1967 war in which Israel captured those areas and East Jerusalem [...]

The phrase "occupied West Bank" is used so often by Reuters, we refer to it as a propaganda mantra.  As we've noted many times, the territory described does not belong to any sovereign state and cannot therefore, under the Geneva Conventions, be considered "occupied".  Moreover, the appellation "West Bank" was assigned to the territory by the Jordanian Arabs following their invasion and conquest in 1948-49.  As such, it is an Arab ethnocentric name which celebrates the ethnic cleansing of the ancient Jewish community that had been living in the region.  The Judeo-Israeli appellation for the territory is Judea and Samaria, a name Reuters correspondents are enjoined to provide as per their handbook of ethical guidelines.  That propagandists like Heller consistently ignore their responsibility in this respect is evidence of their intent to deceive their audience.

Peace talks are frozen, largely over the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Neither Obama nor Netanyahu have offered a concrete plan to try to revive them [...]

Heller puts the onus for suspended peace talks solely on the US (Obama) and Israel (Netanyahu).  There is no suggestion whatsoever of the Palestinians offering "a concrete plan to try to revive them".  In fact, Heller gives Palestinian President Abbas a complete pass on the stalemate, failing even to mention that it is he (Abbas) who has repeatedly refused to sit down with Israel in negotiations.  

[US Congressman] Cantor was referring to a unity deal last month between Western-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement and Hamas, an Islamist group viewed by the United States as a terrorist organisation [...]

Hamas is not simply "viewed by the United States as a terrorist organisation".  It is also officially declared as such by nearly the entire free world including Canada and the European Union.  Heller is attempting here to downplay the widespread recognition of this reality.

Speculation had been high in Israel that Netanyahu would offer new ideas on peacemaking to try to display flexibility and rally opposition to the Palestinians' plan to ask the United Nations to recognise a Palestinian state in September.
In his AIPAC address, Netanyahu reiterated his demand that Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state, a step they fear could impinge on their claim of a right of return for Palestinian refugees displaced by the Israeli-Arab conflict [...]

So you see, Netanyahu is inflexible and demanding, and the Palestinians fearful.

AIPAC's dominant voice in advocating for Israel has been challenged by J Street, a pro-Israel lobby founded in 2009.
J Street leaders have said the group provides a way for liberal American Jews critical of Israeli government policies to support the Jewish state.
Unlike AIPAC, the group supports President Obama's demand that Israel cease settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, while calling on the Palestinians to end incitement and violence [...]

Here, Heller is lobbying for the lobby group J Street.  While Heller asserts, sans evidence, that J Street is "pro-Israel" and describes a few of its political positions, he pointedly fails to report on a key position of its leadership, that is, if the Palestinian Arabs and Arab states will not make peace with Israel, then perhaps Israel "ain't a very good idea".  This too, just a bit unlike AIPAC.

The Israel-hating radical left quotes the Israel-hating radical left

When a purportedly impartial reporter wants to publicly advance her personal ideology, the way to go about it, without risking her career, is to let others who share that ideology do the talking in her stories.

So it is with admitted radical leftist and Reuters correspondent Allyn Fisher-Ilan who interviews Jeremy Ben-Ami, director of the radical-left lobbying group, J Street:

Ben-Ami said he feared Netanyahu's labeling of a reconciliation pact between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group and rival Hamas Islamists as a blow to peace may only further damage already-frozen diplomacy.
"I think now in the wake of the reconciliation there's a possibility that his whole case to the Congress might be ... not putting anything on the table," Ben-Ami said.
"In our meetings here we are urging, from our perspective, that the prime minister's initiative should be a serious plan," he said, adding that he thought Israel should wait to see the policies of a new Palestinian government before condemning it.
Ben-Ami said Netanyahu ought to present a deal along lines agreed in past years of negotiations, including proposed land swaps in exchange for settlement blocs Israel would keep.
"Put a proposal on the table that meets a bar of credibility, not a provisional state on 30 or 40 percent of the land, but a real state, and let them decide if they're serious about peace or not," Ben-Ami said.

J Street directors are on record as stating that if the Arabs will not accept a Jewish sovereign in the Middle East, perhaps it would be best if Israel did not exist:



Quite what one would expect coming from a group which suggests that Israel "should wait to see the policies of a new Palestinian government [Hamas + Fatah] before condemning it".

Israeli Parliament passes law allowing for revocation of citizenship for treason; radical leftists hysterically portray it as "undemocratic"

The Israeli Parliament has just passed a law allowing judges to deny citizenship privileges to someone convicted of espionage or violence on behalf of an enemy state.  If this sounds familiar, it should: dozens of other democracies around the world have similar statutes including the United States, France and that bastion of civic rights, the United Kingdom, where John Amery was executed in 1945 for making propaganda broadcasts for Nazi Germany and where disloyalty to the state still carries a potential penalty of life imprisonment.

Only in Israel of course is such a bill, passed by an overwhelming majority of 37 to 11, ludicrously decried as "undemocratic" and "discriminatory" by the radical left and Arabs who support the dismantling of the state.

Israel's Association for Civil Rights issued a statement in protest saying that "in a democracy you don't deny citizenship" and that the measure sends a "humiliating and discriminatory message that citizenship for Israeli Arabs is not automatic."[...]

"This is another law intended to wage demographic war against us," Hanna Sweid, of the Democratic Movement for Change [now defunct, ed.], said, referring to those Israeli ultra-nationalists who have voiced fears of Jews being outnumbered by Arabs in the future

And only at Reuters, where admitted radical leftists like Allyn Fisher-Ilan do the writing, can those who commit high treason be equated with "critics":

Israel has seldom revoked citizenship privileges in the past, and the measure's passage now seemed symbolic of how increasingly Israeli rightists see the nation's Arabs as well as leftist critics as a threat to their embattled country's future.

That same radical leftist then parrots a popular leftist charge against Israeli democracy:

Unlike Palestinians living in territory Israel captured in a 1967 war, Israeli Arabs are fully enfranchised though many complain of discrimination.

Yes, we've heard about that.

Fisher-Ilan demonstrates definitively that it is actually the left which brooks no criticism when she rushes to the aid of J-Street to insulate the group against censure by Israeli "ultra-nationalists":

Also last week, ultra-nationalist lawmaker Danny Danon held a hearing to upbraid the Jewish-American "J-Street," saying the group, which critises [sic] Jewish settlement-building in occupied land, should be shunned as "pro-Palestinian, not pro-Israeli."

As she fails to explain to readers that J-Street is not shunned by Israeli legislators for its criticism of Jewish settlement-building but rather for its ambivalent stance on Israel's right to exist.



As we've noted in the past, the radical left is not known for its critical thinking (nor its integrity).

Debusmann shills for J Street, Walt and Mearsheimer

In a column appearing yesterday, Reuters' Bernd Debusmann promotes the new political lobby group J Street as an alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and parrots the discredited claims of "political scientists" Walt and Mearsheimer to prop up his contention that support for Israel in the US Congress is due to AIPAC's "stranglehold":

Thanks largely to the enormous influence of AIPAC, which calls itself "America's pro-Israel lobby," criticism of Israel has been rare in Congress;

Debusmann's evidence for his assertion is...? [Silence] After all, it couldn't possibly be that the overwhelming support for Israel in the representative political body of the US is due to the overwhelming support for Israel in the US body politic? Nah, that would be just too facile for Debusmann's "analysis".

Debusmann then goes on to parrot another popular canard:

debate of U.S. policies towards the largest recipient [Israel] of U.S. economic and military aid even rarer.

According to the US Census Bureau, Israel placed tenth in US foreign economic aid in 2006 (the most recent year reporting), behind Iraq, Egypt and Jordan amongst others. Nice try, Bernd.

Israel was second in military assistance behind Iraq and of the approximately $2.3 billion provided, by law more than 70% of that money must be spent in the US, used to purchase military equipment from American firms and thus, directly benefiting the US economy.

For comparison, Egypt received almost $1.3 billion in arms from the US, and Saudi Arabia (which recycles just a small portion of the over $50 billion in petrodollars it collects from American consumers annually) will be spending over $2 billion on US weapons systems this year while it also benefits from de facto American defense guarantees. Debusmann has no comment on the power of the Arab lobby in the US.

Debusmann then tries to paint J Street as even-handed in its positions on the Middle East conflict:

J Street reacted to last December's Israeli attack on Gaza by criticising Hamas for raining rockets on Israeli civilians and Israel for punishing 1.5 million Gazans for the actions of extremists.

Here is what J Street actually wrote at the time:

Neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right or wrong. While there is nothing “right” in raining rockets on Israeli families or dispatching suicide bombers, there is nothing “right” in punishing a million and a half already-suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists among them. And there is nothing to be gained from debating which injustice is greater or came first.

It was this absurd amorality, the incapacity or unwillingness on the part of J Street to distinguish between Palestinian efforts to murder Israeli civilians and Israeli actions to put a stop to those efforts that Rabbi Eric Yoffie was responding to when he called J Street "morally deficient".

Debusmann goes on to tout J Street as having successfully put to rest any doubt about their appeal to a select audience:

Still, the mood at J Street was upbeat. One of the reasons: an attendance that convincingly ended arguments whether there was an appetite for a left-wing organisation that shuns the reflexive Israel-right-or-wrong attitude of the established lobbies.

We would not disagree that J Street will have little difficulty attracting many (though not all) left-wing acolytes who, like the organization's Directors, are proponents of moral relativism. Unfortunately for J Street and Reuters, that list no longer includes others with the power to advance their anti-Israel agenda.