Thanks to Phillip Weiss of Mondoweiss for drawing attention to the following contrasting videos about Israeli Apartheid Week and the many educational videos that are being used to defend Israel’s actions not only in Gaza, but over the past 60 years. Hasbara means “explanation,” but when used in most critical settings, “propaganda” is its intended meaning.
There is even a site, Hasbara-Org, where one can go to obtain “explanations” from the Israeli side of the universe. For example, the settlement building that has been going on in the West Bank and East Jerusalem for 40 years, is not what we think it is. But first, the Palestinian view.
This video announces Israeli Apartheid Week, an international event taking place in many cities throughout the world.
Israeli Apartheid Week
Here’s another production by the New York peace activist group, Adalah, on the Israel boycott effort, which received a boost from the Gaza massacre.
US activists urge boycott of Israeli companies – 15 Feb 09
Now the Israeli rejoinders:
This video is about the myth of Apartheid, which brings us the “truth” from the Israeli side about what is really happening in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The Myth of Apartheid
Here’s another video about the occupation that doesn’t apparently exist. In this video, numerous hasbara themes are repeated, while little is stated about the actual occupation, the Israeli forces stationed in the Palestinian territories who support colonial tactics.
Myth of Occupation
How are hasbara troops trained? Apparently through fellowships intended to provide skills to counter the very idea that apartheid exists or will ever exist in Israel. Only the URLs are provided: just click.
Israel Apartheid Week Part 1 What To Do
The Palestinian Genocide that wasn’t
There are many similar videos to be found on YouTube that hasbara troops can use to defend Israel’s occupation and its colonization of the Palestinian territories, which continues today.
the new face of Israel will be revealed next week.
Will Avigdor Lieberman be given the Foreign Minister post with “full autonomy” — the new face of Israel?
Memo to Netanyahu: the ground has shifted.
worth a read
Ooops!
UPDATE: Ha’aretz Source: Indictment will force Lieberman to quit cabinet within weeks
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Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronot, May 7th 2002, published a letter titled “Dear Soldiers, Please Kill a Lot of Arabs,” that came from Israeli children who sent such letters to Israeli soldiers serving in the Tulkarm area during the so-called “Operation Defensive Shield”. The letters sent by Israeli school students encouraged soldiers to disregard rules and regulations and to kill as many Arabs as possible. According to “Yedioth Ahronoth”, dozens of the letters were sent to soldiers, mostly from children in the 7th through 10th grades, who attend national religious schools.
Ruth Firer and Sami Adwan, an Israeli and a Palestinian scholar, who conducted research comparing Palestinian and Israeli textbooks, March 2002, wrote about Israeli books: “These texts enhance religious-national education, strongly emphasizing the collective values connected to the history of the Jewish nation in ‘their land’ and God’s promises to the Jews that give them an absolute right on the land. The land of Eretz Israel described in the books includes the territories of the PNA from 1967.”
A study by Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel-Aviv University, 124 Hebrew language books approved for use in 1994 by the Ministry of Education, were reviewed, The study concludes that “the majority of [Israeli school] books stereotype Arabs negatively.” In one children’s book, Bar-Tal offers this sampling, “We were lonely… pioneers surrounded by a sea of enemies and murderers.” In elementary school books, according to Bar-Tal, Arabs are often stereotyped negatively and portrayed as “uneducated people and enemies.”
In a report titled “Israeli Textbooks and Children’s Literature Promote Racism and Hatred toward Palestinians and Arabs,” free-lance journalist Maureen Meehan concluded that “Israeli school textbooks as well as children’s storybooks, according to recent academic studies and surveys, portray Palestinians and Arabs as ‘murderers,’ ‘rioters,’ ‘suspicious’, and generally backward and unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative stereotyping of Palestinians and Arabs are the rule rather than the exception in Israeli schoolbooks.” (Washington Report for Middle East Affairs September 1999)
VOID, EMPTY SPACE AREA WHERE PALESTINIANS LIVE
A study presented at the hearing of the political committee of the European Parliament, 24 October 2003, titled “The attitude towards Palestinians in Israeli textbooks,” by Dr. Nurit Elhanan, of the Hebrew University, revealed that “the Palestinians are absent from all textbooks, The Occupation is never mentioned, and the area where Palestinians live is presented in the maps either as an empty space referred to as ‘an area without data’ (Man and Space-maps) or it is incorporated into the state of Israel (The Geography of the land of Israel- maps). In both cases use of the term ‘occupation’ is out of the question, since you cannot occupy illegally what is yours anyway and you cannot occupy illegally an empty space.”
Dr. Elhanan added: “When reference is made to date in the West Bank it is only to Jewish colonies or to main cities like Nablus, Hebron or Beth Lehem as Israeli tourist sites (maps)… In Israel today there is already a second generation of children who don’t know there are occupation, illegal domination and illegal settlements.”
Hillary Clinton, AIPAC and Palestinian school textbooks
“I have stood up and spoken out for their rights to have that protective fence.”
● ‘US textbooks misrepresent Jews, Israel’
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."We all remember the old Hillary, pumping Israeli propaganda about Jewish hatred in Palestinian textbooks before Congress. Yesterday, she reiterated the “inescapability” for a two state solution.
Hillary Clinton should stop imposing grossly unfair conditions on the Palestinians while cowering in fear of offending Israel. And she should stop the cynical exploitation of humanitarian aid for political manipulation and subversion, as well.
“cynical exploitation of humanitarian aid for political manipulation and subversion“
It’s the American way.
goofy pictures of cute kitties: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/03/08/the-cute-cat-theory-talk-at-etech/
Seriously informative read!
Interesting read.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/03/200931113340555177.html