Israeli gov-led Zoom calls, WhatsApp chat logs, and other docs provide a window into the massive effort to shape online discourse and silence pro-Palestinian voices.
How ironic that about half of the comments about this article seem to have been written by the very hasbara minions that Lee exposed in this well written investigative article. Having studied this middle east conflict for over 50 years, and spending time in both Israel and Palestine, nothing in Lee's article surprised me. The overwhelming inordinate power and leverage the pro-Israeli groups and organizations have over not only the American government and politicians, but also mainstream media and all the major social media platforms is frightening. As highlighted in the article with numerous examples, this power and control make it virtually impossible to speak out on behalf of the Palestinian people, or to dare criticize Israel's actions in this war. That's why it's vitally important for journalists like Lee Fang, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Matte, Chris Hedges etc to use their voices and platforms to speak truth to power.
Israel's is an easy case to make. Hamas digs up water pipes to cut into pieces for rocket tubes. It melts together sugar and potassium nitrate - the first a nutrient and the second an agricultural fertilizer - to make solid rocket propellant instead of feeding their subjects. These rockets are shot off unguided in the general direction of Israeli towns.
Israel forcibly evicted Jews from Gaza and allowed the Arabs there to have autonomy and to choose their own government. Instead of monetizing the picturesque Mediterranean oceanfront of Gaza and growing crops to supply the hotels they could have built, effort instead went to building a terror tunnel infrastructure and rockets. Meanwhile Israel continued to supply electricity, water and internet.
After October 7 the charity case Arabs in Gaza exhausted their welcome. That early PIJ rocket that fell in the hospital parking lot didn't help much with Hamas credibility. The world is done with Hamas and it will be taken off the board. This also augurs poorly for the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, now globally painted with the same brush - ungrateful charity cases that kidnap, torture and kill their hosts and benefactors.
I'm having a hard time having much sympathy for Gazans. They were given a paradise when the Israelis pulled out of Gaza and they ruined it all in the name of their death cult grudge against Israel. Gaza should be a rich, resort district with vigorous tech and agricultural industries. It should be a regional port to support a lucrative import/export economy. Instead, it's frickin' shithole dependent upon the welfare of donor nations. To claim that the Jews are "colonizers" is utterly ludicrous. If we're going to rely on history as the arbiter of today, then Israel is, via lawful charter, reclaiming their ancestral lands from the Mohammedan colonizers that drove them out 1,300 years ago. Further, it's a total stoner's dream to think that Gazan and West Bank Palestinians would ever be happy with Israel as their neighbor. I swear, the smart Palestinians are the ones that pursued and obtained Israeli citizenship and are taking part in that miracle. The stupid ones are the ones that profess a love for death, a love that obviously is greater than their love for their children and grandchildren, whom they offer as sacrifices to their most ugly, ugly god. The modern Palestinian movement doomed themselves when they hitched their wagon to Nazi Germany's final solution to the Jewish problem via the Muslim Brotherhood and the Grand Mufti al-Husseini. Until they break free from the curse they placed on themselves, the only "victories" they will have are the cowardly rapes and murders they commit on helpless civilians. Look at what forty years of this has done for them. It's lose, lose, and lose.
On the subject of free speech and pro-Palestinian voices, it's a damned shame they've adopted BLM/Greenie-style protest. All people hear are the vile invectives and the good people just hate them more and more. Mostly, these are stupid, easily manipulated sub-adults with teachers and activists that have poisoned them with Marxist ideology, which requires constant warfare (they call it 'struggle') to live. Add the mindless, mind-bending influence of communist Chinese TikTok and we have a generation of idiots who will gladly give themselves to monsters such as ISIS, Osama bin Laden, and Hamas, thereby driving a vicious wedge into civilization. Maybe if they had a legitimate beef. I don't think they do. I don't think the Palestinian liberation movement, from the river to the sea, is a legitimate beef. I think it's manufactured by some of the worst criminals in the world. I use the word "criminal" with purpose. Look at Hamas top leadership. They sit on billions of dollars stolen from well-meaning people and good-faith countries and from the very people they are supposed to be caring for. Arafat, the father of the modern Palestinian movement, was criminal. He robbed banks, stole money from the people his minions murdered, and skimmed donor money intended to relieve hardship for Palestinians. Hamas leaders do the same thing. It's a medieval warlord culture. Why aren't the Palestinians holding them to account? Their leaders are the ones causing their misery. If only there were such a thing as a pro-Palestine/anti-Hamas movement, there might be a chance for peace.
Thank you for a very thoroughly researched article — exactly the kind Israel doesn’t want to see the light of day. And thank God for independent reporters who have the courage to tell the truth.
3) And maybe most of all, the use of Palestinian civilians as cannon fodder and human shields....actions that are in themselves war crimes and strip civilian protection from sites used militarily (which is not just the launching of rockets).
The demonstrations, remonstrations, and vandalism against kidnapped Israeli civilians posters, far from being "Pro-Palestine", Are they, in fact, de facto "Pro-Hamas"?
This a decent investigative report on the workings of Israeli hasbara industry which fields armies of trolls onto various platforms. One encounters them everywhere blathering talking points design to distract from Israel's bloody ethnic-cleansing and genocide taking place before our eyes in Gaza, and the pogroms & slow ethnic cleansing occurring off-stage in the West Bank.
Examples of these trolls can be viewed in the opening volleys in this comment section. They can be seen sowing doubt about the number of civilian dead (a form of genocide denial) and questioning already settled matters like one of the hospital bombings.
Isn't it curious that virtually every hospital and clinic in North Gaza (and rapidly extending to South Gaza) was severely damaged or destroyed, along with every school, every shelter, every bakery, along with mosques, churches, and thousands of residences and apartment buildings, but all the trolls can talk about is an alleged errant rocket story near a hospital that already has been debunked?
Imagine if a shitload of the rich, powerful and well-connected were caught silencing criticism of, say... Trump. Or Putin in a similar coordinated fashion.
The sheeple would lose their minds.
What will it take for people to wake up? Or has the cancer of social media already made that impossible?
Lee great reporting but we should remember the pro-hamas side also has a propaganda wing—the babies in ICU at the hospital kind of thing. Did people go too far, yeah probably but all is fair in war. This is a war of Western values vs. authoritarian idiots. I stand with people who share my morals of free speech, women's rights, and so much more. I have sympathy for the people in Gaza but they are pawns of Iran. When the terrorists invaded and then war broke out why did Egypt not take the women and children out of harm's way like in Ukraine? The deaths of women and children in Gaza are war crimes by the people who won't give them a lifeboat. War sucks but who started this fight.
Anything taken to excess, no matter the motivation, becomes poisonous, and the Israel lobby today is a case study in excess. There's nothing nefarious about it by nature - all interest groups have a legitimate right to pursue their goals. But the extent of its success in steering political discourse and the media environment in the West in particular, including silencing critics, has made key institutions so lopsidedly supportive of Israel's interests that the divergence is too great. In the long run, interests always reassert themselves, and propaganda can only do so much.
"The massacre also prompted Israel to embark on an invasion of Gaza that has killed more than 16,000 Palestinians, most of whom are women and children"
Shouldn't people be skeptical of Hamas numbers (aka Gaza Health Ministry from where media and NGOs get their numbers) which make no effort to break-out combatants killed by Israel? BTW, the estimates I have seen are that 70% of the dead are women and children, which would mean around 4800 men have been killed. And let's say half of those are actual Hamas members, that would leave around 2400 civilian males killed. Below is a thread taking exception of casualties:
Watch out, Lee -- based on the other comments posted here, you have been targeted and thoroughly infiltrated by brainwashed Zionists.... However, I appreciate your efforts to dig into the nooks and crannies of this travesty in Gaza, and serve up some nuance to balance the extreme and overzealous propaganda campaign being crammed down Americans' throats.
How ironic that about half of the comments about this article seem to have been written by the very hasbara minions that Lee exposed in this well written investigative article. Having studied this middle east conflict for over 50 years, and spending time in both Israel and Palestine, nothing in Lee's article surprised me. The overwhelming inordinate power and leverage the pro-Israeli groups and organizations have over not only the American government and politicians, but also mainstream media and all the major social media platforms is frightening. As highlighted in the article with numerous examples, this power and control make it virtually impossible to speak out on behalf of the Palestinian people, or to dare criticize Israel's actions in this war. That's why it's vitally important for journalists like Lee Fang, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Matte, Chris Hedges etc to use their voices and platforms to speak truth to power.
Israel's is an easy case to make. Hamas digs up water pipes to cut into pieces for rocket tubes. It melts together sugar and potassium nitrate - the first a nutrient and the second an agricultural fertilizer - to make solid rocket propellant instead of feeding their subjects. These rockets are shot off unguided in the general direction of Israeli towns.
Israel forcibly evicted Jews from Gaza and allowed the Arabs there to have autonomy and to choose their own government. Instead of monetizing the picturesque Mediterranean oceanfront of Gaza and growing crops to supply the hotels they could have built, effort instead went to building a terror tunnel infrastructure and rockets. Meanwhile Israel continued to supply electricity, water and internet.
After October 7 the charity case Arabs in Gaza exhausted their welcome. That early PIJ rocket that fell in the hospital parking lot didn't help much with Hamas credibility. The world is done with Hamas and it will be taken off the board. This also augurs poorly for the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, now globally painted with the same brush - ungrateful charity cases that kidnap, torture and kill their hosts and benefactors.
I'm having a hard time having much sympathy for Gazans. They were given a paradise when the Israelis pulled out of Gaza and they ruined it all in the name of their death cult grudge against Israel. Gaza should be a rich, resort district with vigorous tech and agricultural industries. It should be a regional port to support a lucrative import/export economy. Instead, it's frickin' shithole dependent upon the welfare of donor nations. To claim that the Jews are "colonizers" is utterly ludicrous. If we're going to rely on history as the arbiter of today, then Israel is, via lawful charter, reclaiming their ancestral lands from the Mohammedan colonizers that drove them out 1,300 years ago. Further, it's a total stoner's dream to think that Gazan and West Bank Palestinians would ever be happy with Israel as their neighbor. I swear, the smart Palestinians are the ones that pursued and obtained Israeli citizenship and are taking part in that miracle. The stupid ones are the ones that profess a love for death, a love that obviously is greater than their love for their children and grandchildren, whom they offer as sacrifices to their most ugly, ugly god. The modern Palestinian movement doomed themselves when they hitched their wagon to Nazi Germany's final solution to the Jewish problem via the Muslim Brotherhood and the Grand Mufti al-Husseini. Until they break free from the curse they placed on themselves, the only "victories" they will have are the cowardly rapes and murders they commit on helpless civilians. Look at what forty years of this has done for them. It's lose, lose, and lose.
On the subject of free speech and pro-Palestinian voices, it's a damned shame they've adopted BLM/Greenie-style protest. All people hear are the vile invectives and the good people just hate them more and more. Mostly, these are stupid, easily manipulated sub-adults with teachers and activists that have poisoned them with Marxist ideology, which requires constant warfare (they call it 'struggle') to live. Add the mindless, mind-bending influence of communist Chinese TikTok and we have a generation of idiots who will gladly give themselves to monsters such as ISIS, Osama bin Laden, and Hamas, thereby driving a vicious wedge into civilization. Maybe if they had a legitimate beef. I don't think they do. I don't think the Palestinian liberation movement, from the river to the sea, is a legitimate beef. I think it's manufactured by some of the worst criminals in the world. I use the word "criminal" with purpose. Look at Hamas top leadership. They sit on billions of dollars stolen from well-meaning people and good-faith countries and from the very people they are supposed to be caring for. Arafat, the father of the modern Palestinian movement, was criminal. He robbed banks, stole money from the people his minions murdered, and skimmed donor money intended to relieve hardship for Palestinians. Hamas leaders do the same thing. It's a medieval warlord culture. Why aren't the Palestinians holding them to account? Their leaders are the ones causing their misery. If only there were such a thing as a pro-Palestine/anti-Hamas movement, there might be a chance for peace.
Thank you for a very thoroughly researched article — exactly the kind Israel doesn’t want to see the light of day. And thank God for independent reporters who have the courage to tell the truth.
Truth is the first casualty in war
Hamas's most powerful weapons include:
1) The United Nations
2) Much of Western media
3) And maybe most of all, the use of Palestinian civilians as cannon fodder and human shields....actions that are in themselves war crimes and strip civilian protection from sites used militarily (which is not just the launching of rockets).
The demonstrations, remonstrations, and vandalism against kidnapped Israeli civilians posters, far from being "Pro-Palestine", Are they, in fact, de facto "Pro-Hamas"?
This a decent investigative report on the workings of Israeli hasbara industry which fields armies of trolls onto various platforms. One encounters them everywhere blathering talking points design to distract from Israel's bloody ethnic-cleansing and genocide taking place before our eyes in Gaza, and the pogroms & slow ethnic cleansing occurring off-stage in the West Bank.
Examples of these trolls can be viewed in the opening volleys in this comment section. They can be seen sowing doubt about the number of civilian dead (a form of genocide denial) and questioning already settled matters like one of the hospital bombings.
Isn't it curious that virtually every hospital and clinic in North Gaza (and rapidly extending to South Gaza) was severely damaged or destroyed, along with every school, every shelter, every bakery, along with mosques, churches, and thousands of residences and apartment buildings, but all the trolls can talk about is an alleged errant rocket story near a hospital that already has been debunked?
That's hasbara for you.
Imagine if a shitload of the rich, powerful and well-connected were caught silencing criticism of, say... Trump. Or Putin in a similar coordinated fashion.
The sheeple would lose their minds.
What will it take for people to wake up? Or has the cancer of social media already made that impossible?
Lee great reporting but we should remember the pro-hamas side also has a propaganda wing—the babies in ICU at the hospital kind of thing. Did people go too far, yeah probably but all is fair in war. This is a war of Western values vs. authoritarian idiots. I stand with people who share my morals of free speech, women's rights, and so much more. I have sympathy for the people in Gaza but they are pawns of Iran. When the terrorists invaded and then war broke out why did Egypt not take the women and children out of harm's way like in Ukraine? The deaths of women and children in Gaza are war crimes by the people who won't give them a lifeboat. War sucks but who started this fight.
Just as we learned nothing from the Holocaust we seem to have learned nothing from McCarthyism either.
Anything taken to excess, no matter the motivation, becomes poisonous, and the Israel lobby today is a case study in excess. There's nothing nefarious about it by nature - all interest groups have a legitimate right to pursue their goals. But the extent of its success in steering political discourse and the media environment in the West in particular, including silencing critics, has made key institutions so lopsidedly supportive of Israel's interests that the divergence is too great. In the long run, interests always reassert themselves, and propaganda can only do so much.
From the article:
"The massacre also prompted Israel to embark on an invasion of Gaza that has killed more than 16,000 Palestinians, most of whom are women and children"
Shouldn't people be skeptical of Hamas numbers (aka Gaza Health Ministry from where media and NGOs get their numbers) which make no effort to break-out combatants killed by Israel? BTW, the estimates I have seen are that 70% of the dead are women and children, which would mean around 4800 men have been killed. And let's say half of those are actual Hamas members, that would leave around 2400 civilian males killed. Below is a thread taking exception of casualties:
https://twitter.com/Aizenberg55/status/1731753062622982386
Thoughts?
(BTW, I am delighted to see Israel's supporters around the world use their influence to help Israel.)
Watch out, Lee -- based on the other comments posted here, you have been targeted and thoroughly infiltrated by brainwashed Zionists.... However, I appreciate your efforts to dig into the nooks and crannies of this travesty in Gaza, and serve up some nuance to balance the extreme and overzealous propaganda campaign being crammed down Americans' throats.
I hope you will do a deep dive into the pro-Palestinian information war next.
So strange. This feels like a behind-the-scenes look at more than just this one topic. So few people have so much control over American narratives.
Your article reminded of this article below that I saw a while ago. Thank you for the well-researched excellent article.
Billionaire plots $50M media blitz against Hamas with help of big-name moguls
https://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/billionaire-barry-sternlicht-attempting-organize-million-anti-hamas-media-campaign-report