Political Propaganda Handbooks: Israel’s Hasbara, USA Peaceful Upheaval, Soft War handbook…?

Note: A re-edit of 2014 post “Israel (Zionism) propaganda (Hasbara) Handbook”

Hasbara (explanation) is not breaking news, most of our readers are already familiar with Israeli Hasbara .

If you patronize Facebook or Twitter and you posts anything remotely related to pro-Palestine, or work in the media in general, you are probably all too familiar with the persistent Hasbara that floods the comments of every post about Palestine.

It’s a force to be reckoned with: It attempts to control message and kill credibility of articles or commentary that reveal anything negative about Israel.

Wikipedia defines Hasbara as “Public diplomacy in Israel” and refers to it as “public relations efforts to disseminate abroad positive information about Israel.”

That’s true enough but in reality Hasbara is a manipulative propaganda machine.

Students are paid to spread pro-Israel messages online and have been slaving away in the Hasbara War Room to sell the Gaza war in social media.

According to the Hasbara Handbook – their main target audience is USA.

The Israeli Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary was originally leaked by Newsweek Online.

The link to the document in their original article now leads to a 404-page but you can read the 116 page PDF here.

It’s probably been updated since but the 2009 version is more than enough to understand how it works.

Are you persuadable?

According to the Hasbara Handbook Conservative Republicans and religious fundamentalists in USA are generally easiest to persuade or are already on board with team Israel.

This page has an interesting footnote that their “most favorable audience is white and male voters.”

The Handbook refers to religious fundamentalists as Israel’s “Amen Choir” and claims they are “Israel’s strongest friends in the world.”

In general US conservative Republicans and/or religious fundamentalists don’t seem to be a primary target audience for Hasbara, however they dedicate an entire chapter on talking to the American left which appears to be their greatest challenge.

Hasbara propagandists are directed to use empathy – and this word is stressed – as an important factor to use as a tool of persuasion to build credibility.

If you are among the stubborn leftists they may tell you a story to appeal to your sense of empathy.

Hasbara also may target women for persuasion campaigns more than men as their charts seemed to indicate that women were less aware of “the facts” after Operation Cast Lead (pre-emptive war on Gaza that killed over, 2,000 Palestinians and injured many more thousands and destroyed Gaza infrastructure in 2014).

Each chapter of the Hasbara Handbook has helpful boxes outlining the “Words that Work”.

There is even a section praising Obama’s notorious public speaking skills that states:

“President Obama’s language is so similar to what we have recommended for years that he could easily be stealing straight from our playbook.”

Posters that Work

Appendix IV of the Hasbara Handbook is dedicated to “Posters that Work” and lays out a style guide to follow when designing pro-Israel propaganda posters.

Apparently posters featuring Ahmadinejad as Hitler and babies strapped to bombs were epic fails, so now they aim to use “factually based” graphics to spread a positive impression of Israel.

The examples above are from several years ago but we’ve seen this same style of posters circulating during Operation Protective Edge.

Hasbara has it’s own team of graphic artists called the Interactive Media Team from Israel Under Fire which has been hard at work designing high quality, branded graphics to sell the assault on Gaza to western audiences.

The current Hasbara poster campaign features slick graphics, contrasting red and green colors that pop off pro-photographed backgrounds and bold fonts with key words like “rockets” or “tunnels” emphasized for impact. This is a 100% professionally branded media campaign.

The lexicon of the Hasbara Handbook is really impressive as far as manipulation standards go. If you have time to read the whole handbook we definitely recommend it.

Propaganda exists all over the world and perhaps other countries also have official “playbooks” like Israel, but the Israeli Hasbara has mastered the art of persuasion, at least on western audiences.

Note 2: You might have heard of the CIA financed handbook for Peaceful mass upheaval? The USA spread the propaganda that the “Arab Spring” mass demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt adopted and practiced the principles of that handbook (pure myth). The USA was totally taken aback but managed to exploit these upheavals to appoint their dictators.

Note 3: You might have heard of the US new Soft War handbook, meant to impose severe economic sanctions until most people experience hunger and scarcity in medicine and energy and kneel in their negotiations with US diktat.

Sources:
Israeli Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary
Electronic Intifada – Israel student union sets up “war room” to sell Gaza massacre on Facebook
The Independent – Israel-Gaza conflict: The secret report that helps Israelis to hide facts
Israel Under Fire