Countering Pal. Propaganda

Have you seen the "Never Before Campaign" clip? I blogged about it here.

If not, you don't have to see it unless you are in the Hasbarah activity business.

And if you have seen it, check this out:

They were promoting a video which promised to “summarize the Palestinian cause in two minutes.” It sounded interesting, so I clicked on the link and watched.

What I saw was a Palestinian propaganda film, pure and simple.

You might be thinking: C’mon, from your pro-Israel perspective, the film was propaganda, but from the perspective of a Palestinian supporter it was a fair presentation of the issues.

In order to determine which view is legitimately true, we first need to define: What is propaganda?

Propaganda is based on the premise that people are emotional. Propaganda typically presents little or no facts, using techniques like selective omission and over-simplification to play on sentiments and feelings. Propaganda uses highly-charged images and slogans to produce an emotional, rather than a rational, response...

...On one level, the images are extremely powerful and convincing. But on a deeper level, this video is propaganda -- a complete distortion of the issues. Viewers may be emotionally moved, but there is no rational basis to back it up.

That’s why Aish.com teamed up with filmmaker Micah Smith to produce our own version of this film that exposes the propaganda for what it is.

By adding some concrete facts and information, the message of the movie is easily flipped around to become a pro-Israel film, revealing the superficiality of the original. Due to the constraints of the medium, our version of the film cannot possible address all the issues. Therefore we recommend reading the articles below that explore some of these topics in depth.

Ultimately, it’s a lesson in the power of the media, and how -- if we don’t want to be manipulated -- we need to constantly be on guard.

Take a look at their version, second clip there.