[NYTr] Cook: The Propaganda Machine & Israel's "Jewish Problem" in Tehran

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Joan Malerich - Sep 25, 2007

[Jonathan Cook's essays will be familiar to readers of a variety of
online publications, including Counterpunch.  He is a writer based
in Nazareth and, as you will read here, is married to a Palestinian.

This is a tad confusing, and a bit repetitious (since what is basically
an Afterword to an article he published in the Guardian weblogs is
labeled a Preface and comes before the original article. Also, the
original article was edited (for length or for too-strong commentary)
by the Guardian, so what appears below is his full original piece, with
numerous links to other articles.[These have been turned into End Notes
for readability here.]

We published the original, ironically titled "Israel's Jewish Problem in
Tehran" from the Info Clearing House copy on Aug 4, 2007 here:
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070730/066329.html

We're repeating it only a few weeks later, because this version is
quite interesting, in that Cook analyses in some detail the
various layers of the Israeli propaganda machine (some of which New
Yorkers saw in action -- many to their acute embarrassment for the City
-- at Columbia University during President Ahmadinejad's appearance
there this week. -NY Transfer]

                            ***

published on Jonathan Cook's site - Aug 20, 2007
http://www.jkcook.net/

Israel's "Jewish Problem" in Tehran and The Propaganda Machine

by Jonathan Cook

Preface

I published an article entitled “Kosher in Tehranâ€_ on the
Guardian’s popular blogsite Comment is Free on 7 August 2007 [1]
(the same piece is archived on my own site as “Israel’s
Jewish problem in Tehranâ€_). Like most articles criticising Israel
on Comment is Free, it -- or rather I -- was greeted with much abuse
from the Israeli apologists who frequent the site. Which is one reason,
I suppose, why it is worth publishing there. If the
“hasbaraâ€_ crowd are so determined to shout invective every
time criticism of Israel appears on Comment is Free, then it is a sign
either that the site is influential or, at the very least, that they
think it is influential.

All of which encouraged me to air on the same site some simple
observations about the purpose of hasbara and its effects on the
freedom of journalists, particularly in the US, to publish news and
views critical of Israel. That involved mentioning my own experiences
at the hands of the Israel lobby and pointing out how a well-respected
newspaper, the International Herald Tribune, caved in to such pressure.
I do not believe my experience is unique, or special; in fact, I know
it is not.

The results, again particularly in the US, are clear: the media is
profoundly fearful of allowing articles seriously critical of Israel to
be published, and any journalist who dares or manages to sneak such a
piece past the editors is in for a career-damaging bashing afterwards.
Obviously this is an assault of the highest order on freedom of speech
in the West about our support for one country, Israel, and its
involvement in regional confrontations that are increasingly having
global consequences. It ensures that a whole realm of US-assisted
foreign policy, conducted by Israel, is entirely off-limits to debate
in the mainstream American media, even more so than US foreign policy
itself.

(On a related side note: the original article mentioned here,
“Kosher in Tehranâ€_, was offered by the Institute of Middle
East Understanding as an op-ed to all the main newspapers in the US.
Every one of them rejected it. Interestingly, an obscure web page on
the Camera site[2] that published attacks on me over two articles I
published in the Tribune in 2003[3] and 2004[4] shot up the Google
ranking on a search of my name. Does that mean US newspaper editors,
unsure of who I was, checked first to see if the Israel lobby had had a
problem with me in the past? We will never know, of course.)

Unfortunately, and with no little irony, the editors at Comment is Free
excised the last part of my article, in which I discussed my own
experiences, even if briefly given the length restrictions on articles.
Exceptionally, therefore, I am archiving the submitted article rather
than the published one. Anyone who wants to read the version on Comment
is Free can [still] do so [5].

Anyone interested to learn more about my run-in with the Israel lobby
can find Camera’s letter of complaint to the Tribune in 2003 and
my response [at the Electronic Intifada site].[6].

Unfortunately, as far I can see, Abraham Foxman’s pro forma
letter on the Anti-Defamation League’s website is no longer
available in its archives.

My letter responding to the “largest mailbag in the
Tribune’s historyâ€_, as the comment editor told me at the
time, over the 2004 story can be found at the IHT site [7].


The Propaganda Machine

The goal of hasbara is to disseminate good news about Israel, largely
independent of whether the news is true or not.

It is an honour of a kind, I suppose, to briefly have the most active
thread on the CiF site. But not much of one when 95 per cent of the
posts rarely rose above the level of vitriolic name-calling. The
posters probably know that by now I am immune to playground taunts of
“scumâ€_ and “Naziâ€_, but the abuse, I suspect, is
meant more as a warning to others who might criticise Israel. Keep
quiet -- or else.

Volcanic outbursts of hatred on CiF greet anyone who objects to
Israel’s policies: in my case, I sinned by pointing out that its
leaders have turned the small community of Jews in Tehran into pawns in
a struggle to persuade the world that Iran is a genocidal threat to
world Jewry. My point was that Israel’s concern is entirely
hollow. It simply wants to mobilise support for an attack on Iran,
either by itself or the US.

Some posters to this site seem to be aware of the organised nature of
these critic-bashing campaigns. They note that sites like giyus.org
rally the faithful to the cause. But most posters are probably not
aware that Giyus and its ilk are only the tip of a much larger effort
called “hasbaraâ€_ by Israel and its supporters. Usually the
word is translated as “advocacy for Israelâ€_. I call it by
its proper name: propaganda.

The main goal of hasbara is constantly to disseminate good news about
Israel, largely independent of whether the news is actually true or
not, in the hope that over time a benevolent image of Israel will be
reinforced. Here’s an example: in 2000 there were many reports
of an Israeli court ruling that supposedly ended the country’s
system of land apartheid, a legally enforced territorial separation
that keeps Jewish and Arab citizens apart in most of country. To this
day apologists cite this ruling as proof of equality in Israel, even
though the decision only applied to one Arab family, has yet to be
enforced, and the Israeli parliament is currently passing legislation
to make sure it never is.

But the charm offensive is only the upside of their work. The downside
is, as CiF posters know well, a relentless campaign to target,
discredit and silence critics of Israel. It can take many forms, not
only name-calling. I was intrigued to see several posters thought I had
no right to criticise Israel because my wife is an Israeli citizen,
though -- and this is presumably her and my offence -- she also happens
to be a Palestinian. They would have a field day -- but fail to see
their own double standards -- were I to suggest that only non-Jews be
allowed to apologise for Israel.

A few posters made what appeared to be a substantive point: why had I
failed to note that, while today 25,000 Jews live in Tehran, another
80,000 have fled? But look closer and the case crumbles. The
overwhelming majority of those 80,000 Jews left in the wake of the
country’s Islamic revolution in 1979 -- that is, nearly 30 years
ago. They are irrelevant to current Israeli claims that the Iranian
leadership wants to commit a genocide against the Jews. In any case,
most of those fleeing Jews left because they were middle class and
secular and saw no future in an Islamic Iran, despite the reassurances
from Ayatollah Khomeini that they would not be persecuted. In other
words, they left -- like many other Iranians -- for economic reasons,
not political or religious ones.

Other posters simply lied, in the great tradition of hasbara. Several
suggested I had written that Rafik Hariri was killed by Israel. I
hadn’t, and you can check my website to be sure. I had also
apparently written that the two Israeli soldiers captured in a
Hizbullah operation last year were caught on Lebanese soil. Again a
search failed to find the story. No matter. Truth is not what hasbara
is about.

And if all this fails to discredit a critic of Israel, simply label him
an anti-Semite, and the argument can be neatly closed. Game, set and
match.

I am not sure if any other country or cause encourages this kind of
mainly voluntary propaganda work, but I am sure that no other country
or cause has the human resources that Israel can rely on to carry it
out. There are thousands of people sitting at their computers ready to
pounce at any sign of criticism. (I know there are this many because I
have received abusive emails from them, unless it’s just a
handful with thousands of different email addresses.) They do not need
orders or much guidance. They do it because they love Israel and see it
as part of their life’s work to protect Israel’s image.

Doubtless, they believe what they write too. If you have been raised to
live in constant fear of anti-Semitism, and to see the anti-Semitic
impulse lurking in the recessses of every non-Jewish mind (an
observation that is often publicly made in the Israeli and American
media but less often here), then what other motive could someone like
me have but anti-Semitism for writing what I do. The logic is
satisfyingly circular.

But CiF posters may be less aware of how the rest of the Israel lobby
works. Giyus is, in fact, the most amateurish part of its operation.
These are the “shock troopsâ€_ on the front line. They
overwhelm by force of numbers only. Far more effective are the
lobby’s “snipersâ€_. They pick off anyone the shock
troops have failed to frighten off and whose voice might be heard in
places where it matters: particularly in the American media and on US
campuses. Tony Judt has recently felt their ire, as have Professors
Walt and Mearsheimer.

(A separate lobby system, particularly AIPAC, is dedicated to
intimidating elected American representatives. And other groups like
MEMRI do their best to generate damaging information -- some of it
true, some of it not -- about Muslims and Arabs.)

This obsession with preserving Israel’s image in the US is not
surprising: the country’s fate as an occupying, military power
in the Middle East will, after all, be decided in Washington. In the
main, the professional Israel lobby cares little about what is said in
the European media, although as British newspaper websites like the
Guardian start to penetrate the other side of the Atlantic that is
changing. There may yet come a day when we will miss the abusive Giyus
crowd.

The professional Israel lobby have respectable names like Camera (the
Committee for Accuracy in Middle Reporting in America), Honest
Reporting and the Anti-Defamation League. They sound reassuringly
even-handed. Don’t be deceived.

Camera has a section dedicated to “naming and shamingâ€_ some
of the most influential journalists writing about the Middle East.
You’ll find a page dedicated to the Guardian’s former
Jerusalem correspondent, Chris McGreal, after he made the ultimate faux
pas of comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa, a country he knows
intimately. There are many who share the honour: the
Independent’s Donald MacIntyre, Tim McGirk of Time magazine,
Molly Moore of the Washington Post, Jim Muir and Kylie Morris of the
BBC, Greg Myre and Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times. And
that’s just a fraction of the Ms.

Before, the giyus crowd get to work, let me also point out that once I
too was on the Camera list, during a period when I contributed op-eds
to the International Herald Tribune. On a couple of occasions the
Tribune received the largest mailbags in its history in response to my
commentaries. Another small honour, I suppose. There was no doubt the
letter-writing was organised: the Anti-Defamation League’s head,
Abraham Foxman, kindly provided less imaginative writers with a pro
forma letter on the front page of its website denouncing me.

When I stood my ground, the Tribune decided I was too hot to handle.
Many writers presumably just buckle under. A couple of entries on
Camera is enough to make most US journalists extremely wary of a third
“exposureâ€_.

So how will this post be received? What strategy will be used to
discredit me?

The professional hasbarists – the snipers -- will probably
ignore my post. Why stir over this single piece in a chaotic blog on the
peripheries of American discourse. Better not to give me and my writing
the oxygen of publicity.

What about the amateur hasbarists? Will they bite their lip? I doubt
it. Anyone who tries to expose the workings of the Israel lobby is
immediately accused of claiming that the Jews are an all-powerful
cabal. (For the record, I’m not: I just believe people who have
power tend to abuse it, be it the Israel lobby, the National Rifle
Association or the US medical lobby.)

Nonetheless, the hasbarists will be itching to claim that my piece is
another Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious forged document
that suggested the Jews were behind a worldwide conspiracy. Doubtless
they will find other ways to discredit me too, ways I cannot even begin
to imagine. Let them commence…

                               ***

The Guardian Blogs - Comment is Free - Aug 20, 2007
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_cook/2007/08/kosher_in_tehran.html

Kosher in Tehran

by Jonathan Cook

Iran is the new Nazi Germany and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
the new Hitler. Or so Israeli officials have been declaring for months
as they and their American allies try to persuade the doubters in
Washington that an attack on Tehran is essential. And if the latest
media reports are to be trusted, it looks like they may again be
winning the battle for hearts and minds: vice-president Dick Cheney is
said to be diverting the White House back on track to launch a military
strike [8].

Earlier this year Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's opposition leader and
the man who appears to be styling himself as scaremonger-in-chief, told
us: "It's 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself
with atomic bombs." Of Ahmadinejad, he said: "He is preparing another
Holocaust for the Jewish state."[9]

A few weeks ago, as Israel's military intelligence claimed[10] - as it
has been doing regularly since the early 1990s - that Iran is only a
year or so away from the "point of no return" on developing a nuclear
warhead, Netanyahu was at it again. "Iran could be the first
undeterrable nuclear power," he warned, adding: "This is a Jewish
problem like Hitler was a Jewish problem ... The future of the Jewish
people depends on the future of Israel."[11]

But Netanyahu has been far from alone in making extravagant claims
about a looming genocide from Iran. Israel's new president, Shimon
Peres, has compared an Iranian nuclear bomb to a "flying concentration
camp". And the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told a German newspaper
last year: "[Ahmadinejad] speaks as Hitler did in his time of the
extermination of the entire Jewish nation."[12]

There is an interesting problem with selling the "Iran as Nazi Germany"
line. If Ahmadinejad really is Hitler, ready to commit genocide against
Israel's Jews as soon as he can get his hands on a nuclear weapon, why
are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran and more than reluctant
to leave, despite repeated enticements from Israel and American Jews?

What is the basis for Israel's dire forecasts - the ideological
scaffolding being erected, presumably, to justify an attack on Iran?
Helpfully, as George Bush defended his Iraq policies last month, he
reminded us yet again of the menace Iran supposedly poses: it is
"threatening to wipe Israel off the map".[13]

This myth has been endlessly recycled since a translating error[14] was
made of a speech Ahmadinejad delivered nearly two years ago. Farsi
experts have verified[15] that the Iranian president, far from
threatening to destroy Israel, was quoting from an earlier speech by
the late Ayatollah Khomeini in which he reassured supporters of the
Palestinians that "the Zionist regime in Jerusalem" would "vanish from
the page of time".

He was not threatening to exterminate Jews or even Israel. He was
comparing Israel's occupation of the Palestinians with other
illegitimate systems of rule whose time had passed, including the Shahs
who once ruled Iran, apartheid South Africa and the Soviet empire.
Nonetheless, this erroneous translation has survived and prospered
because Israel and her supporters have exploited it for their own crude
propaganda purposes.

In the meantime, the 25,000-strong Iranian Jewish community is the
largest in the Middle East outside Israel and traces its roots back
3,000 years. As one of several non-Muslim minorities in Iran, Jews
there suffer discrimination, but they are certainly no worse off than
the one million Palestinian citizens of Israel - and far better off
than Palestinians under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

Iranian Jews have little influence on decision-making and are not
allowed to hold senior posts in the army or bureaucracy. But they enjoy
many freedoms.[16] They have an elected representative in parliament,
they practice their religion openly in synagogues, their charities are
funded by the Jewish diaspora, and they can travel freely, including to
Israel. In Tehran there are six kosher butchers and about 30
synagogues. Ahmadinejad's office recently made a donation to a Jewish
hospital in Tehran.

As Ciamak Moresadegh, an Iranian Jewish leader, observed:[17] "If you
think Judaism and Zionism are one, it is like thinking Islam and the
Taliban are the same, and they are not." Iran's leaders denounce
Zionism, which they blame for fuelling discrimination against the
Palestinians, but they have also repeatedly avowed that they have no
problem with Jews, Judaism or even the state of Israel. Ahmadinejad,
caricatured as a merchant of genocide, has in fact called for "regime
change" - and then only in the sense that he believes a referendum
should be held of all inhabitants of Israel and the occupied
territories, including refugees from war, on the nature of the
government.[18]

Despite the absence of any threat to Iran's Jews, the Israeli media
recently reported that the Israeli government has been trying to find
new ways to entice Iranian Jews to Israel.[19] The Ma'ariv newspaper
pointed out that previous schemes had found few takers. There was,
noted the report, "a lack of desire on the part of thousands of Iranian
Jews to leave". According to the New York-based Forward newspaper, a
campaign to persuade Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel caused only 152
out of these 25,000 Jews to leave Iran between October 2005 and
September 2006, and most of them were said to have emigrated for
economic reasons, not political ones.[20]

To step up these efforts - and presumably to avoid the embarrassing
incongruence of claiming Iran's genocidal intent while thousands of
Jews live happily in Tehran - Israel is now backing a move by Jewish
donors to guarantee every Iranian Jewish family $60,000 to settle in
Israel, in addition to a host of existing financial incentives that are
offered to Jewish immigrants, including loans and cheap mortgages.[21]

The announcement was met with scorn by the Society of Iranian Jews,
which issued a statement that their national identity was not for
sale.[22] "The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradeable for any amount
of money. Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Iran's Jews
love their Iranian identity and their culture, so threats and this
immature political enticement will not achieve their aim of wiping out
the identity of Iranian Jews."

More important than the welfare of Iranian Jewish families, it seems,
is the value of Iranian Jews as a propaganda tool in Israel's battle to
persuade the world that coexistence with the Muslim world is
impossible. For those who want to engineer a clash of civilisations,
the 3,000-year-old Jewish legacy in Iran is not something to be
treasured, only another obstacle to war.

End Notes

[1]http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_cook/2007/08/kosher_in_tehran.html

[2]http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=6&x_journo=285

[3]http://www.iht.com/articles/2003/05/27/edcook_ed3_.php

[4]http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/08/31/edcook_ed3_.php

[5]http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_cook/2007/08/the_propaganda_machine.html

[6]http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1865.shtml

[7]http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/09/08/edlet_ed3_28.php

[8]http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2127115,00.html

[9]http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/787766.html

[10]http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/880731.html

[11]http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1184168542314

[12]http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3245121,00.html

[13]http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_cook/2007/08/www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070712-5.html

[14]http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/news/rumor-of-the-century/

[15]http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html

[16]http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0427/p01s03-wome.htm

[17]http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0427/p01s03-wome.htm

[18]http://www.juancole.com/2007/06/ahmadinejad-i-am-not-anti-semitic.html

[19]http://www.cjp.org/page.html?ArticleID=148952

[20]http://www.forward.com/articles/iranian-jews-reject-outside-calls-to-leave-1/

[21]http://www.cjp.org/page.html?ArticleID=148952

[22]http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2125486,00.html


[Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He
is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of
the Jewish and Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and
available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press.
His website is http://www.jkcook.net]