Web 2.0 vs. Israel
It features Milli Vanilli and Baghdad Bob, the 2003 Iraqi minister of information. It’s funny, it’s timely, it captures the zeitgeist, and it has a great beat to it. Too bad it’s just a beautiful piece of libel. ”Internet Killed Israeli PR,” a parody music video set to the tune of The Buggles’ 1979 “Radio Star,” has been getting some recent attention on various video sharing websites. It’s considered a response to Latma TV’s hit video “We Con the World.” It has been featured over the past few days on the Ma’an News Agency, Israeli blogs such as Holes in the Net (in Hebrew), and the Los Angeles Times‘ “Babylon and Beyond” blog. And it joins other works, like Doc Jazz’s “Freedom Flotilla song,” in an orchestrated, ongoing Israel-bashing campaign, now repackaged with a stylized Web 2.0 sheen.
This mashup, or audio-video montage, runs the gamut from innocent shots of Star Wars Kid and of Herzl waterskiing, through irrelevant shots of the IDF general staff from the mid-2000s, to a shot of Hitler delivering a speech, all meant to persuade the viewer: Israel is a human rights violator. Its spokespeople lie for it, and not very competently at that. We, the creators of this video, are anti-Israel internet activists, we are onto them, and our activism renders them useless. We’re the cool guys; join our side.
The creators of the video sport the moniker “Minor Demographic Threat” and say they are a “multi-ethnic group predominantly of American and Israeli Jews, but also Palestinians and others.” Their name was chosen, among other reasons, as “a parody of Israel’s race-based arguments against the right of return,” which, in plain English, means their end goal is the dissolution of the Jewish nation-state, in favor of a one-state Utopian solution where everyone will live miserably ever after. The fake “BDS records” label shown at the beginning of the video is a reference to the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, which aspires to destroy Israel as we know it by economic pressure rather than via scrupulous video editing. (“Aspires” is the action word here: BDS movement motions so far have largely failed, even in UC Berkeley’s student senate. Ouch.)
The Minor Demographic Threat describes itself as a “marauding band of anarcho-Yiddishist minstrels,” where “Yiddishist” evidently refers not to an in-depth understanding of the rabbinic civilization that Jews developed for centuries in the Pale of Settlement, but to having the inalienable right to crack circumcision jokes, compare Israel to Nazi Germany, and call Hitler a “putz.”
That the “peace activists” on board the Mavi Marmara started the fight is well documented. It’s been long established that the knives used to stab Israeli soldiers were nothing of the sort Barbara Streisand probably ever wielded. The actual facts of the events of May 31 are known to any news observer that cares enough to look at evidence, and they are not the focus of the video, so there is no point in attempting to counter the non-facts of a propaganda piece. Instead, let’s consider what sort of messages the video conveys, whom they were probably meant for, and what those who support Israel can learn from this work and others like it.
Sincerely, I thought the video parody “Israel killed the Internet PR” was second-rate, no, make that third-rate. Doesn’t begin to compare in quality to Latma’s work in We Con the World.
ENJOY THE LATEST, FRESHEST, MOST HIGHY COOL- and you can dance to it to -
THE BOMB
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL321ehEkNs
Youthful Idealists out to save the world;
Where have I seen this before…ah, yes:
‘The Jerusalem File’.
Israel is a vessel state of the CIA. Israel deliberately bungles its propaganda because that’s what the CIA demands. The game is rigged, folks. The Israeli MSM is no better than SIS-CIA-MSM-Saudi controlled anti-Israel propaganda outlets. In fact, I’d say they’re exactly the same. The Israeli gov could and should sue the MSM for libel — they don’t. Because they do exactly what the US gov tells them to do.
I don’t think any sophisticated and knowledgable observer would describe Israeli “hasbara” as fact-based, if that term is used to distinguish it from the self-serving, “spin-doctored” news releases that are standard fare in media relations today. And to call the piece “libel” is pure cant at best; at worst, it’s another example of the use (by reference) of that old canard, that whenever the actions of Israel are subjected to hard-hitting critical commentary, the perpetrators are said to be motivated by racial stereotypes, myths, and hatred (the “blood libel”).
You could have stopped after the first three words.
“Baghdad Bob, the 2003 Iraqi minister of information”
I thought he was the 2010 Obama spokes-model?
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”
“that old canard, that whenever the actions of Israel are subjected to hard-hitting critical commentary, the perpetrators are said to be motivated by racial stereotypes, myths, and hatred”
So since these guys are not motivated by an animus against Israel but only a sincere desire for justice, they will soon be coming out with videos mocking the human rights transgressions of Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, right, Bobby?
I’m not holding my breath.
Robert, you have the canard wrong. The actual canard is that no criticism of Israel is beyond the pale, no matter how false, distorted, malicious, or absurd, and no matter whether it uses anti-Semitic themes, and that anyone who points out the flaws in a given criticism of Israel, whether or not he uses the word anti-Semitism, is using false accusations of anti-Semtism to deter rightful critiscism of Israel. Your post is a perfect example of that canard in action.
Arabs can be citizens in Isreal, and vote
Jews will be murdered by arabs everywhere there are arabs.
So one more time, who’s got the Human Rights issues again?
End of story
The depths the lefty “anti-Zionists” sink to in order to keep their lies afloat is breathtaking. Iara Lee does propaganda on multiple levels – in little spin pieces and in her tremendously misleading “Raw Footage” from the Mavi Marmara.
These folks wouldn’t know the truth if it slapped them in the face. And they don’t care.
RE: 4 MIKA
“Israel is a vessel state of the CIA. Israel deliberately bungles its propaganda because that’s what the CIA demands.”
Umm…it is a serious topic that should be investigated that neither the CIA or the State Department hires Hebrew speaking Jewish Americans. The CIA and State Department have always been controlled by the Saudi oil lobby and therefore opposed to Israel. The CIA also has a problem with its field agents converting to Islam.
Shalom
The reality is, though, that the internet is the vehicle for those without access to MSM.
MSM continues to be extremely hostile to Israel and, in fact, it is the internet which is enabling Israel’s message, the truth, (eg the al Dura hoax expose) to come across.
So I think they are also trying to pretend that the opposite of what is happening, is happening.
The internet is Israel’s friend so far.
The truth always wins where it is allowed to be told.
Just as light dispels darkness.
Lies have to be maintained by a high degree of effort and expense.
The truth is on Israel’s side. So use it!!!
what a pathetic response to a very funny and very true parody. There is more truth in this ‘parody’ than in anything coming out of the mouth of the zionists lately. I can’t believe you people are still going on with the whining about how the flotilla activists ‘attacked’ the IDF soldiers with knives …. It just makes you look more and more desparate to defend the indefensible. Your stupid response actually provides evidence to the notion that the old fashioned Hasbara is no longer working. It is difficult to believe that Israel has good intentions if you see them destroy olive gardens of palestinians, if you see the bulldozers destroy homes of Arabs so Jews can take their place. You people are akin to the silent germans of the 30′s and 40′s. No, scrap that, make it akin the loud nazi germans of the 30′s and 40′s. The silent ones did nothing. You work actively in the human rights abuse business. It is beyond me how you can live with yourself.
“Jews will be murdered by arabs everywhere there are arabs.”
You people are totally out of your mind. You keep feeding paranoia to each other. Maybe you should visit a Palestinian village. Try to talk to these people, see what you have done to them so you could have your state. Considering all the misery you have caused to these people, they are remarkably restrained.
The truth of the matter is that what is going on today in Israel, with the oaths, the proposals for ethnic cleansing, the second class treatment of your arab population, the occupation, the torture, the rabbi’s that are preaching genocide, the continued settlement building, the wall, the separate roads, the supremacy philosphy of Israeli’s… with all that going on, and you people are worried about this video? that is what worries you? Have you lost all sense of morality? Have you lost the notion that all people are human beings and we should not exclude each other and maltreat each other because we belong to different ethnicities? You all have lost your way. Maybe it was inevitable. Oppressed people turning into oppressors. So much of what you do and say is comparable to nazi germany. It is beyond belief really. But it can’t last. Like it couldn’t last in Germany. And this video is the least of your worries.