By Jonathan Cook * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The passionate support for Israel expressed on talkback sections of websites, internet chat forums, blogs, Twitters and Facebook may not be all that it seems.

Israel's foreign ministry is reported to be establishing a special undercover team of paid workers whose job it will be to surf the internet 24 hours a day spreading positive news about Israel.

Internet-savvy Israeli youngsters, mainly recent graduates and demobilised soldiers with language skills, are being recruited to pose as ordinary surfers while they provide the government's line on the Middle East conflict.

"To all intents and purposes the internet is a theatre in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must be active in that theatre, otherwise we will lose," said Ilan Shturman, who is responsible for the project.

The existence of an "internet warfare team" came to light when it was included in this year's foreign ministry budget. About $150,000 (Dh551,000) has been set aside for the first stage of development, with increased funding expected next year.

The team will fall under the authority of a large department already dealing with what Israelis term "hasbara", officially translated as "public explanation" but more usually meaning propaganda. That includes not only government public relations work but more secretive dealings the ministry has with a battery of private organisations and initiatives that promote Israel's image in print, on TV and online.

In an interview this month with the Calcalist, an Israeli business newspaper, Mr Shturman, the deputy director of the ministry's hasbara department, admitted his team would be working undercover.

"Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the hasbara department of the Israeli foreign ministry and I want to tell you the following.' Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis," he said. "They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the foreign ministry developed."

Rona Kuperboim, a columnist for Ynet, Israel's most popular news website, denounced the initiative, saying it indicated that Israel had become a "thought-police state".

She added that "good PR cannot make the reality in the occupied territories prettier. Children are being killed, homes are being bombed, and families are starved."
Her column was greeted by several talkbackers asking how they could apply for a job with the foreign ministry's team.

The project is a formalisation of public relations practices the ministry developed specifically for Israel's assault on Gaza in December and January.

"During Operation Cast Lead we appealed to Jewish communities abroad and with their help we recruited a few thousand volunteers, who were joined by Israeli volunteers," Mr Shturman said.

"We gave them background material and hasbara material, and we sent them to represent the Israeli point of view on news websites and in polls on the internet."

The Israeli army also had one of the most popular sites on the video-sharing site YouTube and regularly uploaded clips, although it was criticised by human rights groups for misleading viewers about what was shown in its footage.

Mr Shturman said that during the war the ministry had concentrated its activities on European websites where audiences were more hostile to Israeli policy. High on its list of target sites for the new project would be BBC Online and Arabic websites, he added.

Elon Gilad, who heads the internet team, told Calcalist that many people had contacted the ministry offering their services during the Gaza attack. "People just asked for information, and afterwards we saw that the information was distributed all over the internet."

He suggested that there had been widespread government cooperation, with the ministry of absorption handing over contact details for hundreds of recent immigrants to Israel, who wrote pro-Israel material for websites in their native languages.

The new team is expected to increase the ministry's close coordination with a private advocacy group, giyus.org (Give Israel Your United Support). About 50,000 activists are reported to have downloaded a programme called Megaphone that sends an alert to their computers when an article critical of Israel is published. They are then supposed to bombard the site with comments supporting Israel.

Nasser Rego of Ilam, a group based in Nazareth that monitors the Israeli media, said Arab organisations in Israel were among those regularly targeted by hasbara groups for "character assassination". He was concerned the new team would try to make such work appear more professional and convincing.

"If these people are misrepresenting who they are, we can guess they won't worry too much about misrepresenting the groups and individuals they write about. Their aim, it's clear, will be to discredit those who stand for human rights and justice for the Palestinians."

When The National called the foreign ministry, Yigal Palmor, a spokesman, denied the existence of the internet team, though he admitted officials were stepping up exploitation of new media.

He declined to say which comments by Mr Shturman or Mr Gilad had been misrepresented by the Hebrew-language media, and said the ministry would not be taking any action over the reports.

Israel has developed an increasingly sophisticated approach to new media since it launched a "Brand Israel" campaign in 2005.

Market research persuaded officials that Israel should play up good news about business success, and scientific and medical breakthroughs involving Israelis.

Mr Shturman said his staff would seek to use websites to improve "Israel's image as a developed state that contributes to the quality of the environment and to humanity".

David Saranga, head of public relations at Israel's consulate-general in New York, which has been leading the push for more upbeat messages about Israel, argued last week that Israel was at a disadvantage against pro-Palestinian advocacy.

"Unlike the Muslim world, which has hundreds of millions of supporters who have adopted the Palestinian narrative in order to slam Israel, the Jewish world numbers only 13 million," he wrote in Ynet.

Israel has become particularly concerned that support is ebbing among the younger generations in Europe and the United States.

In 2007 it emerged that the foreign ministry was behind a photo-shoot published in Maxim, a popular US men's magazine, in which female Israeli soldiers posed in swimsuits.

* Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair".

On the festive and felicitous occasion of the 61st anniversary of Israel's existence which is being celebrated with much fanfare from Tel Aviv to Washington D.C.; today, on the 61st anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, Gaza is still representing a living "day of the catastrophe" and remains a bleeding wound in our Palestinian body.

Today, the Palestinians are a people without human rights and dignity, without civil rights, without a known fate, and virtually without a future.

There are endless topics which one can talk about on this day, but I still believe that the genocide in Gaza should remain our top headline.

A new report released yesterday reveals the true extent of child killings by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip during its 23-day offensive on Gaza between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009.

The aftermath of Israel's 23-day offensive on the Gaza Strip is not less painful, and the ongoing impact it is having on the civilian population remains hidden in the mainstream media. Yesterday I showed you an example of the catastrophic health system in Gaza, which is a result of the Israeli inhumane siege but that story appears nowhere except on Aljazeera.

A lot more unspoken of testimonies from on the ground and stories of the aftermath prove without a doubt that the Zionist Jews have decided to fulfil Jewish nationalism in way similar to the manner in which German supremacists wanted to exercise their nationalism nearly seven decades ago.

Watch this video and know why we remember Gaza on 15 May:

The following slideshow is a temporary replacement of my previous one, which was removed by slide.com under Zionist pressure (if this one gets removed too, you know why). You can get a customized slideshow from here:
http://bit.ly/xbjjE

[BAPD]

Press Release

Unfortunately, press coverage on Israeli crimes in Gaza is often times onesided and not well-balanced. Reports which reveal the true extent of tragedies do not reach their audiences because they are lost in the great number of articles published. To keep us updated about informative and objective coverage, but also to seize the opportunity and express our support and appreciation towards the authors that take a fearless and objective stand on the issues, we have created the online link collection

Ink For Gaza
www.inkforgaza.net

Ink For Gaza works as follows:

When you come across an article or video which you find very convincing, you send us an e-mail with a link and a very short synopsis. We will collect and review all articles and will publish a collection of the best articles in short intervals on our website.

You can use the link collection for the following purposes:

a) to keep yourself updated from a selection of high quality sources
b) to express your support and appreciation to the reporters by e-mail or through the comment functions on the respective websites
c) to have a high quality collection of articles you can forward to friends, colleagues and decision makers

We urge you to make extensive use of this website and to share this information with all your friends!

1. Keep forwarding us good articles and videos (either using an online form or via E-Mail: links@inkforgaza.net)!
2. Take a few minutes of your time every day to support objective reporting through positive comments and e-mails!
3. Access this website frequently to keep yourself updated and forward the best articles to friends and colleagues!

Please forward this e-mail to friends, colleagues and other e-mail distribution lists!
Ink For Gaza

"We're wading in death, blood and amputees. Many children. Pregnant woman. I've never experienced anything this horrible. We're hearing tanks now. Tell it, pass it on, shout it. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We're living in the history books now, all of us!" Mads Gilbert 3.1.09 13:50 Shifa Hospital - Gaza, Palestine

--
http://www.inkforgaza.net

Citizen journalists report on Gaza

From Bahrain, Haitham Sabbah, an "uprooted" Palestinian activist and blogger, is working to organize and coordinate information on the Gaza situation. Sabbah was as born in exile in Kuwait and has not been allowed to visit Occupied Palestine since 1986.

"Pro-Palestine Bloggers are facing a challenge to educate their readers and fill in the gap that the main stream media, specially the Americans, are ignoring intentionally as we witnessed during the war on Lebanon in 2006, and is evident now in Gaza," commented Sabbah. "Because this controlled media has selected to focus on the Israeli side of the conflict and magnify the casualties there while ignoring the atrocities on the Gazan's side, the public is systematically brain washed to think that the reason for the war is Hamas' rockets, ignoring the fact that Israel is the occupier and they never stopped attacking Gaza, even during the six month truce period. All of this and more is hidden in the Western media. The duty of Palestinian and pro-Palestine bloggers is to expose these lies and show the world the other side of the story which they normally don't see on their TV channels or read in their controlled media." He added, "Moreover, while Israel has barred international media from entering Gaza to cover their crimes, we have Palestinian and Western bloggers inside Gaza who continue relentlessly to publish live and up to minute photos, videos and news that can't be found anywhere else.

Spreading this material of Israeli war crimes is the utmost important objective in this time of war to put pressure on the public around the world to raise their voices against the war in front of their governments. This will help in putting a quick end to this war."

Sabbah has used his degree in Engineering, Electronics and Communication from India's Birla Institute of Technology, not only in his capacity as a senior manager at Zain Bahrain, but also to support his homeland. He helped create the Palestine Blogs Aggregator at http://PalestineBlogs.net. He is also a co-founder of the Palestine Think Tank http://PalestineThinkTank.com, which, like all of his sites, is primarily in English, but also includes material in Arabic.

And of course don't miss Sabbah's own blog at http://sabbah.biz.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/9kfs53

One of the reasons I closed comments on this blog was the huge amount of Spam I had to deal with everyday. Since then, the Spam reduced dramatically. Now I don't have to deal with Spam comments, but Trackback and Pingback Spam only. Of course I can close Trackback/Pingback too, but so far they come in manageable count.

Last week, my spam counter crossed one million, thanks to Akismet for doing such a great job. This tool is the biggest single time saver in my blogging since I installed it couple of years ago.

Doing a little calculations to see how much time could have been wasted on this and assuming that if I had to moderate spam manually it would take around 4 seconds to track each of them:

* 1,001,169 comment spams X 4 seconds = 4,004,676 seconds needed for moderating comments.
* 4,004,676 seconds = 66744.6 minutes
* 66744.6 minutes = 1112.41 hours
* 1112.41 hours / 24 = 46.35 days (that's 1.5 months if I worked blogging non-stop 24 hours a day)
* 1112.41 hours / 8 = 139 days (that's 4.6 months if I worked blogging full-time job, 8 hours a day)

More if I took time off for weekends and holidays!!

I just came to know that once again this year, this blog - Sabbah's Blog - was nominated for the Fifth Annual Brass Crescent Awards 2008. Polls close Friday, December 19!

Last year, our sister Laila El-Haddad (of Raising Yousuf, Unplugged) won the first position and my blog was given a "Honerable mention".

So what are you waiting for? To vote for Sabbah, go to "BEST MIDEAST BLOG" section and give me a tip ;-)

I can't tell you how much happy I am after reading the following email, which I got from a dear American friend. It reassures me that I'm doing the right thing:

My Dearest Haitham,
I remember almost three years ago when I first emailed you, I asked you what your opinion on the Palestinian issue was. What a SILLY question to ask because I didn't know you!

Anyhoo, ever since, you have always been my inspiration, so I want to tell you that you inspired someone else also, my daughter (_removed by Haitham for privacy_), who is a freshman at (_removed by Haitham for privacy_)

Today when driving home after I picked her up (HOPEFULLY she gets her license next week) she said, "Mom, in two weeks I have to give my first presentation in my communications class (that's her major), and we get to pick any topic, it needs to be six minutes, and it's extemporaneous (not written in full, just notes-so they really need to know the subject)

I said, "Oh, well that's exciting, have you thought about a topic?"

She said, "Yes, the occupation"

I turned to her and said, "What? The occupation in Iraq?" (I only asked her that because there's certainly a lot more on our news about it)

She said, "No, Palestine"

Haitham, I got a big lump in my throat, and YOU came to my mind immediately.

She said, "Everyone knows alot about the occupation in Iraq, I want to teach my classmates something with my presentation"

So...she asked me to help her, but I doubt VERY much she would have chosen that subject had not three years ago I stumbled upon your blog, and then you, yes you Haitham, inspired me.

I wanted to let you know about this, so that you just take a rest whenever you need to, but know, that your efforts have now reached to a second generation in my family, and she REALLY wants to know all she can so that she can correct misconceptions that lead to our continued support of the occupation.

One presentation at a time, more to come...

Peace, love and hugs,
-

...and this could go on indefinitely.

Until further notice, if you need to reach me you can always send an email or contact me using the blog contact form.

[Click image to enlarge]

Here's a heat/size map of this blog, courtesy of Wordle. My favourites: Palestinian and Peace, not Israel.

Looking forward to "Peace". Meanwhile, for "Occupation" to end with the end of "Israel", figuratively speaking. Or actually, not figuratively speaking!

It was a great long vacation on personal level. OTOH, I've missed my blog and my online friends and hoping to be active and corresponding back soon.

Being away for more than a month, I have a lot to catchup and do online before I'm actively writing here and posting on my other blogs, but I promise to make it as short as possible.

Thank you for staying around!

No new posts here for some time now because been busy in preparing for my annual vacation with my family on one side and on the other side dumped the old Palestine Blogs aggregator platform and switched back to Drupal because the old one was pain-in-the-neck. That was not an easy task and took some time to clean up the old list of aggregated blogs and putting the rest back on the new one. I hope you like it.

Once that was over, I thought of giving the members some new badges, so last night had a chance to exercise a little on photoshop and came up with few new ones. Here they are (if you like to use any - or more - you can grab the code from http://palestineblogs.net/link-to-us):

and grunge ones:

Check out all the badges on http://palestineblogs.net/link-to-us

Haitham Sabbah, Mary Rizzo and Gilad Atzmon are very pleased to announce their new site, Palestine Think Tank. It is a site containing news, analysis, art and more to further the cause of justice for Palestinians. It concentrates on many aspects of the resistance, but also focuses on the issues affecting the entire Middle East. Please visit us at www.palestinethinktank.com, share this news with those who might be interested, and if you have a blog or site, consider linking to us. We also have a forum for those interested in interactive communication.

Together with us are some of the most insightful and talented writers, activists and artists around. Contributors include Khalid Amayreh, Ramzy Baroud, Adib Kawar, Ernesto Paramo, Wael Al Saad, Nadia Hasan, Iqbal Tamimi, Richard Jones, Nahida Izzat, Razan Al Ghazzawi, Khaled Islaih, Steve Amsel, Ben Heine and many more. www.palestinethinktank.com contains both original material and material from other sources that we believe deserves to be considered.

We are people from different backgrounds who live in different countries. We speak different languages and believe in different religions, or even believe in no religion at all.

These differences are not a problem to any of us.

Differences are what makes the world a wonderful place because everyone is unique. It allows us the possibility to learn more about the world and gain insights we would never have access to otherwise.

Celebrating our differences, we understand that there is a belief that unites us and unites all the people involved in creating this website. It is the belief that Zionism is wrong. Zionism is racism. For Zionism to happen, it means the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people of the land of Palestine. We accept nothing about Zionism as being positive, yet we believe there are some people who don’t know exactly what Zionism is, and therefore assume it is something different than an ideology, and therefore, is beyond criticism.

We wish to educate those who don’t know what Zionism is so that they are able to see how damaging it is and how it is a just cause to stop it. We hope www.palestinethinktank.com will be a space for free discussion and wide-ranging analysis.

We believe that the just struggle of the Palestinian people is the greatest liberation struggle of our times, and we aim to render service to their cause through presenting as many aspects of their history, culture and struggle as we can. We intend to give space to many Arab voices as well, since the full realisation of the potential of people in the entire Arab world has been hindered for far too long by the “International Community”. It is far easier to promote an idea of “the Arab” that cleanses Israel and the West from all responsibility for the instability and lack of progress that in some cases is evident than to listen to the complex arguments and reasoning that people from these countries and who understand the history of the Arab World are able to present.

We hope to be able to provide a site full of valid content that is at the service of the Palestinian people especially. Their steadfastness is an inspiration to all mankind, and to those of us in particular who feel close to their cause or are Palestinian, it is a message of love, hope and humanity that we hope we are worthy of.

Content of www.palestinethinktank.com is intellectual property of the authors. All material that does not appear in this site as the original source will always be credited for authors and source.

The material here may be reproduced elsewhere, but we request that you kindly cite our source and post a link to the page on www.palestinethinktank.com from where it was taken. We will also build up our links and community as time develops, so that we can all work towards our goal with the energy and imagination required.

www.palestinethinktank.com contains a forum, which is a space to discuss arguments related to the Middle East. We hope that it will allow all of us to broaden our horizons, engage in constructive debate and present a social network that will be useful to all of us.

www.palestinethinktank.com will be in two languages, in English predominantly, and Arabic.

We accept original articles as well as suggestions for material published elsewhere.

Almost a year ago, old readers here remember my story (along with many pro-Palestine, anti-Zionism bloggers) with the so called American "left-wing" website called Daily KOS.

I fell of the chair laughing today when I read that:

Prominent writers, members of progressive American organizations known for their heavy criticism of Israel will tour the country, meet with top officials. 'We want to provide them with an eye-opening experience that will help them better understand the complexity of the Arab-Israeli conflict,' says trip organizer Ira Forman.

Among the "guests", Daily Kos editor David Waldman!

You can read the details here. Keep in mind the history of Daily KOS with Palestinian and pro-Palestine bloggers, this whole thing is a joke. All pro-Palestine, pro-Peace, anti-Apartheid, anti-Zionism bloggers knows very well that Daily KOS is not Israel critical. How can they be when they banned each and every "Palestinian" blogger there for no reason, while Zionists still enjoy there the full time show?

Simply, it's time that Israel pay back the "left-wing" Daily KOS for job well done.

The news report that DK editor will visit Sderot (not the settlements) as well as:

The guests are also scheduled to visit with the top negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, Saeb Erekat and may also meet Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni.

Will DK tell Mr. Erekat how many Palestinian bloggers they kicked out? How about visiting Gaza and going through some of the "checkpoints" in Occupied Palestine, Mr. "left-wing"?

So much for U.S. "left wing" bloggers... a nice Israeli propaganda tour... (not paid by the lobby, but directly by Israel).

Welcome to the "left-wing" Independent Media!

Our beloved Mary is back online with here new blog, http://peacepalestine.wordpress.com/ after here old blog got stabbed in the back by a Night-Dog-Zionist called Tony Greenstein.

We Love You Mary!

Many friends asked me for a copy of my new "100% Palestinian Blogger" logo that you can see on the left top corner, but I was lazy to make the necessary modifications and release them until today, when Mona tipped me with a cute message. Thanks Mona :-)

So here they are; new Golden Seals for Palestinian and pro-Palestine blogs and bloggers. These Golden Seals are specially made for blogs and bloggers featured at Palestine Blogs aggregator ONLY (they deserve more than a Golden Seal).

To grab the code of any of the Golden Seals, go to:
http://palestineblogs.org/link-to-us/index.html

100% Palestine Blog:

100% Palestine Blogger:

100% Palestinian Blogger:

100% pro-Palestine Blog:

100% pro-Palestine Blogger:

Get any of the above from here!

Since we are talking about Palestine Blogs aggregator, it is worth mentioning some stats as of today:

1. More than 310 blogs aggregated on hourly bases.
2. More than 9000 visitor a day and almost 1.5 million page views a day.
3. Most of the blogs are in English, however other languages are also welcomed such as Arabic, Italian, French and Spanish to list some.