Hasbara Spam Alert

What really deserves moral censure is the reaction of many foreign governments to the election of Hamas. People like Peter MacKay rejecting them out of hand could only strengthen the hand of the rocket-firing factions and giving them no reason to do anything else.

In this sense the combattants are relatively blameless in that they are following a script written by fairly irresponsible foreign actors(who had nothing to lose and arms sales expansions to gain.)

The alternative was to support the new Hamas government in its public infrastructure  and health work(which it's always been strong on and why it gets most of its Palestinian support) . That approach would have bolstered a less destructive way and undercut recruitement to the militant faction. But its problem is that it takes a whille to show results and is nowhere near as dramatic TV("good" TV for a "24" public) as blowing stuff up.

Israel is now [b]paying[/b] for Hasbara.

Quote:

The Israeli government has launched a program to pay students to promote the Israeli agenda on Facebook and internet chatrooms.

Students participating in the program will receive a two thousand dollar stipend from the Jewish Agency, part of the Israeli government, to spend five hours a week online promoting talking points provided by the Israeli government.

[url=http://www.imemc.org/article/62782]Source[/url]

It's also reported on the very respectable [url=http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/israeli-students-get-200... Intifada[/url] under Ali Abunimah's byline. I have no hesitation in accepting it as true.