Action Alert: Write to New Mexican about Gideon Levy’s half-truths. Yasher Koach to Steven Goldstein…

What are the most effective propaganda techniques?  The American Historical Association states:

The propagandist tries to stimulate others to accept without challenge his own assertions, or to act as he wants them to do. The idea of using suggestion or stimulation as a propaganda device is that it will lead a public to accept a proposition even though there are not logical grounds for accepting it…How does the propagandist use this tool? By making broad and positive statements. By presenting his statements in simple and familiar language. By refusing to admit, or even suggest, that there is another side to the question…A third method of propaganda is the appeal to the known desires of an audience…The skilled propagandist also knows the techniques of “making ideas stick.” It is because of this knowledge that he resorts to key words and slogans, shibboleths, or other symbolic forms.

Unfortunately Santa Fe was again deceived with plenty of propaganda from Gideon Levy and his “moderator,” David Barsamian, on Wednesday, October 5th, 2016, served up by that anti-Israel propaganda machine, the Lannan Foundation.

We urge you to write to Santa Fe media (New Mexican, Albuquerque Journal, Sf Reporter, etc. – see here for contact information) with copies to the Lannan Foundation to expose the lies through half-truths, distortions, and innuendoes Levy claimed.

Background

On September 19 we urged our members to write to the media to inform their readers about the duplicitous writings and talks of Gideon Levy, another Lannan anti-Israel speaker.  It’s only fair that the Santa Fe audience of Lannan speakers should “know before they go.”

You can hear Levy’s talk yourself on the Lannan website here.  Once you listen, use your voice to write to the media.  Tips on writing letters-to-the-editor and op-eds can be found here.

Unfortunately the list of half-truths and distortions by Gideon Levy is much too long to write about in this posting.  Anyone with any reasonable knowledge about the Palestinian dispute with Israel, or with the history of the region, can pick out the propaganda in Levy’s talk.

“The skilled propagandist… knows the techniques of ‘making ideas stick.’ It is because of this knowledge that he resorts to key words and slogans, shibboleths, or other symbolic forms.”

The critique given of Levy in our prior posting is relevant to his Lannan talk as well.  Indeed, he repeated some of the lies and fabrications that have been exposed before by CAMERA (see here for a long list), such as making up quotes like “Golda Meir said, ‘After the holocaust Israelis can do whatever they want.'”  Indeed there are so many distortions, lies, omitted relevant facts, and half-truths that CAMERA couldn’t even list them all in their article.  Instead, they state “If this was the first time that Levy ‘erred,’ there likely would have been less of a public outcry. But despite his pleading innocence regarding his ‘unfortunate mistakes,’ his writings over the years have been marred by documented falsehoods. His distorted coverage … joins a long list of earlier baseless claims…And there are more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more such examples.”

“By refusing to admit, or even suggest, that there is another side to the question.”

As you listen to his prepared remarks you’ll notice that Levy says nothing (literally zero) about the other side – Palestinian leadership and its responsibility regarding the conflict.  And it’s only in the Q&A session when he mentions any of the misdeeds of former Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority itself:  the 2nd intifada.  Note that this is only in the context of why the peace movement has diminished in Israel, not in relation to Palestinian leadership’s unwillingness to compromise on at least two Israeli generous offers of prior two-state solutions.   See the talk by Bassem Eid sponsored by SFMEW, the ADL, and the Jewish Federation of New Mexico to hear some of the information Levy leaves out.

“A third method of propaganda is the appeal to the known desires of an audience.”

Given the loud applause from the audience, it appears as if the pap Levy served up was to a willingly deceived crowd which reacted to Levy’s efforts to convince them of the veracity of his claims – though he offered up no evidence to support his claims, and provided only half-truths, distortions, and familiar far-left language that anyone with a shred of knowledge about the Palestinian dispute with Israel would have rejected as, yes, we’ll say it again, propaganda.

“…techniques, of slogans, catchwords, and other devices, when they talk about propaganda.”

David Barsamian, the “moderator,” of the session begins with lies as well; he falsely claims that the settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights are “outside of Israel’s internationally recognized border[s].”  The truth:  there are no final, clearly-delineated international borders (see our posting on this here).  The so-called pre-1967 war cease fire lines were Armistice lines from 1949, and are not definitive; according to UN resolution 242 the final lines are to be negotiated.  Barsamian further falsely claims that the settlements are “unambiguously illegal under international law” – again another fabrication, which we’ve written about in other postings (see here).

Levy constantly uses left-wing catchwords (colonies, occupation, Settlement project, “brutal, violent regime,” execution, equal rights, universal values, apartheid) while dismissing “Jewish” values.  He mis-states what Jews believe is the meaning of “the chosen people” and uses this anti-Semitic canard (used by prior anti-Semites) to set up Israeli Jews as therefore putting themselves above the rights of others.  Of course,  as is common by propagandists, he never defines the catchwords he uses, instead letting the audience stew in their own common misconceptions as well.

Bottom line

By bringing Gideon Levy, who in his discussion proudly proclaims his “birds-of-a-feather” alliance with the ilk of Noam Chomsky, Norm Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Amy Goodman, and others, Lannan has once again shown its extreme anti-Semitism, or some would call it what it clearly is – Jew hatred.  But Lannan is not alone in this regard, because it is playing to a segment of the Santa Fe population that is also so far left that its propaganda about the Israel-Palestinian conflict swings around to being more fascistic than liberal –  evident in the large applause Levy received from the Lannan audience for his extreme anti-Israel position.

 

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Yasher Koach to SFMEW activist Steven Goldstein, whose letter was published in the October 12, 2016, Santa Fe New Mexican Letters to the Editor: