Israel just quintupled its PR budget to $730 million; experts say it won’t work

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-just-quintupled-its-pr-budget-to-730-million-experts-say-it-wont-work/

227 points · 63 comments · view on lemmy.world

63 Comments

shittydwarf@sh.itjust.works · 59 pts · 132d

yesman@lemmy.world · 46 pts · 132d (3 replies)

This is a panic move. I predict that the Gaza genocide; the Iran War; along with allowing support for Israel to become a partisan issue, will go down as the biggest mistakes in Israeli history.

Even if you don't care about dead Arabs, you can draw a direct line between Israel and $5 gas. American support for Israel is low and dropping. It's not just the anti-Semites and far-left who oppose Israel anymore.

avidamoeba@lemmy.ca · 22 pts · 132d

And I don't think the war and $5 gas are fully reflected in these opinion surveys quite yet.

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · -2 pts · 131d (1 reply)

even more so since it also involves why they are doing gaza, iran war, to distract from epstein files.

badbytes@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 131d

Should look up the length of Gaza genocide. It's not a recent issue. Goes back a bit.

MrSulu@lemmy.ml · 38 pts · 132d

No amount of lipstick can make an ugly as fuck genocide to away.

kurmudgeon@lemmy.world · 36 pts · 131d (3 replies)

Israel was a fucking mistake. I'm not anti-semetic. I'm anti-Israel. I have no problem with Jews. I have a problem with a genocidal, land-stealing dictatorship mascarading as a cruisading democracy that has no value on human life. Fuck Israel.

muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 131d

Well it was such a great idea when puritans did it we thought “why the hell not?”

BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe · 3 pts · 131d (1 reply)

Why are you a Nazi? Why do you hate Jews so much?

/S

Siegfried@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 131d

The common reaction on my book would be "are you denying the right to exist of the state of israel?" As if that would be the highest unforgovable sin

States dont have a right to nothing.

rwrwefwef@sh.itjust.works · 30 pts · 132d (6 replies)

Ngl, Israeli propaganda used to be a lot more subtle. Now it's like they don't even bother trying. They've lost their way.

avidamoeba@lemmy.ca · 19 pts · 132d (3 replies)

It's like they're hellbent on living out the antisemitic stereotypes. It's getting difficult to fight antisemitism outside of Israel.

Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works · 17 pts · 131d (2 replies)

I don't see a lot of anti-semitism aside from fringe internet forums. Anti Zionism is pretty popular though.

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 131d (1 reply)

israel was able to convince many instituitions int he western democracies that anti-zionism is anti-semetic, Universities has been quashing dissent since.

mrdown@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 131d

Not a single institute and western leaders believes antizionism is antisemetic. They willingfully support a genocidal state that they always knew it's nature

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 131d

they went hard on reddit, Worldnews was taken over by them overnight, plus they start spreading it to like r/pics as biden is sole cause (stop voting for him) propaganda, i was able to report those and they did get banned for a while. funny how that immediately disappeared the moment the election ended, no word of them condemning trump for the same thing.

frongt@lemmy.zip · -1 pts · 131d

They found they don't have to be subtle.

Wfh@lemmy.zip · 20 pts · 132d

How much of that will be dedicated to buying votes at Eurovision?

daannii@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 132d (1 reply)

Remember how just like 3 years ago it was super rare to see videos of people being murdered in broad daylight on common social media platforms. ?

If you wanted to see that dark shit you had to go to dark places online to find it.

Now it's every day I see a video on Instagram of someone murdered in broad daylight.

The u.s president even posted such a video.

But the videos I see every day...

Yeah Most of the time it is IDF killing a civilian.

Some innocent person. Sometimes a child.

No coming back from that. We all have seen it now.

We all know. We ain't gonna un-know.

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 131d

it was originally largely targeting harris/biden campaign, i guess they never stopped, because they thought showing it would give them continued support.

phoenixz@lemmy.ca · 17 pts · 132d

We commit genocide, but don't worry, we are nice guys, our commercials say so!

Oh yeah, I totally see that working. People will immediately overlook the genocide because of a funny ad somewhere

knexcar@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 131d (5 replies)

Is this budget for convincing the general public to support them, or convincing US politicians? Because if it’s the former I don’t see it working or anyone believing the lies. Bloomberg tried something similar to get into the democratic primary and I’m pretty sure he failed spectacularly.

But I’d bet it’s the latter, and I let buying US politicians will continue to be successful. Because if both republicans and democrats support Israel, even if the public hates them who else is there to vote for?

Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 131d

It's definitely for the former

$730 million for public diplomacy — the broad category known in Hebrew as hasbara — nearly five times the $150 million they allocated the year before.

Hasbara is about changing perception of the general public. The only reason we see some shift in government officials changing their course is because of how toxic support from Israel is seen (so much so that they can lose elections because of it).

So long as Israel can perform public advocacy to at least get to a place of neutral outlook (or become a sideline topic), then they'd have achieved their goals.

Israel's current stated goal is to increase Arab-phobia and Islamophobia through populism and anti-immigration rhetoric to be greater than people's disdain for Israel.

DillDough@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 131d (2 replies)

3rd parties, independents, just not voting period, there are a lot of options... we're too far gone now though, no matter what we need to fully destroy and rebuild our government from the constitution up.

knexcar@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 131d (1 reply)

Every time an election comes up though, everyone is like “we need to vote for the democrats because third party/not voting is ‘a vote for the republicans’” and sadly I have to admit due to how first past the post elections work they do have a point. So any individual voting for anything other than a democrat (or not voting) makes it less likely the democrats win and more likely republicans win, and they’re by far the worse option (and still pro Israel).

Maybe Israel’s propaganda is to dissuade people from voting for anti-Israel politicians in the primaries and the like, rather than directly make them look good.

DillDough@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 131d

In your hypothetical you stated that every voter was over both parties. If that were the case then any candidate outside of our 2 established right wing parties would win. But yes in reality we are too stupid to do literally anything else besides let the nepo babies and most malignant of our species control everything with 0 repercussions, been like that since the day we developed speech and human societies and it will remain so until we are no more. We are the species with the least ability to learn apparently, even with all the new tools we constantly develop to help us we are doomed to repeat the exact same mistakes for the entirety of our existence.

phutatorius@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 130d

or convincing US politicians?

That involves bags of money delivered via AIPAC and, shall we say, more informal means. That has been a long-term and extraordinarily successful effort.

aramis87@fedia.io · 12 pts · 132d

$730 million for public diplomacy [is] nearly five times the $150 million they allocated the year before. That earlier sum was itself about 20 times what Israel had spent on such efforts before the war in Gaza erupted in October, 2023, following Hamas’s invasion and massacre in southern Israel.

So 2023 was about 75 million, and they're about 10x the budget they were a few years ago.

survey after survey shows declining support for Israel in the United States, its most important ally. [...] 60 percent of Americans now view Israel unfavorably, up seven points in a single year, with only 37% viewing it favorably. [...] 57% of Republicans under 50 hold negative views of Israel. Support has cratered among the religiously unaffiliated, Black Protestants and Catholics. Among American Jews, support has slipped below two-thirds.

Alexstarfire@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 132d (4 replies)

Why would they say that? It's been working for decades.

aramis87@fedia.io · 11 pts · 132d (1 reply)

As the article says

“The problem is that people don’t believe the state anymore. And that’s a much, much deeper problem that no amount of money is going to repair.”

You might also want to read the essay on the thermocline of trust.

Alexstarfire@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 132d

That was always the obvious argument to be made. Just not sure how true it is with how many people still support Israel.

trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 132d

Probably because its still less than their genocide budget

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 0 pts · 131d

they had to pay google as of recently to spread propaganda there.

muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 131d

If your country has a budget for PR and it’s not for tourism…..dude

sportsjorts@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 131d (1 reply)

I would rather have healthcare for all Americans before sending another tax payer cent to those genocidal maniacs. Stop sending money and arms to Israel full stop!

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 131d

israel has healthcare for all, because they can afford since they dont need fund thier war machine, using USA as a proxy for all thier wars.

hark@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 131d

If people know you're a liar, lying more won't help you.

PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 131d (5 replies)

Israel is a pariah terrorist state created out of thin air by the British which displaced 700,000 people who’d lived there for centuries

HugeNerd@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 131d (2 replies)

Nuh uh, god granted a piece of sun-blasted desert to special people then also created lush and verdant plains and forests elsewhere on the planet.

PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 131d (1 reply)

I will never understand the appeal that place has in religion. It’s such a boring ugly shit hole…

HugeNerd@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 130d

Religion is a mental illness.

phutatorius@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 130d (1 reply)

The Brits colluded, but the Zionist program started long before the Brits got involved.

PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 130d

They just ended fucking up the Middle East in general

SabinStargem@lemmy.today · 9 pts · 131d

I know what Israel is: An enemy to people in general. No different from the Nazis.

drmoose@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 131d (6 replies)

I don't think Israel can recover their reputation within foreseeable future. They'd need to completely reform everything.

mrdown@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 131d (1 reply)

They need to stop colonization

prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 131d

That would be step one

floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 131d

Just like the US

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 0 pts · 131d (2 replies)

they need to get rid of netanyahu and his whole government first. hasnt he been in power for decades already?

mrdown@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 131d

Netenyahu is not the real problem. The problem is zionism the supermasist genocidal ideology that all israeli prime ministers before him had. Every single iarseli prime minister is a war criminal that would have done the same as Netenyahu after October 7.

drmoose@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 131d

It feels like the opposite is actually happening. Israel is falling further and further into religious alt right every day.

BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe · 7 pts · 131d (1 reply)

Who would have thought that the lesson they would take from the Holocaust was to "Pay It Forward?"

phutatorius@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 130d

Sadly, that's one common reaction to trauma.

BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe · 6 pts · 131d

Just the announcement of the PR budget was bad PR. Not a good start.

Kepion@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 132d

Imagine how many more tweets like these they can afford now

EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com · 5 pts · 132d

They should probably save their energy for dealing with climate change.

Gates9@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 131d

No, but some folks will get rich off of United States tax payers

HubertManne@piefed.social · 3 pts · 132d

thats that include the stuff for us elections.

Prove_your_argument@piefed.social · 3 pts · 131d

Nothing can be done to change the public’s perceptions of their past and ongoing atrocities since 2023.

The ones who support them are either ignorant of reality or bought and paid for.

T00l_shed@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 131d

I will forgive israel if they give me all the land they occupy. I will immediately give it to Palestine

venusaur@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 132d

Social engineering is a helluva drug

IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 132d

that the budget allocated for the swan song?

mrdown@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 131d

Reminds me of the most popular intelectual property and celebrities has the biggest ad compaign despite not needing it. Same here , israel proved that they can get away with full blown genocide with minimal pressure