Who are the brainwashers?

In preceding posts, we've established that the reasons given for the current Israeli campaign of ethnic cleansing -- the three kidnapped youths, the tunnels and the rocket attacks -- are all fabrications. Anyone with any sense knows that the long-term Israeli plan is to eradicate the Palestinians, either by forced evacuation or by genocide.

We know this, but we cannot say this. The American media has been engaged in a decades-long conspiracy to brainwash the American public into accepting a pseudo-reality. But the hallucination is starting to crumble. From the Daily Beast:

This narrow strip of land that used to be called “the Gaza Strip,” already one of the more densely populated places on Earth, is growing dramatically smaller. The Israeli military, relentlessly and methodically, is driving people out of the 3-kilometer (1.8 mile) buffer zone it says it needs to protect against Hamas rockets and tunnels. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the buffer zone eats up about 44 percent of Gaza’s territory.

What that means on the ground is scenes of extraordinary devastation in places like the Al Shajaya district approaching Gaza’s eastern frontier, and Beit Hanoun in the north. These were crowded neighborhoods less than three weeks ago. Now they have been literally depopulated, the residents joining more than 160,000 internally displaced people in refuges and makeshift shelters. Apartment blocks are fields of rubble, and as I move through this hostile landscape the phrase that keeps ringing in my head is “scorched earth.”

It’s not like Israel didn’t plan this...

Here is another flagrant example of media manipulation:

Apparently Israel today hit a refugee camp and Shifa hospital nearby killing several more kids, photos have been posted (see left). Israel once again claims not targeting or operating in area and says must have been Hamas rockets--in both cases! NBC says at least 30 dead, mainly at the camp, and blames Israel: "The Israel Defense Forces told Haaretz that a 'preliminary investigation has found the Israeli army did not fire at the Shifa Hospital, and the fire is believed to have been Hamas.' However, a NBC News journalist witnessed the attack on the hospital and said it had been fired by an Israeli drone--this attribution, oddly, removed from a revised NBC story, which now highlights Israel's denials. ("Early reports from the ground said an Israeli drone was responsible for the attack.")

How does this happen? Just what, exactly, is the mechanism controlling the press?

The mechanism is a man -- one of the most audaciously evil men alive today. His name is Frank Luntz, and he's a Republican master of propaganda.

There is a reason for this enhancement of the PR skills of Israeli spokesmen. Going by what they say, the playbook they are using is a professional, well-researched and confidential study on how to influence the media and public opinion in America and Europe. Written by the expert Republican pollster and political strategist Dr Frank Luntz, the study was commissioned five years ago by a group called The Israel Project, with offices in the US and Israel, for use by those "who are on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel".

Every one of the 112 pages in the booklet is marked "not for distribution or publication" and it is easy to see why. The Luntz report, officially entitled "The Israel project's 2009 Global Language Dictionary, was leaked almost immediately to Newsweek Online, but its true importance has seldom been appreciated. It should be required reading for everybody, especially journalists, interested in any aspect of Israeli policy because of its "dos and don'ts" for Israeli spokesmen.

This important article proves that all Israeli officials are engaged in deception -- and that they are reliant on the Republican party.

Luntz is a fascinating figure, in the sense that malignity is always fascinating. This profile from last January describes his loss of faith in the American people -- in democracy -- because average working folk can't be talked into accepting the glories of Pure Libertarian Utopia.

These Republican propagandists have always had too high an opinion of their abilities. A wily Luntzian might come up with a way to sell a shit sandwich -- "Let's call it a Chocolate Delight! That name has tested well in all of our focus groups..." -- but one bite of the thing is all you'll take.

Look at Luntz' resume:

Frank I. Luntz (born February 23, 1962) is an American political consultant, pollster, and Republican Party strategist[2] associated with Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Newt Gingrich, and the administration of George W. Bush, for whom he helped frame the public debate surrounding estate taxation around the infamous "death tax" messaging...

Buchanan is widely reviled. So is Gingrich. Perot didn't become president. Dubya spent the last years of his presidency supported by less than 30 percent of the populace, leaving the Dems with something close to a lock on the next election.

Luntz has some magic, yes, but not enough magic to convince you to finish that shit sandwich. Nobody in the world has that kind of magic.

Josh Marshall (has the old Josh Marshall finally returned?) provides further details:

In one very notable example, Israel's current Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, is a former GOP political operative who once worked for Frank Luntz, and only made aliyah (immigrated to Israel) in 2005. He even reportedly played some role (though I suspect a small one since he was just out of college at the time) in creating the 1994 Contract with America. It's usually good for both countries when a country's ambassador has a deep relationship with the country's head of government. It makes more seamless and reliable communication possible. And all seem to agree that Dermer's relationship with Netanyahu is very, very deep - this article refers to him as "Bibi's Brain."

So Dermer is tight with Netanyahu and he, by definition, has a ready grasp of the the minute intricacies of US politics, particularly Washington politics. But his background makes Democrats and especially this White House suspicious.

I don't know what role Dermer himself plays in the working the general ties with US Republicans, though I suspect it's substantial. But Netanyahu has made the de facto alliance between the Likud or what remains of the faction he owns (that part gets very complicated) and the US Republican party increasingly explicit. And that's dangerous. Dangerous for all concerned but particularly for Israel. I wish Netanyahu and his government had a better sense of the toxic repercussions of mobilizing GOP proxies as cut-outs in this way. It should go without saying that the Israel-US alliance becomes more brittle as it becomes more clearly identified with a single US political party. And perhaps more than that, as it becomes more clearly identified with the ties between Netanyahu and US Republicans.

Obviously, Marshall and I are not on the same page; "dangerous for Israel" is a phrase designed to put a smile on my face. I want to see that racist state replaced by a truly democratic society.

But the larger point here is this: Israel's alliance with the worst of America -- with the Republican media manipulators, with the Christian nutcases -- will prove ruinous in the long run, and maybe even in the medium run. This alliance is having an emetic effect on most Americans, including most Jews.

Frank Luntz -- that sour, unhappy little man -- cannot save Israel. No-one can. A million Luntzes cannot sell decent Americans on this scale of barbarity. Euphemism cannot make genocide and racism palatable.

Those who have supported Israel have no choice but to acknowledge their sin. They must acknowledge that racial supremacism has always been the foundation of the Israeli experiment, and that genocide is inevitable in a nation built on stolen land.

Hard truth is the first requirement of justice.