How a Secluded 1984 Conference Forged Israel’s Unprecedented Influence Over US Media

Buoyed by its success, the operation soon expanded to include school and university students worldwide, training them to act as vigorous advocates for Israel in classrooms and on campuses. Graduates of these Israeli-funded programs frequently enter influential fields, including journalism, where they continue to promote Hasbara narratives and defend Israel’s actions. The impact on Western media coverage of Palestine has been profound.

Mint Press News, November 11, 2024

As Israel’s October 1 invasion of Lebanon unfolds, the media’s complicity in shaping public perception raises urgent questions, particularly when viewed through the lens of a controversial 1984 conference where influential advertising and media figures gathered to refine Israel’s narrative strategies. This conference laid the groundwork for a sophisticated propaganda campaign—Hasbara—that sought to sanitize Israel’s actions and cast its military operations in a favorable light. Today, as Western journalists whitewash, distort, and conceal Israel’s the realities of Israel’s deadly campaign of violence, the enduring legacy of this meeting becomes alarmingly clear, revealing how narratives crafted decades ago continue to shape the coverage of a conflict that claims countless lives.

…………………………………………………………………………… The mainstream media’s systematic use of distancing and evasive language, omission and other duplicitous chicanery to downplay or outright justify Israel’s murder of innocent civilians while simultaneously dehumanizing their victims and delegitimizing Palestinian resistance against brutal, illegal IDF occupation is as unconscionable as it is well-documented. Amazingly though, ‘twasn’t ever thus. Once upon a time, mainstream news networks exposed Israel’s war crimes without qualification, and anchors and pundits openly condemned these actions on live TV to audiences of millions.

The story of how Western media was transformed into Israel’s doting, servile propaganda appendage is not only a fascinating and sordid hidden chronicle. It is a deeply educational lesson in how imperial power can easily subordinate supposed arbiters of truth to its will. Comprehending how we got to this point equips us with the tools to assess, identify, and deconstruct lies large and small – and effectively challenge and counter not only Israel’s falsehoods but the entire settler colonial endeavor.

‘Neighborhood Bully’

On June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. The effort was ostensibly intended to drive Palestinian Liberation Organization freedom fighters away from their positions on Israel’s northern border. But, as the IDF savagely pushed ever-deeper into the country, including Beirut, it became clear that ethnic cleansing, massacres, and land theft were – as in Palestine – the true goal. Throughout the Lebanese capital, news crews from major networks and reporters from the West’s biggest newspapers were waiting.

Israel’s rapacious bloodlust and casual contempt for Arab lives had hitherto been, by and large, successfully concealed from the outside world. Suddenly, though, scenes of deliberate IDF airstrikes on residential housing blocks, Tel Aviv’s trigger-happy soldiers running amok in Beirut’s streets, and hospitals overflowing with civilians suffering from grave injuries, including chemical burns due to Israel’s use of phosphorus shells, were broadcast the world over, to nigh-universal outcry. As veteran NBC news anchor John Chancellor contemporarily explained to Western viewers:

What in the world is going on? Israel’s security problem, on its border, is 50 miles to the south. What’s an Israeli army doing here in Beirut? The answer is we are now dealing with an imperial Israel, which is solving its problems in someone else’s country, world opinion be damned.”

Global shock and repulsion at Israel’s conduct would only ratchet during the IDF’s resultant illegal military occupation of swaths of Lebanon. …………………………………………………………..

To say the least, Israel had an international PR disaster of historic proportions on its blood-soaked hands…………………………………………………..

So it was that in the summer of 1984, the American Jewish Congress – a major Zionist lobby organization – convened a conference in Jerusalem, Israel’s Public Image: Problems and Remedies. It was chaired by U.S. advertising supremo Carl Spielgovel, who a decade earlier provided pro bono advice to the Israeli government on strategies for publicly communicating why Tel Aviv refused to adhere to the terms of the Henry Kissinger-brokered 1973 Sinai Accords. Spielgovel later recalled:

It occurred to me then that the Israelis were doing a good job at training their military people, and they were doing a relatively good job at training their diplomatic corps. But they weren’t spending any time training information officers, people who could present Israel’s case to embassies and TV anchormen around the world. Over the years, I made this a personal cause celebre.”

The 1984 Jerusalem conference offered Spielgovel and a welter of Western advertising and public relations executives, media specialists, editors, journalists, and leaders of major Zionist advocacy groups an opportunity to achieve that malign objective. Together, they hammered out a dedicated strategy for ensuring the “crisis” caused by news reporting on the invasion of Lebanon two years earlier would never be repeated. Their antidote? Ceaseless, methodical, and wide-ranging “Hasbara” – Hebrew for propaganda – for “changing people’s minds [and] making them think differently.”

‘Big Scoop’

The AJC subsequently published records of the conference. They offer extraordinarily candid insight into how multiple Hasbara strategies, which have been in perpetual operation ever since were birthed. …………………………………………………………

There was extensive discussion of how to present “unpalatable policies” to Western populations…….. ” The necessity of training the Jewish diaspora in countering criticism of Israel was considered paramount.

………………….. media framing on Israel’s actions needed to be determined in advance…………………

It was also suggested that on an individual and organizational level, Zionist activists serve as a rapid reaction force, deluging news outlets with complaints en masse should their coverage of Israel be at all critical. One attendee boasted of their personal success in this regard:

“One day CBS News Radio reported that an American soldier had been hurt by stepping on an Israeli cluster bomb at the Beirut airport. I called CBS to point out that no one had established the bomb was an Israeli one. One hour later CBS reported that an American soldier had stepped on a bomb; this time the report omitted any reference to Israel.”

‘Frequent Violations’

Another significant recommendation came from Carl Spielgovel: creating a “training program” to bring carefully selected Israeli information specialists into U.S. advertising, PR agencies, and major news outlets. The initiative aimed to equip them with industry insights, ensure Hasbara efforts were maximized, and establish close relationships between Israeli officials and the organizations to which they were assigned.

These “specialists” would operate under the guidance of a U.S.-Israeli council described as “wise persons who can project different scenarios and how to cope with them” on complex issues like “annexation and Jerusalem.”

……………………………………………………………….. Since then, a dedicated Hasbara program aimed at cultivating skilled Zionist advocates in the U.S. has operated continuously.

To a significant degree, the portrayal of Tel Aviv as “the gallant little underdog democracy fighting for survival against all the odds” has been firmly reestablished. Despite the ongoing crisis in Gaza, mainstream outlets seldom provide context for Palestinian resistance to Israel’s policies of annexation, occupation, and military actions. Coverage nearly always frames Israel’s actions as “self-defense” against “terrorist” threats, with Western journalists keenly aware of potential repercussions for diverging from this narrative.

The rapid reaction force proposed at the 1984 AJC conference remains highly active. An extensive network of Hasbara-trained individuals and Israel lobby organizations is always on standby, ready to pressure and intimidate news outlets if coverage diverges from favorable framing or casts Israel in a critical light. As a senior BBC producer once confided to veteran media critic Greg Philo:

“We wait in fear for the telephone call from the Israelis. The only issue we face then is how high up it’s come from them. Has it come from a monitoring group? Has it come from the Israeli embassy? And how high has it gone up our organization? Has it reached the editor or director general? I have had journalists on the phone to me before a major news report, asking which words can I use – ‘is it alright I say this’?”

An October exposé by Al Jazeera, citing testimony from BBC and CNN whistleblowers, detailed “pro-Israel bias in coverage, systematic double standards, and frequent violations of journalistic principles” at both networks.

Were it not for the persistent investigations by outlets like MintPress News, The Grayzone, and Electronic Intifada, unfounded allegations promoted by Israel since the outset of the Gaza conflict—such as claims of Hamas committing mass rape or beheading infants—might never have been thoroughly debunked and might still shape the “context” for Israel’s actions against Palestinians. Meanwhile, countless concerned citizens have actively challenged Western narratives on the conflict in real-time across social media, a groundswell of critique that may be fueling pushback within some mainstream newsrooms. ……………………………………. https://www.mintpressnews.com/1984-hasbara-conference-israel-influence-us-media/288534/