All language subtitles for The.Occupation.of.the.American.Mind.2016.720p.KNPY.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H264-PTP

[street noise]

[explosion]

[explosion]

[music]

Narrator: On July 8,
2014, Israel launched a

devastating military
attack on the Gaza Strip.

[explosion]

Narrator: Over the course
of 51 days, the Israeli

military dropped nearly 20,000
tons of explosives on Gaza,

a densely populated area
the size of Philadelphia,

killing over 2,000 Palestinians and
wounding tens of thousands more.

The overwhelming majority of
these casualties were civilians.

Television news montage:
This strip of land is

being bombarded from
the air, sea, and land...

Israel launched at least 160
strikes on the Gaza strip...

And there's one less hospital in Gaza
now. Israel today flattened Wafa Hospital.

Narrator: The sheer
scale of the attacks sparked

outrage and condemnation
around the world.

News anchor: Israel's
month-long pounding of

Gaza shocked many
people around the world.

Mass demonstrations have been
held in many of the world's major cities.

[protesters chant]

Narrator: But in the United
States, the story was different.

Polls showed the American people
holding firm in their support for Israel.

CNN anchor: This is the latest
CNN-ORC poll of Americans...

shows 57% of those
polled say Israel's action

in Gaza is justified,
34% say unjustified.

Narrator: These numbers were
striking, but they weren't new.

Over the course of a
conflict in which Palestinian

casualties have far
outnumbered Israeli casualties,

the American people
have consistently shown far

more sympathy for Israelis
than for Palestinians.

Peter Hart: It's very difficult to
divorce public opinion on any question

from the media coverage that
people rely on to form opinions.

And I think the most prevalent
lesson from looking at the coverage

is that the coverage tends to see
this conflict from the Israeli side.

Sut Jhally: Study after study has
demonstrated that Israeli perspectives

dominate American
media coverage.

So by far the most common
thing we've heard is that

everything comes down to
Israel's right to defend itself.

Tzipi Livni: Israel is a
state that implements

its right to defend
itself and its citizens.

Yousef Munayyer: It is a talking
point that is set from the top,

and by the top I mean from the highest
officials, government officials, who are

commenting on this issue, which the
media obsessively covers and repeats.

Benjamin Netanyahu: A man's
gotta do what a man's gotta do,

and you say a country's gotta
do what a country's gotta do.

We have to defend ourselves.

Munayyer: In the most
recent war in 2014,

when we looked at
mainstream media outlets,

almost by a margin of 3 to
1, Israeli spokespeople were

overrepresented compared
to Palestinian spokespeople.

So almost every time you
turned on the screen there

was an Israeli representative
on the screen telling you

Israel is the one that's in a position
of defense. It is being attacked.

Ron Prosor: And
basically, Israel is saying:

hey, you don't have to be a
rocket scientist to understand

that if rockets fly on your head,
you're allowed to defend yourself.

Munayyer: Add to this the fact that
you have American elected officials

also reinforcing Israel's
right to defend itself.

President Barack Obama:
As I've said many times,

Israel has a right to defend itself against
rocket and tunnel attacks from Hamas.

Munayyer: And you
hear some of the same

framing by anchors who
reiterate and reinforce

many of the same
talking points that the

Israeli official
spokespeople are making.

CNN anchor: Israel has the right to
defend itself against Hamas, of course -

a group that is firing
rockets on Israel,

coming out of tunnels
to attack Israelis.

Munayyer: That imbalance
there was very significant in

shaping the way the public
understood this conflict.

Rula Jebreal: I worked in the
European media for a long time.

The coverage is the opposite.

There's Palestinian legislators,

Palestinian thinkers,
Palestinian intellectuals,

pro-Palestinian
thinkers. Many voices.

Hanan Ashwari: So
let me say then very

frankly, it's very easy
to blame the victim.

It's very easy to pull
out the terrorist label.

Jebreal: You come to America
and you think that you are an alien,

you're looking at a different
world, or a different planet,

and I'm thinking,
"What's going on here?"

Mark Crispin Miller: When
a narrative is so dominant...

Michael Oren:
Thousands of rockets...

Mark Crispin Miller: ...without
any visible dissent or complication,

it's extremely difficult to
make clear to people that it is -

it is basically a
propaganda story.

John Kerry: Israel is under
siege by a terrorist organization.

Miller: How do
you make that clear

when the mainstream spectacle
is so unrelenting and total?

Jhally: We hear over and
over again that the conflict

comes down to Palestinian
terrorism and Israeli security,

and what gets pushed
out of the frame entirely

is the fact now that
for almost 50 years,

Palestinians have been
systematically dispossessed from

their land and denied their
most basic human rights.

[music]

[newsreel music]

Newsreel narrator:
Pioneers and refugees from

countries of the
oppression, young and old,

they are going now to a
land, which accepts them.

They will march to their
work in the Jewish settlements:

To build roads.
To quarry stones.

They will drill wells to
restore to Palestine's

soil its long-neglected
fruitfulness.

Narrator: Zionism, the
nationalist movement

that emerged in
Europe in the late 1800s,

was dedicated to the
idea that the Jewish people,

after centuries of living as persecuted
minorities within other countries,

were entitled to a state
in historic Palestine,

the biblical homeland of the
Jews more than 3,000 years before.

But there was a basic problem
with the choice from the start.

Palestine was already home to
hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs,

who had been living in
Palestine for centuries -

first under the rule of the
Ottoman Empire, and since

World War I under the
control of the British Empire -

and for decades had
aspirations of their

own for an independent
state in Palestine.

Tensions steadily
escalated during the 1930s,

placing more and more pressure
on the British colonial government

to reconcile the competing
interests of both sides.

[marching]

After World War II and the Holocaust,
the situation reached a breakpoint.

Ultimately the British colonial
government made the decision to withdraw

and to pass the problem on to
the newly created United Nations.

In 1947, UN Resolution 181 recommended
that Palestine be split into two parts.

Jews, who were a third of the
population, would receive 56% of the land.

Palestinians, who were
two-thirds of the population

and possessed more than
90% of historic Palestine,

would receive 44%.

These terms were immediately
rejected by Arab leaders as unfair.

But in the spring of 1948,
Zionist leaders declared

Israel a state along the
proposed borders anyway,

triggering the first
Arab-Israeli war.

Archival newsreel: Arab
armies set out to destroy

the newly born nation, and
suffered repeated defeats.

Narrator: After winning
a crushing victory,

Israel took possession
of even more land.

By the time armistice
was declared in 1949,

Israel controlled 78%
of historic Palestine.

The creation of the new state would
be celebrated by Israelis as a triumph.

But to this day, it is commemorated
by Palestinians as "The Nakba" -

the Arabic term for
"The Catastrophe" -

in memory of the
hundreds of thousands of

Palestinians who were
driven from their homes

to make way for the
new Jewish state.

All told, approximately
700,000 people, more than

half of Palestine's native
population, were uprooted.

Yousef Munayyer:
There's a lot of sympathy

that can be generated,
and I think rightly so,

for what Jewish people as a whole
have dealt with in Western societies,

and globally, because
of anti-Semitism.

The question then becomes:
what is the proper response to that?

The Zionist answer
is, of course, statehood,

and there's many people
who would sympathize

with that if it was in
fact done in a vacuum,

and if it was, in fact,
done for a people

without a land in a
land without people.

The reality is that's just
not the way that it happened.

There were people here.

They lost their homes, their
livelihood, their nation, their everything.

Rami Khouri: This was
a land, in 1910, that was

93% Palestinian Arab and
six, seven percent Jewish.

How did it suddenly become
80% Jewish and 20% Palestinian?

This was not a normal
demographic transition.

This was a consequence of Israel's
desire to create a Jewish state,

and to do that it had to get rid of
as many Palestinians as possible.

There's other more
complex factors, but that's

cutting it to its bare
bones as we see it.

Rashid Khalidi: That is, I think in a
certain sense, the core of the conflict.

The Palestinians have
suffered inordinately

as a result of the
creation of Israel.

The creation of a Jewish state, in
a country that had an Arab majority,

necessarily and inevitably
caused them irreparable harm.

Phyllis Bennis: The
Palestinians use the term

catastrophe to speak of
the 1948 consequences,

when they lost their
land the first time around.

In '67, it was another
Nakba, another catastrophe.

Narrator: In June of
1967, Israel won what

was perceived as a
stunning underdog victory

over much larger Arab
armies during the Six Day War.

With victory, in addition to
taking land from Egypt and Syria,

Israel began to militarily occupy
all remaining Palestinian territory

in the West Bank, the Gaza
Strip, and East Jerusalem.

Bennis: Suddenly all
of Palestine is now lost.

We now had no Palestinian
land left under Palestinian control.

You had a huge
Palestinian population living

as refugees or living
under occupation.

Palestinians are governed under military
law. They are essentially prisoners.

They are treated as if they were all
prisoners of war. They have no rights.

Narrator: In the immediate
aftermath of the '67 war, the

United Nations Security
Council passed Resolution 242.

Citing international law forbidding
the takeover of territory by war,

242 explicitly called for Israel
to withdraw its armed forces.

But to this day, Israel has
largely failed to comply -

not only holding Palestinian
territory, but confiscating additional land

and building massive Jewish settlement
blocks in the West Bank and East Jerusalem

in direct violation of the
Fourth Geneva Convention,

which expressly forbids
states from transferring

civilian populations
into territory it occupies.

In addition, Israel has established
an entire matrix of security control

on Palestinian land to
secure these settlements,

including checkpoints
that prevent Palestinians

from traveling freely
within their own land,

and a 440-mile security
wall along the Israeli

border that cuts into
Palestinian territory.

Munayyer: We're talking
about massive denial

of human rights, for
millions of people.

At the most basic level, the government
that is ruling over these people

is not a government in which these
people, the Palestinians, have a voice.

Jhally: There's really no
way to fully understand why

the Palestinian people have
resisted Israel for so long

without understanding this basic
history of dispossession and occupation.

But for the most part, this isn't the
story we get in American media coverage.

Instead, the legitimate
grievances of Palestinians,

including their right to resist
an illegal military occupation,

get pushed out of the frame
by this constant discussion

about extremism and
terrorism and anti-Semitism.

Fox News Channel anchor:
You know, rational, clear-

minded people understand
that Hamas is a terror group

and it is committed to killing Jews and
wiping Israel off the face of the earth.

That's not debatable.
That's a fact.

Bennis: It's never about land
somehow, that gets dropped out.

It's never about settlements.

It's always about "they hate
us because we're Jewish."

Khalidi: Whatever the
Palestinians have done is

portrayed in terms of
mindless violence against Jews

out of some kind of
primeval anti-Semitism.

No sense of how this started,
where this animus comes from.

It's completely inexplicable in the
way in which it's generally presented

and these people basically
kill because they hate

and they hate because they're
irrational Muslim fanatics or whatever.

Benjamin Netanyahu: And I
think Americans largely get it.

They know who the good guys
are and who the bad guys are.

Khalidi: This is
not an illusion.

American public opinion
is generally supportive

of Israel because
it's been led to believe

that Israel is in the right
and the Arabs are bad guys.

Jhally: None of
this is by accident.

It's the result of a
deliberate effort to

shape American
perceptions of the conflict -

a propaganda effort
that really begins to take

shape with Israel's
invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

[music]

Television news
montage: Israel unleashed

another massive air
attack on Palestinian

guerilla targets in
Lebanon today...

From the sky, the howl of Israeli
jets, bombing and bombing...

Tonight, Israel has
never been closer to,

nor more in control
of, an Arab capital.

Narrator: In the summer
of 1982, Israel invaded

neighboring Lebanon
in an attempt to drive

the Palestinian Liberation
Organization out of its

encampments on the
southern border with Israel.

Israeli officials
justified the attack as a

defensive action required
to take out terrorists.

But as the story
played out on American

television, a different
narrative began to emerge,

one that presented
Israel as the aggressor.

NBC anchor: 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 that we are now
dealing with an imperial Israel,

which is solving its problems in someone
else's country, world opinion be damned.

Norman Solomon: The Israeli invasion
of Lebanon in 1982 was a watershed.

It was Israel breaking
out beyond its immediate

region to aggressively
attack another country

and it was a bit of a
shock to many people.

[gunshots]

[tank fire]

ABC reporter: Israel was always
that gallant little underdog democracy

fighting for survival
against all the odds.

Now the Israelis have annexed
East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights,

settled down more or
less permanently on the

West Bank, and occupied
close to half of Lebanon.

In the interests of self-defense,
that gallant little underdog Israel

has suddenly started behaving
like the neighborhood bully.

Narrator: By the time the
war was over, the Israeli

military would kill 17,000
Lebanese and Palestinians,

and wound another 30,000,
almost all of them civilians.

News reporter: In West
Beirut, hospitals are so packed

with the injured that they
have become specialized.

This center takes only burn
victims of phosphorous shells.

Shrapnel cases, concussions, and
fractures are directed to other facilities.

Narrator: And just a few
months later, American

media coverage would
take an even darker turn.

CBS anchor: There's been another horrendous
turn of events in the Middle East.

Hundreds of men,
women, and children,

perhaps as many as a
thousand people in all,

have been massacred in two
Palestinian refugee camps in West Beirut.

Narrator: Israel's
Lebanese allies, operating

with the consent of
the Israeli government,

had massacred several
thousand Palestinian

civilians in the refugee
camps of Sabra and Shatila.

And American news media
had the pictures to prove it.

Reporter: The Israelis permitted an armored
column of right-wing Christian gunmen

to enter West
Beirut late Friday.

They took up positions
surrounding Shatila refugee

camp last night, and this
morning they were gone.

Reporter: A bloody
massacre which has

heightened tensions
between the US and Israel.

Bennis: Sabra-Shatila was hardly
the first massacre committed by Israel

against Palestinians
and against Arabs.

There's a dirty legacy of
Israeli massacres from the

pre- state through the
creation of the state and beyond.

The big difference was
this one was televised.

CBS reporter: By all
appearances, groups of

men had been ordered
to stand against the wall

and then gunned
down in cold blood.

NBC reporter: Today, Palestinians
searched frantically for relatives.

They took our children, one
said. They're killing our families.

Bennis: This was a
game-changer in terms of how Israel

was going to deal with
the question of publicity.

They went on the
offensive for the first time.

Israeli spokesperson: All the
direct or implicit accusations

that the IDF bear any blame whatsoever
for this human tragedy in the Shatila camp

are entirely baseless and
without any foundation.

The government of Israel rejects them
with the contempt which they deserve.

Bennis: It was perhaps
the first time they

recognized at the
highest levels inside Israel

how much they needed to do that

if they expected to
maintain the kind of

understood support
in the United States -

Israel can do no wrong,
Israel is always the victim,

Israel is the little David
against the big bad Goliath.

Narrator: Two years after the Lebanon
invasion, the American Jewish Congress

sponsored a conference
in Jerusalem to

devise a formal public
relations strategy -

known in Hebrew as "Hasbara."

Participants included PR
and advertising executives,

media specialists, journalists,

and leaders of
major Jewish groups.

According to a brochure
from the Congress:

As one conference
participant put it:

The primary aim of the
conference was to develop

strategies to spin
unpopular Israeli policies

and to counter negative press coverage
by shaping the media frame in advance.

Israel-based advertising
executive Martin

Fenton would put it in
even more blunt terms:

The conference was chaired by US
advertising executive Carl Spielvogel,

the legendary adman
who created the highly

acclaimed Miller Lite
Beer ads in the 1970s.

Jhally: The choice of
Spielvogel makes perfect sense.

He's known as a master of
image inversion and re-branding -

the ad man responsible
for transforming Miller Lite,

which had been viewed
before as a women's beer,

into a manly beer that
tough guys would drink.

[Ad] - The best part is
that it tastes so great.

The best part
is it's less filling.

- Nah, tastes great.
- Less filling!

Jhally: His job with Israel would
require the same kind of re-branding,

only in the opposite direction -

to help soften the image of a country
that's coming to be seen as a bully.

So he recommends
creating a cabinet post

dedicated exclusively
to explaining policy,

whose job would
not be setting policy,

but presenting it in the most
attractive way to the rest of the world.

Solomon: Classic PR
is to say, the problem

is not the policy.
It's the presentation.

When the policies are so reprehensible
that many people become critical,

rather than acknowledge
there's anything wrong with

the policy, there's a doubling
down on the PR effort.

Jhally: After Lebanon, you start to
see the basic hasbara strategy in action.

Images of Palestinians fighting
back against Israel's occupation

make their way onto
American television screens -

and the Israeli military crushes
this resistance in brutal ways

that undercut Israel's image
as underdog and victim.

NBC reporter: Israeli
helicopter gunships deliberately

fired a missile into a
crowd of civilians last night,

killing seven Palestinians
and wounding 70 more.

Jhally: Then Israeli
officials go into full hasbara

mode and act like the
occupation doesn't even exist,

framing all Palestinian
resistance as terrorism

and Israeli aggression
as self-defense.

Israeli spokesman: We
will do whatever it takes

to defend ourselves, and
defend ourselves we will.

Jhally: That's the basic
hasbara strategy in a nutshell.

Even when you're violently crushing
resistance to your own brutal occupation,

portray Israel as
an innocent victim by

demonizing Palestinians
as nothing but terrorists.

Israeli spokesperson: The
Palestinian terror campaign continues.

It only justifies again
and again that we,

Israel, have to continue
to defend ourselves.

Bennis: There have been
horrific Palestinian terrorist attacks,

and I use that word very specifically
to mean what terrorism means,

which is attacks on civilians
for a political purpose.

News reporter: Anger in Israel today
over last night's suicide bomb in Tel Aviv,

which killed four and
wounded around fifty.

Bennis: Those are horrific attacks,
which should be condemned.

They are violations of
international law, period.

But the problem is that
Israeli violence is assumed

to be legitimate because
it's always self-defense.

News reporter: Some of the people who
have been killed are said to be civilians.

In fact, two of them
are said to be little girls.

But the Israeli military says they
try to the best of their knowledge

to make sure whoever they
are striking was a known militant.

Amira Hass: All the
cases when Palestinian

people were killed
by the Israeli military,

and this is not
called acts of terror.

And one should ask why if
it is civilians who are being

killed, but from a plane
and not by a suicide bomber,

why this is not terror
and only terror is

when somebody's killed
by a suicide bomber.

Solomon: If the terrorist
label can only be affixed

to one set of people but
not another set of people,

then you're in an
Orwellian zone, you're down

a rabbit hole of
linguistic manipulation.

Netanyahu: The last thing they
want is a political settlement.

What they want is more
demonstrations, more riots, more bodies.

That's what they want.

[piano music]

Munayyer: And so this becomes
the framing of the situation:

Israel is defending itself, which
means Israel is not the aggressor here.

That doesn't square with the reality
on the ground, and we know that.

You have a right
to defend yourself.

You don't have a right to
occupy people, deny them

their human rights, and
then cry foul when they resist.

That's not the right
to self-defense.

That's the right to repression.

That's what Israel
is asking for here:

Let us do away with
these dissenters, these

Palestinian dissenters,
and call it defense.

Narrator: As news media
have proliferated over the years,

Israel's public relations
efforts have only

become more and
more explicit and intense.

[Song: "For the Love of Money"]

Max Blumenthal: In the United States,
we have a show called The Apprentice,

where Donald Trump auditions people
to work in his corporate boardroom.

In Israel, the version of The
Apprentice is called The Ambassador.

TV Spot: The Ambassador!
In a world where the real

battles take place in
newsrooms and TV studios,

the ability to create a
positive image for your

country is a crucial task
for every ambassador.

Blumenthal: It's a
show where Israelis

compete for who can
offer the best hasbara -

that means explain in
Hebrew, explain our situation.

CNN reporter: While
The Apprentice tests

contestants' ability to
sell lemonade on the street

or handle office politics,
The Ambassador finalists

have learned that selling
real politics is a lot harder.

Contestant: The problem is that when
you sell lemonade, nobody hates lemonade.

Nobody is going to say
that your lemonade occupies

territories or that your
lemonade kills babies.

Blumenthal: Israel's
mechanism of projecting

its propaganda, or
what they call hasbara,

is one of the most sophisticated
arms of its government.

It's a weapon of
Israeli warfare.

Jhally: And when you look today
at how the media cover the conflict,

you see just how successful
Israel's propaganda

has been in reversing
the legacy of Lebanon.

Netanyahu: If there's any complaints,
and there should be, about civilian deaths,

the responsibility, the blame,
belongs in one place: Hamas.

I don't think anyone
should get that wrong.

Hart: The Israeli position
is the first position.

They are allowed to
determine the narrative,

determine the
facts on the ground.

Ron Dermer: Hamas is a terror
organization committed to our destruction.

They fire thousands
of rockets at our cities.

Hart: It becomes a story of Israelis
responding to Palestinian attacks.

News reporter: Israel says this is a
response to the almost 800 rockets

that had landed in Israel
from Gaza this year alone.

Jhally: Again and again,
the wider context of

Israel's occupation simply
drops out of the coverage,

so that it comes across as this
confusing and endless cycle of violence

that begins when Palestinians attack
and Israelis retaliate in self-defense.

News anchor: Three
Palestinians were shot and

killed while allegedly
trying to attack Israelis

with kitchen knives.

NBC anchor: This cycle
of violence continues.

When Hamas launches rockets
from Gaza, Israel hits back.

Munayyer: Cycle of violence pre-supposes
this back and forth retaliation.

It's the same sort of thing
with "a lull in the violence"

or "a relative calm."

CNN anchor: After three
days of relative calm,

the violence is once again
picking up here in the Middle East.

Munayyer: Well, relative
to who and to what, right?

What's actually going
on - on the ground - is

not ever a lull in the
violence for Palestinians.

In fact, occupation is a system of
violence that goes on every single day.

Just because there's no
violence that Israelis are witnessing

for a particular period of
time before it resumes again,

does not mean that there's no violence
facing Palestinians from the occupation.

So this lull in the violence
is only seen through the

prism of Israeli victimhood,
not Palestinian victimhood.

Hart: It's no wonder
that Americans would

identify with the
Israeli side or support it.

It would be shocking
if they didn't.

And I think this is the lesson to be
drawn from thirty years of media coverage

that I think has been slanted
heavily in favor of Israeli interests.

Jhally: What we've seen is
really another kind of occupation -

an occupation of American media and
what we could call "the American mind"

by a pro-Israel narrative
that's deflected attention

away from what virtually
everyone recognizes

as the best way to resolve this conflict:
end the occupation and the settlements

so that Palestinians can
finally have a state of their own.

[music]

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen,

Mr. Arafat, Chairman
of the Executive Council

of the Palestine
Liberation Organization,

his excellency Yitzak Rabin,
Prime Minister of Israel,

the President of
the United States.

[applause]

Narrator: The ongoing
peace process that

began with the Oslo
Peace Accords in 1993

was designed to
negotiate the terms of

Israel's withdrawal
from Palestinian territory

in accordance with UN Resolution
242, which made an explicit connection

between Israeli withdrawal
and a just and lasting peace.

Noam Chomsky: For decades, there has been
an overwhelming international consensus

on a political
settlement of the conflict,

namely a settlement on the
internationally recognized border.

Jhally: The international
consensus for a two-state solution

is based on the borders
in place before the '67 War.

This means that Israel gets
78% and the Palestinians

get the rest - 22%
of historic Palestine.

22%. That's it.

Narrator: But since Oslo,
Israel has actually taken

more Palestinian land for
its Jewish-only settlements.

In 1993, there were
approximately 200,000 illegal Jewish

settlers living in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories.

Since then, that number
has more than tripled,

with approximately
650,000 settlers now

living in the West Bank
and East Jerusalem.

In addition, since
1967, Israel has also

demolished approximately
28,000 Palestinian homes.

BBC news anchor: The United
Nations says there's been a big increase

in the number of Palestinian
homes demolished by Israeli forces.

BBC news reporter: This is what
Palestinians have called ethnic cleansing.

Demolitions and evictions carried
out by Israel in the occupied West Bank.

Norman Finkelstein:
So if you look at the

result, not the words
and the pretty phrases,

what's happened
over the past 20 years,

and was inaugurated at
Oslo, was not a peace process.

It was an annexation process.

Khalidi: What has happened
is that now one in eleven

Israeli Jews live in
these illegal settlements.

So the failure to confront
the settlement enterprise

from the very beginning,
I think, has created a

almost insuperable obstacle to
a creation of a Palestinian state.

There's no place to put it.

Bennis: And that's what
the settlements are all about.

It's to claim the land, facts
on the ground, that become

"nothing we can do
about it now, it's too late."

Israel wants as much of the
land as they can get away with

with as few Palestinians
on it as possible.

Henry Siegman: Israeli governments
from the very beginning, after the '67 war,

never considered giving up
Israeli control of the territories.

Moshe Dayan, who
served as defense minister

and foreign minister,
people asked him:

what will be the future now that
we're controlling the territories?

And he said the future will
be exactly what it is today.

We must continue to retain
control of these territories.

Jhally: Just listen to
Netanyahu talking in

private to his right
wing settler base in 2001

about how he has no intention,
despite what Israel agreed to at Oslo,

of giving up land and ending
its illegal settlement expansion

in the West Bank and the
rest of the Jordan Valley.

Jhally: Netanyahu's clear that
Israel's not giving anything up,

but he's also very clear
that the way to make

that argument is to
invoke security threats.

And he's especially confident
that he can manipulate

the American people to buy
into this security argument.

Jhally: And this of course is exactly the
case he's made to the American people,

time and time again,
whenever Israel's been called out

for refusing to end the occupation
and its settlement project.

Netanyahu: We're willing to
make great concessions for peace,

but there is something that
I will never compromise on.

And that's Israel's security.

Solomon: The
conventional wisdom is that

continuing the occupation
makes Israel more secure.

And if you buy that argument, then
it's a license to occupy indefinitely.

Munayyer: What we're
talking about here is

something that is
completely indefensible.

Israel knows this. Israel
knows this very well.

And for that reason wants to talk
about anything and everything else.

They'd rather talk about terrorism.
They'd rather talk about security.

They'd rather talk about Iran
- anything but the occupation.

Jhally: The reason they've been
able to so effectively change the subject

isn't because they're practicing
some kind of mass mind control.

The main reason is that
the US government itself

has had a vested
interest in promoting

this same narrative
for almost 50 years now

This goes back to the
start of the so-called

special relationship with
Israel in the late 1960s,

when the US decides
to deputize Israel

and make it what the Nixon
administration called a "cop on the beat"

to protect American interests in the
Middle East, especially US energy supplies.

Ever since, the American
government has continued

to give Israel roughly
$3 billion a year

in military aid while also
vetoing one UN resolution

after another condemning
the occupation and settlements.

The challenge is to make
sure that the American people

stay on board with US aid
despite what Israel is doing.

Narrator: A number of
well-funded public relations

organizations have emerged
within the United States

to help Israel justify its
policies, especially the

occupation and settlements,
on security grounds.

One of these groups
is the Israel Project.

In 2009, the Israel Project
turned to conservative

pollster and re-branding
expert Frank Luntz.

Stephen Colbert: Frank Luntz!

This is the man that reframed
the estate tax as the death tax,

health care reform as
government takeover of health care.

Now some critics have called Luntz a
spin-doctor who manipulates public emotion.

But Luntz would reframe
that as Fox News analyst.

Narrator: The Israel Project hired
him to determine which talking points

used by Israeli and US officials
over time have been most

effective in maintaining
American sympathy for Israel.

Luntz wrote up his
recommendations in a 2009

report called The Global
Language Dictionary.

Jhally: If you want to understand how
the propaganda works, especially in the US,

you need to read
the Luntz document.

He's really clear that
the occupation - and

especially the settlements
- are a problem.

And he points to polls that show a
large majority of Americans actually think

that Israel should
retreat to the '67 borders.

In fact, he says:

But, and this is his solution:

The key, Luntz says, is
to claim that the fight is

over ideology, not land -
about terror, not territory.

In fact, these three
words - terror, not territory -

summarize the basis of the
propaganda campaign in the US.

And Luntz goes on to
say that one of the most

effective ways to make
the conflict about terrorism

is to refer to an obscure
political document

written in 1988 by a
small group of ideologues,

the Hamas Charter, that calls
for the destruction of Israel.

Even though the Hamas
leadership effectively disowned the

charter a long time ago,
it's been PR gold for Israel.

Luntz's research
has discovered that:

So, he says:

And his advice has been taken up -
often hysterically - by Israel's advocates.

Morton Klein: The Hamas
Charter not only calls

for Israel's destruction,
ladies and gentlemen.

Article 7 calls for
the murder of every

Jew! It calls for the
murder of every Jew!

It's a Nazi document!

Munayyer: We have the
Israeli prime minister saying

movements like Hamas
that are national movements

are the same thing as ISIS.

Netanyahu: Hamas is like
ISIS, Hamas is like al Qaeda,

Hamas is like Hezbollah,
Hamas is like Boko Haram.

Munayyer: And they're
completely not the same thing.

And anyone who
understands anything about

the Middle East and
political dynamics there

will explain to you
exactly why that is the case

and immediately spot that
for the propaganda that it is.

Siegman: Hamas is as much a nationalist
movement as it is a religious movement.

And, in fact, it often
assigns priority to its

nationalist goals
over its religious goals.

This false notion that Hamas
is part of this al-Qaeda network

is not bought even by important
elements of the American military.

Narrator: In 2010, the United States
Central Command, or CENTCOM,

the highest military
command in the US,

issued a classified report
that questioned the current

US policy of isolating
and marginalizing Hamas,

as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The report described the
two groups as "pragmatic,"

and argued that putting
them and al Qaeda in the same

sentence as if they're all
the same "is just stupid."

And it directly repudiated
Israel's publicly stated

view that Hamas and Hezbollah
are incapable of change

and must be
confronted with force,

warning that failing to recognize
their grievances and objectives

would result in continued failure
in moderating their behavior.

Jhally: And the US military
isn't alone in this assessment.

ISIS itself has attacked
Hamas again and

again because they're
not radical enough.

They're too pragmatic
and too compromising.

But none of these
facts stop people from

going on and on about
the Hamas Charter anyway

in order to paint Hamas
with the same brush as ISIS.

Fox News anchor: I've
spent a lot of time on my radio

program going over
Hamas' Charter, what it says.

It wants to obliterate Israel.
It wants to destroy the Jews.

It is a sick, twisted, you
know, perverted ideology,

a religion that has been
hijacked by radicals,

and it manifests itself
in different forms -

Muslim Brotherhood,
Islamic Jihad, Hamas,

Hezbollah, ISIS, al Qaeda,
it's all the same thing.

Jhally: Meanwhile,
you hear next to nothing

about another
extreme political charter

that has much more
relevance to the conflict -

the platform of the
ruling Likud party in Israel.

Munayyer: Well, if you
look at the language

that's in that charter
- the Likud Charter -

it flatly rejects, quote,
flatly rejects the existence of

a Palestinian state anywhere,
anywhere, on that side of the Jordan River.

In other words, completely denying
the right of a state of Palestine to exist.

That's far more relevant to have language
like the language in the Likud Charter

be in the charter of a
party that is the largest

in an Israeli government,
driving an Israeli state,

and has the capacity
to act upon the words in

their charter in a way
that no other party does.

Narrator: To strengthen
the case that the

conflict is about
terrorism, and not territory,

Luntz points to the
effectiveness of another

well-established
Israeli talking point:

the claim that Israel gave
up control of Gaza in 2005

in hopes of achieving
peace and a two-state

solution and got
only rockets in return.

Ron Prosor: We
left Gaza completely.

We had Gaza, they
could have turned it into

a flourishing, wonderful
place to live in.

Look at what they did.
They turned it into a haven

of terrorists coming
from all over the world.

Munayyer: It's completely untrue
that Israel left the Gaza strip.

They did withdraw their
colonists, but at the same

time they tightened their
control over the Gaza Strip.

Reporter: This is Gaza's
main freight route into Israel,

and normally this road would be bumper
to bumper with heavily laden trucks.

But it's completely closed, as is every
other border crossing in the country.

Nothing's coming into Gaza,
and nothing is getting out.

Munayyer: So the idea
that Israel left is 100% bogus.

Bennis: Gaza remains occupied.

Gaza has no control over its
coast, over its waters, over its harbor,

over its airspace, over the land
or its borders, over its people -

who can come and go is
totally at the Israeli discretion.

In Gaza, there are
constant military

attacks by the Israeli
air force, by drones.

Targeted assassinations
go on all the time.

Hart: It wasn't
really a withdrawal.

But the conventional
shorthand in the media is that

Israel was willing to "give up" an
enormous amount to the Palestinian side

and the Palestinians
responded with violence.

Sen. Reid: Israel, since
1967, controlled Gaza.

They gave it to the Palestinians
in a gesture of peace,

and all they got are a
bunch of rockets in return.

Jhally: This is the basic
frame of Israel's PR campaign -

make sure the media stays
focused on terrorism and

Hamas extremism as
the source of the conflict -

not the occupation
and the settlements.

If you want to see
this in operation

just look at the
coverage of any of Israel's

many attacks on Gaza
over the past few years.

[music]

News montage: Good
evening. In the 60 years of

conflict between Israeli
and the Palestinians,

there have been few, if
any, days like this one...

The scale and intensity of
this attack were surprising -

the deadliest operation
against Palestinians in decades...

After an intense three-week
assault, 1,300 dead, 5,000 wounded.

Narrator: In late December of 2008,
Israel launched Operation Cast Lead,

a massive ground and air
assault on the Gaza Strip.

[news report]

Over a period of
three weeks, the Israeli

military dropped over 600
tons of bombs on Gaza.

[news report]

Nearly 1,400 Palestinians were
killed and thousands more injured.

NBC reporter: The wounded
were carried on corrugated

iron, in private cars,
on backs, and in arms.

The worst one-day casualty toll
in Gaza anybody can remember.

[siren]

Khouri: Normally in a conflict,
civilians can run for their lives.

Gaza was one of the few, if
not the only, modern conflict

where the helpless
civilians who were subjected

to massive technologically
advanced firepower

by the Israelis had
no escape routes.

CBS reporter: With
Gaza City bombed and

burning, Palestinians
heeded Israel's warning

to get out of the way but
found they had nowhere to go.

What's a safe place for
us to go, the woman cried.

Not the UN compound,
where 700 people took shelter.

Israeli artillery hit
it, then hit it again.

Chomsky: It was a brutal,
murderous attack, devastating.

This attack was murderous.

Narrator: As with the Lebanon
invasion three decades before,

horrific images of destruction spilled
onto television screens around the world.

But this time the Israeli
government was prepared.

Six months earlier, it
had set up a new unit

within the Israeli
Prime Minister's Office

to help coordinate the government's
messaging once the invasion started.

NBC reporter: Israel
is defending its actions

saying this assault
is a direct response

to almost daily rocket
and mortar attacks.

M.J. Rosenberg: If you ask any American
why that war started they would say

because the Palestinians started,
you know, firing rockets at Israel.

Fox News anchor: Hamas
keeping up the rocket fire

that triggered the Israeli
attacks in the first place.

Fox News anchor:
Hamas once again firing

several dozens
rockets into Israel today.

Rosenberg: They're
always preparing

Americans for an attack
against these people

who are incorrigible terrorists
who are constantly shooting rockets

and never ever giving
the other side of the story.

Hart: We were told endlessly in
any media outlet you want to look at

that Israel had to invade and
attack the Gaza strip because of an

unending assault from Hamas
and various militant groups in Gaza.

CBS reporter: What are the
goals of that operation right now?

Ehud Barak: To change totally
the behavior of the Hamas.

It is a terrorist regime that
keeps shelling Israel with

thousands of rockets
and mortar shells.

Hart: What this forgets is
that for the latter half of 2008

there was a very
successful ceasefire that

curtailed rocket fire
into Israel dramatically -

almost to the point at
which there was none.

This was shattered in November
of 2008 when Israel attacked

what they said was a tunnel building
project, killed six Hamas militants.

At that point the
ceasefire was off.

And the New York Times,
the so-called paper of

record, reported this
very clearly - one time.

Jhally: The story gets
buried on Page 8 of the

New York Times and hardly
registers anywhere else.

Why?

Well, look at the day that Israel chose to
break the ceasefire, November 4, 2008,

which just coincidentally
happened to be the

day of the historic
election of Barack Obama.

It virtually guaranteed that no
one in America would notice.

And that's exactly
how it played out.

When Hamas resumed rocket
attacks after Israel broke the ceasefire,

Israeli officials went
on American television

and got away with blaming
Hamas for breaking the ceasefire.

Mark Regev: You
know, it was Hamas that

unilaterally tore up the
ceasefire understandings.

It was Hamas that
escalated the violence

that reached a crescendo
on Christmas day,

when we had in
one 24-hour period

some 80 rockets, mortar
shells, and missiles

coming into Israel
attacking our civilians.

Now we want to work with
the Palestinian government...

Jhally: And the lie was then
repeated uncritically by US news media.

CNN anchor: James, there's no question
here, is there, that Hamas started this?

Fox News pundit: Well, I don't
think Israel had any choice.

There was a ceasefire
that was broken by Hamas.

They fired something
like 300 rockets into Israel.

I mean this is an act of war.
What were they supposed to do?

Jhally: Just compare this to how
media outside the US dealt with this.

Channel 4 anchor:
Isn't it a fact that during

the ceasefire not a
single Israeli was killed

and the reason for that was because
Hamas fired not a single rocket.

Israeli spokesperson: No, I
think you're wrong, unfortunately.

Because during that
ceasefire of six months,

they were firing
rockets on a daily basis.

Jhally: On Channel 4 in Britain, you
saw an anchor presenting evidence

that the Israeli
government itself

acknowledged that Hamas
observed the ceasefire.

Channel 4 anchor: This
is actually a document

given to journalists by
the Israeli government

and in this document
it says, and I'm quoting:

"Hamas was careful to
maintain the ceasefire."

Jhally: The Israeli official,
clearly caught in a lie,

attempts to change the
subject to how evil Hamas is.

But the interviewer doesn't
let him get away with it.

Israeli spokesperson:
They were firing rockets,

and they're always
trying to target civilians.

Their main goal is to try to
kill children and women. And...

Channel 4 anchor: I'm
going to have to stop you.

Because this document
is published by the

Intelligence and Terrorism
Information Center,

at the Israel
Intelligence Heritage and

Commemoration Center,
and they say that Hamas...

It's not the
government, sorry...

They say that Hamas
maintained the ceasefire.

Channel 4 anchor: It's
given to foreign journalists

by the government
as a statement of fact.

Israeli spokesperson:
Listen! Would you like to hear

the facts or would you
like to invent some facts?

Channel 4 anchor: Yes, I
would like you to tell me the facts!

Jhally: Exchanges like these
are unthinkable in the US,

even though Israel
itself, behind the scenes,

acknowledged Hamas
had observed the ceasefire -

something another British
reporter forced Israeli

spokesperson Mark
Regev to admit on camera.

Channel 4 reporter: There were no
Hamas rockets during the ceasefire.

Before November the 4th, there
were no Hamas rockets for four months.

Mark Regev: And that's correct.

Chomsky: Israel officially
recognizes that until it

broke the ceasefire, Hamas
didn't fire a single rocket.

I mean, the propaganda
is so powerful

that these truisms, literally
truisms, are almost inexpressible.

Hart: The lesson is that this
conflict started when we say it started.

And we say it started
when Israel was attacked.

[explosion]

Narrator: In 2012, and
again in 2014, Israel

launched two more
devastating attacks on Gaza.

[sirens and screams]

Jhally: Israel can saturate the
media with its spokespeople,

but there's still the problem
of massive Palestinian

casualties showing up
on television screens.

You can't make
those images go away.

An Israeli official actually said,
"In the war of the pictures we lose,

so you need to correct, explain,
or balance it in other ways."

Here again, the Luntz
document spells out

which talking points
have been most effective

in spinning the brutal reality
of Palestinian casualties.

He says the first thing the
pro-Israel spokespeople should do

is to express empathy
for the innocent victims.

Israeli spokesperson:
Unfortunately, innocents

do get hurt. And we,
we really grieve that.

Benjamin Netanyahu: We're
sad for every civilian casualty.

Michael Oren: The
entire situation is tragic.

Jhally: Once you've
done that, Luntz says, you

also have to get people
to empathize with Israelis

by describing what
life is like for them living

in constant fear of
Hamas rocket attacks.

So again and again we
hear the focus-tested phrase

that the "rockets are
raining down on Israel."

Michael Oren: We have thousands of
rockets raining down on our civilians.

Hillary Clinton: Rockets
were raining down on Israel.

Solomon: Any advertising
executive will tell

you, the essence of
propaganda is repetition.

News Montage: Rockets
raining down on Southern Israel...

Rockets raining
down on Israel...

Well, Hamas rockets rained
down on Israeli border towns.

Jhally: Then Luntz tells PR
spokespeople to "turn the tables"

and ask the American
people: "What would you do?"

Benjamin Netanyahu: So what
would you do in the United States?

Ron Dermer: Could you
imagine what America

would do if it were
facing a similar threat?

Israeli spokesperson:
We always try to ask you

the question we ask
ourselves. What will you do?

Netanyahu: What would you do?

Mark Regev: What
would you do if more than

3,000 rockets had
been fired on your cities?

Fox News anchor: What
would you do? 3,000 rockets.

Regev: What would you do if terrorists
were tunneling under your frontiers?

Fox News anchor: What
would you do if three

kids are kidnapped
because of a tunnel network?

Munayyer: What sort
of question is this?

Of course, anybody would act to defend
themselves against unprovoked aggression.

But it is a question that is
completely devoid of any context.

What drives a society to a point
where after multiple devastating wars

they continue to resist with
these most feeble methods?

They don't want you
to ask that question.

They don't want you to
ask what is behind this,

what is the history here,
who are these people?

Where did they come from?
Why are they so desperate?

No. They want you to
understand Israeli behavior.

Israeli behavior is always characterized
as a reaction to unprovoked violence.

Jhally: Then on top of that,
when massive numbers of

Palestinian civilians predictably
die from Israeli attacks,

Israel claims it's part of a deliberate
Hamas strategy to drum up sympathy.

Benjamin Netanyahu: They use telegenically
dead Palestinians for their cause.

They want, the
more dead the better.

Jhally: So that you end
up in this upside-down,

Orwellian world where
Israelis killing civilians

becomes an unforgivable
transgression against Israelis.

CBS anchor: It is hard to
come away with any feeling

but that we are in the
midst of a world gone mad.

Last week I found a
quote of many years ago

by Golda Meir, one of
Israel's early leaders,

which might have
been said yesterday.

"We can forgive the Arabs for
killing our children," she said,

"but we can never forgive them
for forcing us to kill their children."

Hart: It's not difficult
to imagine Americans

identifying with Palestinians
who are suffering.

But they need to be able
to see that suffering on

their television screens
and in their newspapers.

[explosion]

News reporter: Israel said today its
new offensive is targeting terrorists.

Hart: And when your
sense of the coverage is that,

there's something that these
people did to deserve this,

or they are affiliated with terrorists
and terrorist-minded governments,

the fallout of that is an inability to
identify with people who are suffering

in far greater numbers
and in far greater

proportion than their
Israeli counterparts.

[music]

Narrator: The effort
to shape American

perceptions of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict

has been taken up by a number of
pro-Israel groups based in the US.

Together these groups are commonly
referred to as the Israel Lobby.

Nowhere has the lobby's
power to shape a pro-Israel

narrative been more visible
than in the US Congress,

due largely to the efforts
of one of the most influential

lobbying groups working
on Capitol Hill today -

the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee - better known as AIPAC.

[music]

President Obama: It
is great to see so many

good friends from
all across the country.

Congressman Eric Cantor: I see
more than 10,000 people, young and old.

Narrator: AIPAC's
annual conference draws

nearly 10,000 attendees
from around the country,

including the most
influential members of

both houses of Congress
from both parties.

[music]

Tour guide: Remember there are
seven Congressional office buildings.

Sen. Bob Casey: As
you leave here today to

meet with your Senators
and Representatives,

I want you to go there
knowing with certainty that

you'll make a difference with
every member that you meet.

AIPAC representative: You're going to
feel so good when, six months from now,

you see the three major
talking points evolve to

three points of legislation
for the US government.

Khalidi: It would be
very hard for ordinary

Americans to know that
they're being deceived,

that some very competent
experts at spin management

are in fact deluding them.

There are many reasons for this.

One of them is that the
American political class has

basically swallowed the
line hook, line, and sinker.

Congressman Dan Burton: They keep
getting rocket attack after rocket attack,

and then they're
criticized for human rights

problems because
they defend themselves!

Khalidi: This is particularly
true for Republicans...

Congressman Scott
Perry: They're responding,

Mr. Speaker, to attacks
on their civilian population.

I mean, what is it that they want?
Well, we know what they want.

They want Israel obliterated
from the map, Mr. Speaker.

Khalidi: But it's also
true for many Democrats.

Sen. Cory Booker:
We stand with our ally.

We stand with the
democratic state of Israel.

We stand against terrorism.

Hillary Clinton: This
administration will always

stand up for Israel's
right to defend itself.

Khalidi: They made the mistake of
actually leaving AIPAC's fax address

on one bill that was
actually laid before Congress.

And of course, nobody
was apparently embarrassed.

The fact that AIPAC
writes the legislation

for them, or writes
their speeches for them,

doesn't seem in the
least to bother people.

Walt: There's nothing happening
here that's secret or under the table,

it's not a cabal, it's
not a conspiracy.

It is, in fact, domestic
politics the way

it's practiced here
in the United States.

There are roughly three-dozen or
so pro-Israeli PACs that give money.

Over the last 15 or
20 years, they've given

55-60 million dollars
in American elections.

There are one or two
Arab-American PACs,

and I believe the last time I looked
they've given 800,000 to a million.

So you've got 55 million dollars
of PAC contributions on one side,

and you've got maybe a
million at most on the other side.

And that gives you a pretty good
sense of what the balance of power is

if you're planning on
running for Congress.

Rosenberg: It's all
about the money.

Benjamin Netanyahu: And I
do see a lot of old friends here.

And I see a lot of new
friends of Israel here

as well, Democrats
and Republicans alike.

[applause]

M.J. Rosenberg: Bibi
Netanyahu got a joint session,

so that Democrats and
Republicans would have

the opportunity to stand
up and cheer for him

and it would be good for their
campaigns to raise money.

He put out the most hardline propaganda
that went entirely against US policy.

Netanyahu: The
border will be different

than the one that
existed on June 4, 1967.

Israel will not return to the
indefensible boundaries of 1967.

[applause]

Rosenberg: And he gets
29 or 39 standing ovations.

What are they applauding?
The continuation of the conflict?

Are they applauding that more Israelis
and Palestinians are going to keep dying?

Is that what they're applauding?

No, they're applauding, "We want
more money in the next campaign!"

That's what it's entirely about.
There is no other issue like this.

Jhally: For the most part,
the lobby pushes policies

that are consistent with
US interests anyway.

And when these interests don't align,
we see the limits of the lobby's power,

as we saw with Obama's
Iran policy, which passed

despite an intense campaign
by the lobby to defeat it.

So we shouldn't overstate the influence
of the lobby on American foreign policy.

But at the same time, we shouldn't
underestimate the lobby's power

to limit debate about Israeli
policies in the occupied territories,

especially far right Israeli
policies that are often way

out of step with the political
views of most American Jews.

In fact, it's not
accurate to call it the

Jewish lobby at all.
It's the Israel lobby.

Khalidi: The actual
views of most people in the

American Jewish community,
according to every poll,

diverge greatly from the extreme
right-wing, neoconservative views

of the entire establishment
leadership of that community.

Most people in the Jewish
community are much more liberal.

They're against
settlement. They're against

occupation. They want
a two-state solution.

The lobby and its various other

institutions are the
main supports and props

of settlement and occupation
and of protection of the status quo.

Walt: And there are
some key elements of what

we call the Israel
Lobby that aren't Jewish,

the so-called
Christian Zionists.

Christian news anchor:
Evangelical Christians

in America have become
Israel's staunchest ally

in an increasingly
hostile world.

Jhally: Powerful
groups like CUFI,

Christians United for
Israel, lobby Congress

for an expansion of
Israeli territory because

they believe that's
what the Bible calls for.

CUFI announcer: CUFI representatives
from all fifty states went to Capitol Hill.

Their purpose was to
personally speak with their elected

officials and express
concerns for Israel's security

and their support of Israel's right
to the land by biblical mandate.

Chomsky: In the United States,
roughly a third of the population

believes that every word
of the Bible is literally true.

If the Bible is literally
true, then the land

of Israel was promised
to the Jews by God,

and they have every right to
take it over from the usurpers.

Pastor John Hagee:
Listen closely, those of

you who are listening
in the liberal media.

The Jewish people
are not occupying the

land of Israel. They
own the land of Israel.

[applause]

The truth about Israel is
God gave the land of Israel

to Abraham in an eternal
blood covenant 4,000 years ago.

The land of Israel belonged
to the Jewish people then,

it belongs to the
Jewish people today,

and it will belong to the
Jewish people forever.

The land is their land.

Walt: One of the
problems with the influence

the Israel lobby has in
the United States now

is it has been hard for government
officials to have an honest discussion.

Jhally: Just look what
happened to President Obama

when he made the
mistake of simply saying

out loud what the
international consensus is.

President Obama: We
believe the borders of Israel

and Palestine should be
based on the 1967 lines,

with mutually agreed
swaps, so that secure and

recognized borders are
established for both states.

Jhally: It didn't matter
that Obama was just

repeating what had been
official US policy for decades

or that right-wing president
Ronald Reagan had

said essentially the
same thing in the 1980s

in even stronger language.

President Reagan: UN
Resolution 242 remains wholly valid

as the foundation stone of
America's Middle East peace effort.

It is the United States
position, that in return for peace,

the withdrawal provision
of Resolution 242 applies

to all fronts, including
the West Bank and Gaza.

Further settlement activity is in no
way necessary for the security of Israel,

and only diminishes the
confidence of the Arabs that

a final outcome can be
freely and fairly negotiated.

Jhally: When Obama said it, he was
immediately accused by right-wing groups

of setting up Israel
for another Holocaust.

Announcer: Has President
Obama abandoned Israel?

After strong support by 11
consecutive American presidents,

it appears Obama has moved
sharply towards Israel's enemies.

And the results
could be disastrous.

The leader of Hezbollah has
vowed to finish the job Hitler started.

Up till now, America's strong
backing of Israel made that impossible.

But with Obama's waffling, can a
second Holocaust be on the way?

Jhally: It's a pretty
ingenious tactic.

How are you supposed to have a
rational discussion about the occupation

when pro-Israel extremists call the
'67 borders "the Auschwitz borders"?

Rosenberg: These are the
two alternatives: you're either

going to be in Auschwitz
or you're supporting Israel.

Because Israel was in fact
created in the wake of the Holocaust,

it isn't that extraordinary that
the two would be linked that way.

I have a problem with the
idea of exploiting the link

and using those six million
Jews almost, in my mind,

it's like saying Anne Frank would
want the occupation to continue.

Miller: You know, the
Jews have gone through

unspeakable
historical trauma, right?

But the fact is that if you
look at other reactionary

or right wing propagandas
of various kinds,

nationalistic and so on,
you see that what they

all kind of have in
common is this view that

we are in danger, we are
victims, they're trying to destroy us.

Benjamin Netanyahu: If history has
taught the Jewish people anything,

it is that we must take calls
for our destruction seriously.

We're a nation that rose from
the ashes of the Holocaust.

When we say never
again, we mean never again!

[applause]

Miller: You're the victim, so anything
you do in self-defense is okay,

even though it has you
acting like a monster, right?

Sen. Ted Cruz: A
suggestion that Israel has

committed war crimes
is particularly offensive

given that the Jewish
people suffered under

the most horrific war
crimes in the Holocaust.

Finkelstein: It's the argument that they
always use, remember the Holocaust.

Always invoking the Holocaust in order to

justify Israel being
held to a different

standard than everyone
else is being held to.

Hass: I see a lot of
manipulation here about the

victimhood of Israeli Jews,
the sense of victimhood.

And I'm a child of survivors,
Holocaust survivors,

so I'll be the last one to
underestimate the importance of history

and the history of persecution of
Jews in the Israeli-Palestinian context.

But does it mean that
Jews now in Israel go

every day and think
about Auschwitz?! doubt it.

Walt: Anyone who is
critical of the special

relationship, criticizes
the activities of the lobby,

or disagrees with the
policies they recommend,

or is critical of Israel's conduct,
is virtually certain to be attacked,

usually in very harsh
ways by Israel's defenders.

There are watchdog groups
that keep track of what

different media organizations
publish or broadcast

and if they're not happy
about it, they either publish

their own attacks, they
organize consumer boycotts.

Rosenberg: Israelis
and the lobby do not

think there's ever any
problem with policy.

The problem is only the way it's covered,

which is why they have
organizations like CAMERA,

which is, you know, Committee
on Middle East Accuracy.

Accuracy means that you present
the side that makes Israel look good.

The lobby and the
Israelis believe that the

mainstream media in
America is pro-Palestinian!

I mean, it's laughable.

Emerson: Consistently the
Times has suppressed any

story that would portray
Israel sympathetically.

And on the other hand
has written dozens of stories

portraying the Palestinians
sympathetically.

Cal Thomas: Israel is now
portrayed in much of the

major media, especially CNN,
the BBC, as the aggressor,

as the predator nation, and the poor
Palestinians and Arabs as the victims.

Hart: It's one of the most
profoundly successful tactics

of right wing media pressure
and media criticism groups.

And they are going to argue that
it's true in violation of all the facts.

CNN anchor: You're saying that because
CNN has interviewed Palestinian families

and shown Palestinian children
who have been wounded or killed

that somehow CNN is
saying that Hamas is okay?

I don't think that those
two are equivalent.

We're not allowed to show the
civilians caught in the crossfire?

Ben Shapiro: Of course you're allowed
to show civilians caught in the crossfire.

You should also mention
all the restrictions that

Hamas puts on your
reporting inside the Gaza Strip.

You should also mention
all the context with

regard to Hamas putting
children in harm's way.

You should also
routinely mention the fact

that Hamas' Charter
calls for the destruction

not only of the state of Israel but for
the murder of Jews across the world.

Which of course, CNN does not.

CNN anchor: That's silly, Ben.
We talk about that all the time.

We talk about the
charter, the Hamas Charter

that says they want
to obliterate Israel

and wipe Israel off the face of the map.

You're just not being
fair. That's not true.

Shapiro: You mention it occasionally
in the midst of vast swaths of imagery

about Israel using what you
would term excessive force.

Hart: The media outlets don't see
the pushback from the other side.

They don't see the upside to
standing up for their own reporting.

So I think in most cases they cave.

Jhally: Look at the
pressure that came down

on veteran NBC
reporter Ayman Mohyeldin

when he was covering the
2014 Gaza invasion for NBC.

Mohyeldin was playing soccer on
a beach with four Palestinian kids

just moments before they
were killed by an Israeli rocket.

And he talked about this
on social media and shared

video of the heartbroken
reactions of the kids' parents.

[screams and cries]

And what did NBC do? They responded
by pulling Mohyeldin from Gaza.

And of course there's no greater
weapon in the attack arsenal

than equating critical coverage of
Israel's policies with anti-Semitism.

Bill O'Reilly: Any fair-mind
person who follows Al

Jazeera knows it's
anti-American and anti-Semitic.

- You're a Jewish man, correct? - Yes I am.

O'Reilly: It doesn't
come more anti-Semitic

than Al Jazeera. They
would do violence to you.

Alan Colmes: Who? A
journalist at Al Jazeera?

O'Reilly: The people who run that
network. They would do violence to you.

Colmes: I hardly think so.

Chomsky: Abba Eban
wrote an article in which he

explained to American
Jews what their task was.

Their task is to show that
anyone who's a critic of Zionism,

by which he means a critic of
the policies of the state of Israel,

must be either an anti-Semite
or a neurotic self-hating Jew.

That covers 100% of possible criticism.

Stewart: We'll start tonight in
the Middle East, where Israel...

- What! Israel isn't
supposed to defend itself?

- If Mexico bombed Texas
would we exercise the same right?

- What other country is held
to the same standard as Israel?

[inaudible]

- Self-hating Jew!

[laughter]

Rosenberg: So it used to be I
was always called a self-hating Jew,

and everybody like me
was called a self-hating Jew

I am now not only a self-hating Jew,
but they also call me an anti-Semite.

How I, with my four Jewish
grandparents, I'm still an anti-Semite.

My wife was born in a displaced persons
camp in Germany and I'm an anti-Semite.

Munayyer: They have
for a very long time been

able to effectively
defend the indefensible

to the American public

through miseducation
and misinformation

campaigns, through
effective talking points,

through smearing individuals
on the opposite side of things -

labeling them all kinds of things,
sympathizers with terrorism.

I've done dozens of interviews, which
begin from the terrorism departure point.

But when given an
opportunity to actually

speak and present a
different perspective,

that can dissolve rather quickly.

Hannity: Is Hamas a terrorist organization?

Munayyer: Do I get to actually speak now?

Hannity: You get to answer the
question. It's a simple yes or no question.

Munayyer: Sir, you invited me on here...

Hannity: Is Hamas, whose charter
calls for the destruction of Israel,

is that a terrorist organization?
That's a yes or no question.

Munayyer: Thank you for your question.

Munayyer: It's very
telling to me, and it should

be telling to your viewers
as well, by the way,

that the moment you have a
Palestinian voice on your program

who begins to explain the legitimate
grievances of Palestinians on the ground...

Sir, let me finish.

Hannity: What part of
this can't you get through

your thick head? Is Hamas
a terrorist organization?

Yes or no?

Munayyer: The only thing that you're
going to say is what we want you to say,

and if you don't say it, we're
not going to let you speak.

Jhally: So you end up with reporting
that gives way more priority and weight

to the official Israeli perspective
than to the Palestinian one.

Look at how American media
covered Israel's 2014 attack on Gaza.

A keyword search of all
the major networks showed

that over the course
of the 51-day assault,

Israel's ongoing military siege and
blockade of Gaza were barely mentioned

compared to the thousands of times Hamas
rocket attacks on Israel were mentioned.

CNN anchor: Why is Hamas launching
missiles into population centers of Israel?

Jhally: The basic
propaganda frame is built into

the very assumptions
journalists bring to the table.

CNN anchor: Since Israel
pulled out of Gaza in 2005,

8,000 rockets have been
fired from Gaza into Israel.

Jhally: This is how propaganda works.

It works by getting your words
in the mouths of other people,

especially the mouths of supposedly
objective media commentators.

NBC anchor: I'm
wondering, though, whether

you're outraged by
the conduct of Hamas,

starting the conflict
by firing rockets,

building tunnels to
kill and kidnap Israelis,

being more than willing
to sacrifice Palestinian

lives by embedding them
into their own kind of arsenal

and using them, as Israel
contends, as human shields.

Do you have a level of
outrage at Hamas itself?

Jhally: It doesn't seem like
propaganda at all. It just seems like news.

And this goes across all the major media,
including the supposedly most liberal.

Look at Rachel Maddow on
MSNBC, who's known as the

leading progressive voice
on mainstream television.

She did only four segments on the war.

And during these few
segments, she never

once mentioned Israel's
ongoing occupation

of the West Bank or its
siege and blockade of Gaza,

and never once
mentioned the fact that the

US has armed Israel
with the very weapons

that were being used against a
defenseless civilian population.

Instead choosing to frame
the invasion as part of a

senseless cycle of violence
perpetrated by both sides.

Maddow: It's been a constant
cycle of fighting between

Israel and Hamas for the
past several years in Gaza.

And the fighting and the
cause of the fighting feel

terribly familiar because this
is basically a recurring war.

And if it feels like deja vu, if it
feels, ugh, I've heard all of this before,

you are right because this really does
keep happening, over and over again.

Jebreal: Rachel Maddow,
the most important woman

on MSNBC, the leader
when it comes to politics.

In six weeks of war,
never mentioned the word

blockade, occupation,
illegal settlements.

Never mentioned the support
that Congress have for Israel,

unconditional amount of
money, billions of dollars.

What is that? What a disappointment!

Our media operations - national media
- is a scandal when it comes to Israel.

I look at the UK, with all its
deficit, and there's real debate.

For example, there's this anchor,
called Jon Snow, Channel 4 in the UK,

and he interviewed Mark Regev, and
he grilled him with questions. Grilled him.

Snow: Mark Regev,
how does killing children

on a beach contribute
to that purpose?

What was the point of bombing the
El-Wafa hospital, for goodness sake?

There are grave uncertainties about
whether you are acting within the law.

Regev: I disagree.

Snow: You are deliberately
targeting neighborhoods

in which you know there
are women and children.

You've tried everything with Gaza.
You've besieged it for seven years.

The people live an
intolerable and ghastly

life, and you know that
better than anybody.

Why don't you try one other
thing? Talking? Why not talk?

Why not be brave and talk
directly with them? Why not?

Jebreal: I can never
see this in America. I've

never seen anything like
this in the United States.

Jhally: There have been occasional
examples of American journalists

who've had the courage to
challenge the official Israeli line.

Back in the 50s, CBS's
Mike Wallace didn't back

down from grilling Israeli
Ambassador Abba Eban

about Israel's illegal
takeover of Arab land.

Mike Wallace: The fact
remains that Israel benefitted

territorially from a war,
from armed violence.

As a member of the Judaic faith, which
cherishes social justice and morality,

do you believe that any country
should profit territorially from violence?

Jhally: And years later,
Wallace didn't shy away from

comparing the terrorist
tactics of Palestinian militants

with the terrorist tactics of
Jewish militants in the 1940s.

Wallace: The fact is
that innocent people

die from terror,
whoever the terrorists.

The Jewish independence
fighters, trying to

hasten the exit of the
British from Palestine

and to intimidate the
Arab population there,

bombed bus stops and office buildings,
railroad trains and shopping crowds.

The fighters of Stern
and Irgun took a toll of

innocent victims that
ran into the hundreds.

Jhally: More recently, in
2012, during a 60 Minutes

piece, the late Bob Simon
dared to report on what

day-to-day life is
like for Palestinian

Christians who live
under Israeli occupation.

Bob Simon: Israel has occupied
the West Bank for 45 years,

turning the little town
where Christ was born

into what its residents
call an open-air prison.

Kristy Anastis lives
with her mother Clair,

her father, brother,
and sister, in this house,

which is surrounded on
three sides by the wall.

- How do you live with this?

Jhally: Simon's report was seen
as so unusual, and so incendiary,

that Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren
actually tried to spike it - censor it -

leading Simon to directly
confront him on camera.

Michael Oren: When I
heard that you were going

to do a story about
Christians in the Holy Land,

and my assump... and had, I believe,
information about the nature of it,

and it's been confirmed
by this interview today...

Simon: Nothing has been confirmed
by the interview, Mr. Ambassador!

Because you don't know
what's going to be put on air.

Oren: Okay, I don't. True.

Simon: Mr. Ambassador,
I've been doing this a longtime,

and I've received
lots of reactions from

just about everyone
I've done stories about.

But I've never gotten
a reaction before

from a story that hasn't
been broadcast yet.

Oren: Well, there's a first
time for everything, Bob.

Jhally: These are examples of exceptional
reporting, but they are the exception.

And there's a reason for that.

In each of these cases,
these journalists were

mercilessly attacked
and labeled anti-Semitic.

It didn't matter that
they were both Jewish.

That's how the climate
of intimidation works.

Khalidi: It's almost impossible to get
any view that isn't one way or another

shaped by an Israeli
perspective, almost impossible.

It cannot get in without
facing a firestorm of pit-bull

attacks to make sure
that the line is followed.

Blumenthal: Everyone
who's trying to tell the

American public a
different side of the story,

an alternative view of the
conflict that's reality-based,

has already crossed
a barrier of fear, and

I think they've already
told themselves,

well, I'm going to pay for this,
but I'm ready to pay the price.

[music]

Narrator: Over just
the past few years, the

proliferation of social media
and Internet news sources

has made it increasingly
difficult for the

Israeli government and
pro-Israel groups in the US

to manage American
perceptions of the conflict.

Video footage and
reporting from the ground

bearing witness to the
reality of the occupation

are now more accessible
than ever on the Internet.

In addition, over the past few years a
number of high-profile documentaries -

made by Israeli and
Palestinian filmmakers alike -

have trained a harsh
light on current Israeli

policy and the repression
of Palestinian rights.

Narrator: At the same
time, a powerful new

boycott, divestment,
and sanctions movement

has been gaining momentum and
raising awareness of the occupation -

while activists from
the Black Lives Matter

movement have been
making explicit connections

between police violence
against African Americans and

the Israeli mi itary's
repression of Palestinians.

Marc Lamont Hill: We stand
next to people who continue

to courageously struggle
and resist the occupation,

people who continue to
dream and fight for freedom.

From Ferguson to Palestine,
the struggle for freedom continues.

Narrator: And all of these
developments seem to be having an effect.

Polls now show that
while sympathy for Israel

remains at all-time highs
among older Americans,

it has been hemorrhaging
among young people.

Jhally: Despite the
efforts of the lobby,

something really
striking is taking place.

Lots of young people are
abandoning the mainstream

media and turning instead
to other independent sources.

So they have a totally different way
of making sense of what's happening -

an unfiltered view of Israel's repression.

And pro-Israel operatives
like Frank Luntz are in a panic.

In his latest report, he calls what's
happening with young people a "disaster"

and demands that
Israel's supporters respond.

And people have answered the call.

You have powerful right-wing
billionaires like Sheldon

Adelson, a major donor
to Republican candidates,

bankrolling a campaign
to silence and intimidate

student-activists on
college campuses.

But it's not working.

Groups like Students
for Justice in Palestine,

who see what's happening
to Palestinians as a civil

rights issue, have
refused to be intimidated -

they're refusing to back
down even though they're being

labeled as anti-Semitic
and terrorist sympathizers -

and their numbers are growing.

Protesters: The seize of Gaza's got to go!

Munayyer: As the discourse
begins to open, more people

are starting to understand
this as a rights-based issue.

Not an issue of radicalism.

This is a movement for the rights of
people who's rights are being denied -

who are living under
occupation, who want to live

in their country freely
just like anybody else.

Khalidi: You can see just
so many video clips of kids

having their hands smashed
by soldiers with batons.

You can see just so
many pictures of thousands

of people being killed
as happened in Gaza.

And at a certain point
there's a cognitive dissonance.

You realize that what you're
being told is a pack of lies.

Miller: Let's just get away from
mythologies and talk about the reality.

And then maybe be able
to persuade people that they

should not any longer give
their unwavering support

to a nation that is engaged
in a policy that's not

just inhumane and brutal
but ultimately suicidal.

Walt: Given the central role that the
United States plays in backing Israel,

it seems to me Americans,
all Americans, have a

right to question
particular Israeli policies,

and in particular the
prolonged occupation -

the fact that the Palestinian people
have been kept without a state

and without any political
rights for decades now.

Bennis: For us in the
United States, I think,

the issue has to be what
is our government doing?

How is our government
allowing, enabling,

supporting, arming,
defending Israeli violations?

Jhally: In the end,
this comes down to a

battle for the minds of
the American people.

A battle over the stories
they're told to make

sense of this conflict.
A battle over perception.

The more Americans are able to see the
reality of occupation with their own eyes,

to see images of routine daily violence,

of the repression and humiliation that
never make their way into mainstream news,

the more they'll question
the image of Israel as this

tiny little David up against
a bullying Arab Goliath

and start to wonder if
it's actually the outgunned

Palestinians who might
be the real Davids here.

When that starts
becoming the dominant

perception here in
the US, all bets are off.

It all comes down to
American public perception.

Chomsky: That's the one
way to change anything.

Changing perception and understanding
here leading to a change of policy here.

As long as the United States supports
Israel nothing is going to happen.