Israel Hired GOP's Professional Propagandist Frank Luntz to Sell Israel's War on Gaza

View of Jerusalem.

The usual piles of crap from the right to make mass killing and theft of land into a model of compassionate outreach has gone international as Frank Luntz helps Israel with their BS and Hasbara.

He says it is absolutely crucial to exude empathy for Palestinians: "Persuadables [sic] won't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Show Empathy for BOTH sides!" This may explain why a number of Israeli spokesman are almost lachrymose about the plight of Palestinians being pounded by Israeli bombs and shells. In a sentence in bold type, underlined and with capitalisation, Dr Luntz says that Israeli spokesmen or political leaders must never, ever justify "the deliberate slaughter of innocent women and children" and they must aggressively challenge those who accuse Israel of such a crime. Israeli spokesmen struggled to be true to this prescription when 16 Palestinians were killed in a UN shelter in Gaza last Thursday.

Whoa, Dude.  Hitler would be so jealous.  If he'd only not shot himself and lived to be able to avail himself of your complete lack of moral fiber.  He and Eva could be living on the Riviera with your help and getting reparations from the rest of the world.

Avoid talking about borders in terms of pre- or post-1967, because it only serves to remind Americans of Israel's military history.

Um yeah, it just reminds us that you stole your land from others and are still stealing the little the Palestinians have left, and polluting what you don't outright grab.

Luntz also tells Israelis to avoid language that describes reality in Israel because it reminds Americans of the racists in the American South and Apartheid South Africa.

 Instead the American propaganda master says to claim that Palestinians want to demand land from Israelis.

"the right of return is a tough issue for Israelis to communicate effectively because much of Israeli language sounds like the 'separate but equal' words of the 1950s segregationists and the 1980s advocates of Apartheid. The fact is, Americans don't like, don't believe and don't accept the concept of 'separate but equal'."So how should spokesmen deal with what the booklet admits is a tough question? They should call it a "demand", on the grounds that Americans don't like people who make demands. "Then say 'Palestinians aren't content with their own state. Now they're demanding territory inside Israel'.".

Funny how there was no Israel until the land was taken from Palestinians.

Luntz also advises to treat Palestinians who left or were thrown out of Israel as illegal immigrants, not people seeking their homeland.

How about the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled in 1948 and in the following years, and who are not allowed to go back to their homes? Here Dr Luntz has subtle advice for spokesmen, saying that "the right of return is a tough issue for Israelis to communicate...

.... If nothing else works, say that the return of Palestinians would "derail the effort to achieve peace".

 Then again, maybe I should get into this and go demand a place of my own in Northern Sweden, because some of my ancestors were from Lapland with winter digs in France from whence my Huguenot peeps were driven under Louis the 14th.

After all the Israelis have shown that it's all cool.

Picture at top used via Creative Commons License Attribution (CC by 2.0) thanks to Flickr user gnuckx who has no connection to this blog or blogger.

Linda Chavez Calls to End Apartheid of Women in Iran. Why that drips with irony.

From South Africa's Apratheid museum.

Funny story about Linda Chavez's concern of Iranian women,

Don't remember it?

Do you remember that Linda Chavez was George W Bush's first pick for Labor Secretar but she never took office?  Do you remember why?

Yes,  because she had allegedly  hired an  "illegal immigrant"  (she admitted making payments to one, but that's not exactly the same as proven hiring) which put her into the pits with the right so she had to go.

No this isn't about one woman possibly hiring one undocumented immigrant for up to ten years as news sources reported. It's about how the undocumented system is a form of apartheid and it appears that Ms. Chavez appears an active user of that system.

It's hard to imagine the pain behind hidden by that nonchalant excuse.  Not for Ms. Chavez, but for the friend, maybe a relative as I think she was described as a distant cousin.

Yeah, when an employee is not being treated well, they tend to quit.  They may return if they can't find a better offer, but repeated leavings means something is wrong.  And no one ever disputed that Ms Chavez knew she was illegal.  So the best thing to do would be to give her a permanent job and sponsor her for residency like an honest woman.

So what does hiring an undocumented immigrant and refusing to help her become legal have to do with an apartheid situation?  Apartheid treats one set of people like they aren't worthy of human rights.

Like Meg Whitman fired her maid/babysitter Nicandra Diaz-Santillan when the woman asked Whitman to sponsor her for legal status (documentation leading eventually citizenship).  It had also turned out that Whitman hadn't paid Ms Diaz for copious amounts of overtime the woman had done for the candidate's family.  Whitman paid up in 2010 so as to not add criminality to her obvious unconcern for her former maid's documentation problems, but only because the spotlight had been focused so harshly on her distasteful treatment of Nicky.

What is this ability to treat others as unworthy of respect,  just reward for work, and employer FICA payments (unless a person is self employed, the employer pays half of Social Security tax)?  What is the ability to neglect to pay overtime when an employee is asked to work over 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week, just because a person is undocumented?

That certainly smells like apartheid to me.  And in both cases the women came to know that these two women were undocumented.  In Linda Chavez case she ignored the plight of her "friend".  In Meg Whitman's case she fired a long time trusted maid, instead of getting into a politically messy
 situation that would have helped a woman who worked overtime apparently uncomplainingly for many years.

So Linda Chavez's worry about the women of Iran seems like she has cataracts obscuring her vision, but we do know that the neocons are desperate to get into another long protracted war.  Remember all the great things that were supposed to happen if we took a little "cake walk" in Iraq?

Turning Iraq over to the majority was supposed to free people, instead it forced women to don hi-jabs and spurred a civil war that drove millions out of the nation to seek safety across borders.   At least over 100,000 Iraq citizens were killed by the most circumspect number.  More than four thousand five hundred US soldiers died.  About ten times that were "wounded", but other analyses showed that up to a quarter million US soldiers have had their bodies, lives, or mental and emotional capacities harmed so greatly that normal lives will be impossible in the future.

I think America now understands we can't just march into a nation and fix it, but most Americans (70%) were against invading Iraq too.  With the wrong party in office, it doesn't matter what the people want.

That is why I keep trying to remind people about what happened when Republicans were in control before and to point out the hypocrisies of those who support neocon agendas when we haven't even fixed our own very apartheid approach to people who work in our nation.

Word stunts, though seem to be all some political people have to offer.  will we let them drag us back into war?

Picture at top used via Creative Commons license Attribution (CC by 2.0) thanks to flickr user Nagarjun/Nagarjun Kan-dukuru who has no connection to this blog or blogger.

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