from Hacker News

Israeli documents show expansive government effort to shape US discourse

by no_exit on 6/25/24, 3:07 PM with 39 comments

• by Dig1t on 6/25/24, 4:02 PM

  >None of the groups identified in this story’s reporting have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara).

  >“There’s a built-in assumption that there’s nothing at all weird about viewing the US as sort of an open field for Israel to operate in, that there are no limitations,”

  Why does Israel have such a privileged status with respect to other nations? If it were any other country, US news organizations and politicians would be up in arms about a foreign government directly manipulating US public opinion. But this one country is special. Why?

  >Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, signed legislation that revised Georgia’s hate crime statute to include the IHRA definition of antisemitism in January, making it possible for certain criticisms of Israel to lead to increased prison sentences.

  Isn't this eroding free speech in the US? How is it constitutional that saying something about the politics of a foreign government could lead to increased prison sentences for US citizens?

• by afavour on 6/25/24, 4:03 PM

  I’ve been surprised how brazen it’s been. For a little while almost every Twitter login I’d see a promoted tweet from the official Israel account making some statement or other about the war.

  That I can tolerate but I found the same account promoting outrage about US campus protests to be distasteful. That’s a domestic US issue and trying to influence it from the outside feels inappropriate, not to mention leans into a bunch of antisemitic tropes!

• by JoshTko on 6/25/24, 4:08 PM

  Interesting article! Spells out in detail the different tactics used such as advertising, partnership with other organizations, policy/law lobbying, content management partnerships etc. that Israel used. Also interesting in terms of phrasing used, as the wording would be very different if say China was found doing these activities.

• by jocker12 on 6/25/24, 4:14 PM

  A different article (What everyone gets wrong about the 2015 Ashley Madison scandal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40786891) gives a lot more context to this story about which many commenters say it is no news at all. Yes, it's not, because the Israelis "have been doing this for decades".

  But... (and I'll go to the other article)... "But that isn’t a new story. People have been trying to have affairs with strangers for thousands of years. Ashley Madison was never really about that. Avid Life Media, its parent company, wasn’t in the business of sex, it was in the business of bots. Its site became a prototype for what social media platforms such as Facebook are becoming: places so packed with AI-generated nonsense that they feel like spam cages, or information prisons where the only messages that get through are auto-generated ads."

• by TehShrike on 6/25/24, 4:05 PM

  I read about half the article before giving up, but is there any information what Israeli officials actually did to shape US discourse? Besides having meetings.

• by bitcharmer on 6/25/24, 3:30 PM

  How is this news? This has been going on for decades

• by sequoia on 6/25/24, 4:25 PM

  Pro tip for reading an article that concerns Israel: compare and get context. Israel is often held up as a boogeyman even when it compares similarly to other countries. For example, I could say “Israel has a higher rate of incarceration than China!” and while (according to Wikipedia) that’s true, it’s also true for 90+ other states and territories. Israel sounds uniquely bad in the first telling, but when you contextualize you see that they are actual around the middle of the pack. No more boogeyman.

  Context is terrible for the boogeyman narrative, so it’s usually left out.

  In this case, the accusation is that Israel attempts to influence US opinion. Do other countries do this? In 2020 the US department of education said it uncovered ‘$6.6bn in previously unreported gifts from countries including Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It said this figure could be "significantly underestimated".’[0] $6.6b in secret funding from mostly anti-democratic countries, just to a few universities. How does this story about Israel sound now, in the light of more context? Context tends to disrupt the “Israel the unique boogeyman” narrative.

  Does the guardian story include any context about how other countries try to influence US opinion, or what is typical? If not, why not?

  tl;dr: seek context, especially in stories about boogeyman Israel.

  0: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51481396

• by adamtaylor_13 on 6/25/24, 4:00 PM

  The US public's opinion on Israel is the most divided that it's EVER been. Given that we're they're #1 ally and probably one of the reasons they haven't been wiped off the face of the planet, there's a strong incentive for them to try to shape US discourse in their favor. Agreed with other commenter here, not sure how this is news.