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Alison Weir, founder of If Americans Knew and president of Council for the National Interest, details many elements of Israel’s information management programs and how facts are supplanted by propaganda.Weir recently published this essay, which describes many parts of the massive, complex effort by Israel to control information, and to replace facts and opinion with state-approved propaganda. Her interest was sparked by YouTube’s removal of the If Americans Knew channel–since reinstated–and the opaque process.
Israel deploys soldiers, students, government agencies, including Unit 8200 (equivalent to the NSA) and American volunteers to police the media, social media, and WikiPedia. With funding estimated at $70 million or more annually, this is a sophisticated and well-organized campaign.
As Weir explains, the legitimate rejection of anti-Semitism is used to protect the policies and actions of the Israeli government, and this conflation is central to their efforts to protect Israel from criticism and advance its world view, known as Hasbara.