A while back here at Paulitics, I
discussed the campaign by the Israel lobby to pay university students
to agree with Israel in classroom discussions, university clubs and in
rallies.
This
programme and the overwhelmingly pro-Israel North American (and, to a
lesser extent, European) media coverage were however not enough for the
powerful and extremely well organized lobby. The Israeli lobby then
created a desktop application called “Megaphone” about which many political commentators still remain blissfully unaware. Megaphone
serves as a syphoning tool which has the power to instantly send
pro-Israel activists flooding into any online discussion, web poll or
other forum where Israel is being discussed in order to grossly
unbalance the discussion thus creating the impression among Internet
users that Israel’s support is both much wider and deeper than it
actually is. However, as frightening and undemocratic as these two
operations were, they pale in comparison to what the government of
Israel is doing now in terms of making “crimestop” a reality.
The Israeli press is now reporting
that, in addition to the considerable influence of the Israeli lobby,
the government of Israel has decided to marshal its state treasury to
the cause further unbalancing the already obscenely unbalanced debate
over Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. The
government of Israel will now directly pay pro-Israeli agents and
bloggers to infiltrate online discussions, message boards, online
newspaper comments et cetera with a ubiquitously pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian message.