Are you claiming (in your title) that Israel has ordered Jews and Christians to unite to fight propaganda? Or are you claiming that Israel is attempting to egg on fights between Jews and Christians?
Either way, I do not really see where you are getting your claim. The article briefly mentions one small connection to Right-wing Christian groups, but does not indicate that they are taking “orders” from Israel. In fact, the article mentions that there are restrictions on what the government can do, in any event.
It’s a propaganda effort, but I get the sense the OP used the word “orders” (which seems unconnected to the story) to imply that Israel is fomenting a religious conflict or something like a jihad. Which also doesn’t seem to be the case.
WildfireMM**, you need to explain what you intended in the OP and where you’d like to see this thread go. Currently, you have a misleading title backed up by a news report indicating that a lot of people on different sides of an issue are all doing the same thing. That is not grounds for a debate and I am not going to dump it into another Forum. Without some clarification, soon, I will probably close this thread.
Hardly surprising. Whether recruited or not, you can read any number of ultrapro-Israeli messages (no matter what they do) on this very board.
Hopefully – for them – they are getting some sort of reward, monetary or otherwise. It’s beyond biased if they weren’t.
Scary thought if so, for they’ve become what they hate…though I can’t say I am overly surprised. Finding the “good guys” in this conflict is a hopeless undertaking.
On the off chance the debate is about purported cyber attacks, here is another article on what Hezbollah is up too:
If we are talking about something else (or what seems most likely to me, just a drive by rant thread of unknown purpose save to blast Israel), the my apologies. Carry on.
So far as I can tell (not that I’ve put any effort into doing so), the issue is one of astroturfing. Israeli diplos and students are being encouraged to present pro-Israeli views on message boards and in chat rooms. Just a bit of a PR push, can’t see the big deal myself.
Ah…my bad then. I misunderheard what the OP was getting at obviously. I thought we were talking about a REAL issue…like direct and purposeful attacks on various web sites with the intent of hammering the message out about how good Hezbollah is and how evil Israel is. :smack:
I really don’t know what to say about the actual OP so I’ll bow out at this point. Apologies all around. I appreciate the translation though Gorsnak.
From “The Electronic Intifada”. They are claiming that Israel’s MFA is not ‘ordering’ anybody to do anything, but has provided a link to a private company’s legal and free service, if they want to get involved in debating the issues online.
They claim that this is the original missive. If legit, (and it seems to be) it certainly does not seem to be addressed to MFA trainees.
This is the privte website distributing the software. It appears to be connected with various Zionist organistions, but I see no evidence that it can be ordered to do anything by Israel. Perhaps I’ve missed a fact somewhere…
This is the website for the Isreali MFA’s trainee policies. I can’t find the word ‘internet’ being used once.
According to CNN, the group trying to get the word out about Megaphone is the WUJS. The CNN article goes so far as to state:
So, based on my preliminary digging, it would seem that the OP’s point is a fabrication. The Israeli MFA has ordered nobody to do anything as far as I can tell, but they are encouraging private individuals to make use of Megaphone. It seems that the OP was suggesting that there is a Sinister Zionist Conspiracy [sup]tm[/sup], or something of the sort. But there is no evidence that the Israeli MFA is ordering people to do anything, that they are ordering Jews to fight Christians online, or Jews and Christians to fight Arabs online… or anything of the sort. Indeed, I can see nothing that specifically mentions religion, only those who support Israel.
Seem rather like a non-story to me, especially compared to some things like the actions of Hezbollah’s PR “director”, Mr. Green Helmet.
Also interesting is that Lebanese/Palestinian folks are using Megaphone as well… it doesn’t seem to be much more than a tool for searching the 'net and finding content of a specific sort that someone might be interested in joining in.
It does bring up an interesting issue for message boards, however. Leaving the current conflict out of it to prevent people from pointing fingers at current members, as various factions in conflicts become increasingly internet-savvy, it seems likely to me that large boards of this type will be targeted for propaganda operations. It seems like a really good bang-for-your-buck type operation - order a few hundred or a few thousand soldiers or terrorists to spend their off-duty time hitting message boards, blogs, chat boards, and other group communication sites, and pose as various people and either argue for your own side’s case, or more nefariously try to kick off false stories damaging your adversary, which might take hold and run wild on the internet, or pose as citizens of the enemy country who are sympathetic, to get across the notion that they have widespread support.
I don’t care what your political beliefs are - if you’re a Liberal you can assume Bush has his neo-con hordes doing it. Or it could be Hezbollah, or North Korea, or Russia, or whatever. It just seems to me that this is probably going to be a growing phenomenon, and we’re all probably going to have to deal with it.
On second thought, perhaps the SDMB is safe. It’s a ‘hard target’. This place is so good at rational discussion and debunking that it might be seen as a tough nut to crack. Maybe all the spooks are hanging around the AOL chatrooms and posting blog entries at places like FreeRepublic and Daily KOS.
What would be the difference? We already have plenty of apologists for terrorists here. I can’t believe that an actual Hezbollah terrorist posting would say anything substantially different at all from the stuff people like Red Fury, Der Tries, Svetaspol and others already post.
Since the OP does not seem interested, there does not appear to be a topic of debate, and some other posters appear to be mostly interested in making stupid comments about other posters, I’m shutting this down.
