Redress Online
August 15, 2013
Israel is looking to hire university students to post pro-Israel messages on social media networks – without needing to identify themselves as government-linked pimps, the Associated Press news agency reports, quoting Israeli officials.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement that students on Israeli university campuses would receive full or partial scholarships to combat anti-Semitism and calls to boycott Israel online. It said students’ messages would parallel statements by government officials…
The agency quoted an Israeli official as saying on 14 August that a budget of 778,000 US dollars had been earmarked for the propaganda project, and that the national Israeli student association would select participants from a pool of applicants.
According to AP, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz identified the official heading the project as Danny Seaman, a propaganda official who has written posts on his personal Facebook page which the paper described as being incendiary and anti-Muslim.
Haaretz had posted four screen shots of Seaman’s recent posts, AP reported. In one of them, he wrote: “Does the commencement of the fast of the Ramadan mean that Muslims will stop eating each other during the daytime?” In another, he uses profanity in a comment about the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, Saeb Erekat.
While working as director of the Israeli Government Press Office, Seaman had banned Palestinians from receiving government press cards.
Now that you have been warned, the next time you read or hear someone bleating noxious propaganda against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement or braying “anti-Semitism” ad nauseum, you will have more than reasonable grounds for suspicion.