Naftali Bennett Is Running A Campaign To 'Fix Israel's Hasbara'.

The Israeli opposition leader wants to continue the genocidal greater Israel project, but do a better job at hiding it from the public.

Naftali Bennett, the leader of the Israeli opposition challenging Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, shares the exact same genocidal, expansionist vision of greater Israel as Netanyahu, arguably in an even more extreme way.

Bennett, who has described himself as “more right-wing than Bibi”, has called to annex the majority of the West Bank, celebrated the genocide in Gaza, justified the IDF shooting Palestinian children, supports the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon, and supports the war on Iran.

As the Times of Israel noted , Bennett and his coalition partner, Yair Lapid, “broadly accept Netanyahu’s security assumptions — hardline on Iran, hawkish on Gaza and Lebanon, opposed to Palestinian sovereignty under current conditions”.

One of the major ways Bennett is differentiating himself from Benjamin Netanyahu is by campaigning on improving Israel’s propaganda machine, effectively supporting the same Greater Israel policies of the Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, but doing a better job in hiding them from the world.

Israel recently suffered another PR crisis after its national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, released a video showing his forces abusing detained activists who were attempting to bring food aid to Gaza.

In repose, Naftali Bennett did not oppose the torture of international activists, but criticized the damage Ben-Gvir did to Israel’s propaganda machine by publishing the video of it, saying, “The Netanyahu-Ben Gvir-Deri coalition has weakened Israel’s international standing to an unprecedented low, endangering IDF soldiers abroad and arming our antisemitic enemies around the world.”

He then announced one of the key planks of his campaign platform, “how we will fix Israel’s hasbara”.

Announcing his plan, Bennett laid out an organized attempt to run social media troll farms and to plant Israeli propagandists in media in order to silence criticism and factual reporting on Israel’s war crimes.

He said that he will “establish a powerful national hasbara authority:
The authority will set Israel’s messaging strategy, coordinate between bodies, and ensure that the Israeli response is swift, unified, and professional. It will have an independent budget, a professional director, and its own power”.

This “powerful national hasbara authority,” according to Bennett’s plan, “will recruit experts in international media, social networks, public opinion research, crisis management, creativity, data, and technology”.

Bennet called to create a pool of Israeli propagandists in the media to be activated to do damage control for Israel.

As part of his plan, he called to “create a pool of spokespeople in major languages who will appear in global media, podcasts, universities, and social networks.
We will initiate a presence—in every language, in every arena, at every hour.”

He also called to establish a social media troll farm to silence criticism of Israel, calling to “establish a consciousness and technology war room” which “will operate an advanced war room that will monitor the discourse in real time, identify disinformation before it takes hold, and distribute sharp, accurate, and fast content.”

He called to coordinate this campaign with existing Israeli troll farms, writing, “Today, there are many excellent private hasbara efforts operating out of a sense of mission around the world, but they operate alone. We will connect them to a coordinated campaign, one fist for Israel.”

Finally, he called to work with Western government backing Israel in this major propaganda operation, writing, “Israel is not alone. There are other democracies grappling with disinformation attacks and attempts at influence by foreign actors. We will work together with technological, legal, and media tools to fight the lie machines that poison young people around the world.”

Naftali Bennett will be at least as genocidal and expansionist as the Netanyahu coalition government, but he will do a better job at hiding Israel’s crimes from the world by running an even more sophisticated propaganda operation, as he has openly admitted.

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