Here is the article I promised explaining the 5 tactics that Israel advocates (hasbarabots) use to blogswarm comment fields on a blog or article. The tactics generalize somewhat to a debate of any issue not only resolving the Israel-Palestine situation.
1. Change the subject to a topic one more likely to win (be more persuasive).
2. Equivocate on small details to distract audience to argument and debate opponent from the 'bigger picture' or 'full context' of whatever subject started the debate.
3. Drop a dumbfounding, emotional, heartstring-pulling anecdote or even quote. Make sure not to tell specifically where one found the quote just calling it 'general' or 'public' information to prevent the anecdote or its source from being disputed. Dropping an anecdote or quote works better in oral debate/conversation/argument than writing. The longer the stammering and pausing before a response the more a person is perceived as 'not knowing all relevant facts' regardless of how relevant the dropped anecdote was to the original subject.
4. Twist political disagreement with Israel government policy into accusations of prejudice against Jews. Call names like anti-semitism, anti-zionism or simply equate 'anti-Israel' with anti-semitism or anti-zionism. Falsely equate any association with a previously-defined 'unpopular' person (by having previously started a controversy around the person or group) or funding source as 'evidence' of prejudice aka the McCarthyite 'guilt by association' tactic.
Hat tip to title of Elliott Abrams' 1993 memoir subtitle "How Political Differences were Turned Into Crimes" for inspiration.
5. Use all of the above tactics to start a controversy around the person or organization or funding source. Make the person or group or funding source known more for the controversy around their work or funding decisions than for the content of their work or what activities are funded. Employers and publishers are scared off by controversies/conflicts that are feared to hurt future business.
Examples of tactics based on my own personal experience of talking to other people about the Israel-Palestine situation for about 20 years:
Dumbfounding anecdote about Edward Said throwing a rock, from Lebanon side, of Israel's border with Lebanon. Dropper of anecdote used it as a sign "Edward Said doesn't love Israel" and 'wouldn't care too much if Israel ceased to exist as a Jewish homeland governed by laws more informed by Jewish law than Christian, Muslim or any other religious laws.
a Palestinian Authority official put an orphanage sign on his private home to deceive international visitors and cover up corruption in PA government.
a Palestinian ambulance used to transport weapons. Used by so-called honestreporting.com to justify stopping ambulances at checkpoints. One woman who tried to blow herself up at a Beersheva hospital after being allowed into Israel from Gaza cited by camera.org. These two anecdotes are used to justify not allowing Palestinians to enter Israel for medical treatment unavailable in Gaza or West Bank.
Needing to enter Israel for medical treatment unavailable in the West Bank or Gaza shows the inadequacy of the humanitarian and medical aid allowed to be imported, in particular, to Gaza. Remember this the next time one reads the Israel hasbarabots citing numbers of trucks allowed into Gaza usually sourced from the IDF spokesman or Foreign Affairs Ministry to defend the blockade. Challenge the 'weapons in ambulance' anecdote by referring the dropper to page 44 of the 2004 report "Checkpoints A Counterview" by the Israeli organization Machsomwatch.org. Machsom is the Hebrew word for checkpoint.
And this whopper of an dumbfounding anecdote dropped to me by one of my brother's friends at synagogue during a break between services in 2010 at Yom Kippur.
A Columbia, MD-area synagogue organized a trip to Israel during 2010 that one of my brother's friends went on. That friend summed up the trip as 'Israel is focused on trying to build a country Palestinians are fixated on stopping settlements.' 'A Palestinian game show asked a question of how long the coast of Palestine was.' The answer was the coastline Israel claims. Naturally my brother's friend didn't remember the source of the anecdote at that time.
Later I found the question posted, as a link to a youtube video with English subtitles at www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=2497, by the 'incitement monitor' group pmw.org.il. The group also tried to use 'guilt by association' tactics to impugn the EU by way of funding and set logo and two PA Ministers with the question by their presence at another episode of the program. (Tactic 4 above). The group at that website has managed to get audiences with Hillary Clinton when she was a senator for a presentation, by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, on Palestinian school and media violent incitement. pmw.org.il Palestinian Media Watch notes little or nothing about Israeli school and media violent incitement or prejudiced statements toward Palestinians.
Read the book "Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism" by Hillel Schenker and Ziad Abu-Zayyad for a more even-handed, balanced discussion of institutionalized incitement and prejudice. Or read "Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel" by Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky. Thank what I call the 'Israel academic and cultural lobbies' for any difficulty in finding these books. Joel Kovel, author of "Overcoming Zionism" who lost his faculty job at Bard College as indirect retaliation, had trouble getting his publisher to overcome a 'controversy startup' from standwithus Michigan based on the 5 case for Israel tactics and print the book.
Read the link below for background on the controversy startup that almost suppressed the book but led to the firing by Bard College (economic execution) of Joel Kovel.
http://www.wrmea.com/component/content/article/315-2007-december/5798-israel-lobby-unrelenting-in-efforts-to-stifle-speech-it-doesnt-want-americans-to-hear.html
Being Yom Kippur and a guest of my brother at the synagogue I had to sugar-coat and moderate my responses. After a year of remembering the 'Palestinian game show coastline question' dumbfounding anecdote my response is one game show question doesn't impugn an entire PA government negotiating policy. The Israel-advocating friend of my brother was repeating an Israeli 'grasp at straws' to justify Israel's own unwillingness to negotiate without preconditions shown by continued Jewish-only housing construction in Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and West Bank Jewish-only settlement expansion. Less land for Palestine, as a state, is subject to negotiations on land swaps as the demographic character of who lives on what land changes. Demanding initial statements of recognition of an Israeli 'right to exist' by Palestinian negotiators and Hamas charter revisions (reminiscent of demands for PLO Charter revisions before 1993 Oslo Accords) is an Israeli negotiating precondition that belies Israel's stated 'willingness to negotiate all issues without preconditions.'
More examples of use of the 5 tactics to make the 'case for Israel' may follow as I have time and observe them being used.
