Feel free to join in with your own examples of ME media strategies re the struggle for the hearts and minds of the world.  I found these particularly compelling.

Losing the fight

It’s not only huge Arab presence on social media that weakens Israel’s arguments, but also non-transparency in PR.

. . . what continues to be starkly apparent to me as I interact widely on social networking sites is that traditional hasbara, or the set of arguments used in the past to defend Israel’s right to exist or explain its right to act or react, is becoming less and less effective or believable.

One of the possible reasons for this could be put down to sheer online demographics. A recent study in Israel, which was funded by Google Israel and carried out by the School of Media Studies at the College of Management Academic Studies (COMAS) in Rishon Lezion, showed that while in a general sense Israelis are highly connected digitally, their online activity seems confined to mere socializing. The study showed that the majority of Israelis using social media were in their teens or pre-teens and most preferred their activities to be in Hebrew – not very useful for making Israel’s case to the world.

Additionally, statistics show that Israel is only 44th on the list of global Facebook users, with some 3,486,520 using the social networking site and only roughly 5 percent of the country appearing on Twitter, a platform used more for social action.

In contrast, an Arab Technical News Gateway report from last month shows that the overall number of Arab users on Facebook worldwide has already surpassed 43 million, and on Twitter, it’s more than 1.3 million.

Enough said! HOWEVER, IT is not only people power that renders Israel’s traditional hasbara weaker than in the past but also the way it is carried out. International studies into general social media habits suggest that users are becoming much more determined to weed out unreliable sources and are demanding more transparency.

. . . perhaps it’s time to rethink Israel’s PR tactics.

Perhaps, indeed. 

Jun 24, 2012 -- 4:57AM, Miraj wrote:

A questionable effort to defeat Arab-American voters at the polls to keep Congress pro-Israel assumes that only Arabs are anti-Israel and that all of them are.

It is unfortunate that the Arabs have created such air of mistrust.

"International studies into general social media habits suggest that users are becoming much more determined to weed out unreliable sources and are demanding more transparency."

Oh, would that were only so!!!

Jun 24, 2012 -- 10:08AM, habesor wrote:

I came across an article that I think is relevant to this topic. It can be found at:

abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=80... 

Habesor

>>>>>>>> Very nice article Habesor.

I have been saying this for a while but there are members who doubted it. Let me share a bit from the article...

Although AIPAC does not give money as a political action committee, its supporters do. With a budget of nearly $20 million, the organization's publicity literature says AIPAC activists "through more than 2,000 meetings with members of Congress" helped pass "more than 100 pro-Israel legislative initiatives a year."

The organization also takes credit for procuring nearly $3 billion of annual U.S. aid to Israel, 75 percent of which is military aid.................

The article is dated.  The problem being discussed now is how Israel is losing the PR war, and it is.

Jun 24, 2012 -- 3:33PM, habesor wrote:

BDBoy,

The article was written a number of years ago but I think that it is still relevant. Here are some excerpts that state facts that are often overlooked:

"Pro-Israeli groups benefit from the fact that Americans are more sympathetic to Israelis than Palestinians," says James Lindsay, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. "The Jewish lobby succeeds partly because it is pushing on an open door — it advocates policies that most Americans favor. Israel is a stable, pro-Western democracy in a region where governments are often unstable and autocratic. On the other hand, pro-Palestinian groups are trying to push at a closed door."

and as an example, perhaps more relevant when this article was written than now:

"But while President Bush actively courted the American Muslim vote during his 2000 campaign, many experts say cases of racial profiling after Sept. 11 and Bush's perceived pro-Israeli stand have led many American Muslims to question their endorsement of Bush.

"They rather like George Bush, but they certainly feel beleaguered by some of his policies," says Smith. "I think American Muslims are keeping a low profile these days — they just want to be treated equally after 9/11." "

and finally:

"Thousands of miles away from the bloodshed in the Middle East, pro-Palestinian groups also face the daunting challenge of attempting to woo American hearts while hard-line Palestinian groups continue to support suicide bombings as a tactical weapon in the current intifada.

"In the long term what will determine the effectiveness of both sides will be the behavior of Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East," says Lindsay. "So long as Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade remain wedded to using violence, pro-Israeli groups will have an open door in the United States." "

Habesor