Zionists are having to think of new, more subtle ways to defend the occupation and dispossession of Palestinians. A new battlefield has opened up in an unlikely place: BuzzFeed, the fast-growing soft
news website that rose to prominence by disseminating videos of cute animals, but now has pretensions to serious journalism.
A group called reThink Israel has paid for eleven articles on BuzzFeed in the last two months. The content of the articles — all written in the typical BuzzFeed “listicle” style — is at first glance relatively harmless and apolitical. One is headlined “12 Neighborhoods That’ll Stop You In Your Tracks.” It features photos of trendy neighborhoods in such cities as London, Montreal and Melbourne, along with “Tel Aviv, Israel” and “Haifa, Israel.” Another article promises readers “12 Sounds From Israel You’ll Soon Be Obsessed With,” and then there is “17 reasons Jaffa is the Brooklyn of Israel.” …
The financier of reThink Israel is the American casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson.
At Yeshiva University last October, as reported by Philip Weiss for Mondoweiss, Adelson described reThink Israel as as “an NGO for hasbara” — the Hebrew word Israel uses to describe its official outreach and propaganda. He added: “We’re going to provide information, propaganda if you will. We also say that we’re cool. The beaches are cool, the clubs are cool.” Adelson wants Israel to be “cool” to distract young Americans from Israeli policy.
Update: A reader points to a somewhat related story:
On Wednesday, after the Israeli antitrust authority approved his purchase of two more news outlets, the Jewish American billionaire upped his ante in the country’s media market. Adelson already owns one of the four mainstream newspapers here, a free daily tabloid called Israel Hayom (Israel Today). He started that newspaper in 2007 and helped it grow to have the largest circulation in the country. With his latest purchases, Adelson will now also control the main religious daily, Makor Rishon, which caters to Israel’s Zionist religious right, and NRG, the news Web site of the Maariv newspaper, which has faced a multitude of financial woes in the past few years. While the antitrust authority decided that Adelson’s acquisitions are not crossing any competitive red lines, media watchdogs (and not a few political pundits) worry about Adelson’s growing influence.
The Dish 