Shortly after the Gaza war, the Israeli foreign minister realized that Israel’s public image has never been worse. Of course, instead of changing policy and treating the Palestinians as equal human beings; the Israeli government believes that its image can just be made favorable through crude propaganda. The foreign ministry quickly appropriated $2 million for additional propaganda purposes.

Part of that money is to be spend paying pro-Israel advocates to write pro-Israel comments under website articles critical to or hostile toward Israel. About $150,000 is to be spent on this. The Israelis look around and see comments often pro-Palestinians have want to counter that with shills.

I have already seen some of this people at work. Needless to say, they are predictable, uncreative propagandists whom are so unsubtle in their vulgarity that many commentators have identified them as hired hands.

They are quick to post and often very bigoted.

Israel needs to realize that no amount of marketing will change the face of the military occupation. That any PR campaign will not save Israel’s image, nothing will change it, expect policy changes. This is not just an image problem, it is a strong opposition to the injustices Palestinians suffer.