The Daily Background

I’ve learned that the following email was sent out to several organizations and people by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs director Amir Gissin.

Dear friends,

Many of us recognize the importance of the Internet as the new battleground for Israel’s image. It’s time to do it better, and coordinate our on-line efforts on behalf of Israel. An Israeli software company have developed a free, safe and useful tool for us - the Internet Megaphone.

Please go to www.giyus.org, download the Megaphone, and you will receive daily updates with instant links to important internet polls, problematic articles that require a talkback, etc.

We need 100,000 Megaphone users to make a difference. So, please distribute this mail to all Israel’s supporters.

Do it now. For Israel.

Amir Gissin
Director Public Affairs (Hasbara) Department

… So now Israeli government officials are copying the “freeper” tactics pioneered by American right-wing blogs (Free Republic is known for anti-semetic views, ironically) to swamp online polls with pro-Israeli votes?

A slight side note. If you actually go to the “Megaphone” website that the email links to, and look at their thermometer-style user-meter on the left side of the page, you might think that they’re close to their stated goal of 100,000 users. This is because the liquid in the thermometer style gauge is about two-thirds of the way full.

However, if you actually look at the numbers on the side of the thermometer that indicate the scale, you’ll notice that something is seriously mathemtically, um, wack. I’m not amazing at math or anything, but how does the following scale amy any sense? Starting at 1,500 members, then 2,500 members, then 4,00 members, then 6,000 members then 15,000 members, then 25,000 members (approximately where they are right now), and then 40,000 members, then 60,000 and then it skips all the way up to 100,000 members.

As a result, visually it looks as if they’re 2/3rds of the way up to 100,000 members, when in reality they are not even a quarter of the way there (with 24,200 members claimed at the time of this writing).

Another side note: the propierters of the website obviously don’t care about the legitimacy of flooding online polls with their preferred results. Their website is translated into French, Spanish and Russian. Obviously quite legitimate to have Spanish users being asked to vote in a CNN poll intended for American audiences. Or a British poll by the BBC. Whatever.

What’s also interesting is that not all of the “alerts” this organization puts out are even related to Israel. Some of them are just downright anti-Iran for example and have nothing to do with Israel. Or anti-Palestinian.

Filed under: Middle East Crisis, Z-TDB Blog