Actually, the hype preceding the actual release of the documents seemed to be greater than the sum of the several hundred of 250,000 or so documents that Wikileaks plans on eventually releasing. The first batch was released on its special “Cablegate” website on November 28th. It’s called Cablegate, of course, because the leaked documents are largely cables that were sent from U.S. embassies, consulates, and diplomats around the world to the State Department, via SIPRNet, the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, a special under-the-radar internet run by the U.S. Defense Department. Not under-the-radar enough, apparently – according to the guy who allegedly handed the documents over to Wikileaks, a U.S. soldier, it was “childishly easy” to get access to the cables (the whole leak story is documented here.

Based on the press reports so far, the Cablegate documents don’t contain any real bombshells; most of them contain information we already kind of knew (of course Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, along with Israel, want to eliminate Iran as a threat, and the U.S. had to bribe countries into taking Guantanamo detainees – why else would they take them?). But of course, things are different when you see them in print or online. On the other hand, we’re only at the beginning of the process – a mere few hundred of the promised 250,000 plus documents have been released so far. It’s possible the Wikileaks people are saving the “juicy” stuff for later.

Whether the initial fears pan out – that the Cablegate documents will cause all manner of international mischief and even endanger the lives of those named (and those suspected of being the ones not named) as sources, the cat is out of the bag, and there’s no chance of stuffing it back in. What does it all mean? Well, the news media (especially the “Chosen” outlets, like the Guardian and the New York Times) will tell you what they think you ought to know. But Cablegate is all about power to the people – and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be making your own decisions on what content is important and what isn’t.

There are several sites on the internet that have begun to try and organize the information that has been released so far, like the Guardian’s blog page, which has an index of which embassy the cables were sent from and when, the subject matter, graphics of where the data relates to, and other interesting information. But not the contents of the cables themselves. The Guardian is one of the papers chosen to disseminate the information, and in what seems to me to be a restriction completely at odds with the spirit – and fact – of Wikileaks’ releasing the data to the public, the Guardian won’t let you download the cables from their site, just information on who sent what to whom, when, and on what subject.

I would suggest downloading your own copy of the archive itself; Wikileaks offers a torrent of the full archive released so far, which you can download using an application that supports Bittorrent downloads. Remember, Wikileaks has only released a few hundred of the promised documents so far, so the archive isn’t all that big – just a few megabytes or so. You can also find alternative copies of this archive on various torrent download sites around the internet, as well as a torrent of a download of the full Wikileaks site itself, which several enterprising folk pulled when Wikileaks reported that its site was getting attacked (just do a search for “Cablegate torrent” and you’ll find plenty of hosts to download the archive from).

I’d suggest going with the latter; the unzipped torrent downloaded directly from the Wikileaks site was pretty bare-bones, and although it is in HTML format, for use with a web browser, my copy was missing an index, or home page file – meaning that I got annoying boxes instead of graphics, and not very pleasant looking pages. The archive of the full site itself I got from a third-party site was much nicer looking. With either version, you can use your operating system’s search engine to narrow down the data you want – Israel, Iran, sex (don’t bother, because it looks like they cut out all the good parts). You can also get updates on the latest releases and other useful information at the Cablegate Facebook page (the comments are quite interesting; not everyone, it appears, believes that Wikileaks is really on the peoples’ side).

Regardless, you will now have the same information the folks at the Guardian and the Times have, and you will be able to read for yourself what the brouhaha is all about. Or will you? It’s possible that the reason the documents are having a much more mellow impact than expected is because they are much more mellow than they are supposed to be. Many of the cables as published by the site contain a disclaimer: “This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.” Huh? I thought this was about no-holds-barred, out in the open, give the people what they want journalism? Did someone “get” to Wikileaks’ publisher Julian Assange? How is it that this guy is actually still walking around after revealing this sensitive data – much less the scandalous (for the U.S. government) information he released earlier this year about Iraq? This sounds like a story that needs to be investigated by a dynamic, gimme the truth no matter how bad it hurts kind of website – like Wikileaks?

Israel’s “isolation” in this case has nothing to do with anti-Semitism; it’s because Israel’s telecommunications industry is so dynamic, chock-full of so many good ideas and technologies, it wouldn’t be fair to include us with any other international grouping; too many of the great ideas coming out of Israel would get lost in the shuffle if we didn’t have our own standing, and the other countries competing against us in the grouping wouldn’t stand a chance!

To celebrate the emergence of Israel as a world telecom development center, the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute, together with event organizers innaMotion, will be holding Innovation Tele.com 2010 – The Israel Telecom Mobile Brokerage Event – bringing top officials of a dozen foreign telecom companies to Israel for three days of fun, food, and hopefully, dealmaking. The conference takes place next week, October 26-28.

Although Israeli companies are at the forefront of telecom development, many of the companies that develop products here have a hard time getting the attention of international players, says Roy On of the Israel Export & International Cooperation Institute. “Although the telecommunication industry is a very focused market, the limited sales and marketing expertise of many local vendors, along with getting access to the decision makers in foreign companies, makes closing deals very difficult,” On says. “Innovation Tele.com will make the experience of doing business with Israel into fun and full of value to the carrier and the vendor,” thus cementing Israel’s position as a top telecom power.

As part of the event, Israel will be hosting top officials from some of the world’s largest telecom companies in Europe and the Far East  – including from China Mobile, which has over half a billion subscribers! Other carriers set to attend include China Telecom Group, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Jaawal, MTS, NRJ Mobile, Orange France Telecom, P4 PlayMobile, Telecom Italia (TIM), Telekom Serbia, Vivacom, and Vodafone. In a unique approach, the visitors won’t just see Israel from the inside of a stuffy hotel conference room; they’ll be traveling around to different venues, including Old Jaffa, Jerusalem, and a full-day tour of the north, seeing the sites and visiting Israeli hi-tech companies at their home bases.

Potential customers will also get a chance to meet with vendors, and evaluate their sales pitches, with a grand contest to be held on the last day, where the top products will be chosen – and, program organizers hope, purchased -  by the visitors. The Export Institute and innaMotion are working with vendors to make sure they put their best foot forward, given that they’ve got a unique chance to impress an audience with some of the deepest pockets in the telecom world.

Over 40 Israeli companies will be represented at the conference, many of which have made a name for themselves in the industry – such as Waze, which is building a social network revolving around traffic tips, along with a road mapping feature that’s much more useful and accurate than Google Maps, imho; My6Sense, which makes an excellent social media aggregator for the iPhone, letting you control your Facebook, Twitter, and other posts; Worldmate, whose application keeps travelers on top pf their itineraries; MeCanto, an innovative service that puts your music in the cloud and lets you listen to it on your phone, wherever and whenever; and many more.

According to the Export Institute, there some 600 companies in Israel’s telecom sector.  Considering Israel’s population of about 7 million, that works out to one telecom-sector company for every 11,000 people – a pretty high rate, by anyone’s criteria. And considering that Israel has one of the world’s highest penetration of cell phone use per capita, it makes sense that telecom would be a major hi-tech industry here. That, along with the defense-related nature of much telecommunications work, guarantees that Israel is going to be responsible for some amazing telecom developments. Just how well is the sector doing? In 2008, telecom companies were responsible for $12 Billion in exports – half of Israel’s high tech exports and 15% of Israel’s total exports of US$80 billion.

And the sector is only going to grow, say experts. In a recent interview with the Israel Investment Newsletter, Gemini’s Carmel Sofer said that Israel has been responsible for some of the most dramatic cellphone innovations out there. “We’re now witnessing the emergence of the mobile Internet, and this is coming from Israel,” Sofer said. “The mobile phone is no longer being looked at just for its voice capabilities, it’s being considered as a data device. Many are trying to take web applications and make them work on the phone. Those companies, and many of them are located in Israel, who can start developing mobile applications from the ground up as they look how users will interact with the Mobile Internet are going to be the winners.” With sales mobile devices – especially smartphones – really set to shoot up in the coming months (thanks to continued strong iPhone sales, and especially to the phenomenal growth of Android-platform phones), companies  in Israel’s telecom industry are in the right place, at the right time!

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There are plenty of people out there who hate Israel – and Jews. Many people have provided advice on how to deal with them (we won’t go into it here), and we Jews and Israelis are used to people disliking us. And we ourselves have plenty of complaints about the state of things. But these hypocrites have no business complaining about us, when they are so transparently full of hate. For example, it could be that the Hawaiian settler described below pays lip service to the Free Hawaii movement. But as they say, “haki balash” – talk is cheap. The bottom line is that he is living a hypocritical life, as a white settler, stealing the land and resources of the indigenous peoples of Hawaii – the exact thing he accuses Israelis of doing.

Any Israeli attempt at making peace is just a ruse to occupy more land – in other words, Israelis are bad by definition, and the only “right” thing they can do is disappear, ie leave “Palestine,” roll up their tents and move to the moon (maybe). There can be no good Israelis – even the Jews whose families have been here for generations are “settlers,” and must leave for their “countries of origin,” where of course the Holocaust-denying Hawaiian settlers of the world will “welcome” them. But about their own hypocritical lifestyle we hear nothing. From them, that is – but I intend to make sure as many people see this as possible. In my opinion, this is an excellent way to deal with internet anti-Semites – expose them for what they are and keep them on the defensive. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” as someone from another religion once said. If you have any comments, please drop me a line at the e-mail address on the main page.

I apologize for the lengthy preamble; now for the “main event.”

You know how during the spring, when you start working in your garden again, you have to get rid of the detritus – the leaves, rocks, etc. – that have piled up in the winter? And you know how sometimes when you move a rock or a pile of old leaves, you uncover a community of very strange and icky looking bugs? And you know how gross you feel when you see those bugs?

That’s how I felt when I prepared this column. I’ve been turning over rocks around the internet, trying to dig up dirt on some of the most prolific anti-Israel and anti-Jewish writers out there. Actually, “dirt” isn’t the right word – they’re already covered up in muck and mire, and even a long, hot bath with their mommy washing their mouths out with soap won’t fix things.

You may not be aware of it, but there’s a burgeoning (and growing) mini-industry on the internet, consisting of blogs that truck in the most despicable anti-Jewish lies out there. Of course, the authors of these sites take great pains to point out that they’re merely “anti-Zionist,” or that “it’s a minority of the Jews who are responsible.” But their writings are straight out of the Dark Ages, with references to Jewish mass murder, well-poisoning (’“Jews poison wells in the West Bank with the condoning of the Israeli government,” says one blog written by a well-known American anti-Semite), and worse – with even the medieval blood libel charge being revived. Well-meaning rational people – both Jewish and otherwise – sometimes attempt to argue back or present facts in the talkback forums on these blogs, only to be shot down or censored, so the only point of view permitted by commenters is the one that confirms the sick views of the blog author.

Why get myself in a tizzy over this? That’s the obvious question, especially since this isn’t anything new. I could answer that in several ways – that in the past, ignoring this kind of thing did not prove beneficial to Jews – quite the opposite. Or I could say that it’s important that we as a community be aware of the how the other side is using internet technology to convert hearts and minds to their hate cause. That’s certainly something we need to understand. The real reason? It just makes me mad to see these people getting away with this crap.

As I mentioned, you can’t “prove” anything to these people; it’s impossible to have a conversation with them. What’s the point of trying to “convince” them of anything? They’ve got their agenda, and that’s it. The best way to fight them, I believe, is to discredit them – to show them up for the liars and hypocrites they really are. In all likelihood, the “true believers” won’t be negatively affected when they see that their heroes have feet of clay; but it may sow the seeds of doubt, and since their beliefs already rest on a termite-ridden foundation of hate, that extra little doubt may be enough to topple them altogether!

So, what I’ve done is gather information – freely available on the internet – on several of the more prominent internet anti-Semitic “personalities.” I’ve brought as many examples as space allows, and I have many others. But in the vast majority of cases, these internet Jew haters are living hypocritical lifestyles, often guilty of exactly the same thing they accuse “the Zionists” of doing!

For example, one of the premier internet anti-Semites runs his site (and home business) from the suburbs of Honolulu, Hawaii. This blogger, who claims to know “what really is happening” in the world, is a radical leftist/liberal type, whose site gets a fair amount of traffic, and seems to be a source of material for many other anti-Semitic blogs. Most of his content consists of links to “legitimate” news sites, with his commentary.

Of course, one of his favorite targets is “the Occupation” by Israel of Judea and Samaria/the West Bank (I put both terms in to ensure that the focus is on the subject, not the politics). “The settlers” are this, the settlers are that, the settlers are worse than Nazis – anyone whose perused any of these sites will get the idea. An opinion and a token will get you a subway ride, as the saying goes – meaning that everyone is entitled to one. But reading his site, I’ve never seen this fellow address his own sins of occupation – the one where he is part of the horde of mainland Americans who have occupied Hawaii, breaking treaties signed with the sovereign Kingdom of Hawaii (http://www.freehawaii.org/). Now, that may sound a bit far-fetched, especially to those of us who grew up in the U.S. – but apparently, there are a fair number of Hawaiians who don’t think so. The main point, however, is that it would appear that someone who is guilty of occupying someone else’s land (both the blogger and his wife are definitely not of Polynesian or other South Pacific stock) is the last person who should be wagging his finger at Israelis!

Interestingly, further Googling shows that this person apparently worked in Hollywood, as a visual effects producer, on several TV series and movies. Did he do something to get himself thrown out of “Jewish Hollywood?” Note, incidentally, that I haven’t mentioned this person’s name, or site; the reason is that Wikipedia recently banned a biography page on this guy, because he’s famous only among conspiracy theory nuts. He hasn’t been mentioned in the real media enough, and I don’t intend to help him (if you want details, drop me an e-mail).

Then there’s the blogger who, apparently operating from an apartment in French Hill, Jerusalem, supplies his readers with the up to the minute news – from Gaza! Of course, all the “news” is about how evil the IDF is, how Gazans suffer, etc. Again, I am not making a political call here; Israeli policy in Gaza is certainly something that should – must – be discussed and analyzed. But not here, not by this guy, who purports to promote “peace in the desert.” He’s just the wrong man for the job!

While he may have e-mail contacts in Gaza, it would seem to me to be a bit condescending for him to be speaking for native Gazans, who are probably capable of portraying their own situation at least as effectively as he does, from dozens of kilometers away. What, he’s got some special insight they don’t? But even more – the writer of this blog is himself apparently Jewish, an immigrant from New York, a resident of the State of Israel for over two decades! And while we would defend the right of any member of any ethnic group or religion to take any side s/he wishes in a political dispute, it again seems a bit much for a total outsider to portray a culture and lifestyle that he has no part in. He doesn’t even live in the neighborhood, for G-d’s sake! And the fact that he, too, “occupies” an apartment on land (in Jerusalem) that the Palestinians see as their own – while he purports to be helping them out – is mind-boggling, to say the least.

Finally, we come to “radio personality” Alex Jones (he’s well known enough to have a Wikipedia page already), whom almost every anti-Jewish blogger sees as a guru. Jones is a well-known conspiracy theorist who believes that the world is run by the Rockefellers, the Trilatarel Commission, the Bilderberg Group, etc. He’s been around for a long time and his radio broadcasts are available on many web sites.

I have to admit that I have never heard him utter the word “Jew” outright in connection with any of these conspiracies (not that I’m such a devoted listener), but the hints that “the Jews” are behind it all have been quite broad and leading, to say the least. Well, according to Jones’ Wikipedia biography page, “the Alex Jones Show radio program is broadcast live from Emmis Communications’ KLBJ Radio in Austin, Texas.” The CEO of Emmis? Jeff Smulyan, winner of, among other things, the Jewish National Fund’s Tree of Life Award (http://tinyurl.com/cc2pc6)! Interestingly, I have never seen Smulyan’s name on the lists of Jews who run the media on the anti-Semitic sites. Could it be they don’t want to make their “rebbe,” Jones, look bad? After all, his salary is being paid by “Jew media!”

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I wrote about the Camera vs. Wikipedia issue last month, and it generated a number of reader responses – including one from a Wikipedia editor. The controversy, it will be recalled, consisted of an “outing” by an Arab propaganda site claiming that Camera, the pro-Israel Committee’s for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, had “conspired” to take over Wikipedia, by “coordinating their actions in secret” to edit Wikipedia articles and give them a pro-Israel bent. The Arab propaganda site “proved” its case by releasing alleged e-mail messages that it claimed contained “marching orders” to Camera members on how to get past the Wikipedia editors and insert pro-Israel positions in articles on Israel and the Middle East conflict.

I, and another writer in the Jpost, took umbrage at the depiction of the editing effort by Camera members as a “secret plot” to “take over” Wikipedia. “All our side ever tried to do was correct the misinformation,” I wrote in my previous article – and Camera makes it clear that its mission is to correct inaccurate information about Israel, specifically of the type found on Wikipedia pages.

Enuf said, one would think – unless that one happened to be a Wikipedia editor, who insisted in several e-mail messages to me that Camera had sinned, and must be sent to Wiki purgatory (i.e. the editors associated with the organization needed to have their editing license pulled). This editor, known among the Wiki folk as “Eleland” (who actually turned out to be a 22 year old named Evan from Canada, of all places) even put up a Wikipedia page describing the controversy, called “Response to accusations of Wikipedia’s anti-Israel bias.”

In a vigorous e-mail exchange with yours truly, Eleland/Evan claimed neutrality on the political aspect of the “outing,” his only concern being the integrity of Wikipedia. “I have no personal, ethnic, or religious stake in the Isr-Pal conflict either way,” he wrote – a curious statement in and of itself, since his Wikipedia user page contains comments like “I also have an interest in controversial topics including the Arab-Israeli conflict among others,” and “I will /*not*/ apologize for working strenuously to fix Wikipedia’s severe neutrality problems when it comes to Israel.” Like there are no “neutrality problems” to protest when it comes to coverage of Sudan, Lebanon, Kosovo, or a hundred other conflicts. But we’ll let that pass. I do get the impression from Eleland/Evan’s messages that it’s the process, not the politics, that bothers him. “The problem is not political affiliation, or even partisan bias. The problem is that Wikipedia’s organizational structure breaks down as soon as people start co-ordinating their actions in secret. It’s not set up as a parliament where various partisan blocs wheel and deal freely,” he wrote me.

In other words, editing is to be limited to those in the know – those whom “we” approve of. “We” would approve of editors who join the fraternity/sorority and learn how to edit a page “objectively” (if such a thing is possible). And they have to follow Wiki protocol against coordinating. Question: If 100 Camera members had somehow decided on their own to become Wikipedia editors, then there wouldn’t be a problem? I doubt it – because it’s not just about the process at Wikipedia. It’s about the politics as well, at least when it comes to Israel.

How do I know? Because Eleland/Evan said so (remember, “I will /*not*/ apologize” etc.). And there, in that sentence, is the justification for Camera to violate the Wikipedia rulebook in order to correct inaccuracies. Much as they’d like to think so, the anti-Israel crowd does not own Wikipedia, which is a publicly editable site. Let’s say Camera violated arcane rules set by editors to ensure their hegemony; what was the group supposed to do? Given the fact that the rules are stacked against people who don’t have endless hours to spend immersed in the Wiki “culture;” given the fact that a large number of Wiki editors who have staked out a position on Israel are clearly anti-Israel (“objective” Evan isn’t the only one); and given the fact that Wikipedia really is full of inaccuracies about Israel, no fair minded person can complain about Camera’s efforts to set things right – with or without the approval of the Wikipedia “establishment.”

What inaccuracies, you ask? How much time have you got to listen, I ask in return. The language and terminology used to describe Israel and its activities are polluted with anti-Israel assumptions and foundations – taken as fact. I could go on for hours, but I’ll give a few examples, involving the term “Israel and the Occupied Territories.” Actually, this was an easy one, because Wikipedia’s resource page on “occupied territories” does actually portray the correct usage of the term.

In the section “Dispute over classification of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after 1967,” the page states: “The West Bank (current), and the Gaza Strip (until 2005), are often referred to as the occupied territories, however their status was, and for the West Bank continues to be, disputed.” Now that’s Wikipedia’s definition of “occupied territories” when it comes to Israel: “Disputed,” not “occupied,” is the preferred term, because of the historical background of the areas, as described on the page. “Occupation” implies that a sovereign country’s rights have been violated; however, as the page makes clear, there never has not been a sovereign in Judea and Samaria since the end of the British mandate, and it is not as such “occupied.” The rejection by the Arabs of the UN partition plan in 1947 means that the area was never assigned to a government. Today it is in dispute between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (which never had sovereignty over the area either). Although my personal political opinion on the matter may differ, I can accept this description and terminology as historically and factually accurate. And its terminology is approved by Wikipedia, of course.

But the vast majority of Wikpedia pages don’t use “disputed” to describe Judea and Samaria; they use the term “occupied territories,” or, even worse “The Occupied Territories,” in upper case, as if they were describing an independent country! This page, for example, discusses Hamas’ offer to recognize Israel if “it withdrew itself from all Palestinian occupied territories” and “and recognized Palestinian rights that would include the ‘right of return’” (at least they put ‘right of return’ in quotation marks).

Where are all the Wiki policy wonks on these pages? Since when was there a “Palestine” to “occupy” territories from? You mean sticking to the letter of the law is required for Camera, but the anti-Israel crowd can put any old inaccuracy on a page? It’s even on non-political pages: This page, which consists of a list of animals found in Israel, uses the term “the Occupied Territories!” But of course, Wikipedia’s editors are far too busy busting “conspiracies” by Camera to worry about accuracy on its pages. So, “occupied” those disputed territories must remain – even though the description contradicts Wikipedia’s own definition of the status of the area! Talk about lazy! If you want to try this on your own, go right ahead; might I suggest checking out Wikipedia’s use of the term “apartheid” regarding Israel? That Israel is an apartheid state is taken as an unshakeable statement of fact by the Wiki folk – evidence be damned. Jimmy Carter said so, didn’t he?

I expect I’ll get another e-mail from Eleland/Evan, or maybe one of his buddies, castigating me for nitpicking. “The whole world uses the term ‘Occupied Territories’ – Wikipedia is supposed to be different?” Well, yes – that’s the whole point. You can’t set rules about who can edit articles on Israel and how they can edit them while maintaining inaccuracies on those pages that contradict historical fact (as described by Wikipedia itself!), all the while claiming the mantle of “accuracy” and “objectiveness.” If you can’t follow your own rules, why should anyone else have to?

In this case, the “mob” is the vast anti-Israel lobby that haters of our country have managed to pull together. Lots of people have lots of reasons to hate Israel, it seems – for personal, not factual reasons – and they especially hate it when groups like Camera, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting ruins their party by messing up their anti-Israel propaganda with (gasp!) facts, such as in this article by Camera debunking the anti-Israel writings of Harvard professor Stephen Walt and University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer.

One thing that got the “electronic intifada” crowd in a tizzy recently was a supposedly “secret plot” by Camera to edit pages in Wikipedia that contain rabid anti-Israel misstatements and lies. The relevant websites make it sound as if there is a “vast international Jewish (oops, Zionist) conspiracy” to pull a fast one over on the unsuspecting Gentiles (I mean “Palestinian liberationists”). Unfortunately, even the contention that something secret and nefarious is going on is given in the lie by this page from the Camera website, titled “How and Why to Edit Wikipedia.” The page is one of the top links on the Camera home page, so it’s not like the organization was trying to hide something.

Nobody ever tried to quash these groups’ right to speak – or to lie. The idea was to correct the misinformation. Unfortunately, we haven’t been doing as good a job as possible, because misperceptions and errors regarding Israel’s story abound. Of course, it’s easier to make up stories than to do fact checking, and lies are somehow more fun to believe – the bigger the better – for many people.

But we still have a responsibility to tell the truth. Israelis are funny that way, I guess. One way to tell the truth is to pinpoint lies, such as those on Wikipedia, and correct them. Several years ago, a pro-Israel group called Giyus (Give Israel Your United Support) put together an application called a “megaphone program,” where you could receive alerts on stories that appeared on websites with talkbacks and forums that were likely to draw posters from the other side. The megaphone tool brings alerts to your desktop and a link where you can post to, with specific information on why corrective information is needed. It’s sort of like a fancy RSS reader, and the updates don’t come as often as you would expect, given the extent of anti-Israel diatribe over the Internet (maybe pro-Israel commenters have switched to using RSS feeds).

Editing Wikipedia and getting desktop alerts for anti-Israel propaganda are a good idea, but they’re strictly a defensive move. Lots of pro-Israel blogs do that as well, waiting for someone to throw out a lie or a challenge before responding. Part of the reason why the other side seems to have so many propaganda victories, it seems to me, is because they take the initiative and either make up stories, or twist the truth like they would a pretzel, leaving us to try and pick up the pieces.

What’s needed is a method for taking the offensive – for getting our message out and putting “them” on the defensive. As a follower of the talkback circuit, I have noticed that the so-called “anti-Zionists” quickly lose their composure when you put them on the defensive. The real hate and vitriol come out then, with the comments about how the Germans should have finished the job, etc.

You might say that blogs are the ideal way to do this, and some of them do a yeoman’s job (see for example http://muqata.blogspot.com/), but there are so many of them nowadays that it’s too easy to get lost in the crowd. A pro-Israel blog just doesn’t do it anymore for the non-committed we’re trying to reach.

So, in honor of Yom Ha’atzmaut, I decided to list a few methods I think might help beat back the tide. These methods allow us to take the offensive, to set the agenda and free ourselves from anti-Israel screed – a noble and desirable activity for Independence Day, don’t you think?

1) Conduit Toolbars: Conduit is an Israeli startup that makes toolbars, those helpful headers on your browser that bring you news, sports, entertainment, etc. There are lots of them out there, such as this one from Major League Baseball. Chances are that most of the instant install toolbars you come across on the Net are made by Conduit.

I haven’t yet come across a toolbar by Camera, the Foreign Ministry, or any of the pro-Israel news and comment sources on the Internet. Why not? It takes about five minutes to put one together, it’s free, it helps direct traffic to your website, and you can even make money with Conduit’s ad revenue-sharing program. Most important, your pro-Israel “brand” is reinforced with users.

2) BlogTalkRadio: If your blog is good enough to read, it’s good enough to listen to and it might get a wider audience if people can listen to it in the background instead of having to take time to read it. With BlogTalkRadio you can put together your own radio program (weekly, one-time, etc.), that works like a podcast (except you can post a link to the show for listening on-line as well). A search for “Israel” on the site yielded many results, almost all of them with hosts uncomplimentary to Israel, or Christian sites using the term “Israel” in a context other than the one I meant.

3) Toonlet: A picture says 1,000 words, but a cartoon, drawn to make a political point, is worth millions; the opinion of an issue transmitted by a cartoon is very hard to undo with simple text. One has to be very convinced of one’s ideas to be immune to the insidious effects of a cartoon. There’s one rabid anti-Semite running around the Web who has made a career of bringing to cartoon life all the nasty canards against Israel, reviving the blood libel, Israelis are a bunch of Nazis, etc. You and I would never fall for it, I know, but I’m not sure about impressionable college students. Why leave the field open to him? Why not create a pro-Israel cartoon using the free and easy tools at Toonlet. In about 15 minutes you’ll have first class comic that you can distribute all over the Web and save yourself typing millions of words! With tools like these, we’ll be well on our way to taking the offensive and taking back the Internet from the people who would like to roll history back some 60 or so years.