The Times of Israel last week published a feature on The Israel Project (TIP), highlighting the organization’s work on pro-Israel messaging and its impact on the “war of ideas” being waged in traditional and social media outlets. TIP publishes The Tower.
The article describes TIP, led by its President & CEO Josh Block, as “a fast-paced, single-minded war room pumping out pro-Israel memes, fighting Israel’s detractors in cyberspace, conducting polling and research, and helping to arm what Block calls ‘a pro-Israel social media army.’ To equip this virtual militia, TIP has a rapid response team dedicated to producing infographics, videos, and other shareable products that are suited to modern channels of communications.”
Block says that this is needed to counter the infrastructure of the forces opposed to Israel. “Israel’s detractors have built a very sophisticated ecosystem that produces an echo chamber effect,” he says. “They’ve built a system that can build and sustain a meme – a group of ideas that become a cultural fact. For example, how does something so false and ridiculous like the idea that Israel is an apartheid state become something that the US Secretary of State uses as a lazy aphorism?”
The way it works, he says, is that the interconnected “self-referential network” of anti-Israel bloggers introduces a piece of information online, and then moves it across the system closer to the mainstream, where it will get “laundered” by the UN, an NGO, or think tank. Eventually, Block says, even the most vile and absurd accusations against Israel will be considered legitimate discourse.
The article also notes that TIP has “affected over 100 stories in The New York Times this year, 99 in The Washington Post, and 75 in the Associated Press” through its press outreach efforts.
Leaders in the pro-Israel and Jewish communities praise TIP’s influence and role. “There is lots of wonderful, passionate pro-Israel work out there. . . But no one except The Israel Project focuses exclusively on pro-Israel messaging, particularly responses to false and misleading anti-Israeli messages, and the ability to spread their responses through appropriate social media,” said Eric Fingerhut, President and CEO of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life.
[Photo: The Israel Project / Flickr ]