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Excerpt from www.latimes.com
Polls suggest the Middle East is not top on the minds of a large number of young Americans.
The Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, which has been surveying young voters for more than two decades, found in a poll this year that among 16 topics of importance to voters under 30, the Israel-Gaza war was in next-to-last place…
Israeli governments over the years have invested much effort in what they call their hasbara, or global PR — pushing the Israeli narrative worldwide.
And it was largely successful. This may be the first episode in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict where the Palestinian cause has driven U.S. discourse.
There are many reasons. The sheer scale of Israel’s assault on Gaza, with massive destruction that wiped out entire families, went beyond previous Israeli offensives and quickly overshadowed the Oct. 7 attacks. It is difficult to put positive spin on tens of thousands of dead.
The evolution of social media into an omnipresent visual force has shown the suffering of Gazans to the world relentlessly.
A new generation of Palestinian activists appears far better organized than their predecessors. The Palestinian PR machine was relatively ineffective in the past.
Today Palestinian activists operate busy WhatsApp chats and can flood the zone on par with Israeli hasbara.
“Social media allows people to see lots and lots of material that affirms what they believe,” Porter said. “The accumulative effect is powerful over time.”
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