Calcalist: The Foreign Ministry is in the process of setting up a team of students and demobilized soldiers who will work around the clock writing pro-Israeli responses on Internet websites all over the world, and on services like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube...
"The Internet is a theatre in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must be active in that theatre, otherwise we will lose,' [says] Elan Shturman... Our objective is to penetrate into the world in which these discussions are taking place... We will introduce a pro-Israel voice into those places."...
"Their missions will be defined along the lines of the government policies that they will be required to defend on the Internet... We will determine which international audiences we want to reach through the Internet and the strategy we will use to reach them, and the workers will implement that in the field. Of course they will not distribute official communiques; they will draft the conversations themselves. We will also activate an Internet-monitoring team -- people who will follow blogs, the BBC website, the Arabic websites."...
Will the responders who are hired for this also present themselves as 'ordinary net-surfers'?
"Of course," says Shturman. "Our people will not say: 'Hello, I am from the policy-explanation department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and I want to tell you the following.' Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis. They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the Foreign Ministry developed."
