A lesson in media manipulation.

This week I received an email from a group described as the Never Before Campaign. They were promoting a video which promised to “summarize the Palestinian cause in two minutes.” It sounded interesting, so I clicked on the link and watched.

What I saw was a Palestinian propaganda film, pure and simple.

You might be thinking: C’mon, from your pro-Israel perspective, the film was propaganda, but from the perspective of a Palestinian supporter it was a fair presentation of the issues.

In order to determine which view is legitimately true, we first need to define: What is propaganda?

Propaganda is based on the premise that people are emotional. Propaganda typically presents little or no facts, using techniques like selective omission and over-simplification to play on sentiments and feelings. Propaganda uses highly-charged images and slogans to produce an emotional, rather than a rational, response.