Last week I wrote<\/a> about GIYUS \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153online public diplomacy platform of Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Word document)<\/a> describes it\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand the powerful role it can play in shaping the results of online polls and changing the direction of message board discussions.<\/p>\n Yesterday GIYUS sent out an alert<\/a> about a forum on The Christian Science Monitor<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s website. GIYUS appears to have driven a lot of traffic to the discussion\u00e2\u20ac\u201cwhich is titled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Israeli blockade of Gaza: What would you change?<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u201cand has inundated the forum with pro-blockade comments.<\/p>\n Comments in favor of the blockade are consistently receiving \u00e2\u20ac\u0153thumbs up\u00e2\u20ac\u009d votes and those in opposition to the blockade, and the IDF\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lethal attack on the flotilla, are getting voted down.<\/p>\n As an example, here is the comment which is currently the most highly ranked.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Johnny Gee\u00e2\u20ac\u009d wrote:<\/p>\n I would stress the strongest support as possible for the beleaguered Israelis, who are threatened from every direction and by every mode, including missles [sic], suicide murderers, and of course arms from the sea. Remember, the Israelis are the canary in the coalmine \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the real target of the Islamic fundamentalist murderers is the US, Europe, and the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sam from Oregon\u00e2\u20ac\u009d didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the same appeal to GIYUS users and has found his comment voted to the bottom of the thread.<\/p>\n Sam wrote:<\/p>\n I would eliminate all US financial and military support to Israel. Israel is not \u00e2\u20ac\u0153too big to fail\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, and if they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t figure out a way to make nice with their neighbors, then they deserve to fail. The US habit of unconditional support for everything Israeli is the primary cause of middle east unrest. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for US military adventures to come to an end. Bring home the troops, and use all the money for improving US infrastructure, education, and health care.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week I wrote about GIYUS \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153online public diplomacy platform of Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Word document) describes it\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand the powerful role it can play in shaping the results of online polls and changing the direction of message board discussions. Yesterday GIYUS sent out an alert about a forum […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7285,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7284\/revisions\/7285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7284"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}