Help Us Win: From Israeli Diplomacy to the Heritage Foundation

Bryant McGill · Help Us Win: From Israeli Diplomacy to the Heritage Foundation

*Loom Weavers: How Israel and the United States have woven Jewish–Christian diasporas into unified threads against islamic radicalism, hate, and violent extremism.* *Trump, The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, and Project Esther are not isolated phenomena but interwoven threads in a longer historical fabric — one whose patterns reach back through decades of ideological weaving. The populist flare of figures like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens represents the unintended blowback of that larger design — a reactive echo from a system originally built for what its architects believed to be the greater good, yet now animated by forces they scarcely comprehend.* --- On a cold December night in 2008, as Israeli missiles struck targets in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, a different kind of warfare was unfolding six miles north in Herzliya. Inside the glass-and-steel campus of the Interdisciplinary Center, students hunched over laptops in what they called a "situation room," monitoring Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and online polls in real time. Their mission: to shape global perception of the conflict unfolding to their south. This was HelpUsWin.org—a 24/7 digital command center that coordinated volunteers across time zones, distributed talking points in multiple languages, and mobilized thousands to flood social media with pro-Israel messages. The operation, sponsored by the university's Sammy Ofer School of Communications and powered by the Los Angeles-based advocacy group StandWithUs, represented something novel in the history of statecraft: the seamless integration of government strategic communication, academic infrastructure, and grassroots digital activism into a single, continuously operating system. What those students perhaps didn't fully grasp was that they were nodes in a network decades in the making—an ecosystem of mutual defense that stretches from Jerusalem's Prime Minister's Office to Washington's Heritage Foundation, from university campuses to philanthropic boardrooms, united by a conviction that Western democratic civilization faces existential threats requiring coordinated, transnational response. This is the story of that ecosystem: how it was born, how it evolved, and why it represents one of the most sophisticated exercises in strategic communication and alliance-building in modern history. It is, fundamentally, an architecture of survival. ## I. The Genesis: When Explanation Became Strategy The concept predates the state of Israel itself. In 1899, Theodor Herzl, the father of modern political Zionism, recognized that the project of Jewish statehood would require not just diplomatic maneuvering and land acquisition, but a sustained campaign of explanation and persuasion. The Jewish people, scattered and often despised, would need to make their case to the world. Early Zionists called this work "propaganda"—a term not yet poisoned by the 20th century's totalitarian experiments. It was Polish Zionist activist Nahum Sokolow who, in the early 1900s, coined the Hebrew term that would define the endeavor: "hasbara," meaning simply "explanation." The word is deceptively modest. To explain is not to propagandize, hasbara's practitioners would insist. It is to clarify, to provide context, to correct misunderstanding. But hasbara was always more than neutral information-sharing. It was, from its inception, strategic communication in service of national survival—the recognition that for a small, embattled people, narrative power might prove as important as military might. After Israeli independence in 1948, hasbara became institutionalized. Key government bodies—the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, the Prime Minister's Office, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—assumed formal responsibility for public diplomacy. These weren't mere press offices. They were strategic nodes in what would become a comprehensive communication architecture, coordinating everything from journalist tours to cultural programming to rapid response during military operations. By 1977, when Likud leader Menachem Begin became Prime Minister, he immediately appointed Shmuel Katz—whose 1973 book "Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine" had become the encyclopedic source-book for hasbara practitioners—as "Adviser to the Prime Minister of Information Abroad." The message was clear: strategic communication would be a priority of the Israeli government at the highest levels. (National Public Diplomacy Directorate - @NationalHasbara) Yet for all its growing sophistication, Israeli hasbara remained fundamentally reactive—responding to criticism, explaining military actions, countering hostile narratives. What it lacked was what every embattled democracy needs: natural allies with aligned interests and shared values who could amplify its message, defend its legitimacy, and stand alongside it in confronting common threats. That alliance would be forged in America. And 1973 would prove to be the hinge year. ## II. The Great Convergence: 1973 and the Birth of Transnational Conservative Alliance Three events in 1973, seemingly unconnected, would prove to be the foundation stones of a new civilizational architecture: **First**, on February 16, three men gathered in Washington to launch a new think tank. The **Coors-Feulner-Weyrich triad** would prove formative: Joseph Coors, heir to the Coors Brewing fortune who provided the initial capital; Edwin Feulner, a 31-year-old policy entrepreneur who would serve as president from 1977 to 2013 and shape Heritage into a policy powerhouse; and Paul Weyrich, co-founder and first president, an architect of the New Right and Christian conservative movements who understood that cultural transformation required institutional infrastructure. They founded The Heritage Foundation with an explicit mission: to counter what they saw as liberal dominance in policy institutions and return American conservatism to first principles—free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, and traditional values rooted in Judeo-Christian civilization. Weyrich, in particular, brought a strategic vision that extended beyond mere policy papers. He understood that winning required building a comprehensive ecosystem of think tanks, advocacy groups, and grassroots networks—a conservative counter-establishment that could match the left's institutional depth. **Second**, in October, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel during Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The war's early days brought Israel to the brink of catastrophic defeat. Though the IDF eventually prevailed, the conflict shattered Israeli confidence and intensified the nation's sense of isolation. It also galvanized American Jewish advocacy, with AIPAC transforming almost overnight from a modest operation with a $300,000 budget to a political force that would command \$7 million by the late 1980s. The Yom Kippur War also marked a turning point for Israeli politics. The Labor Zionist establishment that had dominated since independence appeared weak and unprepared. Into this vacuum stepped the heirs of a different tradition—one that had been gestating since the 1920s in the youth movement called **Betar**. Founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Betar (Brit Yosef Trumpeldor, named for a Jewish military hero) represented Revisionist Zionism's militant wing. By the 1930s, with 70,000 members across Europe, Betar had become one of the largest and most influential Jewish youth movements, built on principles of Jewish strength, self-defense, military discipline, and unapologetic nationalism. Jabotinsky's vision was to create a "new type of Jew"—proud, strong, disciplined, and ready to defend the Jewish people and homeland. Betar members formed the backbone of the Irgun, the underground organization that fought British rule in Palestine. When Israel gained independence, Betar members founded the Herut party, which would evolve into Likud. The movement produced a generation of Israeli leaders: Menachem Begin, who would become Prime Minister in 1977; Yitzhak Shamir, another future Prime Minister; and many others. Most significantly, Benjamin Netanyahu's father, Benzion Netanyahu, served as Jabotinsky's longtime chief of staff—transmitting the Revisionist tradition directly to the family that would produce Israel's longest-serving Prime Minister. The Betar tradition emphasized several key principles that would prove resonant with American conservatism: military strength as prerequisite for peace (Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall" doctrine), rejection of socialist economics, emphasis on individual liberty combined with national purpose, and unapologetic defense of Western civilization. This was not Labor Zionism's kibbutz socialism but a muscular, market-oriented nationalism that would find natural allies in Reagan-era America. **Third**, that same year, socialist Michael Harrington coined the term "neoconservative" to describe a group of Cold War liberals—including Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan—who were breaking with the Democratic Party over what they saw as its dangerous drift toward dovishness on the Soviet Union and excessive sympathy for countercultural radicalism. These three developments—the founding of Heritage, Israel's near-disaster in 1973, and the crystallization of neoconservatism—would prove to be not parallel lines but converging rivers. They shared, it turned out, a common source: a profound anxiety about Western civilization's capacity to defend itself against enemies both external (Soviet totalitarianism, Arab radicalism) and internal (moral relativism, anti-Western ideology, cultural dissolution). The neoconservatives, many of them Jewish intellectuals who had traveled from Trotskyism through Cold War liberalism to a new conservatism, coalesced around journals like Irving Kristol's The Public Interest and Norman Podhoretz's Commentary. Commentary, published by the American Jewish Committee, would become known as "the intellectual home of the neoconservative movement," vitally engaged in "the preservation and spread of democracy and Western values." Their concerns were both foreign and domestic. Irving Kristol wrote that "if there is any one thing that neoconservatives are unanimous about, it is their dislike of the counterculture." Norman Podhoretz agreed: "Revulsion against the counterculture accounted for more converts to neoconservatism than any other single factor." But by the mid-1970s, they turned increasingly to foreign policy, advocating vigorous anti-communism and, crucially, unwavering support for Israel—not merely as a matter of ethnic solidarity but as a strategic imperative for the defense of democratic civilization. Here was the convergence: Israeli hasbara, Heritage conservatism, and neoconservative foreign policy hawkishness all emerged from the same civilizational anxiety. They shared an enemy (Soviet communism, Arab radicalism, Western cultural decay) and a solution (strategic clarity, moral courage, alliance formation, and unapologetic defense of Judeo-Christian values). What they needed was to find each other. ## III. The Reagan Synthesis: When Strategic Partnership Became Alliance If 1973 was the year of convergence, the 1980s was the decade of integration—but the crucial hinge came in 1977, when Menachem Begin, the former Betar commander and Irgun leader, became Israel's Prime Minister, ending nearly three decades of Labor dominance. Begin's election represented the triumph of Revisionist Zionism and brought to power a leader who spoke the language of civilizational struggle, military strength, and unapologetic nationalism that American conservatives understood instinctively. When Ronald Reagan won the U.S. presidency in 1980, the alignment was complete. Reagan brought to power a president who embodied the fusion of traditional American conservatism, neoconservative foreign policy thinking, and stalwart support for Israel. Many neoconservatives who had been Democrats found comfortable homes in Reagan's administration. Heritage Foundation policy briefs became blueprints for Reagan's domestic agenda. And Begin and Reagan forged a personal and strategic partnership built on shared values—both were products of movements (Betar and American conservatism) that emphasized strength, clarity of purpose, and defense of Western civilization against totalitarian threats. And the U.S.-Israel relationship transformed from friendly partnership to something approaching formal alliance. By the mid-1980s, as one observer noted, Israel and AIPAC realized "there had been a change. They were pushing against a door that was already open." AIPAC's executive director Tom Dine described it in almost breathless terms: the U.S.-Israeli relationship had become "a deep, broad-based partnership progressing day-by-day toward a full-fledged diplomatic and military alliance." He called Secretary of State George Shultz "the architect of the special relationship" and marveled that "George Shultz has made himself the U.S. project manager for Israel's economy." The transformation was structural, not merely rhetorical. Joint military exercises became routine. Intelligence sharing deepened. Israeli defense firms gained privileged access to American procurement systems. The Reagan administration readily accepted Israel's premises about regional stability—that Palestinian terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, rather than legitimate grievances, constituted the primary threats to Middle East peace. But the most profound change was attitudinal. Support for Israel was no longer a matter of Holocaust guilt or ethnic lobbying. It had become, in the minds of American conservatives, a strategic and moral imperative—defending a democratic outpost against totalitarian threats, a marker of American resolve, a defense of Western civilization itself. Heritage and the American Enterprise Institute, along with Commentary magazine, became the intellectual engines of this alliance, articulating a vision in which Israel's security and American power were understood as mutually reinforcing elements of a global strategy to promote democracy and resist authoritarianism. The ecosystem's skeleton was now in place. What it needed was musculature—operational capacity, institutional depth, the ability to coordinate action across borders and sectors. That would come in the next phase, as the network moved from ideological alignment to institutional integration. ## IV. Building the Machine: Academic-Advocacy Integration and the IDC Model In 1994, an Israeli constitutional lawyer and former Knesset member named Uriel Reichman founded something unprecedented in Israeli higher education: a private university built on an American model, with flexible credit systems, endowment funding, and explicit integration with the policy and business worlds. The Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya—IDC—wasn't designed to be another ivory tower. It was designed to be a node in a network. Its location was telling. The campus sits in Herzliya Pituach, Israel's coastal "cyber-belt," adjacent to Mossad headquarters, Unit 8200 intelligence spin-offs, and major defense-tech companies. This wasn't accidental geography. IDC was conceived as an intellectual relay station where statecraft, security doctrine, and private-sector innovation would converge. The university's key centers revealed its true purpose. The **Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy & Strategy** groomed Israel's next generation of diplomats and international communicators, with frequent exchanges with Georgetown, Harvard's Kennedy School, and NATO policy institutions. The **International Institute for Counter-Terrorism**, founded in 1996, became one of the world's leading terrorism research bodies, consulting for the IDF, FBI, Interpol—and maintaining advisory ties to the U.S. Department of Defense, RAND Corporation, and Heritage Foundation fellows in security policy. But it was the **Sammy Ofer School of Communications** that would prove most crucial to the ecosystem's operational evolution. Here, under the rubric of academic research, IDC developed and tested the next generation of public diplomacy techniques—social media monitoring, rapid response protocols, volunteer coordination systems, narrative analytics. The school didn't just study communication strategy; it became a laboratory for developing and deploying it. Across the Atlantic, a parallel development was underway. In 2001, Roz Rothstein and Jerry Barach founded StandWithUs in Los Angeles with a deceptively simple mission: educating people about Israel. But StandWithUs was never merely educational. It was, from the beginning, a hybrid institution—part grassroots movement, part professional advocacy operation, combining volunteer enthusiasm with strategic coordination. StandWithUs represented a new model of para-governmental advocacy, nominally independent but deeply integrated with Israeli government communication strategies. By 2015, this integration would become explicit when the Jerusalem Post announced a joint venture between the Israeli Prime Minister's office and StandWithUs, aimed at training university students in social media advocacy. The genius of the model was its flexibility. StandWithUs could operate on American campuses and in American media with the credibility of an independent nonprofit, while maintaining close coordination with Israeli government priorities and messaging. It was simultaneously grassroots and strategic, American and Israeli, volunteer-driven and professionally managed. What IDC and StandWithUs needed was a way to connect—to bridge the academic research capacity in Herzliya with the on-the-ground advocacy capacity in Los Angeles and across American campuses. They needed a concrete project that would test whether their institutional infrastructure could actually function as an integrated system. In December 2008, they got their test. ## V. HelpUsWin: The Prototype of Digital Coordination Operation Cast Lead, Israel's military campaign in Gaza from December 2008 to January 2009, became not just a military operation but a laboratory for next-generation strategic communication. As Israeli forces moved into Gaza, IDC students and StandWithUs volunteers launched something the world had never quite seen before: a continuously operating, globally distributed digital advocacy network. HelpUsWin.org emerged as the public face of this operation. The site functioned as a "situation room" style portal, curating links to opinion polls, media articles "in need of response," talking points, and encouraging social media activism—updating avatars, coordinating responses, mobilizing volunteers. Behind the public interface was a sophisticated operation: 24/7 monitoring of global media and social platforms, centralized message development, distributed execution through volunteers across time zones. IDC's Sammy Ofer School of Communications documented the operation as a case study, noting multilingual capacity (English, French, Spanish) and global reach. Students worked in shifts, maintaining constant vigilance. When a critical article appeared in a German newspaper, volunteers fluent in German would receive alerts and talking points within minutes. When an online poll asked about Israeli military tactics, the network would mobilize to participate. When critical hashtags began trending, counter-narratives would be deployed. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency described how StandWithUs, in cooperation with IDC Herzliya, established around-the-clock Internet task forces, launching HelpUsWin.org as the coordination hub for what they called "grassroots" but was in fact highly strategic activism. The operation was remarkably effective. But more importantly, it proved a concept: that government strategic communication, academic infrastructure, nonprofit coordination, and volunteer activism could function as a single, integrated system. HelpUsWin.org was the prototype for what would become the standard model of 21st-century advocacy—neither purely governmental nor purely grassroots, but something new: a hybrid network that could operate across jurisdictional and institutional boundaries with remarkable fluidity. The site itself eventually went dark, its tactics absorbed into broader StandWithUs infrastructure. But the model persisted and evolved. By 2021, when conflict erupted again between Israel and Hamas, StandWithUs would reactivate the situation room concept, now enhanced with more sophisticated tools and broader networks. The prototype had worked. Now it needed to be scaled, sustained, and—critically—funded. That would require philanthropic innovation. ## VI. The Philanthropic Architecture: Milstein and the Art of Strategic Giving If you want to understand how the ecosystem sustains itself, follow the money—not to dark corners and conspiratorial cabals, but to the surprisingly public world of strategic philanthropy exemplified by Adam and Gila Milstein. Born in Haifa in 1952, Adam Milstein served in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1973 Yom Kippur War before graduating from the Technion with an engineering degree. He immigrated to the United States in 1981, earned an MBA from USC, and built a fortune in commercial real estate as managing partner at Hager Pacific Properties. But Milstein's story is interesting not because of his business success but because of what he did with it. In 2000, he and his wife founded the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation with a mission to "strengthen American values, support the U.S.-Israel alliance, and combat bigotry and hatred in all forms." What made Milstein's approach distinctive was what he called "active philanthropy." Rather than simply writing checks, the foundation operates on three principles: investing time and expertise alongside financial resources; funding organizations that engage audiences across life stages; and developing "philanthropic synergy" by fostering partnerships and collaboration among grantees. Look at the Milstein Foundation's portfolio and you see the ecosystem in microcosm. It supports StandWithUs (where Milstein sits on the board), Hasbara Fellowships, AIPAC's American Israel Education Foundation, Israel on Campus Coalition, and Christians United for Israel. But it also supports—critically—The Heritage Foundation, alongside the Capital Research Center and Center for Security Policy. Here is the empirical bridge, the verifiable connective tissue linking Israeli-origin advocacy networks to American conservative policy institutions. The Milstein Foundation doesn't hide this; it publishes its grantees openly on its website. What critics call a "shadowy network" is, in fact, largely transparent—a set of aligned institutions pursuing shared goals through coordinated philanthropy. By 2019, the foundation had given StandWithUs approximately \$850,000 in donations. Milstein co-founded the Israeli-American Council and served as its chairman from 2015 to 2019, building what Vice President Mike Pence called "the largest Israeli-American organization in the world." Milstein's model has been replicated by other major donors—the Klarman Family Foundation, the Adelson family, and others—creating a sustainable funding ecosystem that supports the network across its various nodes. This isn't dark money or covert funding. It's strategic philanthropy in service of shared civilizational values—democracy, free enterprise, Western cultural heritage, and the U.S.-Israel alliance. The effect is multiplicative rather than merely additive. Organizations funded by overlapping donor networks develop natural coordination, share best practices, and recognize opportunities for collaboration. The philanthropic architecture creates not just funding but connective tissue—personal relationships, institutional familiarity, strategic alignment. By the 2020s, all the pieces were in place: governmental coordination in Jerusalem and Washington, academic research capacity, advocacy organizations with global reach, digital infrastructure for rapid response, and philanthropic networks providing sustainable funding. What the ecosystem needed now was a domestic analog in America—a way to bring these strategic communication capabilities to bear on threats emerging not just abroad but within American institutions themselves. That would be Project Esther. ## VII. The Domestic Turn: Project Esther and Strategic Defense at Home In October 2024, The Heritage Foundation unveiled Project Esther, described as "A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism." The name evoked the biblical queen who saved the Jewish people from destruction through strategic action and moral courage. But Project Esther was more than symbolic. It represented the ecosystem's evolution from primarily external advocacy (defending Israel internationally) to integrated defense (confronting anti-Israel and antisemitic threats within American institutions). The project proposes a "National Task Force" targeting what it identifies as the "Hamas Support Network"—a coordinated domestic effort using network analysis, lawfare, coalition-building, and systematic defunding to isolate and degrade pro-Palestinian activism on American campuses and in civil society. Critics immediately denounced it as McCarthyist, a blueprint for censorship disguised as civil rights protection. But view Project Esther through the lens of the ecosystem's evolution and a different picture emerges: not censorship but strategic defense, applying to the American domestic context the same coordination, rapid response, and network thinking that had proven effective internationally. Consider the operational parallels. Just as HelpUsWin.org created real-time monitoring and coordinated response to hostile narratives globally, Project Esther proposes systematic monitoring of campus activism and coordinated legal, political, and institutional responses. Just as IDC provided academic legitimation for Israeli strategic communication, Heritage provides policy analysis framing pro-Palestinian activism as part of a broader antisemitic threat network. Just as StandWithUs coordinated campus-level advocacy, Project Esther proposes coordinating responses across universities, state legislatures, and federal agencies. The ecosystem's core operational DNA—centralized strategy, distributed execution, rapid response, coalition management, narrative coherence—has been adapted to a new theater. Heritage explicitly positions this work as domestic, emphasizing it involves no foreign partnerships to avoid conspiracy accusations. Yet the methodological continuity is unmistakable. This is jurisdictional adaptation, not replication. Project Esther operates in an American legal and cultural context, using tools available within that framework—civil rights law, Title VI enforcement, state-level legislation, donor pressure on universities. But the underlying logic is identical: identify threats to shared civilizational values, map networks of hostile actors, coordinate multi-institutional responses, and mobilize aligned actors for sustained defense. Whether one views this as defensive vigilance or authoritarian overreach depends largely on whether one shares the ecosystem's fundamental premise: that Judeo-Christian democratic civilization faces coordinated threats requiring coordinated defense, and that the line between legitimate criticism and existential assault is clear and urgent. ## VIII. The Architecture of Mutual Survival: Understanding the Whole Step back from the particulars—the specific organizations, the individual donors, the tactical operations—and what emerges is a structure of remarkable coherence and sophistication. This is not a conspiracy, hidden and covert. It is an ecosystem, largely public and often quite explicit about its purposes and methods. Understanding it requires seeing not isolated parts but integrated system. The ecosystem's architecture rests on several key structural innovations: **First, hybrid institutional forms.** Organizations like StandWithUs function simultaneously as grassroots movements and strategic communication operations, as educational nonprofits and political advocacy groups, as American institutions and Israeli allies. This hybridity provides flexibility and reach that purely governmental or purely private actors cannot achieve. **Second, academic-practitioner integration.** IDC Herzliya pioneered a model where research and operations, scholarship and advocacy, exist in productive tension rather than artificial separation. This isn't corruption of academic integrity; it's recognition that in an era of information warfare, ideas and operations cannot be artificially separated. **Third, philanthropic network architecture.** Strategic donors like the Milstein Foundation don't just fund organizations—they create connective tissue, facilitate collaboration, and build sustainable ecosystems through "active philanthropy" that provides expertise and coordination alongside capital. **Fourth, transnational coordination without formal structure.** The ecosystem maintains coherence not through hierarchical command but through shared values, aligned incentives, personal networks, and coordinated funding. It is simultaneously American and Israeli, governmental and private, strategic and grassroots. **Fifth, adaptive methodology.** From print media to television to social media to AI-enabled communication, the ecosystem has continuously evolved its tactical approach while maintaining strategic consistency. HelpUsWin.org's 2008 methods would look primitive today, but the underlying model—monitoring, coordination, rapid response, volunteer mobilization—remains constant. The effect is a network that exhibits what systems theorists call "distributed cognition"—intelligence that emerges from coordination among many nodes rather than central planning from a single brain. Israel's National Information Headquarters in the Prime Minister's Office provides strategic guidance, but execution flows through hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals, each acting with considerable autonomy within a shared framework. This explains the ecosystem's resilience. Remove any single node—defund one organization, discredit one spokesperson, expose one donor—and the system continues functioning. The network's strength lies not in its parts but in its connectivity, not in individual actors but in shared purpose and aligned action. ## IX. The Civilizational Imperative: Why This Matters One could tell this story as a tale of influence peddling, foreign lobbying disguised as domestic advocacy, propaganda masquerading as education. Critics do exactly that, and their concerns deserve serious engagement. Questions about transparency, about the line between legitimate advocacy and manipulation, about the proper role of foreign governments in American political discourse—these are important. But there is another way to understand this ecosystem, one that takes seriously the worldview of its architects and participants. From their perspective, this is not influence peddling but civilizational defense—the recognition that democratic societies, precisely because they are open and self-critical, face asymmetric threats from ideologies that use democratic freedoms to undermine democratic values. The neoconservatives who helped shape this ecosystem in the 1970s and 1980s were formed by a specific historical experience: they had watched liberal democracies nearly lose World War II through inadequate resolve, had seen American liberals rationalize Soviet tyranny, and had witnessed Western intellectuals romanticize totalitarian movements while denigrating their own civilization. Their response was not reactionary nationalism but strategic clarity about threats and unapologetic defense of Judeo-Christian democratic values. Israel, for them, was not merely an ethnic affinity or religious obligation. It was proof of concept—a small democracy surrounded by hostile autocracies, constantly threatened with destruction, forced to maintain both military and narrative vigilance simply to survive. If Israel could be delegitimized, demonized, and isolated despite being the Middle East's only functioning democracy, what hope was there for democratic values anywhere? This explains the ecosystem's intensity, its willingness to devote enormous resources to what might seem like relatively modest goals—winning a campus resolution here, countering a critical article there. Each battle, from this perspective, is not isolated but part of a larger war for civilizational survival. Lose enough small battles and you lose the war. The analogy they often draw is to the 1930s, when democratic societies failed to recognize existential threats until nearly too late. Nazi Germany and imperial Japan were dismissed as regional problems, their ideologies treated as legitimate political philosophies deserving of neutral engagement. By the time democracies recognized the threat and mobilized to confront it, tens of millions had died and civilization itself hung in the balance. Could this analogy be overwrought? Perhaps. But consider: in the span of a century, the Jewish people went from near-total annihilation to national revival, from radical vulnerability to a measure of security, from diplomatic isolation to alliance with the world's most powerful democracy. That achievement required constant vigilance, strategic thinking, coalition-building, and willingness to defend their interests aggressively and unapologetically. Why would they abandon those habits now? And if one accepts that Judeo-Christian democratic civilization—the framework that produced human rights, scientific rationalism, free enterprise, and unprecedented human flourishing—is genuinely threatened by totalitarian ideologies whether Islamist or Marxist or their strange contemporary fusions, then coordinated strategic defense becomes not manipulation but duty. ## X. The Future Architecture: AI, Adaptation, and Alliance The ecosystem continues evolving. In 2021, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett re-established the Public Diplomacy Directorate to coordinate government messaging, appointing veterans of public diplomacy and digital media to key positions. The Directorate already demonstrated effectiveness with rapid distribution of CCTV footage during a Damascus Gate terrorist attack. New technologies are being integrated. Artificial intelligence enables more sophisticated media monitoring, sentiment analysis, and narrative modeling. Social media platforms evolve, requiring constant tactical adaptation. The situation room model pioneered by HelpUsWin now includes AI-assisted monitoring and response recommendation systems. The philanthropic architecture expands. Beyond the Milstein Foundation, Milstein founded "The Impact Forum" in 2017—an exclusive network of philanthropists that meets regularly to support organizations fighting antisemitism, strengthening Israel, and protecting American democracy. By 2025, the forum had raised over \$3.5 million supporting more than 50 organizations. Coalition-building accelerates. The inclusion of Christians United for Israel—with over seven million members, the largest pro-Israel organization in America—represents recognition that the defense of Judeo-Christian values requires actual collaboration between Jews and Christians, not just rhetorical invocation of shared heritage. Meanwhile, **Betar** itself has experienced renewal: reborn in America in summer 2024, Betar US has rapidly become one of the most active Zionist movements in the country, with chapters from New York to Dallas, embodying the same "loud, proud, and aggressive" defense of Jewish identity and Israeli sovereignty that Jabotinsky envisioned a century ago. The movement's resurrection—complete with the unapologetic militancy that once scandalized mainstream Jewish organizations—signals a generational shift toward more assertive civilizational defense. Most significantly, the ecosystem adapts to new threat environments. Israel's public diplomacy increasingly employs direct-to-public messaging, with Prime Minister Netanyahu addressing Iranian and Lebanese populations directly via social media, bypassing hostile governments to speak to citizens about shared interests in peace and prosperity. This represents a profound shift—from defensive explanation to proactive strategic communication, from reactive hasbara to integrated information operations. What emerges is a picture of institutional learning and strategic adaptation. The ecosystem doesn't simply repeat successful formulas; it identifies core principles (coordination, rapid response, narrative coherence, coalition management) and adapts them to new contexts. From print to television to social media to AI-enabled communication, from campus advocacy to congressional lobbying to direct-to-public messaging, the tactics evolve while the strategy remains constant: defend democratic civilization against its enemies through coordinated, sustained, strategic action. ## XI. Conclusion: The Network as Necessity In 1973, when Heritage was founded and AIPAC transformed and neoconservatism crystallized, few could have imagined how these separate threads would weave together into a comprehensive ecosystem spanning continents and institutions, connecting government ministries and think tanks, academic centers and campus organizations, billionaire philanthropists and student volunteers, all aligned around core civilizational values and strategic objectives. The story is often told as scandal—foreign influence, lobbying power, propaganda networks. But view it through another lens and you see something different: a case study in how democratic societies can organize strategic defense of their values and interests without sacrificing the openness and pluralism that define them. The Public Diplomacy Directorate's mission—to coordinate Israel's messaging and enable rapid, efficient responses to emerging narratives—could describe the ecosystem as a whole. From Jerusalem to Washington, from Herzliya's situation rooms to Heritage's policy briefs, from Milstein's philanthropic networks to StandWithUs's campus chapters, the ecosystem provides what democratic societies require in an age of information warfare: coordination without centralization, strategic clarity without authoritarian control, sustained defense without abandoning core values. Is this model without problems? Of course not. Questions about transparency, about the proper boundaries between foreign advocacy and domestic politics, about the line between vigorous defense and threat inflation—these are legitimate and important. But dismissing the ecosystem as mere "lobbying" or "propaganda" misses what's genuinely significant: the successful creation of a transnational architecture for civilizational defense, built not through coercion but through coordination, sustained not by secrecy but by shared values. HelpUsWin.org, the digital situation room that once coordinated responses during the 2008 Gaza conflict, is long gone. But its model persists and evolves, instantiated now across dozens of organizations and thousands of individuals, embedded in academic centers and think tanks, funded by philanthropic networks and sustained by the conviction that Western democratic civilization—for all its flaws and failures—remains worth defending. The ecosystem's ultimate achievement may be this: demonstrating that free societies can learn to defend themselves strategically and systematically without becoming what they oppose. That small democracies can forge alliances with great powers on the basis of shared values rather than coercion. That grassroots enthusiasm and professional strategy need not be contradictory. That explanation and advocacy, information and persuasion, can coexist with democratic norms. Whether one celebrates or condemns this achievement depends, finally, on whether one shares its fundamental premise: that Judeo-Christian democratic civilization faces genuine threats requiring coordinated defense, and that the alternative to organized strategic response is not neutral objectivity but gradual erosion and eventual defeat. In that sense, HelpUsWin.org's name was more than a slogan. It was a diagnosis—recognition that "us" (democratic societies, open systems, Judeo-Christian values) require winning strategies to survive in a world where many forces work toward their destruction. And it was an invitation: to recognize common threats, forge common purpose, and build the architecture of mutual survival. Fifty years after Heritage's founding, that architecture stands as perhaps the most sophisticated and successful exercise in transnational strategic communication ever constructed—not imposed from above but built through alliance, sustained not by coercion but by conviction, effective not through manipulation but through coordination in service of shared civilizational imperatives. The question for free societies is not whether such architectures should exist—in an age of information warfare and ideological conflict, they inevitably will. The question is whether they can be built transparently, operated within democratic norms, and subject to legitimate critique and oversight. The ecosystem traced here suggests that the answer is yes—imperfectly, controversially, but genuinely. That may be the most important lesson: not that the network exists, but that it exists in the open, operating through persuasion rather than coercion, building alliances rather than dependencies, defending civilization not by betraying its values but by embodying them strategically and systematically across borders, institutions, and generations. This is the architecture of mutual survival. And in a dangerous world, survival—for democracies as for individuals—is never guaranteed but only earned through vigilance, strategy, and the courage to defend what one values most. --- ## **Addendum: Clarifications, Source Notes, and Structural Refinements** *Prepared post-publication to address factual precision, source transparency, and methodological framing.* ### **I. Clarifications of Institutional Nomenclature and Dates** 1. **Reichman University (formerly IDC Herzliya):** Throughout the article, references to the *Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya* should be read as *Reichman University (IDC Herzliya until 2021)*. The **Sammy Ofer School of Communication** opened in 2006, pioneering Israel’s academic integration of public diplomacy and strategic communication studies. 2. **Public Diplomacy Directorate (2021):** Prime Minister Naftali Bennett re-established the **Public Diplomacy Directorate** in December 2021 to synchronize Israel’s governmental messaging, particularly during crises and conflict. Its remit includes coordination across ministries and international communication bureaus. ### **II. Contextual and Source Precision** 1. **HelpUsWin.org (2008–09):** The *HelpUsWin* initiative, launched during **Operation Cast Lead**, functioned as a volunteer coordination platform operated by students at Reichman University and supported logistically by **StandWithUs**. Reports from the *Jewish Telegraphic Agency*, *CNET*, and *Jerusalem Post* confirm its “situation-room” model for real-time online response. It should be understood as a **prototype of hybrid coordination**, not a government-directed psychological operation. *Primary references:* Powerbase; JTA archives; CNET (2009). 2. **StandWithUs and Government Integration:** Earlier phrasing describing a “joint venture with the Prime Minister’s Office” refers broadly to programmatic alignment and shared training initiatives, not a formal joint legal entity. This clarification distinguishes collaboration from direct governmental funding or command. 3. **Milstein Family Foundation and Heritage Foundation:** Publicly available records from the **Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation (MFF)** list StandWithUs, Hasbara Fellowships, and the Israeli-American Council as major grantees. While MFF supports organizations ideologically adjacent to the **Heritage Foundation**, direct monetary contributions to Heritage are not independently documented. The accurate framing is therefore **“overlapping philanthropic networks within the same ideological ecosystem.”** 4. **Betar U.S. Revitalization (2024):** References to Betar’s “rebirth” in 2024 denote reported activity from Betar’s official U.S. channels and social platforms. Independent verification should note that reactivation appears to be organizational and symbolic, not yet at historical scale. 5. **Project Esther (2024):** The **Heritage Foundation’s *Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism*** was released **October 7, 2024**. It proposes a *National Task Force* to address antisemitism in U.S. institutions through coordination of civil-society and legal mechanisms. Critics (e.g., *The New Republic*, *The Guardian*, and *Electronic Intifada*) argue it risks chilling free speech on campuses. The article’s interpretation should therefore be read within this **debate of strategic defense vs. civil-liberties balance**. ### **III. Methodological Framing** 1. **Coordination Architecture vs. Conspiracy Model:** The article’s central claim—of a distributed yet coherent ecosystem linking government, academia, advocacy, and philanthropy—is reaffirmed. The operative phrase is **“coordination architecture,”** denoting a networked system exhibiting *distributed cognition* and *strategic adaptation*, rather than covert manipulation. 2. **Transnational Continuity:** The *HelpUsWin* model (2008) → *Act.IL* (mid-2010s) → *Project Esther* (2024) trajectory illustrates **methodological inheritance**: rapid-response frameworks, networked narrative defense, and multi-node coordination evolving through changing media ecologies. 3. **Philanthropic Synergy:** “Active philanthropy,” as practiced by the Milstein Foundation and others, is better defined as *meta-organizational governance*—funding that embeds relational ties among grantees to sustain ideological and operational coherence without centralized control. ### **IV. Additional Scholarly and Journalistic Sources** * **The Heritage Foundation –** *Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism* (Oct 7 2024). * **The Washington Post (Apr 27 1986)** – “Israel’s New Super-Lobby in Washington: Reagan and Co.” (Tom Dine/George Shultz quotes). * **Powerbase / CNET / JTA (2008–09)** – coverage of HelpUsWin.org during Operation Cast Lead. * **Reichman University official site (runi.ac.il)** – institutional history of IDC/IDC Herzliya transition. * **Milstein Family Foundation – *Who We Support* page (milsteinff.org)** – philanthropic portfolio. * **The Guardian (Feb 2025)** – “Trump Threat to Deport Pro-Palestinian Students Mirrors Right-Wing Heritage Blueprint.” ### **V. Civil-Liberties and Normative Considerations** A balanced interpretation of the ecosystem must also note the **tension between strategic defense and democratic openness**. Title VI enforcement, donor-driven academic pressure, and digital monitoring of campus activism raise unresolved questions about free expression and due process. Scholars and civil-rights advocates continue to debate whether such architectures can remain **transparent, proportionate, and rights-respecting** while countering genuine extremist threats. ### **VI. Summary Statement** The addendum does not alter the core thesis—that Israel and the United States have progressively woven governmental, academic, and philanthropic networks into a joint defense architecture—but it refines the record. Each clarification enhances historical fidelity, protects against overstatement, and underscores that what appears conspiratorial from a distance is, on inspection, an open and evolving **system of strategic coordination** within the norms of democratic statecraft. --- ## References and Sources ### Historical Foundations and Early Zionism 1. Sokolow, Nahum. "History of Zionism (1600-1918)." Early 20th century writings on Zionist advocacy and "hasbara." 2. Herzl, Theodor. "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State), 1896. Foundational text on political Zionism and the need for strategic communication. 3. Jabotinsky, Ze'ev. Writings on Revisionist Zionism and Betar movement (1920s-1930s). ### Betar and Revisionist Zionism 4. Shindler, Colin. "The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron." Cambridge University Press, 2015. 5. Stanislawski, Michael. "Zionism: A Very Short Introduction." Oxford University Press, 2017. [Chapter on Revisionist Zionism and Jabotinsky] 6. Kaplan, Eran. "The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and Its Ideological Legacy." University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. 7. Betar USA official website: https://www.betarus.org/ 8. "Benjamin Netanyahu's father, Benzion Netanyahu, and his role as Jabotinsky's secretary." Multiple biographical sources. ### Operation Cast Lead and HelpUsWin.org (2008-2009) 9. Macleod, Hugh. "Israeli students get \$2,000 to spread state propaganda on social media." The Electronic Intifada, December 8, 2013. https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-students-get-2000-spread-state-propaganda-social-media/13125 10. Powerbase. "HelpUsWin.org." https://powerbase.info/index.php/HelpUsWin.org 11. Broache, Anne. "Israel recruits 'army of bloggers' to combat anti-Zionist Web sites." CNET, July 29, 2009. 12. IDC Herzliya. "Students Fighting on the Online Front." IDC website, 2009. https://thecjn.ca/news/israeli-students-reach-youth-worldwide-new-media/ 13. Jerusalem Post. "Online warriors: IDF faces new combat challenges." December 2008-January 2009 coverage of Operation Cast Lead digital operations. ### IDC Herzliya and Institutional Infrastructure 14. Powerbase. "Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya." https://powerbase.info/index.php/Interdisciplinary_Center_Herzliya 15. IDC Herzliya official website: https://www.idc.ac.il/en/pages/home.aspx 16. "Asper Institute for New Media Diplomacy, IDC Herzliya." Jerusalem Post, 2007. https://www.jpost.com/ 17. Asper Foundation. "Donation to IDC Herzliya for New Media Diplomacy Institute." Press release, 2007. 18. Reichman, Uriel. Statements on IDC's role in hasbara (various interviews, 2007-2009). 19. NoCamels - Israeli Innovation website: https://nocamels.com/ ### StandWithUs and Act.IL 20. StandWithUs official website: https://www.standwithus.com/ 21. Wikipedia. "StandWithUs." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StandWithUs 22. Act.IL website: https://www.act.il/ 23. Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). "Act.IL: A Study in Pro-Israel Influence Operations." May 2019. https://medium.com/dfrlab/ 24. Haaretz. "Meet the Former IDF Soldier Creating a Pro-Israel 'Tinder' for Hasbara." 2017. https://www.haaretz.com/ 25. Electronic Intifada. "Act.IL app turns Israel advocacy into a game." https://electronicintifada.net/ 26. Ben Yosef, Yarden. Founder of Act.IL - biographical information and IDF background. ### Modern Hasbara and Digital Operations 27. Stein, Rebecca. "Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine." Stanford University Press, 2021. 28. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel. "Public Diplomacy and Hasbara" initiatives and budgets (2009-present). 29. Calcalist. "Israel Foreign Ministry pays for 'internet warfare team'." 2009. https://www.calcalist.co.il/ 30. BBC. "Israel pays students to fight internet battles." August 14, 2013. 31. +972 Magazine. "Inside Israel's million-dollar troll army." Various articles 2013-2024. 32. 7amleh - The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement. "Systematic Efforts to Silence Palestinian Content On Social Media." https://7amleh.org/post/systematic-efforts-to-silence-palestinian-content-on-social-media 33. Journal of Palestine Studies. "Israel's Propaganda App: An Echo Chamber of Pro-Israel Ideologues." https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/232163 ### The Heritage Foundation - Founding and Structure 34. Heritage Foundation official website: https://www.heritage.org/ 35. Britannica. "Heritage Foundation | History, Reagan Administration, Project 2025." https://www.britannica.com/topic/Heritage-Foundation 36. Edwards, Lee. "The Power of Ideas: The Heritage Foundation at 25 Years." Jameson Books, 1997. 37. Stefancic, Jean and Richard Delgado. "No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America's Social Agenda." Temple University Press, 1996. 38. Smith, James A. "The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite." Free Press, 1991. 39. Rich, Andrew. "Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise." Cambridge University Press, 2004. 40. "Paul Weyrich and the Creation of a Conservative Coalition, 1968-1988." West Virginia University dissertation. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7468&context=etd 41. Edwards, Lee. "Leading the Way: The Story of Ed Feulner and The Heritage Foundation." Crown Forum, 2013. 42. Coors, Joseph. Role in Heritage founding - various biographical sources. 43. Powell Memorandum (Lewis F. Powell Jr.), 1971. "Attack on American Free Enterprise System." ### Heritage Foundation and Reagan Era 44. Heritage Foundation. "Mandate for Leadership: Policy Management in a Conservative Administration." 1981. 45. Heritage Foundation. "The 2nd Reagan Revolution." https://www.heritage.org/commentary/the-2nd-reagan-revolution 46. Heritage Foundation. "The Reagan Record: A Reconstruction." Report #62, 1986. http://static.heritage.org/1986/pdf/hl62.pdf 47. Journal of Policy History. "The Heritage Foundation: A Second-Generation Think Tank." Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-policy-history/article/heritage-foundation-a-secondgeneration-think-tank/CA2246E84985F004A29800B5DAB9EC5B 48. Political Research Associates. "Takin' It to the States: The Rise of Conservative State-Level Think Tanks." 1999. https://politicalresearch.org/1999/09/01/takin-it-states-rise-conservative-state-level-think-tanks ### Project Esther 49. Heritage Foundation. "Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism." 2024. https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/project-esther-national-strategy-combat-antisemitism 50. Klayman, Adam and Wajahat Ali. "The Heritage Foundation's 'Project Esther' Has Nothing to Do With Fighting Antisemitism." The New Republic, December 2024. https://newrepublic.com/article/188341/heritage-foundations-project-esther-nothing-fighting-antisemitism 51. Electronic Intifada. "Heritage Foundation's 'Project Esther' targets Palestine solidarity." https://electronicintifada.net/ 52. CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations). "Must-Read: The Heritage Foundation's 'Project Esther' and Its Impact." https://www.facebook.com/CAIRNational/posts/-must-read-the-heritage-foundations-project-esther-and-its-impact-on-pro-palesti/1156058163225036/ 53. Palestine Legal and Center for Constitutional Rights. Analysis of Project Esther's legal implications. ### Neoconservatism and Israel Advocacy 54. Podhoretz, Norman. "Breaking Ranks: A Political Memoir." Harper & Row, 1979. 55. Kristol, Irving. Writings in *Commentary* and *The Public Interest* (1960s-1990s). 56. Vaïsse, Justin. "Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement." Belknap Press, 2010. 57. Heilbrunn, Jacob. "They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons." Doubleday, 2008. 58. Mann, James. "Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet." Viking, 2004. ### AIPAC and Israel Lobby 59. AIPAC official website: https://www.aipac.org/ 60. Mearsheimer, John J. and Stephen M. Walt. "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. 61. Rosenberg, M.J. "AIPAC: The Lobby That Became Too Powerful." Various articles in HuffPost and other outlets. 62. Bard, Mitchell. "The Water's Edge and Beyond: Defining the Limits to Domestic Influence on United States Middle East Policy." Transaction Publishers, 1991. ### Campus Advocacy and Student Organizations 63. Horowitz, David. "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America." Regnery Publishing, 2006. 64. Horowitz Freedom Center. Campus activism materials and DHFC initiatives. 65. Campus Watch (Middle East Forum): https://www.campus-watch.org/ 66. Canary Mission: https://canarymission.org/ [Note: Controversial surveillance database] 67. AMCHA Initiative: https://amchainitiative.org/ 68. Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME): https://spme.org/ 69. StandWithUs campus programs and materials. 70. Israel on Campus Coalition: https://israelcc.org/ ### Philanthropic Networks 71. Adelson, Sheldon. Philanthropic activities supporting Israel advocacy (numerous sources). 72. Marcus, Bernard. Philanthropic work related to Israel and conservative causes. 73. Singer, Paul. Political and philanthropic contributions. 74. Milstein, Adam. "Israel and the Millennial Generation." Public statements and writings. 75. Milstein Family Foundation website and activities. 76. The Impact Forum (founded by Adam Milstein, 2017): https://www.theimpactforum.org/ 77. Israeli-American Council (IAC): https://www.israeliamerican.org/ 78. Times of Israel. "Trump addresses IAC after vowing to be 'best friend Jewish Americans ever had'." https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-addresses-iac-after-vowing-to-be-best-friend-jewish-americans-ever-had-at-donor-event/ 79. Electronic Intifada. "Israeli American Council." https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-american-council ### Christians United for Israel (CUFI) 80. Christians United for Israel official website: https://cufi.org/ 81. Hagee, John. Sermons and writings on Christian Zionism. 82. Ariel, Yaakov. "An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews." NYU Press, 2013. 83. Durbin, Sean. "Righteous Gentiles: Religion, Identity, and Myth in John Hagee's Christians United for Israel." Brill, 2015. ### Menachem Begin and Likud 84. Begin, Menachem. "The Revolt." Nash Publishing, 1977. [Memoir of Irgun activities] 85. Silver, Eric. "Begin: The Haunted Prophet." Random House, 1984. 86. Shilon, Avi. "Menachem Begin: A Life." Yale University Press, 2012. 87. Katz, Shmuel. "Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine." Steimatzky, 1973. 88. Peleg, Ilan. "Begin's Foreign Policy, 1977-1983: Israel's Move to the Right." Greenwood Press, 1987. ### Benjamin Netanyahu 89. Netanyahu, Benjamin. Various speeches and policy statements (1996-present). 90. Netanyahu, Benzion. "The Founding Fathers of Zionism." Balfour Books, 2012. [Shows ideological lineage from Jabotinsky] 91. Caspit, Ben. "The Netanyahu Years." Thomas Dunne Books, 2017. 92. Tibon, Amir. "The Netanyahu Era." International reporting on Netanyahu's career. ### Project 2025 and Heritage Agenda 93. Heritage Foundation. "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise" (Project 2025). 2023. https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/project-2025 94. Roberts, Kevin. Heritage Foundation President statements on Project 2025. 95. Numerous media analyses of Project 2025 (New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, etc.). ### Israeli Government and Public Diplomacy 96. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Public Diplomacy Directorate materials and reports. 97. Prime Minister's Office, Israel. Strategic communications initiatives. 98. IDF Spokesperson's Unit. Press releases and strategic communication guidance. 99. Bennett, Naftali. Statements on re-establishing Public Diplomacy Directorate (2021). 100. Netanyahu, Benjamin. Direct-to-public social media communications to Iranian and Lebanese populations. ### Academic and Critical Analyses 101. Stein, Rebecca. "GoPro Occupation: Networked Advocacy and Palestinan Resistance." *American Anthropologist*, 2021. 102. Khalidi, Rashid. "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine." Metropolitan Books, 2020. 103. Said, Edward. "The Question of Palestine." Vintage Books, 1992. 104. Finkelstein, Norman. "The Holocaust Industry." Verso, 2000. 105. Chomsky, Noam and Ilan Pappé. "On Palestine." Haymarket Books, 2015. 106. Pappé, Ilan. "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine." Oneworld Publications, 2006. ### Digital Influence and Information Operations 107. Woolley, Samuel C. and Philip N. Howard, eds. "Computational Propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians, and Political Manipulation on Social Media." Oxford University Press, 2018. 108. Bradshaw, Samantha and Philip N. Howard. "The Global Disinformation Order: 2019 Global Inventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation." Oxford Internet Institute, 2019. 109. Tufekci, Zeynep. "Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest." Yale University Press, 2017. 110. Howard, Philip N. "Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives." Yale University Press, 2020. ### Think Tank Studies and Conservative Movement 111. Medvetz, Thomas. "Think Tanks in America." University of Chicago Press, 2012. 112. McGann, James G. "The Fifth Estate: Think Tanks, Public Policy, and Governance." Brookings Institution Press, 2016. 113. Abelson, Donald E. "Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes." McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009. 114. Wilentz, Sean. "The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008." Harper, 2008. 115. Phillips-Fein, Kim. "Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal." W.W. Norton, 2009. 116. "American think tank networks and expert debates around the Global Financial Crisis: Keynesian insurgents against austerity defenders." https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14494035.2017.1397393?needAccess=true 117. "A Course Correction in U.S.-China Relations: Understanding American Think Tanks' Policy Narratives." https://zenodo.org/record/7447598/files/jsp0987%20su%20.pdf ### Trump Era and Contemporary Politics 118. "Reflection of Ideology: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump's Declaration Speech of Jerusalem as Capital City of Israel." http://jos.unsoed.ac.id/index.php/jes/article/download/2715/1640 119. "The Dominance of Power Over the Figure of Donald Trump in the Official Presidential Speech of the United States of America (The United States Recognizes Jerusalem as The Capital Of Israel): A Discourse Analysis." http://journal.lspr.edu/index.php/communicare/article/download/34/25 120. "'Divide, Divert, & Conquer' Deconstructing the Presidential Framing of White Supremacy in the COVID-19 Era." https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/8/280/pdf?version=1626865458 121. "The Trump Effect: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Racist Right's Internet Rhetoric." http://jhs.press.gonzaga.edu/articles/10.33972/jhs.125/galley/125/download/ 122. "The Trump Prophecies and the Mobilization of Evangelical Voters." https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/00084298211012698 123. "'We need to talk': Trump's electoral rhetoric and the role of transatlantic dialogues." https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0263395720936040 124. "United States Foreign Aid and Multilateralism Under the Trump Presidency." https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ngs-2021-0030/pdf 125. "Latinos & Racism in the Trump Era." https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/150/2/150/1897799/daed_a_01852.pdf 126. "Continuidades entre as políticas externas de Biden e Trump para Palestina/Israel." https://periodicos.pucminas.br/index.php/conjuntura/article/download/28769/21408 127. Times of Israel. "A technophobe reporter tries online Israel advocacy -- and nails it." https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-technophobe-reporter-tries-online-israel-advocacy-and-nails-it/ ### Historical and Cultural Context 128. "Overcoming Being Overwhelmed in the Trump Era." http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/radicalteacher/article/download/613/478 129. "Introduction: Teaching and Resistance in the Time of Trumpism." http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/radicalteacher/article/download/530/328 130. "Unipolar Dispensations: Exceptionalism, Empire, and the End of One America." https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1462317X.2018.1484986?needAccess=true 131. "Climate Denial and a (Hopeful) Lesson From History." https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.12341 132. "From Collective Memory to Transcultural Remembrance." https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/portal/article/download/1534/1651 133. "Reckoning with the Past, Imagining the Future." https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/24289EC1B0056D5050F4DE9CAB044F28/S0034670523000736a.pdf 134. "Activist turns: The (in)compatibility of scholarship and transformative activism." https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/17506980241263246 135. "Whither Politics, Whither Memory?" http://www.modernlanguagesopen.org/articles/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.334/galley/417/download/ 136. "Conceptualising historical legacies for transitional justice history education in postcolonial societies." https://uclpress.scienceopen.com/document_file/3916cb29-1315-4bc2-8a72-11dff3829c5b/ScienceOpen/Hist_Educ_Res_J-19-10.pdf 137. "The (New) American Political Tradition." https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/2EB572D36DD15E81D2C0043DD65145B8/S2515045624000063a.pdf 138. "Victoire d'Obama : leçons pour les gauches d'Europe." https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f1bd620152ee0be0926a265433061b11d2fc81de 139. "Radical Left Culture and Heritage, the Politics of Preservation and Memorialisation, and the Promise of the Metaverse." https://www.mdpi.com/2571-9408/7/2/26/pdf?version=1706106614 ### Additional Resources 140. Powerbase - Comprehensive database on think tanks, advocacy organizations, and political networks: https://powerbase.info/ 141. SourceWatch - Center for Media and Democracy's wiki tracking corporate PR and front groups: https://www.sourcewatch.org/ 142. Political Research Associates - Monitoring right-wing movements: https://www.politicalresearch.org/ 143. OpenSecrets (Center for Responsive Politics) - Money in politics database: https://www.opensecrets.org/ 144. ProPublica - Nonprofit investigative journalism: https://www.propublica.org/ 145. The Intercept - Investigative reporting on national security and politics: https://theintercept.com/ --- *Note: This reference list includes both primary sources (official websites, founding documents, policy papers) and secondary analyses (academic studies, investigative journalism, critical assessments). URLs were current as of compilation; some historical materials may require archive.org access. Researchers should evaluate sources critically and consult multiple perspectives when examining controversial topics.*