(Update below: Actress is Israeli and appears to have been commissioned on Hasbara gig)

I'm somewhat of a fool for excruciatingly bad Hasbara videos, but this one surely takes the cake:


From this video, we learn "Israel" is massively paranoid, even somewhat hysterical, believing edited second-hand evidence from biased sources (IDF spokesman's video from the flotilla), suspicious of people trying to help her and storming out of treatment - so far so true. Apart from making rather poorly judged use of the experience of real women with real trauma, the July 1st video is also ridiculously sexist; beginning with the cheap camera-pan up the actress's legs and ending with the fact it was first posted on Youtube a day earlier, under the title "Sex with the Psychologist".

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© Youtube
This is so embarrassingly counterproductive one feels it simply has to be satire. But then again, so is our foreign policy.

Update: The actress is Tel Aviv based Aimee Niestat. Niestat confirmed to +972 it was her in the video, but declined to say who was behind it, and offered no comment on whether this was a government project. However, +972 was able to confirm through a source with knowledge of the actress' engagement that the gig was indeed described at the time as a Hasbara video commissioned by the government. It's unclear whether this was specifically the Information Ministry - we'll confirm as soon as we get their response.

Update II: This "grass roots" campaign has a Facebook page, as well. Very popular.

Update III: The Information Ministry released its somewhat oblique comment on the issue. Read it here.