Dimi Reider writes:

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”.

Is this for real? Your guess is as good as mine. 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. However, +972 was able to confirm through a source with knowledge of the actress’ engagement that the gig was indeed 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: Max Blumenthal adds:

A source who works inside Haaretz told me that Neistat is a Haaretz employee who translates Hebrew content into English (occasionally staffers at the translation desk produce original journalist content and editorials). Of course, everyone at Haaretz is entitled to their opinion, but Neistat’s involvement in a government-sponsored propaganda campaign seems like an ethical breach. As appallingly bad as the video was, the fact that an apparent staffer for one of Israel’s major newspapers played a starring role is far worse.