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The Israel Project.........posted May 11, 2008

-by Melissa Apter

Marcus Sheff, executive director of The Israel Project, spoke to a small group of staffers, donors and community leaders at TIP's office in Washington D.C. on March 17 to deliver a stirring message about Israel's "24/7 communications war."

Founded six years ago, The Israel Project, operating out of D.C. and Jerusalem, provides fact sheets, polling data, sources and images for journalists reporting on the region prior to the filing of a story. It is an effort to counteract stories spun by Hamas public relations men in what Sheff called "Pallywood."

TIP views itself as the "good cop" in the pro-Israel communications world. "Our job is to help reporters do their job better," said Founder and TIP President Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, adding that TIP does not criticize journalists work after the fact, allowing for organizations such as Honest Reporting and CAMERA: Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America to play "bad cop."

Central to TIP's operations are the "Intellicopter" tours. The Intellicopter tours take journalists, businessmen and world leaders on a two-and-a-half hour helicopter tour over Israel giving the passengers a clear view of the tiny country and its security threats. "They see Jerusalem, they see the fence...and we give them pamphlets so they have something" to reference, said co-founder Sheryl Schwartz.

Passengers are also taken to Sderot where TIP has a store-front office solely so that the "Sderot story [won't] slip away."

According to Sheff, approximately 700 journalists and 200 individuals have been taken on the Intellicopter tour at a cost of $5,000 U.S., a significant chunk of TIP's $6 million annual budget.

The expense is well worth it. Said Mizrahi, "our polling shows that when we started support for Israel [in the U.S.] was at 20-something percent, and now it's over 60 percent- tripling the support for Israel."

Looking towards the future, TIP hopes to expand their staff (which currently includes six staff members in the Jerusalem office and one in Sderot) with more multi-lingual members and to expand current projects as well as create new databases. TIP has recently acquired a space in a new media high-rise in Malcha.