Israel's smiling PR drive

Israel's smiling PR drive

www.guardian.co.uk

Israel's latest conscripts in the fight to improve the country's image have been unveiled: ordinary Israeli citizens. Armed only with a government-issued hasbara pamphlet and a winning smile, they will be sent to wage war with their detractors, in an effort to present Israel as a benign, democratic utopia whose only achilles heel is poor public relations.

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The Israeli ministry for public diplomacy is going to great lengths instructing Israelis how to conduct themselves when engaged in PR on behalf of the state.

What Israeli PR Ministry failed to note that what causes such consternation abroad is not whether Israelis use camels as their primary form of transport, or whether their homes are connected to gas pipelines but Israel's flagrant and repeated violations of international law but, of course, this would prove a far harder nut for the spin doctors to crack.

Instead, those who stand up to Israeli aggression in Gaza and the West Bank are belittled by the likes of Shimon Peres, who recently quipped:

"There are millions of Indians who love us, a billion Chinese who love us, and millions of evangelicals, who love us. We have a problem with Sweden, but we're working on it."

The funny thing to note here that Father of Indian nation Mahatma Gandhi rejected Zionism.

Gandhi's major statement on the Palestine and the Jewish question came forth in his widely circulated editorial in the Harijan of 11 November 1938, a time when intense struggle between the Palestinian Arabs and the immigrant Jews had been on the anvil in Palestine. His views came in the context of severe pressure on him, especially from the Zionist quarters, to issue a statement on the problem. Therefore, he started his piece by saying that his sympathies are all with the Jews, who as a people were subjected to inhuman treatment and persecution for a long time.

"But", Gandhi asserted, "My sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and in the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after their return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?"

He thus questioned the very foundational logic of political Zionism. Gandhi rejected the idea of a Jewish State in the Promised Land by pointing out that the "Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract." The Zionists, after embarking upon a policy of colonization of Palestine and after getting British recognition through the Balfour Declaration of 1917 for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jews," tried to elicit maximum international support.

I won't even touch China as we all know where China stands.

The article states clearly the ugly truth behind this PR drive

The darker side of Israeli hasbara is the relentless pursuit of anyone deemed a danger to the state, whether domestic dissidents or external critics. The recent savaging of Naomi Chazan and the New Israel Fund, as well as the gunning down of the Goldstone report, showed the true face behind the hasbara mask, in which politicians and press alike utilised the most vicious tactics available to ostensibly "improve Israel's image in the eyes of the world".

Even Israel's own leaders warn of a system of apartheid emerging if a settlement with the Palestinians is not hammered out soon and for all that the spin doctors try to blow out the smoke, the underlying fire continues to burn.

It is no surprise that Israel's leaders want to improve the country's image without having to take concrete measures in the form of concessions to the Palestinians. Likewise, it is not unusual that the same politicians seek to blame others for "misunderstanding" the situation rather than admitting that their own policies are highly questionable and unethical. However, to rope ordinary Israelis in by repeatedly telling them that anti-Israel sentiment abroad is irrational and baseless is both a futile and dishonest path to tread.

I truly believe Israel's image problem will only be solved when the core crimes committed by Israel stop and the Israeli-Christian, Israeli Arabs, minority Jews & Palestinians are dealt with equality. The Israeli public should demand their government spend all its energy on such fundamental affairs of state rather than worry about how many foreigners know that Maccabi Tel Aviv won the Euroleague in 1977. Hasbara is no substitute for adherence to justice and basic human rights.

PR drives makes one question:
"So it's all just a matter of the image being portrayed as far as Israel is concerned then is it? Nothing to do with the ever growing expansion, militarism, racism and murders?"

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by December_Rain


kind of like what the Germans did to show Germany as a wounderfull utopia
with smiling families and so on, with the skelatons locked away in the back

reply to post by December_Rain


Well why not?

The Palestinian cause would gain so much more support in the world if they were not always portrayed in the media as fanatical terrorists who would as soon blow themselves up as look at you.

Show regular Palestinian people. Mothers tasking care of their children. Fathers trying to make ends meet. Girls and boys trying to live normal lives in occupied areas. We should see more regular people loving people.

Naturally if your world image is a woman you can't even see because she is wearing a tent over her head and a man with bombs strapped to his chest...this image will not garner much sympathy.

Israelis are not stupid. Far from it.
They know how to play the game to win.