Israel's smiling PR drive

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Israeli citizens are being recruited to boost the country's image abroad – but the campaign amounts to papering over cracks.

Seth Freedman
guardian.co.uk
Monday 22 February 2010 13.36 GMT

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.

Into the breach has stepped a phalanx of Israeli spin doctors, who have devised a campaign in which they want all Israelis to participate when travelling overseas by "telling about the beautiful Israel you know". To that end, three television commercials are currently being aired which mock the foreign media for its portrayal of the country. In one, a French newsreader is shown confusing Independence Day fireworks and flypasts with military action on Israel's streets. "Fed up with how we're portrayed abroad?" asks the advert. "You can change the picture."

The ministry for public diplomacy goes to great lengths instructing Israelis how to conduct themselves when engaged in PR on behalf of the state: first listen, then speak; maintain eye contact; use relaxed body language and tone; don't preach; ask questions; answer points raised; stick to two or three messages you want to convey; and maintain a sense of humour. If such rules are followed, the campaign literature suggests, there is a strong chance of winning over even the staunchest adversary.

Hasbara is seen as a vital weapon in Israel's arsenal, both by government officials and ordinary Israelis. According to a poll, 85% of Israeli citizens want to help promote the country's image abroad, and in itself there is nothing wrong with taking such a patriotic stance. However, as has been seen time and again with Israel's attempts at hasbara, more often than not the campaigns are based more on witch-hunts and whitewashes than honest debate over the most thorny issues surrounding the state.

Despite the sarcastic adverts broadcast by the public diplomacy ministry, what causes such consternation abroad is not whether Israelis use camels as their primary form of transport, or whether the average Israeli home is connected to gas supplies. Rather, Israel's flagrant and repeated violations of international law in its dealings with the Palestinians are key to most critics' complaints – 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."

Peres and the officials behind the latest PR drive are one side of the hasbara coin, trying to make light of Israel's image problem and implying that winning over their opponents is only a matter of patient, good-natured explanation. The other, 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".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/22/israel-pr-campaign

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1. Peres has a greater problem than Sweden.

I am beguiled by the notion that Israeli politicians believe that they can change facts and somehow bury them in the ground. Surprising quip from Peres considering the recent walk out by the Turkish president or foreign minister, after the Gaza massacre.

Peres, who, believe it or not, has a Peace Center named for him, needs to return his Nobel Peace Prize ASAP to avoid charges of hypocrisy. Israel's brand is now beyond redemption, and Netanyahu will undoubtedly tarnish it even more.

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2. Here's more on Israel's tarnished brand.

Columbia dean fronts for the Israel lobby

Thanks to Philip Weiss for this news, posted on February 23, 2010

"Last night I did a post on a March conference in New York that seems poised to bash Goldstone and the idea of international law. Chaired by Columbia Law School dean David Schizer, the conference on the "use of law as a weapon of war" to delegitimize democratic nations has been organized by the "Lawfare Project." But the Lawfare Project is mute about who it is. I said the group has a hidden agenda, Israel. (You call me conspiratorial. Alas, it's true; I went into therapy for it and they couldn't cure me.)

Well the assiduous Peter Belmont went to whois.net and determined that the website for the Lawfare Project was set up in January by Roslyn Singer of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a lead organization of the Israel lobby. You'd think they might tell you that when they stage a conference? No."

http://mondoweiss.net/2010/02/...

An additional source: Columbia U. law dean chairs all-day anti-Goldstone hoedown.

http://mondoweiss.net/2010/02/...

There just doesn't seem anyway to get beyond Goldstone except to bury it in a lot of legal nonsense. Really surprised Dershowitz isn't part of the solution here.

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3. 'Behind Brand Israel: Israel's recent propaganda efforts'

Ben White
The Electronic Intifada
23 February 2010

""The Delegitimization Challenge" report from the influential Israeli think tank the Reut Institute has put the spotlight on efforts by Israel and the Zionist lobby to counter the growing movement for justice in Palestine, and specifically, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign. The work done by Reut has rightly attracted attention, but it is only one (particularly prominent) example of a wider trend, as the Israeli government and global Zionist groups mobilize to fight the threat to the apartheid system.

It was an issue discussed when Israeli policymakers convened for the recent Herzilya Conference where there was a session called "Winning the Battle of the Narrative: Strategic Communication for Israel." There was also an associated working paper, prepared by a team that included Ido Aharoni from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), along with senior officials from the prime minister's office, public relations firms and two key lobby groups -- The Israel Project in the US, and Bicom from the UK ("Winning the Battle of the Narrative" (PDF)).

An additional working paper produced for the Herzliya conference was called "The 'Soft Warfare' against Israel: Motives and Solution Levers," produced by a mix of academics and representatives from the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE), the Institute for Policy and Strategy, NGO Monitor and Israel's MFA ("The 'Soft Warfare' against Israel: Motives and Solution Levers" (PDF)).

At the end of last year, another significant conference was convened by Israel's MFA in Jerusalem, called the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism. Convened by far-right Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Likud Minister of Knesset and settler Yuli Edelstein, included in the program was a working group called Delegitimization of Israel: "Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions." The aim was to "come up with imaginative, effective and successful solutions to counter this evil ," forging strategies of "defense" and "offense."

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11093.shtml

So the fear is actually for the BDS Movement, which will inevitably escalate when it becomes apparent to everyone that the Apartheid solution "it is." And who can't see that far ahead? It has been Apartheid in the West Bank for decades already.