Posted on 09/30/2005 2:59:26 PM PDT by Alouette
Nobody ever accused Israel of effective public relations. But the latest tactic adopted by the Foreign Ministry and American Jewish organizations represents a new low: arranging speakers and cultural performances that openly slander the country, in a misguided effort to demonstrate Israel's liberality.
A case in point was the recent tour of Israel organized by the American Jewish Committee for non-Jewish American politicians. It featured a visit to an Arab town where officials from Sikkuy, an Arab advocacy organization, regaled the guests with tales of how Israel mistreats its Arab citizens. Sikkuy's co-chairman, Ali Haider, for instance, told the visitors with a straight face that Arab Israelis are deprived of fundamental civil rights, and "the minute that Palestinian citizens of Israel try to protest, the police kill them."
Haider's charges are obvious nonsense: Arab Israelis enjoy the same civil rights enjoyed by citizens of any Western country. Nor is this difficult to demonstrate: One need only look at the many Arab newspapers, which routinely publish vicious invective against the government without fear of reprisal; the numerous demonstrations that take place unhindered despite speeches that border on criminal incitement (such as the Islamic Movement's annual "Al-Aksa Is in Danger" rally, at which movement leaders tell tens of thousands of listeners that the government is plotting to destroy the Temple Mount mosques); or the unbridled election campaigns run by the several Arab political parties.
But the AJC's guests – like those of organizations such as the Chicago Jewish federation, which invited Sikkuy to lecture to its donors next month – will not come away with any of those facts. What they will come away with is the belief that Israel oppresses its Arab citizens, because in the absence of facts, most people fall back on the "no smoke without fire" theory: that even if the claims are exaggerated, they must have some basis in reality. Very few people have the intellectual sophistication to realize that if such charges can be made in a public forum without fear, they are false by definition.
Tzipi Barnea, who organized the AJC event, defended it to Haaretz by claiming "the bottom line is that these meetings work." Yet it is hard to see how Israel's interests are served by bolstering the credibility of anti-Israel slander. And that is precisely what the AJC does when it presents Haider to its guests as a credible exponent of the Israeli Arab situation.
THE FOREIGN Ministry prefers its anti-Israel propaganda in the form of cultural events, to which it traditionally devotes about one-third of its PR budget. Last year, for instance, it financed a tour of American college campuses by the Israeli hip-hop group Hadag Nahash. Many of the group's lyrics are "acrimonious attacks" on the government; for variety, it also has some songs advocating socially beneficial behavior such as drug use. Aviva Raz Schechter of the Israeli Embassy in Washington acknowledged to Haaretz that some of the lyrics are problematic, but declaimed: "The intention is not to be so caught up by the minutiae of the lyrics, but to create an atmosphere of peace. Pay attention to the big, bottom-line message – that we need peace like we need air to breathe." Quite how "acrimonious attacks" on Israel's government create "an atmosphere of peace" remains a mystery.
Now, the ministry plans to expand this technique under the guise of a seemingly unexceptionable reform: As of January, Israeli representatives overseas will be given authority over 60 percent of the ministry's PR budget, which was previously controlled entirely from Jerusalem.
In itself, this makes sense: People on the spot undoubtedly have a better understanding of local conditions. The catch is that overseas representatives will decide not only which specific projects to invest in, but also what percentage of the budget to devote to cultural events as opposed to classic PR – and both opponents and supporters of the reform concur that the likely result is an increase in budgets for "culture" at the expense of classic PR.
UNFORTUNATELY, however, Israel's cultural exports almost all follow the Hadag Nahash model. Numerous Israeli films, for instance, have won awards at international festivals. But almost without exception, these films portray Israel as a brutal occupier oppressing the Palestinians for no good reason. Several recent award-winners, for example, dwell at length on the hardships that army checkpoints or the security fence impose on Palestinians, while ignoring the suicide bombings that prompted these measures, or the fact that Israel had offered to establish a Palestinian state in almost all the territories, but the Palestinians rejected this offer and launched a terrorist war instead. Showing such films will not persuade uninformed viewers of Israel's tolerance toward its critics; it will merely persuade them that Israel is a brutal and senseless oppressor.
Similarly, the Foreign Ministry routinely finances translations of books by leading Israeli authors and lecture tours by these same authors. But most of Israel's award-winning authors – people such as Amos Oz, David Grossman and Sami Michael – deem Israel primarily to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and espouse this theory in both their novels and their speeches. Michael's intifada-era interviews, for instance, have included gems such as "the argument that we are in a state of war is a big lie," "the regime exploits [the conflict] to trample on and crush human rights" and Hamas operatives – the leading perpetrators of suicide bombings against civilians – cannot fairly be termed "terrorists."
It would seem self-evident that the best way to convince others of the justice of Israel's cause is not by underwriting vicious anti-Israel slander. Clearly, however, this is not self-evident to either the Foreign Ministry or the American Jewish establishment.
It is therefore the responsibility of ordinary Israelis and American Jews to teach these organizations the basic facts of life.
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