Gissin: 'Take The Israel Media War To The Enemy'

Jerusalem -----November 13 ..... The Palestinians have succeeded in turning battlegrounds into crime scenes and forcing Israel into the defendant's dock, Ra'anan Gissin said Sunday, adding that Israel desperately needs to be proactive and turn the tables.

Gissin, a longtime Ariel Sharon adviser who served as an Israel foreign media spokesman during Sharon's tenure as Israel prime minister and serves as a reserve colonel in the Israel Defense Forces spokesperson's office, said a good example of how to do this was a move being spearheaded by former ambassador to the UN Dore Gold.

Gissin said Gold and other former diplomats were building a case to take to the International Court of Justice in The Hague and demand it initiate legal proceedings against Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for conspiring to commit crimes against humanity.

Gissin, speaking a day before the fifth annual David Bar-Illan Conference on the Media and the Middle East, to be held at the College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel, said this type of action would bring the Iran president's genocidal threats against Israel to the attention of the media, which so often acts as judge and jury.

Instead of constantly being on the defensive and apologizing, Gissin said, "Israel needs to take the PR war into their territory. If the media is the one who adjudicates, we need to put the other side on trial in the media - use the media as theater to carry the war into enemy territory."

Israel needed to look at the media battlefield as almost as important as the military one, and to act accordingly, he said.

For instance, he said, Israel should have known that by shelling Beit Hanun in Gaza last week the Israel Defense Forces was walking into a PR ambush, with those from Palestine eager to have pictures of dead civilians beamed around the world.

Gissin said it was clear after the Kassam rocket barrage on Ashkelon, Israel last week that the Palestinians were trying to lure Israel into making a Kafr Kana type of mistake that would fundamentally alter the world's view of what was taking place in Gaza.

Gissin was referring to the errant Israel missile attack in the Lebanese village of Kafr Kana during the fighting in the summer that killed 28 people and led to a temporary halt in air strikes, and also to IDF artillery shells that mistakenly killed more than 100 civilians in the same village in 1996 and effectively put an end to Israel's Operation Grapes of Wrath.

The IDF must do everything necessary to keep from entering into a "crime scene" scenario when it was clear this was what the enemy was trying to achieve, Gissin said.

"There is a pattern here. Israel needs to identify it, and act accordingly." Gissin said that just as Israel often "intercepts" suicide bombers with targeted killings before they carry out their attacks, it also needed to "intercept" damaging pictures that could quash a military operation. One way to do this would be to avoid military actions that would push the television lens in the direction of images harmful to Israel's interests, he said.

Sharon understood this, Gissin said, and that for this reason he waited to react for a few days to the terror attack on the Dolphinarium club in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2001 so that the world's camera lens would focus on the 21 Israel victims of the Palestinian horror rather than on the IDF's retaliatory actions.

Israel needed to take the media offensive and provide the world with real-time images of what the IDF was up against, he said. It would do Israel good to track with a camera an Islamic suicide bomber or those firing rockets at civilians to show the international community just how the terrorists operate, in the hope that this would provide the world a forceful explanation of why Israel reacts as it does.

Gissin spoke about Israel wanting peace but added the rest of the world often unfairly questions its legitimacy. He said he must spend most of his time justifying Israel’s existence to its detractors.

Gissin, who was born in 1949, is a fifth generation Israeli. He earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology and political science from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and a doctorate in political science and public administration from Syracuse University in New York. He is one of Israel’s leading spokesmen for the international community on issues of security and stabilization in the Middle East.

Gissin was recently appointed as a co-moderator of IsraelPr, an Internet based global public relations and public affairs think tank which provides real time consultancy to the Israel Prime Minister's Office, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Israel Defense Forces and dozens of Jewish and Israel non-profit organizations.

Israel is dealing with a world media that is deeply hostile to its existence. They badly need a strategy.

Also present is much latent and some overt anti-semitism. Sorry, but it's true.

You find it mostly in the Leftwing of the Defeatocratic Party.

I pray that they are successful. Lies and deceit are the enemies tools. How people are taken in by it amazes me.

We hear them say that 9/11 was an American conspiracy at the same time that they are praising the terrorists that did it. What a screwed up world we live in.

Ranan Gissin also stated the following at the media and PR conference:

"In future wars, we must call them wars, and not place a spin on this action and label it a military operation," said Gissin. "That is called the sin of spin. We needed to have had all of our combat and media resources out there, we needed to declare it a war."

Gissin, who was told by the moderators of the media and PR conference that he was now greatly missed being outside of public office, concluded: "One must first shoot the enemy with film and then only after the pictures are out on the networks and on the Internet, then shoot the enemy with bullets."

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.