Soccer Dad

The best hasbara

Israel's apparently concerned about its image.

After decades of battling to win foreign support for its two-fisted policies against Arab foes, Israel is trying a new approach with a campaign aimed at creating a less warlike and more welcoming national image. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who has argued that the protracted conflict with the Palestinians is sapping Israel's international legitimacy, this week convened diplomats and PR executives to come up with ways of "rebranding" the country.

Personally I find Israel's narrative pretty compelling. Israel is a functioning democracy that is flourishing despite being surrounded by enemies. Why re-brand?

The campaign is a departure from the government's long-held practice of "hasbara," or "explaining" itself to Western audiences that may have little sympathy for crackdowns on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Now Israel wants to create an alternative image abroad, focused exclusively on assets like tourist attractions and business innovations. In the words of one campaigner and ad executive, the aim would be to create "a narrative of normalcy."

The problem isn't Israel or its narrative. Go down a few paragraphs.

Palestinians, who have found it harder to push their own message abroad since the election of a Hamas Islamist government that has come under a Western aid embargo for its refusal to recognize the Jewish state, accused Israel of a white-wash.

"Nothing Israel can do in its campaigns or media influence cancels the fact that they are an occupying power," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, a moderate.

Yes Saeb Erakat the man who gave an urbane facade to the corrupt, terrorist government of Yasser Arafat is a "moderate." No amount of high priced PR is going to change that and that's a big problem.

Perhaps what Israel needs is not an image makeover but image assertion. Insist on full compliance by any Palestinian before dealing with him. The problem with the "relative moderate" is that grants legitimacy to those who are just as dedicated to Israel's destruction as Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran, but are circumspect enough to be quiet about it when speaking in English.

And yet who's a celebrity? Why it's Mr. Hezbollah! He's a German intelligence agent whose specialty is arranging these one sided prisoner exchanges.

The German analyst is known as "Mr. Hezbollah." He lives in Berlin and speaks fluent Arabic, English, and French. He was educated as an Arabist, and he has qualifications which neither high-level diplomats nor seasoned statesmen can offer, in the eyes of the UN leadership. Since he's taken part in previous German-negotiated prisoner exchanges, he knows the bizarre rules of hostage-trading as well as the main people involved. The German government has twice been a successful mediator between Hezbollah and Israel, and the work is as delicate and demanding as it is prestigious.

And don't turn to the likes of Mr. Hezbollah to get hostages back if the cost is going to be the release of hundreds of terrorists. It doesn't build good will those who are released often return to terror.

On the other hand American Jews view things somewhat differently. 81 percent of American Jews might not view things quite the same way.

Eighty-one percent of American Jews believe that the real goal of the Arabs is the destruction of Israel and not the return of occupied land, according to the annual survey of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) on various issues.

And American Jews are not alone. According to Amira Hass, Israeli Jews also fell similarly.

Israelis are convinced that we are facing an existential danger.

But Hass feels that

The purpose of instilling such fear in Israelis is to win ongoing support for the IDF's policy of constant escalation. The security establishment is not neutral. Its members, no less than bureaucrats in any other system, want to perpetuate the rationale for their existence and their salaries. They need public silence about the free use the IDF makes of the weapons and ammunition that it puts into its soldiers' hands. This serial intimidation is meant to give the IDF a free hand while it expands its operational infrastructure, perhaps to the point of using thousands of cluster bombs on Gaza, too.

So sure, it's true that the Palestinians smuggled 20 tons of explosives into Gaza. Nothing to worry about. The occupation's the problem, not the threat.

It's a view that seemingly Secretary State Rice subscribes to.

"The Palestinian people deserve a better life, a life that is rooted in liberty, democracy, uncompromised by violence and terrorism, unburdened by corruption and misrule and forever free of the daily humiliation of occupation," she told a dinner organized by the American Task Force on Palestine.

"I believe there could be no greater legacy for America than to help bring into being a Palestinian state for people who have suffered too long, have been humiliated too long," added Rice, whose government is accused by Arab states of siding with Israel in the conflict.

In critiquing Secretary Rice's words Joel Mowbray nails the problem.

Most observers, including many in the Israeli establishment, refuse to acknowledge the increasing Islamic nature of Palestinian society in large part because they cannot believe that a secular Arab nationalist could have implemented Islamic indoctrination. But Arafat did so out of necessity. The original Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorists had an inherent limitation, as the prospect of their own deaths was a deterrent. Arafat thus turned to Islam, which enabled him to breed a new generation of terrorists, who were far more effective than their wiser and better-trained predecessors for one simple reason: Not only were they not afraid to die, but they actually desired death.

It's not just that Israel has an enemy. It is an enemy motivated by religion, which makes it impervious (or at least resistant) to reasonable compromise. And yet Israeli government after Israeli government promotes the idea of compromise.

When the Israeli government fails to make its cause adequately and even elements in the Israeli media help fan the perception that there's just a simple misunderstanding, or, worse, that Israel's at fault, is there any reason to expect that other country's diplomats adopt the language of the Palestinians?

Now amount of hasbara can cover up that lack of self confidence. Israel must push forward and explain that it is threatened by Iran and that the Palestinian issue will not be resolved by compromise, but by a change of heart.

Until Israel's leaders are willing to assert confidentally that Israel has a right to exist and that it must defend itself against an implacable enemy, Israel will look tentative, weak and unsure. No amount of packaging can replace the self confidence that comes from knowing and asserting that you're in the right.

UPDATE: I edited this slightly for clarity.

Technorati tags: Israel, Hasbara.

Posted by SoccerDad at October 30, 2006 5:51 AM | TrackBack