Positive Views of Israel, Brought to You by Israelis

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Yes we are fed-up with Israel. Not the way you are viewed, but the way
you behave. The way you cheat on the Palestinians, by abusing the trust
of the Europeans in the way you export your produce.

No regards / Cees

February 18, 2010
Positive Views of Israel, Brought to You by Israelis
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/world/middleeast/18israel.html
By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — The Israeli government, deeply worried about the country’s
declining international image, began a campaign on Wednesday to turn
every Israeli — and ultimately every Jew — into a traveling public
relations agent.

With a Web site backed by an advertising blitz, the Information and
Diaspora Affairs Ministry began issuing Hebrew pamphlets to passengers
on Israeli airlines and offering coaching courses to groups heading
abroad. The message: “Are you fed up with the way we are portrayed
around the world? You can change the picture.”

The information minister, Yuli Edelstein, said in a statement that a
poll he had commissioned found that 91 percent of Israelis believed
their country had a poor image and that the vast majority wanted to play
a role in improving it.

“To counter the big money invested by Arab states in propaganda against
Israel, we have to mobilize our human capital, meaning the residents of
Israel,” Mr. Edelstein said.

The new Web site presents a conservative interpretation of the issues
over which Israel is most often criticized abroad — its settlements in
the West Bank and treatment of Palestinians, including the war in Gaza a
year ago. But it also seeks to puncture what the ministry considers
common myths about Israel — that it is a big and primitive country, that
food consists of little more than hummus and falafel, and that Israelis
as a group do not seek peace.

On the Web site, fake news clips show a British television journalist
asserting that in Israel the camel is the main means of transportation
and a Spanish reporter claiming that Israelis grill meat outdoors
because they lack kitchens. A French news anchor is seen saying that
life here is a series of endless explosions.

The launch coincided with a growing controversy over the killing of a
Hamas official in Dubai. Many Israelis have wondered if the
assassination was the work of their Mossad spy agency, especially
because a number of the false identities used by the killers were of
Britons who had immigrated here.

One main message of the campaign is that Israel is a technically
advanced and diverse society and that its government policies are not
the source of regional conflict. It notes that a number of important
agricultural breakthroughs have occurred here, including drip irrigation
and the development of the cherry tomato.

“The campaign stems from a genuine fear that Israel is misrepresented,
sometimes in very vicious ways,” observed Shlomo Avineri, who teaches
political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “On this level it
is understandable. But I think it is puerile. Some of the information is
ridiculous, and behind it I find a Bolshevik mentality — to make every
citizen an unpaid civil servant for the policy of the government. There
is never any intimation that some of our problems have to do with actual
policies.”

Mr. Avineri said this was the first time in decades Israel has had a
separate Information Ministry, and its existence, in his view, was a
sign that the government was approaching the issue without sophistication.

Eytan Gilboa, director of the Center for International Communications at
Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv and a longtime advocate of improved
public diplomacy for Israel, said some of what the ministry published
was fine, but he did not believe that country’s poor image had to do
with a misperception that it is primitive.

“This country’s main challenges are the false comparison people make
with an apartheid state and the questioning of its right to exist,” Mr.
Gilboa said. “And the pamphlets don’t deal with those.”

Anat Weinstein-Berkovits, the Information Ministry’s spokeswoman, said
the material would be translated into a number of languages so that Jews
everywhere could use it in defense of Israel. In a later phase of the
program, citizens would be trained in how to speak on foreign television
and radio broadcasts about their lives and experiences.

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