Losing the PR war
By Ron Dermer

(May 17) Jews throughout the world can't understand why Israel 
is losing the public-relations war with the Palestinians, 
a war of words and images almost as important to Israel's 
security as the ones waged with bullets and missiles. 

Prime minister Ehud Barak's Camp David fiasco last July, 
dangerous and irresponsible in its own right, should have at 
least bought Israel a sizable portion of international goodwill. 
Indeed, Barak, then-foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, and others 
behind last summer's diplomatic fire-sale pointed to the world's 
newfound sympathy for Israel as one of their government's great 
strategic achievements. 

But despite Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's 
counteroffer of ubiquitous violence and his henchmen's bumbling 
attempts to defend their latest campaign of terror - first as a 
reaction to then opposition leader Ariel Sharon's visit to the 
Temple Mount, then as a revolt against the "occupation," and 
now as a protest against the settlements - Israeli spokesmen 
have not been able to capitalize on Barak's generosity and 
Arafat's barbarity: 

While this carefully orchestrated campaign of terror should have 
turned the clock back decades on Palestinian attempts to mobilize 
international support, Israeli efforts at hasbara have at best 
achieved a draw.? 

Explanations for our inability to present a compelling case in 
the courts of public opinion range from failing to employ 
articulate lawyers to pleading in front of an anti-Semitic jury. 
To be sure, for a nation with tens of thousands of fluent 
English speakers, our government has no excuse for putting 
someone in front of a CNN or BBC camera who does not have a 
perfect command of the language. Nor can we afford to be in 
the position in which we found ourselves last fall, when there 
were no eloquent spokesmen among top Israeli diplomats in the US. 

On the other hand, the charge of anti-Semitism seems somewhat 
far-fetched. 

The international media, inclined to side with the "weaker" 
party, whether Jew or gentile, see the Palestinians as Davids to 
Israel's Goliath. This systemic bias, combined with the ability 
of a non-democratic regime to manufacture the image it presents 
to the outside world, has proven extremely destructive to our 
image abroad. Last fall's shameful attempt by an Italian 
journalist to apologize to the PA for filming the brutal 
lynching of two of our reservists - an episode quickly forgotten 
- sheds some light on the dilemma we face. 

But last October, a few weeks into the current round of 
Palestinian violence, when I was asked by a friend at the 
Foreign Ministry to help members of their "propaganda" team 
craft a message for an American audience, I discovered another 
reason behind Israel's failed PR effort. 

At the time, there had been a spate of anti-Semitic attacks 
around the world, nearly all of them perpetrated by Muslims in 
the name of "al-Aksa intifada." I suggested that our diplomats 
in the US focus on these incidents and explain that they are a 
clear sign that much of the Islamic world has not accepted the 
legitimacy of a Jewish state, and that a religious and racial 
war was once again being waged against Jews. The difference, 
however, was that for the first time in 2,000 years the Jewish 
state had given our people the power to defend itself. 

Furthermore, I advised them to use every opportunity to contrast 
Israeli democracy with Arab autocracy and Islamic fanaticism, 
differentiating states such as Jordan and Turkey from Syria and 
Iran. Americans should know that the fact that our nations' 
flags burn side by side throughout the region is no coincidence. 
The free way of life that the United States has always championed 
and whose torch Israel bears in the Middle East is the gravest 
threat to the sea of tyranny that surrounds us. 

Such an argument, I explained, would be understood by a nation 
founded by immigrants fleeing religious persecution and with a 
Declaration of Independence penned by a man who once warned that 
the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. 

Unfortunately, I was informed that these ideas ran counter to 
the guidelines set down by Ben-Ami. The foreign minister, in his 
infinite wisdom, had warned against all attempts to "widen" the 
media war by presenting our conflict as a battle between "Jews" 
and their enemies. Our country would best be served, he argued, 
by limiting the media's focus to Israelis and Palestinians. 
That such a strategy was doing great damage to the State of 
Israel and only searing the image of Palestinian rock-throwers 
facing Israeli tanks into the international consciousness didn't 
seem to occur to him. 

Israel must not be afraid to defend itself as a Jewish and 
democratic state. In order to get the world to believe in the 
justice of our cause, those who plead our case must first act 
as if they believe in that cause themselves. Only by "widening" 
the propaganda war and convincing the world that the Jews are 
once again forced to fight for their right to live in freedom 
in their own state can we help contain the real war being waged 
against us.