Outside Israel this is clearly visible when one reads newspapers or watches reports about Israel on TV and Internet. The average Israeli, however, seems not to be overly aware of the dangers this situation constitutes for his own future and the future of the state of Israel.
Perhaps this could be the result of the narrow outlook of the Hebrew language news providers who tend to treat the affairs like” Holyland” as our main problems.
The Israeli Government is also to blame for not doing enough to counter the daily attacks on Israel by foreign media and politicians .
A recent campaign by the new formed Hasbara (Public Relations) ministry seems to reach out to the Israeli’s in the first place. The Masbirim site of the ministry teaches the average Israeli citizen to defend the country when travelling abroad.
It is hard to phantom how the opinion of the masses in Europe will be influenced by an Israeli back- packer or two on a trip away from the daily tensions in their homeland.
Two recent examples of the way our state is pictured in the foreign media illustrate our dire situation.
The first example is a story originally run by the Economist in the UK, which later was published by other foreign outlets like Al-Jazeerah.
The report suggested that Palestinians in Jerusalem are discriminated against by racist traffic lights. Don’t laugh! The Economist takes this very seriously..
Traffic lights at intersections bordering on Arab neighborhoods flick green only briefly for Palestinian cars and minutes for cars coming from Jewish “settlements”, according to the Economist.
The intersection in The Economist report is next to French Hill. It is one of the main crossings in Jerusalem where two highways are coming together (highway 1 and 60) next to smaller roads like the Shu’afat exit road.
Camera the US based watchdog, confronted the Economist with facts about other nearby intersections bordering on Jewish neighborhoods only. “Jewish” cars encounter there similar and even longer waiting times. Although Camera proved the whole story ridiculous The Economist was hardly impressed and refused to correct the report.
INN reported and refuted this idiocy as well. (Click here for article)
Al -Jazeerah thought it could do better and sent a TV crew to the French Hill intersection to film“the discrimination” of Palestinians coming from Shu’afat. This video became a central theme in several news reports by papers and news sites in Europe.
The second example is an article in the Hebrew Israeli paper Haaretz. This story had even more consequences than the Economist report. On April 11 Haaretz reporter Amira Hass wrote a story about so called intended Israeli mass deportations of Palestinians from the West Bank. These deportations would be the result of a “new” Army Order, according to Hass. However Haaretz omitted that the Order was an amendment of an Order dating back to 1969 which in fact would give illegal immigrants on the West Bank more rights in case of detention. Within 24 hours the story became a hit on the internet and circulated around the world.
Incredibly the Israeli government did not officially respond to this libelous report.
Here, too, INN refuted the claim immediately. (Click here for article)
Only recently a background paper that clearly proved the Haaretz story a hoax was circulated among the Foreign Press (sic!).
The Arab league, however, was more alert and jumped on the story. An emergency summit in Cairo was the result. Syrian president Assad was once again the propaganda champion by slamming the Israeli Order as “ethnic cleansing”.
Members of the EU parliament’s Green Party were not sleeping either and demanded that EU Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton take action against this Israeli “breach” of article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention”. Never mind this whole action was solely based on the Ha’aretz article, the next nail into the coffin of Israel had already been hammered down.
So what to do ? In fact there is so much that we can do to improve our public diplomacy.
The Masbirim initiative is clearly not going to make enough impact.
A recent launched private initiative in the Netherlands and Belgium might make a difference. A group of Israelis and Dutchmen founded a new public diplomacy organization that uses a new concept in which quality information is collected by a professional team and directly delivered to politicians, governments, editors and the wide public by using e-mail, blogs and articles in newspapers.
An example of the Missing Peace modus operandi was a recent study into the Haaretz report. Data from a study of the University in Haifa about the massive illegal immigration during the period 1993-2004, were collected. Other information showed that the Israeli government in fact helped legalize some 32,000 illegal immigrants on the West Bank in 2006 through 2008. A closer look at the particular Orders revealed that they in fact constituted an extra layer of juridical oversight to prevent unjust deportations. The collected information was put into a report which was published and sent to EU politicians and to organizations involved with public diplomacy in Europe.
http://missingpeace.eu/_download/MP-00003-EN-20100503.html
The new organization with the name Missing Peace was founded in March but has already produced several reports.
The most recent Missing Peace report is about the complex situation in Jerusalem. The report deals extensively with the building plans, demolitions and other issues which were recently world news and eventually led to a crisis in US-Israel relations.
http://missingpeace.eu/_download/MP-00001-EN-20100429.html
Even the average Israeli reader will be surprised by the amount of unknown information mentioned in the report. The most important thing however, is that this information becomes available for the wider public in countries where Israels position is eroding.
So are we in dire straits? Yes we are!
Can we do something about it? Yes we can!
All it takes is a number of devoted and well informed people with connections in the Diaspora, computers and a small budget. Cooperation between organizations involved with public diplomacy is another requirement. Third the government has to end the theater of the absurd in which three ministries are dealing with hasbara. One will suffice as long as it has a budget , is managed by experts and will not be paralyzed by bureaucracy.
For the sake of the future of our people we have to utilize all our resources and to make a joint effort to win this crucial battle in the ongoing war for the survival of Israel.
Yochanan Visser
CEO Missing Peace Information
Publicist Israeli and Mid East Affairs for “de Volkskrant” and “Het Vrije Volk” (The Netherlands)