Israeli PR

 

It's an amazing thing.

Israel is a country with some great PR flacks. Beyond those "in-country," it has thousands of practitioners available to tell its story to the world.

Yet it insists on living in the past, when it was little David to the Arab's Goliath.

Its military successes - thank G-d for them - have turned the tables and the world now sees poor Hamas and Aza as David and Israel as the - not just Goliath but the "nazi" Goliath, the apartheid Goliath.

The most recent blunder was the "Flotilla incident."

Israel has every right to defend itself.

Hamas has a well-known record of importing, or trying to import, weapons into Aza.

The ships bound for Aza carried people who advertized the fact that they wanted confrontation with the IDF.

The stage was set for an incident.

There is an old and very valid expression: The best defense is a good offense. In military terms, a "pre-emptive strike."

Israel has done several successful pre-emptive strikes and several that - while their tactical objectives may have been met - their strategic benefits were lost due to "public opinion."

The Flotilla Incident was one of the latter (unless you look at Fox.Com where the pro-Israel lobby sounds off).

Israel's "Ministry of Public Diplomacy & Diaspora" sent out a blurb the other day that fell woefully short and, to my mind at least, embarrassed Israel. For much of the two-page effort the flack was talking about the so called West Bank, forgetting that the issue was Aza.

No mention was made of Egypt's blockade of Aza.

Back to "best defense." Israel knew and the flotilla organizers knew that there would be a confrontation.

Israel knows - or should know - that the world's press generally is anti-Israel.

What could Israel have done to turn defense into offense - and we're talking "PR offense" in this case?

Load a helicopter with "news" photographers from the major Israel bashers: BBC and CNN. Add a Fox film crew for "the other side." Have "reporters" aboard the IDF intercept vessel so they can't deny that Israel ordered the flotilla to halt or head to an Israeli port. Move the press chopper near, but not over, the ship before the IDF team arrives over the boat and starts its exercise. Make sure there's a good camera angle for the media.

Hamas manages the press much better than Israel. It took a court action to force the world to realize that a Hamas "dead child" film was faked, a court action NOT prompted by Israel or Israelis who sat on their collective hands and accepted the canard.

Times have changed.

Israel no longer has the world's sympathies. Hamas, the PLO, and other organizations intent on wiping Israel off the face of the earth (as a prelude to a world-wide attack on all non-Moslems?) now have the world's misplaced sympathy.

Israel builds a fence to keep out terrorists, the world chastises Israel, not the terrorists. The US builds a wall and stations armed Guardsmen along its border with Mexico to keep out non-violent peons looking for work here (OK, to be fair, to also prevent some on-the-ground drug trafficking) and the world yawns.

The world has a double standard. Israel must know this, but it apparently doesn't care about its image; certainly not enough to engage PR people who know how to manage PR.

This battle for survival is as much about image as it is about guns and bullets. Israel currently is losing, and losing badly.

Yohanon Glenn
Yohanon.Glenn at gmail dot com