Israeli government to open hasbara site in English
You will recall that when I blogged the announcement of the government's new hasbara website last week, I was critical of the fact that the site was Hebrew-only. Someone in the government must read my blog, because they have now announced that they will be opening an English-language website in April. Hopefully, the English on the website will be better than the following (lifted word-for-word from the article): “The interest there has been is too good to be true,” Edelstein said. “This shows that we pressed the right buttons.”Notwithstanding my criticism, there are positive things to point out:
Edelstein said the main complaint he had received was the lack of an English-language site.
Training sessions have begun, and a pamphlet about how to defend the country is being distributed at Ben-Gurion Airport.As I have said previously, you can represent Israel abroad from your living room or home office. Targeting those Israelis who travel a lot is not necessarily the best thing. And while we're all happy to have materials, they have to be timely and the government cannot dictate to the people doing it how they should explain Israel's positions.
...
Edelstein said Israelis should feel free to advocate for a Palestinian state if that was their opinion, but that his ministry would concentrate on giving Israelis facts and techniques for representing Israel abroad.
“The campaign doesn’t encourage people to give speeches on the Palestinian conflict but to talk about their lives and that we don’t take our wives out to fight Palestinians but to concerts,” Edelstein said.Uh oh. That sounds a lot more like that awful 're-branding Israel' stuff we heard a year and a half ago. I hope not.
“If people talk about the beautiful Israel and are ready for the tough questions, it can change the atmosphere for Israel internationally.”
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:48 PM
2 Comments:
The best hasbara is the shlichim, people assigned to the U.S. for work (e.g., Intel), and business people (yesterday I got to meet the Israeli water tech people on their U.S. tour... fabulous!). The thing Israel needs to do with them is to prepare them for the differences between the Jewish immersion in Israel and the immersion of U.S. Jewish communities in Christian culture (did you know that the percent of U.S. people who identify themselves as "Christian" is greater than the percent of Israelis who identify themselves as "Jewish"?). The Israelis are sometimes shocked by how the U.S. communities have adapted to their surroundings, especially out in fly over country. Some call it assimilation, but I wouldn't call it that. Leadership and friendship from Israelis to the U.S. Jewish communities is hugely beneficial to the U.S. Jews and to Israel. The surrounding community (many JCC's, for example, have more than half non-Jewish members) will respond to this leadership and support Israel even more thoroughly than they already do.
Secondly, if Israel wanted some U.S. points of contact and writer-contributors to the hasbara site, the JCCs would be a good place to look.
Thirdly, highest suggestion for the new website in English is a page for the rocket info I keep advocating.
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