Israel Matzav

What's Israel doing wrong?

David Solway has a whole list of things that Israel is doing wrong, as a result of which it is losing the battles in the media and in the 'international community.' He's right about everything on his list, and I urge you to read the whole thing. Here's some of what he has to say:

To begin with, it is obvious that Israel has failed miserably to carry out an effective hasbara program, that is, public diplomacy, the circulation of information, pro-Israel activism. There is now a powerful psychological dimension in the war that is being waged against the Jewish state, a new media front in which the country is being demonstrably trounced. It is the Palestinians who have won the day with the clever deployment of their propaganda arsenal, in other words, disinformation, historical falsifications, and outright lies, the kind one sees animating the slanderous, campus-sponsored “Israel Apartheid Weeks.” France’s Ambassador for Human Rights François Zimeray is perfectly right when he urges Israel “to raise the drive to repair its international image to the level of a strategic imperative, or risk a situation in which the state itself was delegitimized.”

...

Secondly, it has become prudent, particularly in the light of an increasingly inimical American administration, if not to decouple from, at least to loosen and dilute the American connection. According to Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, there is already a “tectonic rift,” a “potentially irrevocable estrangement” between the two countries. If so, Israel must do its utmost to salvage what it can from the widening chasm. For example, Israel receives approximately $3 billion in United States aid annually, but most of this is funneled right back into the American defense industry in the form of purchases and contracts, helping to create American jobs while at the same time starving the potential of the Israeli defense network and drying up Israeli jobs. This situation need not continue. Israel surely has the technical know-how and the means to build its own fighter jets — just as Canada was able to produce the Arrow, the most sophisticated fighter plane of its time, before Prime Minister John Diefenbaker scrapped the project, doubtlessly submitting to American pressure.

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Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Israel needs to be far more agonistic. Are we to believe that the nation that contrived the improbable 1976 Entebbe rescue mission is now incapable of freeing kidnapped Gilad Shalit from years of illegal Hamas captivity — even during the largely successful (but prematurely ended) Operation Cast Lead? Or of stiffening its treatment of imprisoned Hamas war criminals and aspiring suicide bombers rather than approving the use of cell phones and private TVs, correspondence courses from Israeli universities leading to earned degrees, and conjugal visits? What prevents Israel from unleashing systematic targeted assassinations against Hamas officials until Shalit is released? It required ten plagues for the pharaoh to relent and let his captives go, but I suspect in this case two or three plagues would be sufficient as the Hamas leadership is progressively lopped. Desperate expedients maybe, but assuredly feasible. One thing is certain: there is no way the young soldier should be allowed to remain in prolonged detention.

There's much more - read the whole thing.

Given the state of the world in which we live today, I have started to question whether we have any hope of winning the hasbara battle. Granted, we are doing a lot of things very poorly. But even if we were doing all the hasbara right, the anti-Semitism in the 'international community' today would probably make us the scapegoat anyway.

Depressing, isn't it?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:59 AM