Peres is wrong: We need hasbara
President Obama has an Israeli adviser who is known to have said that if you have good policy you don't need hasbara (public relations efforts). David Horovitz, who this morning announced his resignation as the JPost's editor in chief after seven years, rips the notion that we ever don't require hasbara to shreds. Quite simply, we always need hasbara because our enemies always lie. Mass protests could come to constitute the latest strategy being widely employed against Israel, the new supplement to conventional warfare, terrorism, missile attacks and the development of non-conventional weaponry. And central to mass protests is not physically defeating Israel but hurting its legitimacy – symbolically breaching its borders and persuading a watching world of its ostensible bloodlust.Read the whole thing. He's spot-on. And unfortunately, the IDF is not listening. Think how long it took them to release those photos of the armed terrorists on the Mavi Marmara.... And that's only the tip of the iceberg....
What is seen to be happening on the Syrian border, or at the Kalandiya crossing point for that matter, is as important as what is actually happening. Whether Israel really kills 20, 10 or no protesters is not the whole point; the goal of the protests is convincing the international community that the IDF has been killing again, generating new waves of protest and escalating condemnation.
So in addition to grappling with what is unfolding on the ground, the IDF needs to take the lead in telling the world about it – in detail, in real time. If it continues to leave the field clear for its enemies to lie to the world about what is unfolding, this “Arab spring” is going to turn into a long, hot summer.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:27 PM
1 Comments:
As Shy Guy would say, the Stupid Jews believe they never have to explain anything because Israel is following the correct policies. But even when Israel does, it never receives credit for them.
And the lack of sound hasbara has come back to haunt Israel in the form of renewed Obama Administration pressure on Israel to commit national suicide.
If Israel cannot explain why retreating to the 1948 borders plus land swaps is not in Israel's national interest, then Israel looks like its standing in the way of peace.
And sad to say, the ultimate goal of Israeli politicians is more to keep good relations with America than to ensure Israel's survival. There is more than enough time for them to hurry to perform oral sex on Obama before September.
Since Israel doesn't need hasbara, it just needs to make Obama happy. What could go wrong indeed
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