Seeking balance

Sunday night we went to a meeting on "Israel and public opinion - getting the
message across," organized by the Israel Citizen's Action Network (ICAN).
The two speakers were retd. Maj. Gen. Danny Rothschild, and Andrew White, a
London based lawyer active in pro-Israel lobbying.
Gen. Rothschild spoke about his experiences as Military Governor of the West
Bank and other positions where he dealt with foreign diplomats and press. He
urged all those engaging in pro-Israel PR to always tell the truth, even if it
meant saying "we don't know" or "we made a mistake." He explained that often
in dealing with the press, the other side has no compunction about lying,
while the Israeli spokesman may have insufficient data to make any conclusion.
In that case the Press often prefer to report the Palestinian's side, even
when they know it isn't true! Nevertheless, in a democracy there is no other
choice than to tell the truth, since any lie will be found out by the Israeli
press and other agencies.
He described how Hamas had gradually taken power from Fatah by paying for
the humanitarian needs of the people that the PA was not providing. This
included paying for food, medicines and education. He did not say where the
funding came from, although I suspect that it was Iran. He seemed to imply
that all the problems of the Palestinians come from poverty. When I
challenged him on this, pointing out that there was no basis to the formerly
much-touted liberal idea that the terrorists were "poor and desperate" (for
example as stated by among others Cherie Blair and Jack Straw), when in
fact most of them are educated and middle-class, he back-tracked and said
that he never attributed the violence to poverty itself. This kind of
ambiguous analysis does not help our PR activities, since there is no
evidence that poverty itself is the motivating factor for suicide bombers,
but rather Islamist ideology is the main cause (for example the homegrown
bombers in the UK). We need to get our story straight on this.
Surprisingly, Rothschild said he was worried about Iran's conventional arms
program, rather than their unconventional (nuclear) weapons program, which
he thinks will take until 2010 to complete. Meanwhile, Iran is building up a
tremendous conventional arms capability, and still regards the Faw Peninsula
of Iraq and the Arab Islands in the Persian Gulf as its own territory. If it
took them over by force it would raise its share of the world's oil supply to
15%, something that the West could not stand by and accept. He ended up by
criticizing the Israel lobby for not doing its job properly!
Andrew White explained that he developed his web-site www.beyondimages.info
out of a sense of desperation when he saw how inadequate were the tools being
given and developed for those who wish to counter the well-ensconced and
effective anti-Israel lobbies in the UK. He feels that we should not engage
in direct clashes with anti-Israel forces, but rather project a positive image
of Israel in relation to the good things it is doing, in order to counter the
negative image held by many who are not directly engaged in the dispute. This
seems very similar to the situation as I knew it in Washington DC in the 1970s
(plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose).
He gave as an example the situation at the School of Oriental and African
Studies (SOAS) in London, which was known as a hot-bed of pro-Palestinian
propaganda until very recently, when they over-played their hand and did a
series of such outrageous activities that it galvanized the Jewish pro-Israel
students to organize, and take their rightful place as a recognized student
organization. They have had such good programs, including Khaled abu Toameh,
the Palestinian correspondent of the Jerusalem Post, who was listened to very
closely by a large crowd of students. This general "image" approach rather
than responding to specific calumnies of the pro-Palestinians has worked very
well in that case.
These informative talks were useful in helping to inform the "informers" but
as one person pointed out, the situation can change simply because Yossi
Benayoun was in the British cup final! Nevertheless, we still have to keep
pressing on, responding to the negatives and presenting the positives of
Israel in order that the view of the Western world at least be balanced.