Here’s a fascinating piece at Ynet by Ron Ben-Yeshai about how the "magical cure no longer works" for Israel– hasbara/the Israel lobby. No, Israel is getting isolated on the world stage, and it’s going to start to hurt the country. Notice in this excerpt that Ben-Yeshai says part of the answer is: We should alter our conduct.
Hence, instead of engaging in “Hasbara,” Israel needs to engage in a comprehensive “war of perception” that is coordinated on all fronts – the media, the legal arena, and the diplomatic stage. We should also enlist the help of the best Jewish minds in the world for this cause.
It would also be good to adopt several immediate steps. For example, willingness to show diplomatic flexibility and agree to freeze settlement construction for a year – something Obama is almost begging for – would boost his status in the region and indirectly boost our own status as well. We also need to quickly put an end the Gilad Shalit affair, so that we can open the crossings to Gaza in a controlled manner. The siege we imposed on Gaza has already caused us damage on the global front that is greater than any security damage to be caused by the release of several hundred murders to the West Bank.
“Hence, instead of engaging in “Hasbara,” Israel needs to engage in a comprehensive “war of perception” that is coordinated on all fronts – the media, the legal arena, and the diplomatic stage.”
Sue more plus more effective propaganda techniques. Lovely plan.
“We should also enlist the help of the best Jewish minds in the world for this cause.”
Cough, dual loyalty, cough…
“For example, willingness to show diplomatic flexibility and agree to freeze settlement construction for a year – something Obama is almost begging for – would boost his status in the region and indirectly boost our own status as well. ”
A tactical stop, to be reneged on later. A sorta “ceasefire” with the understanding that war will restart in the very near future.
“The siege we imposed on Gaza has already caused us damage on the global front that is greater than any security damage to be caused by the release of several hundred murders to the West Bank. ”
Translation: Lets release some of these 13 year old stone throwing kids and their mothers; those kind of “murderers”…
“Translation: Lets release some of these 13 year old stone throwing kids and their mothers; ”
Further translation: We can always re-arrest them next week, since we don’t have to charge the with anything to keep them in jail indefinitely, and there’s no such thing as due process or double jeopardy for Palestinians in the occupied territories.
“gestures”
That’s what they call it when Netanyahu can’t bring himself to do it
Ron Ben Yishai is as mainstream as you can find in Israeli journalism. This is not Israel’s Phil Weiss.
On the new hasbara offensive:
I saw the new (“re-branded”) Israeli tourism posters this week.
Poster #1: young, female violinist in a Roman ampitheater.
Poster #2: Israeli cowboy in in an open field.
Nothing Jewish or Christian, no images of war, and, of course, still, no Arabs.
Reminds me of the mid-80s when the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria (aka the Military Occupation in the West Bank) produced a glossy brochure with lovely color pics. The cover had golden fields under a blue sky. Detailed graphs showed how Palestinian life had improved greatly under Israeli administration.
I was one of the army people who distributed these publications. Needless to say, there were no takers.
A few months later, the 1st Intifada started.
Elliot, how would you try to market ethnic nationalism? Cute chicks and Marlboro men are advertising staples for the last half century. I’m only surprised there weren’t any puppies (were there?)
What’s that line about Roman burning while someone fiddles? A yippee-kai-yay cowboy on a horse? Or strolling with a piece of hay in his mouth? That’s rebranding all right: the only open fields are in Palestine somewhere, aren’t they?
Their PR is as bad as their fashion designers.
This is just a filler, until they get the “best Jewish minds” on it ;-)
LOL
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OT:
What about Michael Neumann’s latest brilliant piece in Counterpunch? It breaks ethnic nationalism down so that, dare I say it, even a Richard Witty might be able to understand.
link to counterpunch.org
After he explains what ethnic nationalism is and where it has come from, he gets to the heart of the Zionism is racism formulation:
“‘Jew’, in other words, does not refer to those who espouse Judaism or embrace Jewish culture. ‘Jew’ means ‘of Jewish ancestry’. In virtually every Canadian jurisdiction, ancestry is explicitly cited as a prohibited ground of discrimination. Ancestry is just a contemporary stand-in for the older notion of race and is generally used in references to racial discrimination.(**) Like skin colour, it’s something you cannot change, and therefore a particularly repugnant basis for determining civic status.”
Definitely a must-read.
Excellent article former coMMenter, should be required reading for everyone.
I concur completely: the Neumann article is a must-read. Of course, you’ll never get Canadian Prime Minister Harper to go along: his best bud is David Frum.
I agree, it’s a must-read, so here it is again:
link to counterpunch.org
It directly flies in the face of Richard Witty’s conflation of an individual’s self-determination with any “people’s” “self-determination and goverance.” It directs
why this poetic conceit is a poison that keeps on giving, blessed originally by Woodrow Wilson, and most singularly (as ethnic nationalism) by Hitler, and now by Zionist Israel; it ties in with the Nazi and Zionist versions of “lebensraum,” the subject
of some of the recent comments on this blog under various threads. And the article
identifies why Israel’s application of it does not parallel any historical application.
Yes, Citizen, and what makes this so important is that while Zionists try their best to spin Israel/Palestine activism as some neurotic, obsessive, narrow pathology–why are they so obsessed with Israel?–and conscientious Jews such as Weiss try to frame the issue in a very specific Jewish context, drawing attention to the overriding ideology of ethnic nationalism greatly broadens the scope, making this issue universally applicable.
It just so happens that there is only one ethnic nationalist state in existence today: Israel. And it is one too many.
BTW, Elliot, thanks for the heads-up on Ben-Yishai. But his tagline gives him away
There is no threat from Iran. And no one internationally is going to accept that there is. So Ben-Yishai better start dealing with that reality instead of living in The Matrix with the rest of Israeli crazies.
BDS ought to be extended to the big (as in powerful and wealthy) American Jews who support Israel right or wrong with their American-made dollars, like the Starbucks guy, and the other who owns Slim Fast (mentioned on this site yesterday). Some targeted Leviev for his support of the settlements, and that worked. We should get a list going of who we can hurt.
I, for one, am not going to sit back and let a crew of genuinely dangerous nutcases cause WWIII because they claim an unacceptable right to pre-emptive action…with nukes, no less. Even our crazy un-American ex-President, George W. Bush, never entertained nukes in Iraq, not that we know of. Israel’s security, by any stretch of the imagination, is not worth a third world war. Ever. The operating law is the greatest good for the greatest number of people; and decimating our way of life for 6 million emigrants to a 60-year-old country run like a Spartan experiment does not meet the test.
P.S. link to labelsonline.com
sells inexpensive permanent adhesive labels that you can print up at home and slap on things to spread the BDS message.
Sheldon Adelson lost like 1/3 of his casino wealth, for which, O rejoice, because it’s not going to the settlements.
You forgot to mention Lowes, the other Home Depot, whose founder supports the West Bank expansion.
Syvanen, thanks. I dont know any names except the ones I listed. But I made a decision over the past few days that I am going to boycott US Jews who support this nonsense. So, thank you for Lowes and Home Depot (I’m pretty sure that Home Depot is a honey pot for West Bank activity as well.). Guess I’ll have to go to Ace Hardware, except I seem to remember Ace Hardware is owned by West Bank Jews. Like, for real West Bank people.
Maybe someone can disabuse me of that if I’m wrong.
I need feedback from someone who’s older than me. Is this what it looked like as pressure against apartheid South Africa ramped up? Because from what I’ve read that’s what it looks like to me. This is a sign we can be hopeful, right?
On the other note, I find the Ben-Yeshai’s rational rather pathetic. “We need to get Gilad Schalit back, open the border crossings and end the blockade.” Not, for any of the human reasons but because it’s not playing out as good PR like the consultants said it would. It’s as if Zionists were fielding Democratic presidential candidacies. Oh wait, I forgot — they have been.
If I wasn’t laughing, I’d be crying.
It started slowly with anti-apartheid pressure against South Africa. The majority of America had to figure out what apartheid meant. That was like educating a nation of dead cockroaches, on one level. “Let’s try spelling it. A. P. A. R . T. H…” But it caught on because the press took it on.
Now, unbeknownst to Americans, this IS catching on in countries around the world. The ‘damage on the global front’ Ben-Yishai refers to sure the hell isn’t the USA. Sweden and France have cut critical infrastructure contracts. Disgust is mounting in the British House of Lords. Once Americans realize that BDS is an issue and it can work, it will work.
A very key component of the US congress inititated and pushed hard for the education of the American people and economic sanctions against apartheid S Africa:
The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC)–the analogy they used was Jim Crow. The movement spread around the western world and Japan. There is no such instigating and publicizing political clout in the USA representing Palestinian Americans. The Israel
Lobby here has totally cowed the CBC , as one former CBC member Cynthia McKinney would be the first to tell you:
link to greenchange.org
Today, to my knowledge, you have to live in Norway or Turkey to find high government officials putting pressure on Israel to conform to basic standards
of civility and to find open discussion of the I-P issue in their respective MSM.
Both African Americans and Jewish Americans are quite correctly very proud of their respective historical
agency role in the US Civil Rights Movement. Both official agency collectives now have a double standard
firmly in place, ignoring the plight of the Palestinians and the negative impact on
USA’s best interests, as the price to pay for advancement and maintence of
their respective ethnic constituency around the world.
Lookit, BDS-type strategies are used to support jewish colonialism all the time.
It’s only their anti-colonial objective which is the cause for complaint, not the means.
Yes, and look at who was the proposed target of BDS in June of this year.
Likud minister proposes Israeli sanctions on US
Their first sanction against us should be refuse all our foreign aid.
Better yet, have a real show of force and give it back. We have some uninsured children who could put that money to better use.
It’s a shame Ben-Yeshai is too naive to understand the fact that the best Jewish minds in the world are interested in reforming Israel rather than manipulating peoples perceptions of it. For all the harm Zionism has done, at least it is doing some good in chipping away at the stereotype of “the Jews” having some inherent intellectual superiority over others.
Israel is always a great help when I need to convince some “philosemite” that some of us are really quite stupid and short-sighted.
I contend “Judophiles” is a better label for the individuals you refer to, as they tend to have no love for the vast majority of Semites in this world. I also generally prefer the term “Judophobes” over “anti-Semites” on similar grounds. Granted, those such as the Christian Zionists who cheer on Israel while praying for Armageddon to bring the slaughter of Arabs and Jews alike do deserve the label of “anti-Semites”, as that describes their bigoted position on the conflict to a tee.
The words anti-Semitisn and philosemitism may be based on faulty etymology, but they were coined to denote hatred or love for Jews at a time when other “Semites” were all but irrelevant to European social reality. I see your point, Kylebisme, but I prefer common usage to etymological precision. I feel the same way about the word “racism”, which has also been discussed here. In common usage, it means ethnic/religious/cultural hatred and discrimination. Whether Arabs or Muslims or Jews or Asians actually constitute “races”, or whether “races” even exist at all is, IMO, entirely beside the point. Racism is a good, solid, useful word, and everyone knows what it means.
kylebisme, Tele-Evangelist John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel, or CUFI, is run by a Jew. Maybe he wants to be first in line with that Messiah shit, although I doubt it; I think he’s planted there to keep Hagee in line. Hagee, on the other hand, will be out scarfing up another Armani suit to drape over his refrigerator frame for the first meeting.
I hope I dont insult anybody on this board, but I had to spend an hour with an Evangelical who spoke in tongues and had this patter down about God and The End Times that nearly turned my mouth into an automatic drill so I could tunnel my way out of there. He was trying to convert me. It was like listening to the ravings of a lunatic. There was a point in my life when I could have bought all this stuff; I think that’s what scared me :-) … even imagining that I was susceptible at one time.
Fundamentalist anything: Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, evokes horror images in me. They pick this book that is hundreds upon hundreds and hundreds of years old written by goatfuckers in the desert and claim divinity from it. Aarrggh! People will stay 20 ft away from a neighbor who claims to hear voices from God, sneer at him and tattle in the neighborhood, but pick up some 2300-year old text and follow it slavishly. [Sorry to go like this.]
Racism is a good, solid, useful word, and everyone knows what it means.
I agree.
I understand you are going with the flow, but suggest doing otherwise to better overcome the archaic European bigotry the terms were coined from. I also refuse to use “holocaust” to refer to genocide for similar reasons, as the theological implications of such usage of the term is utterly revolting.
I agree about the horrifying theological implications of using the word holocaust, and avoid it wherever I can. In Italian and French, the Hebrew word Shoà (which means destruction) is commonly used to refer to the Nazi genocide of the Jews. In English however, I find the word Holocaust unavoidable – again a matter of usage. With regard to other genocides, where there are no specific words – such as Nakba or Porrajmos (Nazi genocide of the Roma ) – I prefer generic terms other than holocaust. Of course, if we are going to be sticklers, the term “genocide” itself, in its broader sense, is also problematic, in that it is used to refer to events that do not include the murder or even attempted murder of an entire “genos”.
I think that “segregation” might be a better word to use than “apartheid” simply because the connotations are so clearly negative in the US.
Shmuel,
Yeah, I use “Shoah” to refer to the Nazis genocide of Jews when speaking English and conversing people who I can be reasonably sure are familiar with the term, or simply “Nazis genocide of Jews” otherwise. As for “genocide”, while I agree that the usage of the term is often technically an overstatement, I consider it close enough to be appropriate when referring to atrocities such as the Shoah.
One technique of hasbara is to come up with a new name for hasbara.
What does that say about the Jewish minds already helping the cause?
We should also enlist the help of the best Jewish minds in the world for this cause.
What does that say about the Jewish minds already helping the cause?
LOL :)
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