Standwithus trains el al employees in the danger of goldstone. (Photo: standwithus)
Haaretz is reporting that the Israeli airline El Al has has agreed to "engage in public diplomacy efforts" in North America. The program is called "Blue and White El Al Ambassadors" and is being sponsored by the Jewish Agency, StandWithUs and the Israeli Foreign Ministry. According to El Al deputy CEO, Yehudit Grisaro, and Alon Portman, the missions director at the Jewish Agency, the goal of the program is to represent "the beautiful, positive apolitical face of the State of Israel."
StandWithUs says:
This is a breakthrough partnership between the private sector and StandWithUs in Israel where for the first time, a private company has taken on the responsibility to help fight lies and misinformation that are being spread about Israel.
“apolitical”
Ha, yea that’s the point isn’t it? Come see beautiful Israel but ignore the apartheid and colonialism that defines Zionism. Oh and hate Arabs and Muslims while you’re at it.
You mean they are going to walk down the aisles while the passengers are in the friendly skies and proselytize Israel? Hand out blue & white brochures on Fifth Avenue? Do flash mobs at the airport? What?
These people are really effing stupid, aren’t they. They are so out-of-touch with reality, it’s mind-boggling. “[T]he beautiful, positive apolitical face of the State of Israel.”
That, and there’ll be a test – you’ll have to sign a landing card on the plane in support of “the jewish state’s right to exist”, and promise you won’t go near the West Bank or Gaza, and not associate with Palestinian Israelis. Those who fail the test…
LOL! Does any other nation on the planet partake in this sort of PR nonsense to boost their image? Maybe China did during the Olympics a few years back. But that was during the Olympics. Israel’s PR machine runs 24/7 even on the Sabbath.
Anybody click on the Livni article over at haaertz? I don’t like Livni because of Cast Lead, but she acknowledges the unofficial first two rules of Zionist arguing (we rule, they suck):
(Livni) continued criticizing the government for “the story it is selling regarding the current reality. The first part says everything is alright. The second part says that everyone is against us: (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) Abu Mazen joined forces with Hamas, (Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip) Erdogan is an Islamist and in Egypt it is impossible to know what will happen, everyone is anti-Semitic and all that’s left [for Israel] to do is to wait and see what will happen.”
Thinking about it, there are patterns to follow.
For example, TV campaigns of the kind “Experience adventure, visit New Jersey” (sorry, the slogan was a bit different, but I think I recall the sense). Clearly, some high risk activities were encouraged (visiting Atlantic City), some were not (parking car in Camden). When I visited Europe, I have seen similar campaign for Greece and Lodz. The latter was quite catchy, playing up the rather unexpected way one should pronounce the city name (like would in “would you”). Very ambitious effort, something like trying to make a tourist mecca out of Akron, Ohio.
Of course. to promote visits to Israel one should explain how to get there. I am not sure if Sumud was correct, but one would have to experiment. For example, suppose that I have military training and I would like to visit friends in West Bank Judea and Samaria to defend them in an unlikely event of Arab invasion. What would El Al suggest?
My recollection of different marketing efforts suggests that the proposed strategy, “fighting lies and misinformation” is not the usual approach. For example, Greece has a certain reputation, undeserved to be sure, for financial creativity. This could be addressed in a nice campaign of TV ads fighting lies and misinformation about the risks in buying Greek bonds (which have VERY attractive yields!). Instead, in ads we see an alluring woman, yachts, sea, and real estate in serious need of renovation (as if nobody did a paint job in the last 3000 years) etc. Perhaps sailing is a good way to avoid traffic jams in Greece, but if so, the ads were silent on traffic jams.