Now that Toronto Film Festival is over, we’ve asked Cecilie Surasky, Jewish Voice for Peace’s Deputy Director, to reflect on the events of the past few weeks and help put them in perspective. JVP was involved in supporting the protests in Toronto, and Surasky is the founder of their important Muzzlewatch blog which tracks "efforts to stifle open debate about US-Israeli foreign policy."
Traditionally, Israel’s Foreign Ministry has been responsible for shaping the country’s political image — not for lifestyle marketing. The country’s Ministry of Tourism was in charge of attracting tourists. In a switch, they’re now working together to help rebrand Israel as a lifestyles-oriented destination, a strategy being ramped up thanks to the anniversary. . . The ministries, of course, have a tough road ahead of them. According to a late-2006 National Brand Index survey of nearly 30,000 respondents in 35 nations conducted by branding expert Simon Anholt, Israel had the lowest public perception of any country in the world — except for Iran.
Best Face Forward, March 2008 adweek
This has been a watershed moment in the movement.
The people who drafted the Toronto Declaration were all volunteers and they had no budget, yet they managed to put a huge monkeywrench into the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs utterly ridiculous and pathetic Brand Israel campaign, a campaign which the Ministry hoped could "improve Israel’s political stand" by diverting attention from Gaza and the West Bank to, say, the Israeli film industry. But in the end, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, "… the buzz this week in Toronto has centered on the one thing Israeli officials had sought to avoid: the conflict with the Palestinians."
What’s more remarkable, the Declaration organizers fought off and withstood one of the most nasty counter-attack campaigns I’ve ever seen. It included an endless stream of lies repeated by dozens of Israel advocacy groups, bloggers and journalists (see JVP’s fact sheets); vicious over-the-line character assassinations; the promotion of fabricated history about Tel Aviv; threats to destroy charities associated with signers and more.
They said it was a boycott, it wasn’t; they said it called Tel Aviv into question, it didn’t; they even said it was an effort to delegitimize Israel, it absolutely wasn’t. And because few critics bothered to actually read the Declaration, many repeated these lies.
Why such an over the top counter-attack? Because they succeeded in moving their message into the mainstream.
When do you remember well-known, even iconic film stars speaking out on this issue in such a critical way? Never. What’s key here is that groups like the American Jewish Committee and the ADL are most worried about message creep, the possibility that ideas embraced by those of us who value Palestinian lives equally will find their way into the mainstream. They’ve used a range of tactics, including good advocacy but also name-calling (anti-Semite!) and pulling philanthropic/advertising strings, to make sure Israel’s ongoing brutal treatment of Palestinians remains the unspoken elephant in the middle of the living room. But many folks-including plenty of Jews- are starting to refuse to back down.
I think the trauma of Gaza is largely responsible-good people everywhere have just had it. During the Gaza fighting it was Jon Stewart and Bill Moyers and now it’s Jane Fonda and Harry Belafonte – all signs that Israel’s human rights violations are bleeding into popular culture.
Even Roger Ebert, the number one popular movie critic, came out and said, "I thought of it as an innocent goodwill gesture, but now realize it was part of a deliberate plan to "re-brand" Israel in Toronto, as a pilot for a larger such program. The Festival should never have agreed to be used like this."
But the effort to deal with Israel’s increasing global isolation through branding was always doomed to fail. Simon Anholt, the world’s top nation-branding expert who said Israel scored the worst of any country he had ever polled, also said he had never seen a country re-brand itself. The issue is the product, not the marketing.
When will Israel learn the lesson? If they want the world to love them- and there is plenty about Israeli culture worth loving, starting with its remarkable human rights community- then they need to start by giving Palestinians the full legal and human rights to which they are entitled. Then, it would be a win-win for everyone.
