Israel's Ongoing Public Diplomacy Fiasco

DAVID ISAAC 

On Feb. 28, at a meeting of something called the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, Turkey's Prime Minister Tacip Erdogan called Zionism "a crime against humanity." Another day, another vicious slur on Israel, in this case from the leader of a country that only yesterday had been its strategic ally in the region. All that was unusual was that this one actually drew a comment from Secretary of State John Kerry - "objectionable" - after it was exposed by the private monitoring group U.N. Watch, awkwardly for Kerry at the very time he was visiting Turkey.
The episode underscores the worldwide no-holds-barred attack on Israel's legitimacy and how little push-back this meets from Israel herself.
A number of articles have appeared recently lamenting Israel's public relations failures. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach writes in The Jerusalem Post on Jan. 7, "What good is having Apache helicopter gunships, or Merkava tanks, to defend your citizens against attack if you can't even use them because the world thinks you're always the aggressor?" On Jan. 11, in the same paper, Barry Shaw, author of "Israel -- Reclaiming the Narrative," says, "government-wise, we are barely on the battlefield for hearts and minds, while the Palestinians and their supporters seem to have endless resources and are succeeding to win the world away from us."
Martin Sherman, executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, also writes in The Jerusalem Post on Feb. 14: "Israel's greatest strategic challenge, its gravest strategic failure, its grimmest strategic danger is the (mis)conduct of its public diplomacy."
Such complaints are nothing new. Decades ago, Shmuel Katz, who thought of himself primarily as an "information man," returned repeatedly to this subject, as readers of this blog well know. He called for a response against the assault on Israel's legitimacy, what Shmuel described as the "many-faceted campaign of denigration throughout the world, openly aiming at the demonization of Israel as a state and of the Jews as a nation."
In "A Crying Need" (The Jerusalem Post, August 6, 1982) Shmuel wrote:

How long must the battle for a sane and rational policy on information go on? ... [F]or years Jews and other friends throughout the world, specifically in the U.S. and Europe, have been complaining bitterly that attacks on Israel go unanswered. There simply is no permanent, established machinery adequate for the task and ready to handle the very special problems faced by Israel.

Nothing has changed except the extent to which the campaign of demonization has succeeded. Sherman, in his op-ed, says the criticisms of Israel's public diplomacy are found only in the English press, "revealing what appears to be an alarming lack of awareness of, and/or interest in, the topic among the Hebrew-reading public."
There have been valiant civilian efforts made outside of Israel. The media watchdog group CAMERA is a striking example. It was founded in 1982 and under the tireless leadership of its chairman Andrea Levin, has exposed media bias around the world. "Stand with Us" focuses its energies on educating about Israel on college campuses, which have become a frontline in the propaganda war against Israel. Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI offer a window into what Arab media and governments say in their own language.
The Internet has opened up the field to the efforts of individuals. Marcella Rosen, a former ad agency executive, has created the site "Untold News," which creates short videos on Israel's positive contributions to science. This writer has made his own efforts at Zionist education with the website Zionism101.org, created at the behest of Herbert Zweibon, the late chairman of Americans for A Safe Israel. The very number of groups and websites advocating for Israel indirectly points an accusatory finger at Israeli governments for failing to do the job themselves.