It's not the PR, stupid


By moshetzarfati2
February 22, 2010
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The JC reports that Propaganda and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein has launched a website for Israelis to explain to whomever they meet abroad that Israel is a much-maligned lovely country the same size of Wales etc etc etc ad nauseum.
In Haaretz, there's a report that Mr Edelstein told a Zionist Federation dinner (side questions: Why no report in the JC? Is the ZF broiges with the JC over its editor's slamming of Danny "the wise" Ayalon?) that the Goldstone Report was a "new kind of anti-Semitism."
This is of course nonsense. It's the standard jejune paranoid mantra of people who do Israel such a disservice by calibrating even the mildest criticism of Israeli behaviour by anyone who is Jewish as anti-Semitic.
Classifying Richard Goldstone as anti-Semitic is just plain childish vituperative rubbish and immediately raises the question among Jews and the rest of humanity too as to whether it will ever be possible to enter into meaningful discussion with Israel about anything at all.
Anyway, back to the Propaganda Ministry's website, it seems to believe that by showing Israelis juvenile, amateur and sarcastic faux TV footage depicting Israelis using camels as their primary form of transport, or whether the average Israeli home is connected to gas supplies the problem will go away. The ministry does not grasp, or does not want to grasp, that Israel's flagrant and repeated violations of international law in its dealings with the Palestinians are key to most critics' complaints.

COMMENTS

John Gold

22 February, 2010 - 22:39

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Mosher, I agree with you - the whole situation has become slightly absurd...

Either people like to control others speech and thoughts (control freaks)?
Or possibly they are truly traumatized from past events relating to (real) antisemitism - and it works itself out like this...?


returning sephardim

23 February, 2010 - 18:26

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Or it is the default infallibility clause? That churlish, self-isolating, self-proclaiming, mistaken and Aryan interpretation of 'chosen ones' that looses true essence and perspective in the minds of those who are not interested in being mindful. So many of us feel deeply uncomfortable with this mistaken sense of superiority including the many in the geographical Israel. Superiority complex, blended with insecurity and understandable fear born of the past seems to birth in some a hostile, unseeing response, expecting and therefore more likely to attract only hostility from others. Such limited and limiting responses I feel have parentage more in fear and arrogance than faith and due consideration. Am I just being cynical? Quite possibly and if so I am sorry. Israel the people is surely told to love our neighbours as ourselves, to treat others as you would wish to be treated, so if we are chosen we are surely chosen in part to serve? I enjoy your writing moshetzarfati2, thank-you

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