The Deterioration of Israel's Image is Largely Self-Inflicted
By
Dr. Yoram Shifftan
If we try to extract the essence of the many situations in which Israel
is criticized, including the famous letter to the Guardian in April 2002
that started the academic boycotts, the recent call in September 2006 by
61 Irish academics for a boycott, the various anti-Israel trade unions,
church, public meeting, newspaper, radio and TV events that criticize
Israel or call for academic, cultural and commercial boycotts against
it, we note that this essence is transmitted by few recurring slogans:
- "Israel is an occupier of Arab land".
- "The settlements are illegal according to international law" .
"Israel does not abide by
international law and the resolutions of the United Nations".
- "Israel is
an apartheid racist state and it discriminates against its Arab
citizens".
The slogans and the content behind them are not only false
but they represent the exact opposite of the objective truth. It would
have been very easy to refute these false allegations yet this is not
done by Israel officially. Why?
There is a paradox. Ever since Oslo process began in about 1992, Israel
has been making concessions as never before, some of them even
unilaterally, and the more concessions she makes, the more her image
deteriorates. Furthermore, whenever there is an atrocity committed
against Israeli civilians, instead of sympathy, Israel's image
deteriorates further in the court European public opinion. When it seems
that Israel's image cannot deteriorate further, there is a new poll to
disprove this assumption, like the most recent one, The Nation Brand
Index, polling over 25,000 consumers worldwide in which Israel came at
the bottom of most rankings.
There are two reasons for this situation. The first is Israel's
passivity, timidity and apologetics-based approach. But perhaps even
more important is official Israel's insistence, since Oslo process
began, to ignore the false allegations thrown at her. The objective
observer is bound to conclude that Israel is not in a position to refute
the false allegations because they are objectively true. The Israeli
public is not aware that since Oslo process began there have been
radical changes for the worse in the policy of Israel's Ministry of
Foreign Affairs (MFA). Since then, it is dictated from the very top of
the ministry (often against the wish of the lower levels), including the
ministers this passive approach and will not refute the main false
allegations thrown at Israel even when there are many public
opportunities to do so. Worse, not only there is a deliberate policy of
official Israel to conceal objectively true historical and legal facts,
which happen to be pro-Israel, but Israeli diplomats are forbidden by
the very top of Israel's MFA to refute the false allegations thrown at
Israel. This is in contradistinction to the sane practice of refutation which
prevailed in Israel's MFA before Oslo process began, but often the
high-ranking functionaries of Israel's MFA and the Minister himself,
will actively propagate the anti-Israel untruths which are propagated by
the Arabs and their friends. As a result, the number of people in the
world that know the true historical and legal facts decreases
autocatalytically. The result is very grave for many reasons including
the loss of the belief in the justice of the Jewish-Israeli cause by the
Israelis and Jews themselves and the ensuing decreased motivation of
Israelis and Jews to engage in Hasbara (PR), and because of the
increased motivation of terrorists to kill Israelis and Jews. It has to
be stressed that this is not a mere question of intellectual exercise,
but this self-inflicted Israeli failure to improve its image is a direct
and major cause of loss of Israeli and Jewish life and limb, as well as
resources.
The latest idea of Israel's MFA is to rebrand Israel's image by
stressing Israel's achievements in science, music and culture and to
highlight its historical and modern tourist attractions, is bound to
fail as it is irrelevant to the false allegations thrown at Israel. It
is merely another chapter in the policy of ignoring what the enemy is
focussed on. Indeed if you have taken somebody's country you cannot
evade your guilt by being good in science or offering the sun in the
winter. It is just like an individual blamed for theft or murder
defending himself by saying that he is a good scientist. You have to
REFER to the incriminatory allegation and try to refute it, if you can.
The major reason why Israel's brand is so low, and keeps deteriorating,
in particular since Oslo process began, is the refusal of Israel's
ministers of foreign affairs only since Oslo process began to allow
Israeli diplomats to reiterate the FUNDAMENTALS of the conflict when
they are on international radio, TV and other such public occasions,
often sharing the same platform as Arab-friendly representatives, who,
all of them, whatever the subject is, will invariably focus on the
fundamentals, and use again and again, the same refrains, in particular
the slogans about the "occupation", "the illegality of the settlements
according to international law" and "Israel is incompliant with
international law". But the Israeli representative will invariably
ignore such major allegations about the occupation, the settlements and
incompliance of international law. Rarely he would refer to these
allegations at all, and even when he does he would emit a statement that
confirms the Israeli guilt of occupation, he would issue a statement
such as "that the occupation will end when the terror will end". Nor
Israel's MFA produces the same written material they did until 1992
which did contain the fundamentals, which was also used by the other
advocate bodies, diaspora Jewish communities and youth movements, and by
Christian Zionists. If official Israel does not reiterate the
fundamentals it is no wonder that Israel's image is the lowest in the
world in view of the ever increasing number of lies propagated by
Israel's enemies. The representative Jewish bodies in the diaspora have
the tendency to align themselves with the local Israeli embassy. So if
the material propagated by the embassy is lacking, the local Jewish
communities and other advocate bodies will be much less effective, and
the proportion of people that know the true objective facts will
decrease further.
Also, there are many objectively true pro-Israel facts that official
Israeli representatives do not mention at all or very rarely. This
includes mentioning Jewish refugees from Arab countries, their greater
number and the greater property which left behind, the fact that they
had to leave countries where they lived before the Arabs came to these
countries, and that they were transported large distances into
unfamiliar surroundings, whereas most "Palestinian refugees" moved just
short distances within Palestine itself, and out of their own volition
and despite Israel pleas for them to stay. Another example that Israeli
representatives could mention is that in the 1940s Arab politicians
suggested an "exchange of population", i.e. that Arab countries will
absorb Palestinian Arabs and Israel will absorb Jews from Arab
countries. Israeli diplomats could have pointed out that half of this
Arab-suggested 'exchange of population', i.e. the part that Israel
absorbs Jews from Arab countries, has already been carried out. In fact
not only the counterpart other half has not been carried out yet, but
Israel has already uprooted its own Jewish population.
In counteracting the absurd allegation that Israel is a South-Africa
type of discriminatory regime, official Israel should have pointed out
that the opposite is true; Israeli Arabs have more rights and duties as
compared with Israelis Jews. For example, Israeli Arabs do not do
compulsory military service of 3 years and then long and dangerous
reserve duties every year. Yet they have the right to vote in the
national level. This is completely unparalleled in other western
democracies where there is a correlation between duties and rights. For
example, Jews killed Jews as parts of the opposing armies in WWI.
Israeli Arabs even refuse to do national service in their own
communities and terrorize the few members of their community who raise
the possibility.
Israel does not say that the Arabs themselves write in all their
official documents in Arabic that they are one nation only (which indeed
they are by all criteria). These documents include the Baath party
founding documents in Syria and Iraq, the various founding Palestinian
Arab documents. The Feisal-Weizmann 1919 agreement refers only to two
states that will be created in the fall of the Ottoman empire. There
will be an "Arab State" and a Jewish state called "Palestine" (!)
according to this agreement. It thus follows that by the Arab own logic
they deserve one state only since it is customary in the world that one
nation deserves one state only. Israel should have pointed out in every
opportunity that we face an anomalous situation in which one nation has
got not one but 22 states and 22 votes in the United Nations. At the same time this
one nation that has got by far more than one state already, with vast
surface area and natural resources, refuses the Jews to have even one
tiny state.
Present-day official Israel studiously avoids pointing out that until the
mid-1960s there was no claim on the part of the Palestinian Arabs
themselves that they are a nation apart. Indeed they have no specific
history, culture, language which makes them a nation apart, and they
never claimed to be. In fact when Palestinian Arab leaders represented
their communities with the British Mandate authorities, they kept
emphasizing that they are not a nation apart but only a part of the Arab
nation, at most a part of greater Syria. Israel could have cited
admissions by Palestinian Arab leaders themselves that the Palestinian
national identity was invented as a fiction only for the sake of
fighting the Zionist Jews (one famous such admission is is by the head
of the PLO Military Operations Department, Zuhair Muhsin to the
Netherlands paper Trouw in 1977).
Furthermore, Israel could have said that even if we assume that the
fiction that Palestinian Arabs are a separate nation is true, it is the
case that they have already a state of their own. Until Oslo process
began, Israel's MFA saw it as one of its major mission to advance in the
world the recognition that even if one assumes that the "Palestinians"
are a nation apart, there is already a Palestinian Arab state which at
the moment is called Jordan. Earlier this part of the world had other
names such Trans-Jordan, Eastern Palestine, Eastern Eretz Israel. Arabs
play with words and names and the failure of Israeli diplomats to point
this out, is just as serious a failure contributing to the deterioration
Israel's image as the failure to point out that there is already a
Palestinian Arab state in existence.
Israel could have furthermore pointed out that this Palestinian state is
not in Uganda or Madagascar but in Palestine. In fact it occupies
four-fifths of Palestine. Israel should have stressed further that
according to many international agreements the whole of Palestine was
reserved for a Jewish state. One of the bodies that took this decision
was an organization of 52 states that preceded the United Nations the
League of Nations. This was the most fundamental decision of this body
of nations and this decision was referred to by this body as a "sacred
trust of civilisation". The decision was arrived at on the basis of the
historical and legal facts and the long and unique association of the
Jewish people with Palestine. In the words of the League: "Whereas
recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the
Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their
national home in that country".
As just one example of how much the captains of Israeli Hasbara (PR)
today have become detached from true objective reality to distinguish
from the approach of my-country-right-or-wrong is the behaviour of
Israel's first president Dr Haim Weizmann. He would be called today a
leftist, was always to the left of the socialist Ben Gurion, always
stressing that Israel's true moral status will be determined by the way
it treats the Arabs, always trying to please and not to antagonize the
British. But when he heard that Churchill contemplates "to postpone or
withhold" (to use the words of the later league acquiescence to
Churchill's recommendation) in four-fifths of Palestine the application
of the original League's decision to recreate the Jewish state in the
whole of Palestine, he strongly appealed to Churchill to reconsider this
postponement of the Jewish state in four fifths of Palestine i.e. in
Eastern Palestine in the area of today's Jordan. He said that a Jewish
state in Western Palestine only (i.e. all the area west to the river
Jordan which of course includes Judea, Samaria and Gaza; Original
international decisions included the Golan heights too where there was
intensive Jewish life for millennia) will not be economically viable and
the whole of Palestine is crucial for a Jewish state whereas Eastern
Palestine is not really important for the Arabs since they anyhow have
such vast areas according to the original League's decision. He and
other Jews did not succeed, but they tried. Today even the remaining
fifth of Palestine is too much for some Jews.
The representatives of official Israel should have said on every public
opportunity, which they never do, that the League's decision is explicit
in that only Jews have been granted with national rights in Palestine
and the decision calls on all the nations of the world to facilitate
Jewish immigration to Palestine and to encourage the dense settlement by
Jews in Palestine "on the lands, including State lands and waste lands
not required for public purpose". The League's Palestine Mandate conveys
the requirement of urgency in the accomplishment of this Jewish
settlement. It makes it clear that these rights of the Jewish people are
safeguarded in perpetuity. And indeed Israeli representatives should
have never missed an opportunity to further stress that it is enshrined
in the Charter of the United Nations that rights of nations obtained by
virtue of a mandate of the League of Nations continue to be valid during
the life of the United Nations. This principle of the 'Continuing
Obligations of the Mandate' was further confirmed by the decisions of
the of the International Court of Justice and applied in the case of
South-West Africa (Namibia of today). See for example pp. 121-123 in the
book of Prof. Julius Stone, Israel and Palestine: Assault on the Law of
nations, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981, and the articles of
Prof. Eugene Rostow.
Until 1948 there were Jewish settlements east of the green line; these
included the four settlements of Gush Etzyon, Kefar Darom, Atarot, Neve
Yaakov, Kalya, Beith Haarava, the Jewish quarters in Hebron and the old
city of Jerusalem. A very easy way for Israeli diplomats to point out
that from the point of view of International law, Jewish rights and the
obligation to settle Jews in Western Palestine, are the same on both
sides of the green line, as stressed by Prof. Eugene Rostow, would have
been to observe in every public opportunity that indeed there were
Jewish settlements until 1948 on the eastern side of the green line
until they were removed in 1948 or before by Arab aggression . This very
existence of Jewish settlements east of the green line before 1948 is a
proof of their legality since even the British, who were not friendly to
Jewish settlement and immigration (in betrayal of their official
obligation according to international law, which was to encourage Jewish
immigration and settlement in Palestine), did not dare removing these
settlements east of the green line, since they knew that this would be
the most glaring violation of international law and their own obligation
as the Palestine Mandatory. To argue otherwise would mean that the very
Arab aggression, in 1948 or before, that caused the destruction of
Jewish settlements east of the green line, in 1948 or before, caused
these settlements to become illegal, which is of course absurd and
illogical. Post-1967 Jewish settlements east of the green line should
enjoy at least the same legitimacy as their pre-1948 precursors. In fact
often the settlements reconstituted after 1967 were built in the same
places as the pre-1948 settlements that were destroyed by the Arabs.
The whole Jewish settlement enterprise erected after 1967 enjoys
multiple sources of legitimacy. Not only were the settlements built on
public land, and not only they were built in the historical cradle of
the Jewish people, and not only it enjoyed the legitimacy bestowed on it
by the obligations of the Palestine Mandate of the League of nations,
but also it enjoys the legitimacy that follows from Arab aggression that
caused it to be removed 19 years earlier or before. Indeed in
international law there is the cardinal principle "Ex iniuria non oriur
ius" according to which it is forbidden to allow an aggressor state to
benefit from the fruit of its aggression. There are many examples for
the application of this principle. For example, Belgium still contains
part of Germany from WWI due to German aggression. Trans-Jordan and
Egypt invasion of Western Palestine in 1948 was such an aggression. This
aggression alone would have allowed Israel to apply its sovereignty in
all of Western Palestine. It is because of these multiple sources of
legality according to international law that all experts in
international law agree that Israel has the right to annex and apply its
sovereignty in all the territories that she arrived at in its
self-defence wars in 1948 and 1967 (for further details see the book of
Julius Stone quoted above).
As I said, the main reason for the deterioration of Israel's image is
the fact that its official representatives are forbidden (since the
beginning of the Oslo process) "from the top" of the Israeli government,
to deny in public the untruths thrown at her. These untruths, issued
slogan-like by the Arabs and friends, whatever is the subject discussed,
focus on the "occupation" and the "illegality of the settlements
according to international law", a subject I dealt with above. The third
slogan thrown at Israel is that it "does not comply with international
law and United Nations decisions" (see for example the recent declaration for
boycott of Israel issued in the Irish Times by the 61 Irish academics).
But here again the opposite is the truth. This is explained in detail by
the great expert in international law, Professor Julius Stone, in his
book quoted above, and this was the major reason he wrote the book and
given it the title "Israel and Palestine: Assault on the Law of
Nations". Everybody should read this book and spread its existence. The
title of this book is very significant in the context of refuting the
third slogan just mention. It is indeed an "Assault on the Law of
Nations" to claim that Israel does not comply with international law. It
is Israel who studiously comply with, and accept United Nations recommendations, and
the Arabs who reject all recommendations ever since before 1948, and
systematically violate the agreements they do sign. For example,
Feisal-Weizmann 1919 agreement, duly signed by Arab and Jewish
representatives, was never kept by the Arab side. Indeed a major point
of Stone's book, and it should be clear too from what is written above
about Israel's fundamental rights according to international law (in
particular that Israel's rights are enshrined in the charter of the United Nations),
is that if the claim that Israel haters propagate, that Israel does not
fulfil United Nations resolutions, and Israel does not abide by international law,
were true, than this would mean that there are fundamental logical
contradictions between the charter of the United Nations and its later
resolutions, which is not the case. Again for details, see the book of
Julius Stone. Even the United Nations with its singling out of only Israel
cannot champion logical contradictions, and there are no logical
contradictions in the set that includes the United Nations charter and the United Nations
resolutions.
It would be too long to go through all United Nations "resolutions" here. But
suffice it to say that all so-called "United Nations resolutions" with respect to the
Arab-Israeli conflict have no legally binding power and are just
recommendations. By their nature, they become legally binding law only if
both sides to the conflict accept them. One party cannot reject such a
United Nations resolution (recommendation) and years later claim that the power of
this resolution is binding even though it was itself who had rejected it
in the first place. This happened again and again. For example, consider
the legal standing of resolution 181 (II) ("Partition Plan" of 1947).
Prof. Stone devotes chapter 4 (pp. 59-66) to this question. He says that
the Arab-friendly view "that the General Assembly's Resolution 181 (II)
remains legal force, ignores the stark historical reality that the
resolution never came into legal force at all. That resolution would
have come into force if the parties concerned had accepted it. But it is
well known that the Arab states not only rejected it, but committed
armed aggression against it and against Israel, and thus wholly aborted
it. They deliberately destroyed it, as it were in utero, before it
entered the world of legal effectiveness.
To attempt to show,...that resolution 181 (II) "remains" in force in
1981 is thus an undertaking even more miraculous than would be the
revival of the dead. It is an attempt to give life to an entity that the
Arab states had themselves aborted before it came to maturity and birth.
To propose that Resolution 181(II) can be treated as if it has binding
force in 1981, for the benefit of the same Arab states, who by their
aggression destroyed it ab initio, also violates "general principles of
law," such as those requiring claimants to equity to come "with clean
hands," and forbidding a party who has unlawfully repudiated a
transaction from holding the other party to terms that suit the later
expediencies of the repudiating party". In view of this irrefutable
logic it is amazing that you see at times self-hating Jewish
post-Zionist historians that write that it was in fact Israel that
rejected Resolution 181 (II), i.e. they invert factual reality on its head.
Resolution 242 that was passed after the Six Day War and is a fundamental
"United Nations resolution" (again, only a recommendation without legal binding
power) since many of the later United Nations resolutions (recommendations) are
based on it and quote it. Again the same pattern of Arab falsification
of the resolution repeats itself: The resolution is falsified and then
it is claimed that Israel does not comply with United Nations resolutions. Then
academic and commercial boycotts as well as atrocities against Israeli
and Jewish civilians are committed on basis of this lie. Arab-friendly
representatives keeps saying that resolution 242 calls for the retreat
of Israel from all the "new" territories it returned to in the 1967
self-defence war. But this is again a lie. There were months of haggling
in the United Nations, before the resolution was passed, in which the Soviets and
the Arabs wanted such a resolution recommending that Israel retreat from
all the territories, but in the end they did not have their way. This
has been confirmed again and again orally and in many writings, for
example by the two main formulators of this resolution, the British Lord
Carrington (not a friend of Israel) and by the American, the
Under-Secretary of state, Professor Eugene Rostow mentioned above, who
was earlier the dean of the faculty of Law in the best law school in the
US (Yale University). Israel has already complied with the resolution
(recommendation) and has retreated from more than 90% of the
territories; she has given Egypt land that was never Egyptian, and that
Israel conquered in self-defence no less than three times (and was thus
entitled to keep it many times over) in 1948, in 1956, and in 1967. Note
too, that not only the resolution recommends that Israel gives away only
PART of the "new" land, but it also recommends that Israel gives away
some of the land only in the context of total peace in the area, and
even then it recommends that Israel retreats to borders that are
recognized by all its neighbours and are compatible with its security
requirements. And we know that it was the American Chief of Staff who
prepared the report for president Lyndon Johnson that spelled out the
"recognized and secured borders" mentioned in the resolution to which
Israel would retreat in the context of total and real peace. According
to this expert, "secured borders" mean retaining not only the areas in
Western Palestine and the Golan heights but a part of the Sinai
peninsula (which Israel already gave away).
The reasons Israel's image keeps deteriorating includes not only the
fact that its official representatives are deliberately forbidden from
the top of the Israeli government to mention in public the objectively
true legal-historical facts, facts that were spread by Israeli diplomats
before Oslo process began, but in addition to this active concealment of
pro-Israeli facts by the top Israeli strata, the top of the Israeli
government itself often propagates Arab untruths. Worse, it is the very
people that are officially responsible to spread the basic facts of
Israeli Hasbara (PR), as their counterparts indeed did in previous
generations before Oslo process, who now often propagate the enemy's
lies. There are many examples. I will confine myself to just two here.
As the Oslo process began and for years later, it was no less but the
Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs himself, that propagated as true
fact, including in Israeli radio and Israeli newspapers, the Arab lie
that Israel already took 78% of Palestine and left for the "Palestinian
Arab Nation" only 22% of Palestine. But the fact is that Judea, Samaria
and Gaza are 22% of fifth of Palestine and not of Palestine. This is so
since Western Palestine is only fifth of Palestine. Jordan is four
fifths of Palestine. The correct definition of Palestine is the one that
appears in the Feisal-Weizmann agreement, the League of Nations
documents, the United Nations documents, and in all the other many
international agreements and documents referring to Palestine. But if
you falsely define one-fifth of Palestine as Palestine, you enhance
Palestinian victimhood and Israeli guilt. The second example involves
the person who until not long ago was the general manager of Israel's
MFA. He propagates even on the Israeli official state radio, that the
settlements are illegal according to international law. This is the
functionary that should have propagated the opposite, and indeed until
Oslo process began his counterpart in Israel's MFA had propagated the
opposite.
The functionaries of Israel's MFA before Oslo process began indeed
stressed the legality of the settlements and they put great effort, and
saw it as a major mission of theirs, to advance in the world the
recognition that THERE IS ALREADY A PALESTINIAN ARAB STATE as pointed
out above. See also in this context the chapter in Julius Stone's book
entitled "The Kingdom of Transjordan (Jordan) as a Palestinian Arab
state", where it is made absolutely clear that the definition of the
extent of "Palestine" in the legal world which I have given above is the
correct one. Stone points out in this chapter that "the cutting away
in 1922 of four-fifths of the territory within which the Jewish national
home was to be established in order to create the Emirate of
Transjordan, which later became the present state of
Jordan...drastically reduced the already tiny allocation to the Jewish
people's right of self-determination...Both Cisjordan and Transjordan
made up historic Palestine" and "that the origins and present position
of the Arab state of Jordan in Palestine rebut the very claim that the
Palestinian people lack a homeland. Not only did the state of Jordan
arise in Palestine over Jewish protest at the expense of the home
allocated for the Jewish nation; it also inexorably became, by the same
course of history, a Palestinian Arab state".
The self-defeating way that official Israel conducts itself is also seen
from the following argument. According to all objectives analysts the
"territories" are essential for Israel's security and in addition its
leaders have no right to give them away since these territories were
given by the community of nations to the Jewish people in perpetuity and
no present generation can give it away on behalf of future generations.
But assume one wants to overlook the illegality of giving away these
territories and their importance for security reasons. Then how the
present Israeli leaders expect to benefit from the appreciation of
giving away the land, if they do not accompany this giving away with the
stressing that Israel's gives away as a gift something which is legally
hers. After all if you have stolen something and then you return it,
this is not such a great act of benevolence that need to be rewarded as
compared with giving a gift of something that belongs to you.
Once the fundamentals are brought into the conscious of the world, many
other relatively minor criticisms of Israel lose their power. For
example the issue of the fence. It is clear that since Israel is
entitled to annex and apply its sovereignty anywhere in Western
Palestine, it can build a fence wherever she choose to. But the issue of
the fence and the checkpoints that are often claim to disrupt
Palestinian life are easy to refute because such criticism is a clear
reflection of one-sided anti-Semitism: Implicit in this criticism is the
assumption that the CONVENIENCE of Palestinians is more important than
the LIFE of Israelis. Here too the accepted asymmetry is the reverse of
the true one. The unpleasant and costly burden to maintain a fence and
checkpoints is non-existent in the Arab side since no Jew will attack
Arabs. But this has to be pointed out explicitly. Furthermore, the
burden to maintain checks in the entrance to every mall, every school,
every public institution etc., does not exist in the Arab side. No Jew
would come and hurt Arab shoppers or school children in Arab towns.
Furthermore, every Arab can walk safely in Tel Aviv for example, but an
Israeli, in the Palestinian Arab town of Nablus for example, will be
lucky to get away with his life, and most probably he would be lynched. Arabs can
express their political opinions in all the coffee houses in all the
towns of Israel. Can you imagine one Jew doing so in one Arab town.
Thousands of Israeli Arabs and Arabs from other Arab countries are given
at any one time the best and equal medical treatment in Israeli
hospitals. Can you imagine a single Jew given such a treatment in any
Arab town in the world. Israeli universities have the proportion of Arab
students as their proportion in the population. But it is Israel that is
called an "apartheid and racist state". Consider Arab countries where
Jews cannot enter into the country by law, where it is not allowed to
build a synagogue, even in Jordan that is in formal peace with Israel,
it is punishable by death to sell land to Jews, but the liberal
academics of this world will single out Israel as the racist apartheid
state. They will never single out Sudan, for example. They never
suggested an academic boycott on Sudan because of Darfour, for example.
But in order to point out that the accepted asymmetries are Orwellian
inversion of the true asymmetries, one need a break with the culture of
passivity and self-depreciation, cultivated by the Israeli elite since
Oslo process began, egged on and often financed by external agents often
hostile to Jewish national existence and by psychological warfare
aggravated by Israel's relative election system, in the justice system,
the education system, the political system, the media, the army, the
police, and in Israel's MFA. So the failure of Israeli diplomats since
Oslo is only one facet of the general atmosphere. This self-depreciation
and absence of self-assertion get to absurd levels: Israeli diplomats
were persistently grilled on the BBC because of colateral damage caused
by targeted military activities. When it was suggested to Israeli
diplomacy to invoke in response on BBC the 630,000 German civilians
deliberately killed by allied bombing in WWII, and without prior
warnings (unlike Israeli action who always warn civilians), or the
destruction of Arab villages by the British airforce during the
suppression of the Arab rebellion, or the use of nuclear weapon in WWII
just to save allies soldiers' life and shorten the war, or the more
recent death of many civilians in ex-Yuguslavia, Afghanistan or Iraq by
NATO bombing from the safety of high altitude, the response of Israeli
diplomacy was that MFA would not accept the suggestion for fear
offending the British. With mentality like that, Israel's image will
only keep deteriorating. ###
Submitted December 13, 2006
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Dr. Yoram Shifftan has published many articles on Israeli hasbara, in publications such as Ha'aretz, Ma'ariv, Hatzofeh, Hamodia and Ha'Uma. He has also presented a special series about hasbara on Arutz7 radio. NOTE: Dr Yoram Shifftan (with two f) is not Dr Yoram Shiftan (with one f)
from the Technion.
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