Guest Post: Arial Conference Part II

This guest post by Mark L. Levinson is part two in a series on the Arial University Conference.

The Position of Israel in International Media

Yoni Ben-Menachem, a former director of Kol Israel, chaired the panel on Israel’s position in the international media.  He said that our position is poor because of Operation Cast Lead and because of the Goldstone Report that presented claims of Israeli war crimes.  Much has to do with how we conducted the war. 

Among the people, hasbara — the explanation and promotion of Israel’s cause — is a synonym for failure.

On the one hand, Israel faces hostility in the international media.  We find it difficult to explain even the most vital issues such as those of Gilad Shalit the hostage, the threat of the Iranian bomb, and our negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.  Experts consider there are three reasons:  First, we have no central authority coordinating hasbara.  Actually, though, we have had such an authority since the Second Lebanese War, so the question is what the hasbara authority is doing.  Second, when the government makes a decision it does not take into account the effect on the worldwide perception of Israel.  Third, not enough staff and budget are devoted to hasbara.  In addition, though, the government’s policies are difficult to defend because they are mistaken.

On the other hand, there is the hostility of the Arab media.  The Arab media are a lost cause, because there are 400 or 500 Arab satellite stations and we’ve done no significant counter-broadcasting.  Once the Israel Broadcasting Authority did have a viewership for its Arabic-language TV and radio broadcasts, but those broadcasts are no longer a factor because they weren’t properly cultivated.  They suffer from a lack of resources.  At a minimum, Israel should have an Arabic-language satellite station; but when we did have one, we let it lapse.

“Our Mistake Was To Try To Be Appreciated”

Next to speak was Daniel Seaman, director of the Government Press Office.  He claimed that Israel is the only country that has an office of hasbara.  Other countries base their policies on their interests and feel no need to justify them to anyone else.  We can’t follow a policy designed to make us the pet Jews of the world, whatever hasbara benefits some people might imagine it bringing.  In practice, for years we held off from counterattacking against Gaza and do the British courts care about that?  Instead they issue a warrant against Tsipi Livni.  When we allow ourselves to be pressured into acting against our own interests, we only strengthen the arguments against ourselves. 

People say it’s counterproductive to talk about our right to settle the land; it’s too controversial politically.  But if we don’t have the right to settle in Hebron, by what right are we residing anywhere else?

Did we have a hasbara department working for us during the Six Day War?  We didn’t, and nobody vilified us until afterward we started doubting ourselves.  What we should do is state our positions and if they’re accepted, fine; if they’re not, it doesn’t matter.

For eight years southern Israel suffered so that the world would not be displeased with us.  If there is any hasbara failure to regret, that is the failure.

The debate is stuck in the 1990s, as if it were all about Palestinian rights.  But Israel has acknowledged Palestinian rights.  The problem now is the Arab refusal to recognize our rights.  The point we should be making now is that we are here despite the Holocaust, not because of it, and not thanks to the international community.

We have survived because we have managed the proper combination of determination and compromise.  We set up the state despite those who, like ten of Joshua’s twelve spies in the Bible, warned us not to try.  Our mistake was to try to be appreciated and understood.  The idea of branding Israel as a success story only feeds the idea that Israel is the new Goliath.  What’s important is what we do rather than what the world says, as long as what we do remains within the guidelines of Jewish ethics.

“There Is No Such Thing as Jewish Morality”

The next speaker was Gideon Levy.  Short of bringing a terrorist straight from Gaza, I’m not sure the conference organizers could have found a living individual more despised by the Ariel audience in general.  Levy is a columnist for the Haaretz daily and writes insistently against Israel’s presence across the Green Line and against the Israeli military for what he presents as practical, political, and moral reasons.  Before Levy spoke, Yoni Ben-Menachem the moderator warned that if any commotion started, the panel would simply get up and leave.  There were a few shouts of protest, particularly from one man who wanted to address Gideon Levy, but nothing escalated to the point where Ben-Menachem even feinted at carrying out his threat.  When members of the audience demanded at least to ask questions after the speeches, Ben-Menachem first said that those were not the rules; this was a panel discussion, not an open question-and-answer session.  When some of the audience persisted, he said he would speak with the organizers and see about a question period.

Levy started by admitting that at this moment he was not in his natural place.  Then he began his discussion of hasbara by calling it a laundered synonym for propaganda.  Hasbara is unnecessary and propaganda is unnecessary, he said.  What’s important is what the nation does and what it thinks of itself.  I am a patriot, I am proud to be an Israeli, he said, but I would like to be prouder. 

What happened in Gaza was not a war, it was a one-sided attack.  Almost nobody was fighting against us.  The conditions for a just war, as for example Barack Obama has stated them, are that the war must be a last resort for the sake of self-defense, there must be proportionality, and civilians must be exempted as conscientiously as possible.  We failed to fulfill the last two conditions.

If the whole world is telling us something, then maybe before we get angry at the world — at Turkey for a TV drama showing Israeli soldiers intentionally murdering civilian children, at England for an arrest warrant against our foreign minister, at Sweden for an article about exploiting Palestinian corpses for organs — we should consider that possibly we bear some of the responsibility. 

The Goldstone report was good for us, because without it the necessary questions would not even have been asked.  Goldstone has helped formulate the next code of ethics for the Israel Defense Forces, because next time we will think twice.

In fact, this was the first war since 1967 not followed up by an investigating committee.  The world would have praised Israel for launching an investigation, and if we have nothing to hide, then there is no reason not to investigate.

Nobody pilloried Goldstone for his investigation in Yugoslavia or in Rwanda.  But when he comes out against Israel, suddenly we blame the messenger for the bad news.  Well, suppose it is all nothing but lies.  Even so, this war harmed our international standing.

Yes, the world applies a different standard to us than to other nations.  And I’m very proud of that.  We shouldn’t want to be classed with Sudan or Libya.  We are a democracy, but democracy has a price.  A democracy is not expected to impose a cruel forty-year occupation.  There is not one country in the world that recognizes our occupation — not of the Western Wall, not of Yizhar, and not of Ariel.  You can’t wave the whole world away.

There is no such thing as Jewish morality, there is only universal morality, and it is embodied in the international law established following World War II.  That is the only criterion, and it was not conceived as an anti-Israeli criterion.

According to international law, we should not be in this location (Ariel).  When we understand that, we will not need hasbara.  The world liked us fine during the Oslo process, they liked us fine at the time of the Six Day War.  When we turn ourselves into North Korea and ignore world opinion, all the world media will in turn refuse to listen to us.