Israel as a Rogue State 38

• Neil van der Linden aan yahooneil

  
  
  Article from the Guardian; I add to it a comment from the Jerusalem Post and an article in Dutch from the NRC Handelsblad.

  Resumé from the NRC article, an interview with Uri Dromi, former PR strategist under Rabin. He summarises Israeli failures and successes in its PR regarding the Gaza boat conflict:

  
  

  In general: in the nineties Israel could do as well as it pleased, but then everything was covered through the expectations of an upcoming peace agreement

  for the Gaza flotilla Israel PR failures:

  -Israel's trying to link the flotilla with Al-Qaeda, which backfired on Israel itself after it was proven a lie (even though the rumour still lingers on)

  -the We are the world 'parody' videoclip linking the boat and Hamas being distributed by the Israeli government itself, which backfired

  -Israel's attempt to link the flotilla to a probably faked video in which somebody allegedly shouted 'go back to Auschtitz' (which if indeed fabricated would imply that the Israeli authority cynically abused Auschwitz)

  -suggesting that there were weapons on board (even though this rumour still lingers on)

  
  

  What according to Dromi succeeded (!):

  -keeping back any witness reports and video footage of what happened prior to the IDF entering on board of the boats and supposedly being attacked, video footage of which was widely distributed by the IDF, NAMELY images of how from the air the boats were attacked with 'stun grenades' and rubber bullets, something that of course created panic on board, over there in the dark, especially if you don't know what kind of grenades and bullets are being shot at you, while everybody knows that rubber bullets can be very harmful, if not lethal

  -conveying the reaction of those on board as a 'lynch party'.

  
  

  Mr Dromi congratulates Israel with these successes, as Israel still had the upper hand in the distribution of news during the first five days, until the story disappeared from the headlines

  (and for instance until somebody propped up with the Helen Thomas story, which was kept in store from a week before, it may seem).

  
  

  Anyway as Antony Lerman, a former Israeli citizen, writes in the Guardian: even though Israel again succeeded in getting the upper hand, the general mishandling of the whole matter by the Israeli government plus the revelation of lies at any moment will raise the international press' mistrust again future Israeli government info. Which implicitly if confirmed by the Jerusalem Post author.

  
  
  Neil
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• http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/04/israeli-pr-machine-gaza-flotilla-media-battle

Israeli PR machine won Gaza flotilla media battle

Reporting by mainstream media on the Gaza flotilla attack was unbalanced and dominated by Israel's edited version of events

• Antony Lerman is the former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research

• • Antony Lerman
  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 June 2010 13.05 BST
  • Article history

The provenance of photographs of weapons supposedly found on the boats has been questioned in the blogosphere. Photograph: AP

From the moment that the Israeli naval commandos launched their attack on the flotilla aiming to break the siege of Gaza by carrying humanitarian aid to the territory, the struggle by both sides to dominate how the media covered the events – a struggle that began days in advance of the 4am attack on Monday – entered a completely new phase.

Soon after the commandos landed on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship carrying more than 600 of the activists, the live satellite broadcasts from the vessel were cut. From that point on, the Israeli authorities seized almost complete control of how evidence of what was taking place could be made public. Video of the last footage broadcast by the journalists on board was immediately available from sources such as al-Jazeera and the IHH (the Turkish Foundation for Freedoms and Human Rights and Humanitarian Relief), but it showed a very confusing picture: there were badly injured passengers, yet it was impossible to know how they had been injured.

What the world has been watching since then is either edited video shot by the Israelis or other video shot by activists, confiscated by the Israelis and subsequently edited and made available through Israeli sources.

In an operation reminiscent of the first week or so of the Israeli offensive against Gaza in winter 2008-2009, the Israeli PR machine succeeded in getting the major news outlets to focus on its version of events and to use the Israeli authorities' discourse for a crucial 48 hours. (One example of how this was being done is aleaked, sophisticated briefing paper with key talking points, compiled using official government sources and pro-government Israeli media, issued through the World Zionist Organisation on 1 June.)

This time, however, commentators in the Israeli media, on the left and the right, were immediately slamming the commando attack as a failure. The repeated screening of the video, taken from an Israeli assault craft, of the commandos abseiling down ropes onto the Mavi Marmara and then being set upon by the activists waiting for them on the deck, became the defining image of the capture of the boats. Posted by the IDF on YouTube, by Wednesday it had attracted more than 600,000 views.

The activists' actions were described by Israeli spokespersons as a premeditated terrorist attack by al-Qaida sympathisers, using clubs, knives and guns, carried out with the intention of "lynching" the commandos who were carrying out an entirely legal and peacefully executed operation.

This Israeli version of events was very often given an uncritical airing. The fact that the video was a selected and edited segment, that the activists who witnessed what happened were being held incommunicado, that every bit of recorded evidence they may have had in their possession was being confiscated – this context was rarely highlighted, with BBC online and radio coverage particularly weak in this respect.

Of course, the media were not responsible for the Israeli clampdown – which continued even after the activists began to be seen in public being taken into detention at the Israeli port of Ashdod and when they were being deported – but there could certainly have been more attention drawn to the imbalance in the sources from which the media were obtaining their information. Even after first-hand accounts started to be broadcast, there seemed to be a belittling of their validity by describing eye-witnesses simply as "activists" or "pro-Palestinians" when some were writers, members of parliament and journalists.

By late Tuesday afternoon, Israel had still not provided a list of names or locations of the injured; there was no official number or list of the deceased; no official count of the numbers of the detainees and their locations; no report on the legal status of the wounded at the IPS medical facility and at hospitals across the country and extremely limited access to the wounded. And those arrested, detained or in hospital were still being denied unrestricted access to lawyers, relatives and consular representatives.

But once the testimony of the activists became available and the blogosphere got its teeth into the visual evidence, from whatever source, an alternative picture quickly emerged and the mainstream media struggled to keep up.

Prior to the landing of the commandos, the boats were probably softened up with rubber bullets, smoke bombs, tear gas; the provenance is in question of pictures of weapons supposedly found on the boats and posted on Flickr by the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs; the Americans appeared to confirm that there was no evidence to suggest that IHH was a terrorist organisation with links to al-Qaida. And the Israeli army all but admitted that the activists did not have guns of their own before the raid.

The truth is, however, that after five days, the mainstream media have moved on (the attack on the Gaza flotilla is no longer featured as a top story in the news box on the BBC's front page). The news imbalance may have been partly redressed, but the Israeli version of the events and the presentation of legal arguments to justify Israel's actions by friendly commentators continues to occupy significant media space. And given the fact that virtually all the visual evidence is now in Israeli hands, it's almost inconceivable that we will ever know precisely what happened. At this stage, it seems fanciful to believe that any Israeli-based investigation will make available all the raw footage Israel has in its possession.

I suspect that the government of Binyamin Netanyahu and those responsible for the relentless effort invested in media management will judge their PR onslaught as a success, in spite of the fact that many Israelis and Israel's supporters will rail at the media for being biased. That this is so only further confirms how blinkered and foolish the Israeli government has become.

Far from generating much sympathy for Israel's action, the video images of the assault on the commandos only deepens the impression of an Israeli military as weak, unprepared and pathetic. It confirms that the decision to undertake such a disastrous action showed "hubris, poor intelligence work, and determined inability to learn from experience".

And the fact that so much attention is paid in Israel to the PR and media implications, with even some critical commentators there viewing the action as right and only the PR result a disaster, is surely deeply troubling evidence, albeit not exactly new, of the lack of a moral compass among the country's leadership.

• Comments on this article are set to remain open until 6pm this evening

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Resumé:

Mislukt:

link met Al-Qaeda leggen

de 'grappige' videoclip

de gefakete videoopname waarin wordt gezegd 'ga terug naar Auschwitz' (NB dus waarschijnlijk door Israel zelf gefabriceerdt)

wel gelukt:

het uit het nieuws weghouden van wat er allemaal gebeurde voordat de Israelische militairen aan boord kwamen, zoals schieten met rubber kogels en stun grenades (waarvan je op dat moment niet weet wat het is) uit de lucht

het voorstellen als een 'lynchpartij'

tekstversie | originele versie | printversie hele pagina

NRC Handelsblad 10-06-2010, pagina 9

Israël verliest greep op internationale opinie

Israël slaagde er vaak in de publieke opinie in de wereld in zijn voordeel te beïnvloeden. Maar de pr-machine, de hasbara, haperde na de entering van het konvooi voor Gaza.

Door onze correspondent
GUUS VALK

tel aviv, 10 juni.

Uri Dromi weet hoe je, zoals hij het noemt, „de wereld jouw versie van het verhaal tot zich kan laten nemen”. De directeur van een conferentiecentrum in Jeruzalem was onder premier Yitzhak Rabin, begin jaren negentig, de belangrijkste pr-strateeg van de Israëlische regering. „Ook toen heeft Israël geweld gebruikt, ook toen werden er burgers gedood. Maar Israël slaagde er keer op keer in de publieke opinie in de wereld veel sterker te beïnvloeden dan nu.”

Hasbara, letterlijk ‘verklaren’, is het eufemistische Hebreeuwse woord voor de geoliede pr-machine waarmee Israël de wereld van het eigen gelijk probeert te overtuigen. De Israëlische regering en het leger hebben een uitgebreid en hoogopgeleid voorlichtersapparaat. Israël-gezinde organisaties als The Israel Project organiseren rondleidingen, mediaconferenties en trainingen hoe Israëls positie op internetfora moet worden gebracht.

Maar de hasbara hapert. De afgelopen week, in de nasleep van de bloedige entering van de Free Gaza vloot op de Middellandse Zee (negen opvarenden werden gedood) slaagde Israël er niet in de zeer kritische wereld voor zich te winnen. De aanval op de vloot werd unaniem veroordeeld.

Uri Dromi: „Dat komt deels door de andere context. In de jaren negentig werden gewelddaden van Israël vaak nog wel door de vingers gezien, omdat er nog een belofte van een vredesproces met de Palestijnen in de lucht hing. Nu gebeurt er helemaal niets, en de wereld is daar geïrriteerd over. Maar ook belangrijk is, denk ik, dat er grote pr-fouten zijn gemaakt.”

Het Israëlische voorlichtingsapparaat moest bijvoorbeeld de bewering intrekken dat opvarenden van de Mavi Marmara, waar de negen mannen werden doodgeschoten, banden hadden met Al-Qaeda. Dat gebeurde na kritische berichten van bloggers, die de regering vroegen naar bewijzen.

Een tweede incident was een filmpje dat de voorlichtingsafdeling van premier Benjamin Netanyahu naar de buitenlandse pers stuurde. Het filmpje was gemaakt door een journalist van de rechtse krant The Jerusalem Post en laat acteurs, verkleed als opvarenden, met zwaar aangezette Arabische tongval een aangepaste versie van We are the world zingen. „Wij zijn vreedzame reizigers/ met pistolen en messen/ de waarheid zal nooit haar weg vinden naar jouw televisie.” Na een storm van buitenlandse kritiek trok het hoofd voorlichting het filmpje weer in.

Israël gaf verder toe dat een filmpje, waarop te horen is hoe iemand, volgens Israël van de Mavi Marmara, via radiocontact roept ‘Kop dicht, ga terug naar Auschwitz’, bewerkt is.

Volgens Dromi zijn dit fouten waardoor Israël de slag om de publieke opinie verloor. „Het duidt op een ander regeringsbeleid, of liever: geen beleid. Iedereen zegt altijd dat Netanyahu zoveel verstand heeft van public relations, maar dit heeft hij helemaal verkeerd gedaan.” Op het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken zitten een minister en een onderminister van de extreemrechtse partij Yisrael Beiteinu (Israël Ons Huis). Dromi: „Zij communiceren vooral de boodschap: de hele wereld is tegen ons. Dat pakt funest uit.”

Ondanks die fouten slaagde Israël er wel in de wereldwijde discussie over de entering van de vloot, in internationale wateren, te verplaatsen naar de opvarenden. Volgens Israël werden de commando’s, toen ze landden op de Mavi Marmara, opgewacht door een gewelddadige menigte en moest er uit noodweer geschoten worden. De ruim 700 opvarenden werden gevangen gezet en konden dagenlang niet met de buitenwereld praten.

Journalisten mochten de boten niet op of met de opvarenden praten. Net als tijdens de Gaza-oorlog, ruim een jaar geleden, was de ‘locus delicti’ lange tijd niet toegankelijk. Camera’s en foto’s van aanwezige journalisten werden in beslag genomen. Israël bepaalde zeker de eerste week welke beelden naar buiten kwamen, en wanneer.

Schrijver Anthony Lerman, die lange tijd in Israël woonde, schreef in de Britse krant The Guardian dat Israël hierdoor tóch de winnaar is van de mediaslag. Iedereen praatte al snel over welk geweld de activisten precies hadden gebruikt, aldus Lerman. Het woord ‘lynchen’ werd gebruikt, en ging de wereld over. Onthullingen in de Israëlische pers, zoals de erkenning van Israëlische militairen dat voorafgaand aan de entering met zogeheten stun grenades en rubberen kogels naar het dek is geschoten, kregen geen wereldwijde aandacht. Het was immers geen voorpaginanieuws meer. Netanyahu zal, volgens Lerman, al met al de pr als een succes beschouwen. „De Israëlische autoriteiten kregen vrijwel volledige controle over hoe het bewijs van de gebeurtenissen openbaar gemaakt moest worden.”

• JPost.com
• International

Photo by: YouTube

British press marvels at Israel’s PR

By HERB KEINON
06/07/2010 06:19

“Israeli PR machine won Gaza flotilla media battle,” ran a headline in the 'Guardian.'

Talkbacks (10)

While conventional wisdom in Israel holds that the government’s public diplomacy (hasbara) efforts following the Mavi Marmara incident last Monday were an unmitigated disaster, the picture painted in some circles abroad is that of a vast, smooth, efficient propaganda machine that has effectively dominated and controlled the flotilla narrative.

“Israeli PR machine won Gaza flotilla media battle,” ran a headline Friday in the Guardian, a British newspaper extremely critical of Israel.

The article was one of a number of stories the National Information Directorate had gathered and sent to reporters to combat the widespread narrative here that last week was an utter hasbara failure.

“In an operation reminiscent of the first week or so of the Israeli offensive against Gaza in winter 2008-2009, the Israeli PR machine succeeded in getting the major news outlets to focus on its version of events and to use the Israeli authorities’ discourse for a crucial 48 hours,” wrote Antony Lerman in the Guardian.

“This Israeli version of events was very often given an uncritical airing,” Lerman wrote. “The news imbalance may have been partly redressed, but the Israeli version of the events and the presentation of legal arguments to justify Israel’s actions by friendly commentators continues to occupy significant media space.”

The Independent, another British newspaper hypercritical of Israel, published an article the day after the incident headlined “Israel ruled the airwaves as it did the seas.”

The paper’s correspondent, Donald Macintyre, wrote about how the IDF kept journalists away from the passengers on the ship, and how Israeli officials “fanned out among the reporters, relaying with courtesy and fluency their version of events. This in turn was reinforced by a stream of analysis and explanation by politicians and sympathetic analysts in the live television coverage throughout the day and, by late afternoon, there was the aerial black-and-white film, supplied by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), of commandos landing aboard the Mavi Marmara.”

Macintyre wrote that it remained to be seen whether Israel’s account of events would be vindicated by an independent investigation, but for one day “Israel moved with impressive efficiency according to the American political maxim about media rebuttal and counterattack: speed kills.”

And the British Sunday paper The Observer dedicated a brief item Sunday to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev, who Ruth Sunderland termed the “spin doctor in chief for the Israeli government.”

“If the men from Mars ever wanted to manufacture a PR man, they would model their robot on Regev,” she wrote. “No matter how formidable the interviewer, or how aggressive the questioning, he never buckles under pressure. His disarming Aussie accent and unfailing politeness – he calls interviewers ‘Sir’ and uses phrases like ‘I beg to disagree’ – almost lulls listeners into overlooking his aggression.”