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The Views
and Personal Opinions of Joel Block
For years, we have been hearing and complaining about Israel’s
poor showing in the PR (“Hasbara” in Hebrew) battle connected
to the Arab/Israeli conflict. There is no doubt in my mind that
those in charge of our Hasbara efforts have been derelict in their
duty and not done the job properly.
However, I also have to ask myself, what good is all of the Hasbara
in the world, when our own people go out of their way to give us
bad press and bad-mouth our military? Just look at some of the statements
by Israelis since the beginning of the current military operations
in Rafiah:
Zehava Gal-On (Meretz): has called on soldiers to “disobey
orders to fire at unarmed demonstrators, calling such directives
‘illegal’."
Roman Bronfman (Meretz): “The IDF is losing its power of deterrence
because of its failure to discriminate between demonstrators and
terrorists. Israel is losing its legitimacy.”
Meretz-Yahad MK Avshalom Vilan: "The defense establishment
has lost their minds. Whoever gave the order for gunships and tanks
to fire at protestors gave an illegal command."
The Geneva Initiative architects called on the government to order
the IDF to stop the Gaza operation that they say infringes on international
law. "Killing civilians will only encourage extremists to hate
and support terror," the group said in a statement. The group
called on the government to open negotiations with the Palestinians
"so we can leave the territories with an agreement."
Yossi Beilin, architect of Oslo and the Geneva Initiative said
during an interview on Israel Radio this morning that the Rafiah
tunnels have been in existence for 22 years, so he doesn’t
see the point of going after them now. In other words, we’ve
been making a mistake for 22 years (including the period of the
Oslo Accords when Dr. Beilin was a minister in the government) so
why bother correcting it now?
These people, and others like them, were elected to the Knesset
by Israelis to represent Israelis, but when hearing their statements
at times, one would think that they actually “represent”
a “Palestinian” constituency. This obviously cannot help
our Hasbara efforts. It also leads me to ask a question that disturbs
me deeply:
Considering all of the “representation” that the “Palestinians”
enjoy on our side, who “represents” us on the “Palestinian”
side?
© Joel Block, 2004
Send comments to: jbloch@bezeqint.net
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