MONDOWEISS ONLINE NEWSLETTER

NOVANEWS

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• ‘Debate Ltd’ seeks guerrillas for international hasbara army
• Israelis made ’strategic theft’ of ISM’s video cameras
• Beinart has pushed the reset button on Israel
• Did Specter’s blind support for Israel help end his career? Just wondering
• Qumsiyeh: we’re reaching the ‘endgame’ of an anti-colonialist struggle
• It’s hard to blame your uncle when you’re 62

‘Debate Ltd’ seeks guerrillas for international hasbara army Posted: 22 May 2010 With worldwide Palestine solidarity and the BDS movement growing in strength, Israeli propaganda efforts intended to counter the “peace with justice” call have also come under the spotlight. We’ve seen Reut’s “delegitimization” report, crass campus hasbara, and a host of other initiatives (both “engagement” and “offensive”). With that in mind, a new article in The Jerusalem Post makes for interesting reading: In 2001, IDC [Inderdisciplinary Center] Herzliya students Gur Braslavi and Ariel Halevi won the Oxford Union Debating Competition for teams from foreign countries. Nine years later, their joint company, Debate Ltd., was chosen to carry out the Israeli government’s new public diplomacy initiative. The company recently took on a contract to conduct 200 workshops in which its instructors teach regular Israelis the arts of rhetoric and persuasion. If the pilot proves successful, it will likely be extended and multiplied. By creating an army of amateur ambassadors, Israel hopes to counter negative media portrayals and improve its image abroad. A “senior instructor” at Debate, Ran Michaelis, is extensively quoted as he gives his advice on how to defend Israel in discussions abroad. The company’s website says that Michaelis has previously spent a year in the UK as an intern for Labour Friends of Israel, as well as two years in Virginia working for the Jewish Agency. Which just goes to show that no matter the hasbara credentials, the end result is wearingly familiar. Michaelis’ advice boils down to the following, well-worn Zionist :debating” strategies: 1. Avoid inconvenient nasty words like “wall” and “human shields”. 2. Make irrelevant analogies. 3. Distract attention by talking about anything except Israel/Palestine. 4. Appeal to emotion. So far, so normal.  The article does, however, offer some useful insights into strategies being deployed against “delegitimization”. According to Debate co-founder Ariel Harelvi, the Israeli government is “using regular Israelis as an army of guerrilla advocates”: In an interview for Metro, Ronen Plot, director-general of the [Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs] ministry, laid out his office’s activities and presented its plans for the future. “Ultimately what we are interested in is that every Israeli who goes out of the country knows how to advocate on behalf of Israel,” said Plot. “Obviously we can’t train all of them to be at the same level, and we can’t expect them to be professional spokespeople overnight, but we can give them the tools to become effective advocates on Israel’s behalf by preparing them for the type of questions they are likely to meet and providing them with talking points that reflect Israel’s positions.” For that purpose, the ministry has printed hundreds of thousands of small booklets outlining Israel’s position on a wide variety of topics. The booklet is handed out free to passengers flying out of Ben-Gurion Airport, and travelers are urged to read it on the flight. Then there are the Israeli sports figures, celebrities, artists and business people, who are part of a hasbara “elite unit”: Where the ministry is really focusing its attention, though, is on filling the ranks of Israel’s hasbara army. “We have created a cadre of 50 notable people, leaders in their field, who have taken upon themselves to help represent Israel proudly,” said Plot. The list includes professional athletes, actors, actresses, successful business executives, artists and other public figures. Members of the “elite unit” undergo extensive training and are urged to speak about Israel in public when abroad, and meet with groups of incoming visitors, when at home. “People like Olympic gold medalist Gal Friedman, renowned actress Noa Tishbi and respected businessman Ya’acov Peri were happy to answer our call and enlist in our service,” said Plot. “They understand the relative weight that their word carries, and were kind enough to lend it to the cause.” And what about tourists coming to Israel? It’s another opportunity… Recognizing that a trip to Israel can do more than anything to shape people’s perspectives of the country, the ministry recently invited a group of 70 licensed Israeli tour guides to take part in one of Debate’s workshops. “The tour guide workshop was different than the others,” explained Adi Balderman, the head trainer for Debate. “Whereas with most groups we train we have to provide the participants with information on what they can expect to encounter on their visits, the tour guides came to us with a wealth of experience from the field, and with concrete examples of difficult cases they encountered.” And so it goes on. Reading an article illustrated by a picture of the illegal Separation Wall about tired arguments dressed up afresh to “improve” Israel’s “image”, I’m reminded of Mazin Qumsiyeh’s remarks about being in the “endgame”.

Israelis made ’strategic theft’ of ISM’s video cameras Posted: 22 May 2010 On a number of occasions, we’ve run photos and reports from International Solidarity Movement, which has volunteers throughout the occupied territories, ala freedom riders of the ’60s. ISM volunteers make these recordings at great risk. Rachel Corrie was a member of ISM. Well ISM is reporting that the Israelis have made a “strategic theft” of a lot of its media equipment, and is seeking donations to buy new cameras. Its report follows: The ISM media office was raided two times in the span of four nights in February, when Bridget Chappell and Ariadna Jove Marti were arrested. In the raids, the Israeli military stole all of our computers (three laptops, one desktop) as well as several video cameras. Just a few weeks ago, the Hebron office was broken into while activists were away. We believe the military is also to blame because neighbors reported soldiers coming to look through the windows multiple times when the apartment was empty, and in the raid two laptops, multiple cameras, photo memory cards and USB memory devices were stolen, while other valuables were left in plain sight. ISM needs to replace this equipment in order to continue the important work we’re doing. Documenting ongoing settler violence and harassment in Tel Rumeida (Hebron) and Sheikh Jarrah (East Jerusalem) are two of our most important activities. The residents of these communities demonstrate remarkable resilience by refusing to be deterred by settler violence. In order for the communities to have a chance of telling their story to the global community (one of ISM’s primary roles), and to prove the innocence of our Palestinian friends when they are falsely accused (a frequent occurrence), we need to capture high-quality footage.  We need: at least two small hand-held video cameras (roughly $150-200 each). ISM Gaza activists risk extreme danger to document some of the worst human rights violations in the world. One primary activity is documenting use of live fire in the “buffer zone” towards farmers and non-violent demonstrators. Israel’s use of live fire has killed 14 and injured over 50 thus far in 2010. Bianca Zammit, a Maltese activist, was shot in the leg April 23 while filming a demonstration, proving that such documentation is viewed as a threat by the Israeli military. We need: a Mac laptop computer for video editing ($1000) / A /camera with good ‘optical’ zoom, such as a Canon Powershot S51S ($150-300) The strategic theft of our media equipment, combined with Bianca’s shooting, serve as a reminder that we pose a real threat in our ability to reach global audiences with information about Israel’s actions. As non-violent activists, cameras are our weapons in exposing the Apartheid…

Beinart has pushed the reset button on Israel Posted: 21 May 2010 02:39 PM PDT The Beinart piece is huge. I have to admit it. I resisted; I didn’t see anything new in it, and it bugged me because it is the effort of a religious Jew to revive Zionism among young Jews, but it is huge. It has brought the news home to the Establishment that liberal Jews don’t like Israel for good reason. Here is David Rothkopf, who states here that he is a former roommate of Michael Oren, the ambassador of Israel to the U.S., saying that the Beinart piece marks the “new normal” for Israel (and her propagandists who once sat up late in their bunkbeds thrilling one another with stories they’d read of the Mitla pass). I don’t think I have the patience to read the Rothkopf, too long. But he seems to be saying it’s chilly weather for the special relationship.

Did Specter’s blind support for Israel help end his career? Just wondering Posted: 21 May 2010 This long political obit for Arlen Specter in the Jewish Exponent of Philadelphia emphasizes that he always worked for Israel, sometimes “behind the scenes.” Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, which has helped destroy the two-state solution by urging on the colonization of Jerusalem, supported him down the line. Including 1992, the year after Clarence Thomas hearings, when you’ll remember that Specter had grilled Anita Hill. Well in 1992, several other incumbent Senators lost to women, but not Specter. His opponent, Lynn Yeakel, was painted as anti-Israel because her Presbyterian church had had some meetings, probably about the criminal occupation. Here’s my question: Did Specter’s Zionism hurt him this time around? Klein and Gary Erlbaum, a local macher, got behind a statement accusing Joe Sestak, Specter’s primary conqueror, of being against Israel. Maybe that helped Sestak? That recent poll said more than half of Democratic voters have a negative view of Israel. Did the rubber just meet the road?

Qumsiyeh: we’re reaching the ‘endgame’ of an anti-colonialist struggle Posted: 21 May 2010 The view from the West Bank: “Looking out from my window,” Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian professor and activist, said on a press call hosted by the Institute for Middle East Understanding yesterday, “I’m seeing the settlement of Har Homa, the largest Jewish settlement between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. And I see the cranes and the construction continuing.” Meanwhile in the West: Elvis is in the BDS building (or at least in its general vicinity). Andrew Sullivan, outing himself as a progressive on this score, won’t be cowed by unscrupulous accusations of anti-Semitism. In the New York Review of Books, Peter Beinart says liberal Zionists in the U.S. are becoming, well, illiberal. All around me, in New York and D.C., the mood, the conversations on Israel-Palestine are shifting. So, too, are the conversations shifting in Israel. But they’re not shifting toward openness. Rather, things are closing, curling up on themselves in a defensive cocoon — a cocoon with sharp spikes, impaling all those who dare question it. Most of the time, it’s Palestinians who are on the nasty end of it. The crackdown is against the robust movement for justice, embodied today in the popular resistance efforts of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line–not through the channels of the Israeli government or the Palestinian Authority, but through civil society. “We’re reaching the endgame,” said Qumsiyeh, the coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Apartheid Wall and Settlements in Beit Sahour, who was himself arrested earlier this month. “Lots of people know that this is a classic colonial-anti-colonial struggle. It has been opposed because it’s reaching an end. Israel is building walls.” The walls are keeping out even the likes of Noam Chomsky, the leftwing linguist and staunch supporter of the two-state solution, for having disagreeable views. “If someone like that is denied entry, what is one to say, when [Israel] reaches the level of Stalinist Russia or fascist Italy in terms of free speech?” asked Qumsiyeh. But the walls also box a hell of a lot of Palestinians into Israel proper. For them, this is not the occupier versus the occupied, but the citizen against the very ethos of her state, said Nadim Rouhana, a Tufts professor who works on issues involving Palestinian Citizens of Israel. “The efficacy of [Palestinian citizens of Israel] is limited by the state,” Rouhana said during the same IMEU press-call. “They certainly feel they have very little impact on the political system.” And so their redress occurs in civil society. Then Israel clamps down, lumping in Palestinian civil society with its Israeli counterpart. The fear is that this mobilized community — collective Palestinians and individual Israelis — will make Israel look bad, and call the Jewish state into question. “What has been happening in the last year or two, certainly in the last few months, is that the more objection there is to this idea of a Jewish state, the more the crackdown increases and the more the crackdown is on freedom of expression and civil society,” Rouhana said.  The comparison the Israeli right — the Israeli collective consciousness — most dreads is the South Africa one. This theme came up again and again in the IMEU call. Israelis are afraid of it; Palestinians draw hope from it. ‘Get behind us, like you got behind South Africa’s blacks.’ That’s what BDS is all about. But there are other areas of comparison: Palestinians, according to Qumsiyeh’s calculations, control only 8.3 percent of the land in Israel and the Occupied Territories. The same was true in — you guessed it — South Africa, where whites had the land, and forced blacks into small portions, 8 to 9 percent, of the land.

It’s hard to blame your uncle when you’re 62 Posted: 21 May 2010 Yonatan Touval, one of the Israelis behind the Geneva Initiative, clearly articulates the degree and ways in which Israel has suffered as a result of its special relationship with the United States. His hope is that Obama might correct the imbalance in the relationship and make it one based on genuine mutual interests, yet the quirk in Touval’s analysis is his claim that Israel is a victim in a relationship thrust upon the Jewish state — that America has indulged Israel “to the point of abuse.” “Take the money,” insisted Uncle Sam. Little Israel was powerless to refuse. And now look what this over-indulgent uncle has done to its helpless nephew. I guess this can be seen as a version of the “friends don’t let friends…” sentiment. Even so, the fact that Israelis still feel they can push their Little Israel image seems itself to be an expression of the way Israel has been over-indulged. In “Pox Americana,” Touval writes: Put simply, the relationship has damaged Israel by turning it into an adolescent state that doesn’t take responsibility for its own actions. And why should it take responsibility, when America’s uncritical embrace allows it to behave with the certainty that no action would ever be too costly – America would always save it from military, economic or diplomatic ruin. To the extent, moreover, that this certainty has weakened Israel’s resolve to settle its conflict with its neighbors, the country has been further damaged by the loss of faith that the conflict could ever end. Hence the powerlessness to stop the occupation. This has had a terribly corrosive effect on Israeli life – from the high level of stress in everyday living, to the distorted allocation of national resources (Israel’s 2010 state budget allocates $14.4 billion for defense, a figure equal to 6.7 percent of the country’s GDP – the highest of any developed nation ), to the psychological adjustments that Israelis must make in the face of the deepening erosion of democratic values and growing doubts about the future prospects of the country as such. Israelis have become accustomed to living under such anomalous conditions because, in many respects, the cushion of the special relations with the United States allows them to. But being habituated is a mixed blessing – which is also to say, a mixed curse. Indeed, rather than habituation, Israel needs rehabilitation. And to those on the other side of the ocean who would disclaim responsibility, by placing the onus on Israel alone, we Israelis can only respond: “Where have you been all this time? It is you, America, that has turned us into what we are.”

See: www.mondoweiss.net