Once a Sow's Ear...

... always a sow's ear.

My last post touched on the subject of Israel's attempts at rebranding itself. Such attempts are doomed to fail. Even The New York Times' Israel-friendly Jerusalem correspondent, Ethan Bronner, admits as much:

"'There aren't many other places in the world where white people with guns tell brown people what to do', said Ethan Bronner, The New York Times correspondent in Israel, today as he tried to explain Israel's image problem in the international press. Bronner was on a panel discussion on the subject of Israeli Hasbara at the Eilat Journalism Conference. He said that even if in Israeli eyes [my italics] the state of Israel is not colonialist, for foreigners its actions are very similar to colonialism. Therefore, said Bronner, especially in Europe, which went through a comprehensive de-colonization process over the past century, but also in the US, there is a principled [my italics] problem with Israel's image. Bronner also pointed to a specific example: International coverage of the IDF takeover of the Turkish [sic] flotilla to Gaza: 'You're starting from an inferior position', he said, 'because most people don't understand why you're trying to prevent the equipment from reaching Gaza. It's clear why you're trying to prevent weapons from getting there, but unclear why other equipment is banned. And when you try to stop it, 9 people are killed. It's not good. It doesn't look good. You have a lot of catching up to do if you want to argue that some of the people on the boat were really nasty'. Lilach Sigan, editor of Globes daily magazine, asked Bronner why the international media only dealt with Israel's actions around the Turkish [sic] flotilla and did not devote sufficient coverage to the Turkish and IHH connection. 'We're not perfect', she pointed out, [but] 'the problem is that the focus is only on Israel's mistakes [my italics] and not on the mistakes of Hamas and the suffering they inflict on the Palestinians'. After Sigan's statement elicited applause from the audience, Bronner replied: 'Nine people died. Who shot the 9? Not Turkey. That's the story. If no one had been killed on the flotilla, nobody would have cared about it. Nine died. That's the main thing. Those are the first 15 paragraphs'." (Translated from the Hebrw as How to wink in English, Oren Persico, The 7th Eye, 21/11/10 - found at Yes, NYT's Ethan Bronner actually said this on-record, Didi Remez, 972mag.com, 22/11/10)

Nevertheless, as if the current flood of Zionist bullshit swamping the ms media and the internet isn't enough, Israel is about to launch yet another propaganda offensive - in Europe:

"The Foreign Minister is planning to initiate a new public relations campaign in a number of European capitals [London, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Paris, The Hague, Oslo, & Copenhagen] early next year. The campaign, which will make extensive use of professional advocacy and public relations experts by Israeli embassies in Europe, aims to also use as many as a thousand people in each country, who will be willing to volunteer to spread Israel's message... Each ambassador was instructed to prepare... a list of at least 1,000 'allies', who will be routinely briefed by the embassy for advocacy and public relations. These 'allies' will have to be willing to take action on behalf of Israel, through support demonstrations and rallies, in publishing articles in the press, etc. Among the types of persons that will be sought to assist in the campaign will be members of the local Jewish community, activists in Christian organizations, journalists, politicians, intellectuals, academics and activists in student organizations. The novelty of this campaign is that it will not rely on the work only of Israeli diplomats and volunteer supporters, but on professional lobbying and public and public relations companies hired by the embassies... The professional lobbyists and PR agents will be provided with materials from the embassies, which will be produced by a special team at the Foreign Ministry. The Foreign Ministry team will produce 3 types of materials: political messages on the peace process, the settlements, etc will be encapsulated; 'branding' messages which will position Israel in specific areas of activity, such as technology, economy, tourism, etc; and messages about problematic developments in the Middle East which are not directly related to Israel, such as human rights in Iran or Syria, Hezbollah's takeover in Lebanon, etc. The ministry has also instructed the ambassadors in those 9 capitals to focus their activities on organizing groups of influential persons from those countries to visit Israel. The ambassadors were also instructed to hold, at least once a month, a high profile public event." (Liebermann urges Europe embassies to use 'allies' in PR efforts, Barak Ravid, Haaretz, 28/11/10)