Media dump on Israel for unfair media coverage of Israel

Israel's bad image: Blaming the victim

All of us know what a beating Israel has taken in the press. Newsweek's Michael Hirsh has taken note of Israel's bad image, but instead of naming the real culprit, he uses it as the occasion for another round of (relatively mild) Israel bashing. The entire problem, according to Hirsh, is Israel's inept public relations skills.

Books could be, and should be, written about the failings of Israeli public relations and press management. It is under-budgeted, inept, unresponsive and sometimes seems to concentrate on alienating the entire foreign press corps. All that is granted. But all the PR expertise in the world, and all the budget in the world will not solve the problem of Israeli public relations. According to Hirsh for example, it is Israel's fault that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian dictator, upstaged Benjamin Netanyahu when they were both in New York. Israel was at fault because the press found it better infotainment to give fawning interviews to Ahmadinejad, where only the right questions would be asked - the ones he wanted them to ask. Israel was presumably also at fault when Columbia university, having coincidentally gotten a $100,000 bribe from the Alavi foundation, a front for the government of Iran, invited the Iranian dictator to express his views about the Jewish problem, gay rights and democracy.

Carol Saivetz and Marvin Kalb documented how the media distorted the Second Lebanon war to help turn "nasty" Nasrallah into a hero and the Israelis into villains. Hirsh just might have been familiar with that study, though strangely, he didn't mention it. The staged ambulance chases, the fake smoke in the photos, the same "victims" showing up in different locations, products of Hizbollywood, were eagerly delivered by the media to an audience anxious for "real dirt" on Israel. Media coverage of the Gaza war was a barely disguised remake of the Second Lebanon war.

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