Aletho News

Israel Launches New PR Campaign on North American Campuses: Faces of Israel

Connie Hackbarth | Alternative Information Center | February 16, 2011

A delegation of young Israelis will embark next week on a singular public relations campaign on North American campuses. Entitled Faces of Israel, the delegation includes Arabs and Jews, representatives of the LGBT community and Ethiopian immigrants who are meant to show the “real face” of Israeli society.

Yuli Edelstein, the Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs and the initiator of Faces of Israel, said that “We believe this is the appropriate answer to the campaign of delegitimisation occurring against Israel throughout the world. This campaign will bring local students face to face with Israeli students just like them. The delegation will be divided into groups and go to various universities, where they will participate in panels and direct encounters on campus.”

According to Israel’s Artuz 7 news outlet, delegation members were “carefully selected with the goal of representing Israeli society as a colourful and diverse society which protects equality and human rights, and thus refute attempts to present Israel as an apartheid state.”

During events, a memory stick with information entitled “Invented in Israel” will be distributed to participants.

Although Minister Edelstein notes that “this is a new strategy that puts the human face of Israel in the front stage…through regular people from the grassroots,” Israeli attempts to whitewash its colonial polices and occupation of the Palestinian territory are not new. Israel’s Foreign Ministry doubled its embassies’ public relations budgets for 2011 has been working for several years now on professional public relations campaigns that present Israel as a liberal, innovative and hip society and vacation destination. The packaging of Tel Aviv as a gay-friendly city, for example, is an important component of this official reality distortion.

The actual “representativeness” of this delegation, members of which underwent 40 hours of training through the Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, was even questioned by the settler-affiliated Arutz 7 media outlet. Arutz 7 noted that the delegation included no (Jewish) religious, orthodox or members who live in the West Bank settlements. In response, the Ministry noted “we found it appropriate to have other representatives” and that Minister Edelstein himself resides in Neve Daniel, a settlement near Bethlehem, and that he would be accompanying the delegation.

The Alternative Information Center (AIC) is still searching for details of the delegation’s public engagements in North American universities. What is known to date is that all delegation members will meet for a “main event” in New York on Sunday 6 March that will include presentations by Edelstein on the importance of fighting the campaign against Israel; Knesset Member Dalia Itzhik (Kadima) on women’s rights in Israel; Knesset Member Majallie Whbee (Kadima), a Druze-Palestinian on equal opportunities in Israel; and Malcolm Hoenlein, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organisations. There will also be “Zionist hip-hop” with the Israeli group Dag Nahash.

The Alternative Information Center calls on Palestinian Solidarity and other activists groups to mobilize against Faces of Israel as part of preparations for the Israel Apartheid Week in March.

February 16, 2011 - Posted by aletho | Deception, Solidarity and Activism