A re-post from Melanie Phillips
January 3, 2011
The challenge of public diplomacy vis-a-vis the delegitimisation of Israel
Address to Ariel Conference on Law and Mass Media, 30 December 2010
As we all know by now, Israel has lost the battle for public opinion in the west. Even the Israel government is now acknowledging this fact. Israel and its defenders have been outclassed and outmanoeuvred in a war of the mind being waged on a battleground it never even acknowledged it was on.
Calls for more and better hasbara, however, are meaningless if the message or narrative promoted by Israel and its defenders misses the point of the attack being waged upon it. And it does miss that point, by a mile.
You cannot resist or overcome a threat unless you first understand its nature.
The first thing to say is that this phenomenon is characteristic not just of the media animosity or economic or academic boycotts. It goes across the intelligentsia and political class, spreading well beyond the normal suspects on the left into the mainstream middle-classes.
In Britain, the universities, the established church, the theatrical and publishing worlds, the voluntary sector, significant elements within the Foreign Office, members of Parliament across the political spectrum, as well as the media have overwhelmingly signed up to the demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel.
The scale of this phenomenon is nothing short of a multi-layered civilisational crisis.
The west is experiencing a total inversion of truth evidence and reason. A society’s thinking class has overwhelmingly subscribed to an immoral, patently false and in many cases demonstrably absurd account of the Middle East, past and present, which it has uncritically absorbed and assumes to be true.
continue reading
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Melanie Phillips on Israel
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
One--and perhaps the only--way Israel can extricate itself from the concerted assault of anti-Semites. Overwhelming victory in a Middle East-wide war. That would buy Israel a few decades of existence.
What irony it is that the people most tormented by genocide must resort to localized mass destruction to survive. Muslims must have forgotten that Israel has H-bombs and the ability to use them anywhere in the region.
This will end badly.
"The west is experiencing a total inversion of truth evidence and reason. A society’s thinking class has overwhelmingly subscribed to an immoral, patently false and in many cases demonstrably absurd account of the Middle East, past and present, which it has uncritically absorbed and assumes to be true."
I guess the same would neatly summarise Sarah Palin and the Religious Right with regard to Creationism versus Science.
thehawkreturns
Post a Comment