Dora McPhee (VIC) on Jason Koutsoukis’ “Israel admits to an image crisis” The Age, 4 July 2009 July 4, 2009
http://www.theage.com.au/world/israel-admits-to-an-image-crisis-20090703-d7u3.html
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s communications chief, Ron Dermer, admits that Israel faces a serious public relations problem but his remedy is to spend $US100 million a year on information campaigns abroad in order to convince the world that Israel has not dispossessed the Palestinians of their land. Does this mean the historical fact of ethnically cleansing 720,000 Palestinians and denying them their right of return for the last 60 years is now an inconvenient truth that once again will have to be swept under the carpet by his information campaign? Unfortunately for Israel those refugees and their descendents are still living in refugee camps and have not forgotten what was done to them. The displaced Palestinians in the Diaspora also bear witness to the fact that Israel’s creation as a “Jewish state” in what was Palestine could only have been achieved through a gross injustice that denied Palestinians their right of self-determination in their homeland. And what of the inconvenient truths of
the illegal settlements and Israel’s total control of the water resources and the apartheid system of control of the Palestinians living in the occupied territories, not to speak of the thousands dead, injured and in
jail and the 1.5 million being punished by a siege and blockade in Gaza? Their families all remember and are living witnesses to the brutality of Israel’s colonial and apartheid policies in Palestine.
Ron Dermer wants the Palestinians to accept that the Jews from all over the world have a right to the land of Palestine when those very same Jewish immigrants have never acknowledged the rights of the Palestinians to that land, which the Palestinians have lived in continuously for centuries. The arrogance of his mission to whitewash Israel’s continuing project of dispossession, exploitation and outright colonisation, to the world, when the facts on the ground are living and concrete proof of this illegal colonial project betrays the very colonialist mindset that has allowed Israel to masquerade itself as a liberal democracy. The international community rightly condemns colonialism and apartheid as crimes against humanity but it is still a long way off from bringing such crimes to an end and has displayed a distinct blind spot when it comes to Israel. Israel’s public relations problem indicates that some eyes are at last opening to see the ugly truth.
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