A recent commentary in "The Jerusalem Post" made the point that Israel has very effective state instruments to execute defense, security and intelligence policy decisions, but that it completely lacks any similar agency for the purpose of planning and carrying out public policy programs necessary for the creation of the appropriate international atmosphere for Israeli strategies to work.
No one can deny that Israel’s image in the world is worse now than it has been at any time since independence in 1948. There are several reasons for this, but the most important is that Israel’s enemies in the Muslim world have been engaging in extensive public relations operations in Europe, North America and elsewhere for decades.
Many years ago the PLO, under Yasser Arafat, began to hire US and European public relations firms to design and carry out propaganda campaigns on behalf of its policy positions and operations. Israel has never done anything similar. Indeed, the Israeli government has delegated this vital function to its diplomatic missions abroad. But diplomats are not trained to be specialists in public relations, and with honorable exceptions they’re not very good at it. A case in point is that when the remarkably successful United States Information Agency (USIA) was merged into the State Department, it disappeared without a trace.
There are a few private organizations dedicated to researching and exposing anti-Israeli and anti-semitic operations abroad and designing strategies to counteract them, but they are few and not very well financed.
There is a potential resource, however, that could prove highly valuable in this vital battle, but which is entirely overlooked. I refer to the community of relatively recent olim, immigrnts to Israel, particularly those from Europe and North America, who collectively have widespread and significant contacts in their countries of origin and elsewhere and could serve as what the intelligence community refers to as “agents of influence” to disseminate the truth about Muslim and other anti-Israel activities.
If nothing effective is done in this regard, we can expect that the highly effective propaganda of our enemies will continue to create a very hostile atmosphere in precisely those parts of the world that should be most supportive of Israel, the only democratic country in the entire Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with the partial exception of Tunisia. That, coupled with the outbreak of virulent anti-semitism in several of the Western countries, makes for a toxic combination which we ignore at our peril.
Norman A. Bailey, Ph.D., is Adjunct Professor of Economic Statecraft at The Institute of World Politics, Washington, DC, and teaches at the Center for National Security Studies and Geostrategy, University of Haifa.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 11, 2014
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