The Message from an Israeli Think-Tank all Pro-Palestinian Activist Groups Need to Hear

The right time for co-ordination and a unified agenda with a single, coherent message is now.

Avraham Burg, former MK, Knesset Speaker and peace activist, has been expressing with passion his disillusion with what Israel has become and his fears about where it is taking the Jews, for years. Photo courtesy: jfjfp.com

(LONDON) - One of the best articles I read in the whole of 2012 was published at the tail end of the year, on 30 December, by Ha’aretz. (As my regular readers know, I think Ha’aretz is the most honest newspaper in the world on account of its reporting and analysis of what’s really happening in the Zionist state). The article was written by Barak Ravid. The headline over it was Think tank: Israel’s poor international image not the fault of failed hasbara (the Hebrew word for explaining and advocacy, for which read propaganda). The subject of the article was the first report of a new Israeli think-tank, Molad, The Center for the Renewal of Democracy. Outside Israel there are probably very, very few people who have heard of Molad, so let’s start with what it is.

Here is Ravik’s own description:

“Molad, established less than a year ago (in January 2012) is a think tank devoted to providing Israel’s liberal left with new ideas regarding matters of foreign policy and security, as well as socioeconomic issues. The new study is the first project released by Molad as part of an effort to infuse leftist ideas in Israeli public discourse. This effort, the center believes, will help resuscitate a political camp which is currently on its deathbed.”

Molad’s governance includes a Public Council chaired by a former Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Avraham Burg, who for some years has been expressing with passion his disillusion with what Israel has become and his fears about where it is taking the Jews. In an op-ed for the New York Times last August, he castigated Prime Minister Netanyahu for his “warmongering” and Israel for its “unconscionable treatment of the Palestinians.”

As Ravid noted, Netanyahu and his closest advisers believe that Israel’s poor and deteriorating image in the world is the result of a hasbara failure; and that a more effective presentation of Israel’s case, and increased advocacy efforts, will solve a large portion of the country’s woes in the international arena.

The Molad study concludes that the Netanyahu-driven criticism of Israeli advocacy is “detached from reality” and “a myth”. The real reason for Israel’s growing isolation in the world, the study proclaims, “is the Israeli government’s policies.”

Ravid’s article also contains a very good explanation of why until recently the Zionist state was so successful in selling its propaganda lies as truth. It possessed the awesome ability to do so because of NID. What’s that?

Here’s Ravid’s description:

“Israel’s advocacy effort is directed by the National Information Directorate in the Prime Minister’s Office. All the other official advocacy entities, and there are several of these - the Foreign Ministry, the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry, the IDF Spokesman’s Office, the Tourism Ministry, the Jewish Agency - are subordinate to the directorate. The National Information Forum, comprising delegates from these various bodies, is in charge of coordinating messages and formulating strategies. The directorate also consults media and marketing experts from both academia and the private sector. And, in addition, the government conducts an unofficial advocacy effort involving hundreds of Israelis and overseas activists, organizations and NPOs, along with non-Jewish supporters; this effort is aimed at delivering Israel’s messages mainly in the United States and the EU.”

In other words, one of the main reasons for Zionism’s success for so long in selling its propaganda lies as truth was to do with the efficiency of its hasbara effort, its unity and co-ordination.

How on the other side of the coin has the pro-Palestinian camp performed to date?

Ravid put it this way:

After analyzing Israel’s advocacy effort, the Molad study used the same tools and criteria to assess the efficacy of the anti-Israel campaign.

What it found was that the various anti-Israel efforts have failed to properly coordinate and unify their messages. The organizations do not operate under the aegis of one overall group; in many instances, they act separately from one another. Unlike Israel, with its National Information Forum, there is not a single anti-Israel group which takes overall responsibility for setting a unified agenda.

Moreover, the Palestinian Authority’s role and influence on anti-Israel advocacy is limited. “More than anything,” contends the study, “the conduct of these bodies reflects the anti-Israel advocacy campaign’s absolute failure to unify organizations and activists in this context around a single, coherent, official message.”

“Apart from basic principles,” it continues, “these groups lack a common idea or common goal that could consolidate them as partners in one official body.”

That’s an echo of what I have been writing in various articles for quite some time. At the risk of getting myself red-flagged by some if not many pro-Palestinian activist groups as well as by Zionism, the mainstream media and the Arab regimes, I’ll repeat myself. Most if not quite all pro-Palestinian activist groups everywhere are doing their own little things in splendid isolation and are like flies to be swatted away by the Zionist monster.  Some will say I’m not being fair because pro-Palestinian activist groups are assisting the process of isolating Israel. That’s true but only at the margins. Pro-Palestinian activist groups could not point to any significant success if Israel’s actions and policies were not turning much of the world off.

The right time for co-ordination and a unified agenda with a single, coherent message is now. And to my way of thinking what that coherent message should be is obvious. The only real prospect for a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict is via the creation of one state with equal rights and security for all. But as I indicated in my last post, for this to become the driving idea of a coordinated and unified agenda, the occupied and oppressed Palestinians would have to set the ball rolling by demanding and bringing about the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority, in order to make Israel fully responsible and accountable for its occupation.

That would create a new, dynamic political environment within which pro-Palestinian activist groups of all faiths and none would have their best chance of making a real difference in the struggle to change the course of history - provided they put their act together and were united and coordinated.

One of the merits of a global campaign for one state with equal rights and security for all is that the message is a positive one. It is about care and concern for both Arabs and Jews in Palestine. And that would resonate with many, many people around the world.

Israel has its NID. Perhaps what is most needed on the other side is a PNID.

The above should not be taken to mean that I believe the countdown to catastrophe for all can be stopped. It might already be too late. I am saying only that a united and coordinated global campaign for one state with equal rights and security for all offers the only real prospect for trying to prevent a final Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which could trigger another great turning against Jews everywhere if the rising, global tide of anti-Israelism was transformed into classical anti-Semitism.

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East.

Over more than four decades Alan Hart enjoyed intimate access to, and on the human level friendship with, leaders of both sides including Golda Meir, Mother Israel, and Yasser Arafat,Father Palestine. (Others included Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres, Nasser, Sadat, King Faisal, King Hussein—the list is long). He also participated at a leadership level in the secret politics of the search for peace in the Middle East (as an intermediary between Arafat and Peres when it was presumed that Peres was headed for leadership).

Alan recently announced the American edition of his epic book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Vol. 1: The False Messiah. This is Alan Hart’s epic three-volume journey through the propaganda lies and the documented truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of what has come to be called the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

He blogs on AlanHart.net, and tweets on twitter.com/alanauthor

See also:

• President Obama’s opportunity to speak truth to power: Part 1
• President Obama’s opportunity to speak truth to power – Rahm Emanuel does it for him – Part 11
• Open Letter to President Obama: Change the Rules of the Game
• An Appeal to the American People

Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. The sub-title of this volume is Conflict Without End? It takes the story from the 1967 war and the creation of Greater Israel to the present and the question: Is Peace Possible?

Will President Obama be allowed to deliver an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians in order to achieve peace for all and, if not, what’s the most likely future for the region and the world?

• "... immensely readable and a magnificent piece of work ..."
  -- Clare Short, MP and Int'l Development Sec't in Blair Govt

• "... elucidates the dangers involved in the unconditional Western support for Zionism and its oppressive policies against the Palestinians."
  -- Ilan Pappe, Leading Israeli revisionist Historian

• "... principled, ... historical, ... excellent, even heroic, in effort and scope."
  -- Mark Bruzonsky, founder, MiddleEast.org; World Jewish Congress, first Washington Representative

  ________________________________________
  Tweet Follow @OregonNews
  _________________________________________
  
  

  ---

  Israel | Palestine | Peace | Politics | Most Commented on
  
  
  Salem-News.com Top Stories
  

  2025: Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst

  Two Wars with No Way Out

  No One Owns the Future

  The Ugly Origins of Trump's America First Policy

  A One-State Solution Could Transform the World

  
  

  Comments Leave a comment on this story.

  Name:
  
  

  All comments and messages are approved by people and self promotional links or unacceptable comments are denied.

  
  

  ---

  JohnWV January 7, 2013 7:43 am (Pacific time)
  

  If the following is antisemitism, how then may resistance to organized Israeli/Zionist/Jewish control of America be expressed? Consider: Israel can do no wrong news reporting. Half of all American millionaires being Jewish. America's Mideast wars all instigated to benefit Israel. Our support for the horrors Israel visits upon occupied Palestine. American Jews being central to and grossly enriched by the Wall Street obscenity. Israel/AIPAC control of our government and actually writing congressional legislation. Right now, right here in United States, disproportionate Israeli/Jewish media, financial and political control is rampant. Our country, not just Palestine, has been occupied by Israel. The Wall Street felons remaining unpunished attests to the depth of the occupation. Once great America has been bankrupted by: 1. Our Mideast wars instigated by Israel. 2. Our support for Israel’s Mideast conquests. 3.The Great Recession felonies of Wall Street Jewish Americans and their traitorous Jewish American government enablers. As a post WW2 youth, I was proud of my country's heritage of democracy, honor, justice, opportunity and stature among nations. Today, I grieve for our diminished America, for our future, for our children and grandchildren.

  ---

  JohnWV January 4, 2013 3:20 am (Pacific time)
  

  Since Imperial Rome, it has happened again and again. Jews enraged their neighbors and repeatedly suffered disastrous pogroms. Excesses of Weimar Germany's monied Jewish minority led to the most recent which Israel promotes, actually advertises, as justification for its apartheid malevolence. “Never again” is lost on Netanyahu's Israel. Blind to history, its paranoid pursuit of invulnerability, territorial conquest and supremacist empire in, and beyond, the Mideast ensures “again” on a far grander scale. Abandoning and aggressively isolating the Jewish state could force it abandon its grandiose aspirations and thereby avert its destruction. There is no greater or kinder support that America could render to both the Mideast and its “inseparable Mideast ally.”

  [Return to Top]

  ---

  ©2025 Salem-News.com. All opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Salem-News.com.
  
  
  Articles for January 1, 2013 | Articles for January 2, 2013 | Articles for January 3, 2013