Marketing Israel

At this point, it would be a cliche to say that Israel has a PR problem. It is clear that in many sectors, Israel has lost the battle for hearts and minds. To many, Israel is an illegitimate state built on an original sin and its every action and policy only serves to confirm and reinforce Israel's inherent evil. While some have taken up the challenge of defending Israel, there seems to be little or no strategic coordination, with no central message being promoted.

It is essential to show Israel beyond the conflict with its neighbours. To this effect, numerous groups such as Hillel try appeal to students by promoting Israel as party central, as a vibrant and sexy place full of beaches, clubs, hot women and good-looking men. While it is important to show Israel's modern society, this above approach leaves much to be desired. Some might argue that in might even have the opposite effect, showing Israel to be a high-tech superpower callously dancing in its "bubble" while the poor, oppressed Palestinians are suffering beneath its military boot.

So why does Israel have a marketing problem? I would suggest that it has to do with a Jewish ambivalence about making a strong claim. The "Israel = sex" approach fails because it tries to promote Israel as an alternative to Los Angeles, Brazil or Amsterdam. What is results in is a rather cheapened image that fails to convey Israel's true beauty.

Israel is one of the most unique places on earth. The world's only Jewish state, Israel is an enigma. Fundamentaly, at the core of the current campaign to delegitimize Israel is a burning question asked by Israel-haters, the ignorant public and even many Israelis themselves: "What are Jews doing in the Middle-East?" In order for a true PR victory to be successful, it must address this issue head-on while highlighting Israel's amazing achievements and advancements.

The modern State of Israel has a story unparalleled in the history of humankind. It is a story of love and longing, oppression and faith, courage and heroism. It is the story of a people exiled from its homeland for two millennia while never giving up its dream of returning to its borders. It is the story of an ancient people building a modern state. There is no precedent in the annals of humanity for the survival of a people outside of its land for 2,000 years, and for its subsequent rise from the ashes to come home.

Let the world know that Israel rivals Egypt, Babylonia, Rome, Persia, China and India in terms of antiquity and it has outlasted all of its ancient neighbors. Let the world know that before the Greeks ever produced a lofty deep thought that the Jewish people were already ruled by a Jewish king in the Land of Israel. Let the world know that when Rome was still just a collection of mud huts along the Tiber River, Jewish prophets living in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Galilee were preaching the morals and ethics that form the basis of modern Western civilization.

Let the world know how the Jewish warriors fought like lions against the legions of Rome in defense of their homeland. Let them know that even when the Romans declared that "Judea is vanquished" and built a monumental arch to celebrate their crushing victory other the Jews, these same lowly Jews continued to have faith in their eventual return to Israel. Let them know that for twenty centuries, Jews turned three times a day towards Jerusalem and prayed: "May our eyes behold Your return to Zion in mercy", that every single Passover seder and Yom Kippur fast ends with the fervent hope of "Next year in Jerusalem", that every groom at his wedding pledges that if he should forget Jerusalem, he should forget his right hand.

Let the world know about the brave pioneers to dreamt of a Jewish state in a barren and empty land, who were mocked for their vision. Let them know about the chalutzim who answered the call to ascend to the Land of Israel, who dried out swamps, fought malaria, disease and hostile enemies, and ultimately made the desert bloom. Let the world know that the most fertile, green, blossoming parts of Israel today were nothing but desolate wasteland a mere century ago and would still be but for these courageous Jews.

Let them know of a state that arose out of the ashes of the destruction of European Jewry, a state that took in hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab land, a state that saw the ingathering of entire Jewish communities as disparate and far-flung as Yemen, Poland, Russia, Afghanistan, Morroco and Ethiopia. Let them know that the prophetic prediction of the Ingathering of the Exile on eagles' wings is unfolding before our very eyes as Jews continue to answer the call of Zion.

Let them know the story of the few versus the many, of how a ragtag nation of survivors, with G-d's help, overcame the combined armies of 6 nations, of how Israel has paid for every single inch of territory with Jewish blood, sweat and tears. Let them know how despite Israel never having known a single day of peace, it has produced a tolerant, advanced and modern society, how despite the daily attacks on its citizens and survival, it is a world leader in technology, medicine and science.

Let them know the story of Israel. Wow! What passion! What drama! This is the story that the world is waiting to hear.

Falsifying History

In the media, on university campuses and certainly in the political debate, there is a systematic movement to falsify and rewrite history in regards to Israel and the Middle-East. It has been the official policy of the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Hamas, to deny and to minimize Jewish historical connections to the Land of Israel. Even as Mahmoud Abbas conducts "peace" negotiations with Benyamin Netanyahu, PA-run television aired a documentary on Rosh HaShanah in which, panning to the Western Wall, the narrator explained, “They [Israelis] know for certain that our [Arab] roots are deeper than their false history. We, from the balcony of our homes, look out over [Islamic] holiness and on sin and filth [the Jews praying at the Western Wall].”

To combat this insidious campaign of denial and revisionism, it is necessary to make a few points clear. One of the most ridiculous claims are references to "Palestine". Never in the history of the civilization has there been a sovereign country, ruled by a distinct Arab people, called Palestine. The only independent states that have ever taken shape in the Land of Israel (besides the brief rule of the Crusaders) have been Jewish. Furthermore, the notion of a Palestinian people only took root during the 1960s. Before then, it was the Jews of Israel who were referred to as Palestinians! Only once the Jews became "Israelis" could the Arab appropriate that name for themselves.

Another common claim is that the Land of Israel is sacred to all three major monotheistic religions. This, of course, is nonsense. "Palestine" and Jerusalem are not mentioned at all in the Qur'an! (The Land of Israel, however, is mentioned in relation to Allah bringing the Children of Israel into the Promised Land). The only Islamic connection to Jerusalem is the later claim that Muhammad spiritually visited Jerusalem and ascended to heaven from there. To mark this spot, Muslim caliphs built the Dome of the Rock and the Mosque of Omar on the Temple Mount, emphasizing that the reason why this spot is sacred to Muslims is because the Jewish Temple stood on that spot. Besides these two mosques, Jerusalem plays no other significant role in Islamic theology. The Land of Israel also has no particular sacredness attached to it in Islam, making it different than any other conquered territory. The holy land of Islam is Arabia- not Israel.

In contrast to this, it is in the Land of Israel that the Jewish people developed, flourished and ruled themselves. It is the Promised Land of the Torah. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Bible! It has been at the heart and centre of the Jewish conscious ever since King David conquered the city and made it his capital over 3500 years ago. It was to Jerusalem that every single Jewish male made pilgrimage three times a year during Temple Times. It is towards Jerusalem that Jews pray three times a day (Muslims pray towards Mecca), beseeching G-d: "And to Jerusalem, Your city, in mercy return, and dwell in it as You have spoken, and rebuild it speedily in our days, as an eternal structure." Every Jewish wedding is marked with the breaking of a glass in remembrance of the destruction of Jerusalem and the solemn vow of "if I forget thee, O Jerusalem." Every single Passover seder and Yom Kippur fast is ended with the fervent hope and declaration of "Next Year in Jerusalem!" Clearly, not all claims are equal.

One of the most repulsive libels about Israel is that the Arabs are being forced to pay for the sins of the European Holocaust. It must be stated as forcefully as possible that Jews have been in Israel since biblical times, thousands of years before the Arabian tribes burst out of their peninsula, long before Muhammad ever received his first revelation and millennia before the rise of Nazism. It was in the 1920s, two decades before the annihilation of European Jewry, that the world recognized the right of the Jewish people to a homeland in the Land of Israel- they didn't create or bestow these right, but rather recognized preexisting ones.

These false claims are part of a campaign to delegitimize the very foundations of the Jewish state, which are the unbroken Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. Before any significant negotiations or agreements can be made, the world, and particularly the Arab and Muslim world, must recognize the right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. Without that, there can be no coexistence.

Shame and Pride

"They hate the Sabbath and they hate the laws of Judaism and they hate the yeshivas and they hate the rabbis. And they hate being Jewish and they hate G-d and they hate Zionism and a Jewish state and the need to be different... And they hate the bitter reality of hundreds of thousands supporting and marching for and believing in all the things that they hate, and so they are prepared to use any and all means to destroy the Jews of Jewishness. And the most most frightening thing is that, in all its ugliness, I have seen and recognized the face of Hatred and Murder Past."

These words were written over 20 years ago by Rabbi Meir Kahane HY"D. Since then, this hate has not diminished but continues to show itself. It shows itself on both sides of the Atlantic, causing harm and damage to those they hate so much. This hate shows itself in Israel when leftist journalists steal military secrets and spy on the army. It shows itself when professors at Hebrew University march hand in hand with Arab and demand the Jews out of Shimon HaTzadik, or when hundreds demonstrate in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem in against Israel's right to self-defense. This hatred rears its ugly head in the United States as "pro-peace" Jewish groups demand that Obama force himself on Israel or when liberal Jews in the government attack and condemn Israel. There are Jews who hate Israel, who hate Judaism and the Jewish people, and who make it their mission to hurt us.

Recently, the New York Review of Books published a lengthy essay by Peter Beinart, The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment, in which he blames Israel's illiberal tendencies and rightward shift for alienating young American Jews. Beinart explains that "the only kind of Zionism they [young American Jews] found attractive was a Zionism that recognized Palestinians as deserving of dignity and capable of peace, and they were quite willing to condemn an Israeli government that did not share those beliefs." American Jews wanted a more "humane, universalistic Zionism" and because Israel could not provide this, they no longer feel an affiliation with Israel.

Beinart's analysis is telling, not because of its conclusions but because of what it says about liberal Jewry. The reason why many young liberal Jews don't give a fig about Israel is because they don't give a fig about Judaism or Jewishness. The American Jewish Establishment has indeed failed them for not instilling within them Jewish pride or values. These young American Jews are the product of three of four generations empty of Jewish belief and practice. The Jewish Establishments are the ones who fought tooth and nail against Jewish education and "parochialism", who ordered Jews: "thou shalt melt!" and who replaced all religious boundaries between Jews and non-Jews. They prided themselves on sending Jewish kids to public schools and on their interfaith seders and events. They preached a message of absolute equality and unity, of brotherhood and love, stressing the universal over the particular. "Being Jewish is being part of a great tradition, like being Irish or black or Vietnamese." So young Jews chose to be human beings rather than to be Jews and now we see the frightening results: over 50% intermarriage rate and a complete disconnect from Israel and the Jewish people.

There has been a parallel process in Israel. The founders of the state tried to create a Zionism and a Jewishness without Judaism, and now what is left among many is a confused group that cares not for Zionism, Jewishness or Judaism. These are the Israelis who wave PLO flags, demanding surrender and appeasement in the face of Arab greed, consumed with guilt over their rights to their land, convinced that they are occupying Arab land. They do not want a Jewish state, a state built on Jewish culture, religion and history, for the Jewish people, but a "state of all its citizens" or, in Shimon Pere's words, "the Singapore of the Middle-East". Their confusing and self-doubt is evident on their faces as they march, chanting "No holiness in an occupied city!"

These young Jews, in Israel and in the Diaspora, are embarrassed of being Jewish, of the baggage that it carries and of the obligations it entails. They are embarrassed of "choseness", of Jewish destiny and fate. As such, they simply want to do away with it. Consider the "utopian" future set out by H.G. Wells:

"And yet between 1940 and 2059, in little more than a century, this antiquated obdurate culture disappeared. It and its Zionist state, its kosher food, the Law and all the rest of its paraphernalia, were completely merged in the human community. The Jews were not suppressed; there was no extermination... but under the Tyranny there was never any specific persecution at all; yet they were educated out of their oddity and racial egotism in little more than three generations. Their attention was distracted from Moses and the Promise to Abraham and the delusion that God made his creation for them alone, and they were taught the truth about their race. The world is as full as ever it was of men and women of Semitic origin, but they belong no more to “Israel”."

This is the aim of these Jewish enemies of Israel. They only wave around their Jewish ancestry as a weapon to attack the Jewish people. Judaism is little more than liberalism to them and as such feel no connection to their Jewish brethren around the world. They ally themselves with every Jew-hater and Israel-basher, adding fuel to the fire as they proclaim their Jewish identity while defaming the Jewish people.

The Jewish Establishment has failed. The secular Zionist system has failed. It has raised a generation of Jews empty of Judaism and who only want to be human beings. How can we rectify this situation?

By returning, by coming back to Judaism, its obligations and its prohibitions, its values, commandments and laws. By acquainting ourselves with Jewish history, connecting to Jewish peoplehood and recognizing Jewish destiny. We must once again become the people who so brazenly defied Pharaoh and slaughtered his idol before the eyes of all of Egypt, the nation who rose up so bravely against the Babylonians, the Greek persecution and the Roman tyranny. We must once again have the pride to declare G-d's Absolute Oneness to the entire world as we sing: "How fortunate we are, how good is our portion, how pleasant is our lot and how nice is our inheritance!"

The Assault on Israel's Heritage

The assault on Israel's Jewish heritage has begun. The American administration has taken taken the side of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in denying Israel's right to build in Jerusalem, and by extension, the deep Jewish historic roots in the Land of Israel. The increasing American pressure for Israel to stop building in its capital and to surrender half of the city to the Palestinians, coupled with the continued assault on Israel's Jewish heritage, serves to delegitimize Israel's right to exist.

In February, Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu announced that he would add Mearat HaMachpela, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, in Hebron and Kever Rachel, Rachel's Tomb, in Bethlehem to a list of Jewish and Zionist heritage sites. Mearat HaMachpela is believed to be the burial place of the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as well as their wives Sarah, Rebecca and Leah. Rachel's Tomb is described in the Book of Genesis as the site where Jacob buried his wife Rachel following her death during childbirth. These two holy sites are incontestable proof of the deep biblical and historic Jewish connection to the Land of Israel.

Rioting on the part of the Palestinians, and international condemnation, followed Bibi's recognition of Israel's Jewish heritage. Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas called the move "a serious provocation" while Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh threated a third intifada. Throughout Israel, Arabs rioted, vandalized Jewish property and attacked soldiers. In Hebron, Arabs threw glass bottles at IDF patrols while in Jaffa, local Arabs, aided by Israeli leftists, threw molotov cocktails at buses. The UNESCO Director General released a statement expressing "concern" over the move. The US State Department called it "provocative and unhelpful". The absurdity of the situation reached its apex with full scale denial of the Jewish heritage of these sites by Turkey's premier Erdogan told a Saudi newspaper that the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb “were not and never will be Jewish sites, but Islamic sites.”

The next target in the assault on Israel's heritage was Jerusalem. When US envoy to the region, George Mitchell, was visiting Israel with the intention of starting indirect talks between Israel and Fatah, Israel's Minister of the Interiour Eli Yishai announced announced the construction of 1,600 Jewish apartments in the Jewish neighbourhood of Ramat Shlomo. Mitchell claimed that this routine construction was part of an Israel effort to humiliate him. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the announcement "an insult" while Obama's top adviser, David Axelrod, called it "an affront". When Bibi visited Washington in order to deliver a speech to AIPAC, Obama treated him with disdain and humiliated him. There was no photo-op between Bibi and Obama and no state dinner. Obama showed his displeasure by leaving Bibi to wait for him for forty minuted while he had dinner with his family. Israel's PM received a treatment that that would have been considered shameful for the leader of Angola.

Obama's pandering to the Arabs has encouraged them in their war against Israel and the Jewish people. His harsh stance on Jerusalem and his embarrassing treatment of Bibi has made the Arabs harden their position and to continue their assault against Israel. Fatah called for Muslims to converge on the al-Aksa mosque to protect it from Jewish attempts to destroy it. Hamas escalated Muslim rioting by calling for "a Day of Rage" against Israel. The reason: Israel's rebuilding of the 17th century Churva synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem. The synagogue, built in the four centuries ago by Rabbi Judah Ha-Chassid, has been destroyed twice, the latest time by the Jordanians in 1967. After the Jordanians illegally divided up Jerusalem in 1967, they expelled the Jewish population from the Old City and proceeded to desecrate synagogues, yeshivot and Jewish sites in Jerusalem. To symbolize the destruction of Jerusalem's Jewish community, the Jordanian army dynamited the Churva synagogue and used its ruins as a stable. Israel's restoration of the most significant medieval synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem causes Islamic rage and violence. Hamas' ambassador in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, told the Al-Jazeera satellite channel that the opening of the Hurva Synagogue formed part of a larger Israeli attempt to “invent” a Jewish history for Jerusalem.

Israel's Jewish heritage is consistently under attack. It has long been a policy of both Fatah and Hamas, as well as the larger Arab and Islamic worlds, to deny the historical fact of the Jewish roots and presence in the Land of Israel. This denial is strengthened by the Obama administration's portrayal of Jewish construction in Israel's capital as "settlements" and "threats to peace". Obama's hostility towards Israel ignores the fact that Jerusalem is, and always has been, a Jewish city. It has been at the heart of the Jewish conscious ever since King David made it his capital over 3500 years ago and his son Solomon built the First Temple on Mount Moriah.

Internationally, a campaign is underway to paint Israel as an illegitimate colonial power. By erasing the Jewish people's roots in the Land of Israel and portraying Jews as European interlopers who stole Palestine from the natives, anti-Israel propagandists pave the way for the annihilation of the State of Israel. Since Israel is based on an original sin of land theft in 1948, Islamic genocidal threats and terror are perfectly acceptable means of "resistance". Any Israeli attempt at self-defense is automatically "war crimes", a colonial dictator repressing the aspiration of the indigenous people.

Israel will not be able to win the war against its enemies unless it sets the record straight. The State of Israel draws its legitimacy from the legacy of king David and Solomon, from Judah the Maccabbee and Bar Kochba. Zionism is the natural expression of two thousand years of Jewish longing to return home, to rebuild their country from which they were forcibly removed by Roman centurions and legionnaires. What gives Israel the moral upper-hand in the conflict is the fact that the Land of Israel belongs indisputably to the Jewish people. It was in the Land of Israel that the Jewish people arose, built two Commonwealths, and fought courageously before being carried away by first the Babylonians and then the Romans. It was the Land of Israel in which Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sojourned, in which David fought and Solomon built, in which Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied and called the wayward Jews to repent. It was the Land that, upon remembering its glory, the exiled Jews sat down by the rivers of Babylon and wept. It is the Land upon whose agricultural cycle the Jewish calendar and holidays revolve. It is the Land which our Sages taught that the entire Torah rests. Jewish settlement and presence in Israel predates that of the British in Britain, the French in France, or the Romans in Rome. When the Greeks were only beginning to ponder the great philosophical questions, the Jews had already left Egypt, conquered the Land, established Jerusalem as their capital, built the Temple there, split into two kingdoms, been exiled by the Babylonians for 50 years, and returned to rebuild under Ezra and Nehemia.

Even after the vast majorities of Jews were carried into captivity by the Romans, the Land was never bereft of a Jewish presence. The center of Jewish life spread to the Galilee and then to the Golan, and during the ages, pious Jews settled in the holy cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias. For the great masses who could not ascend and return home, Israel remained the focal point of their intense longing and desire. Every single year, at the end of every Passover Seder and Yom Kippur fast, every Jew would declare: Next Year in Jerusalem! At every Jewish wedding, a cup is broken and a vow is made: If I forget thee, O Jerusalem... Three times a day, every day, observant Jews turn towards the East and beseech G-d, "may our eyes behold Your return to Zion in mercy". A Jew cannot even eat a cookie without thanking G-d "for the good and spacious land which You gave our ancestors as an inheritance".

Any peace agreement must be based on the recognition that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, the land in which our people arose and developed. Our answer to the haters must be that of Simon the Maccabee, which he wrote to the Seleucid king Antiochus: "We have neither taken foreign land nor seized foreign property, but only the inheritance of our fathers, which at one time had been unjustly taken by our enemies. Now that we have the opportunity, we are firmly holding the inheritance of our fathers." The relationship of the Jews and their Land is one of love, longing, tearful separation and joyous return.

As the holiday of Passover approaches, we must remember the fifth promise of Redemption, corresponding to the Cup of Eliyahu and the fifth cup of wine at the seder: "I will bring you to the land, concerning which I raised My hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and I will give it to you as a heritage; I am the Lord.'"

Chag Kasher v'Sameach