SteamedPenguin

Ha'aretz has an interesting article on Israels' image problems in the USA.

Let me give some excerpts that are interesting:

The article talks about the group of professionals starting to deal with Israels image problem in the USA, they include such illustrious people as:

... Elias Buchwald, one of the founders of Burson-Marsteller, the second-largest PR firm in the United States; Fran Oppenheim, the owner of a consulting company and formerly brand director at the food giant Kraft General Foods; Helen Marlow, formerly Phillip Morris spokeswoman and vice president in the giant tobacco firm, who dealt with the "anti-tobacco" wave

Let's take for example Fran Oppenheim:

One right-wing, zionist organization reports she is a "representative for The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations". This is no big surprise, they aren't going to tap people to market Israel in the USA that are just middle of the road Americans. She'll be a true believer, or better yet, somebody who has totally bought into Israel as necessary for her social and political well being. Not that Israelis are necessary, just Israel. I doubt her Ashkanzi sensibilities really make her care about the unwashed masses our Arab Jewish Israeli immigrants. If the Israeli establishment doesn't care, I doubt these milquetoast-toast American Ashkenazis care.

The true believers are settlers. Not that I find settlers to be respectable people, but you gotta respect that sort of cheap commitment they have; Living in subsidized housing, getting what amounts to free water and power, and getting to shoot all the darkies you want without ethical or legal repercussions is hard living. By comparison this Fran Oppenheim really represent a weak commitment to Israel, living in the USA, being wined and dined by the cream of Israeli and American society, jetted here and there, without having to endure dealing with us smelly Palestinians.

I don't doubt she is a good marketer. After all it must take a wizard to try to sell utter crap. Just imagine what kind of integrity you must have as a person to stand in front of people and tell them that the rubbery piece of shit with a slightly yellow color is cheddar cheese?

That's right, she made her name selling crap and now she can cement it on the sidewalk of shame by trying to sell Israel, a racist, apartheid state that keeps ten million Palestinians under occupation, imprisonment, and terror, as a haven of not only democracy but good living and open-ness.

Next we have Elias Buchwald:

SourceWatch notes:

For the last 20 years Buchwald has been a volunteer media trainer at an annual program organized by the the American Jewish Congress and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

A racist zionist crazy person has a mirror of previous article mentioning Buchwald:

The program is designed to improve the primary task of the foreign ministry representatives: hasbara - that peculiar Israeli word that is a hybrid of information, public relations and propaganda.The chief exponents of this craft are supposed to be the prime minister and foreign minister, but their English, ability to express themselves and the content of what they say does not exactly help to promote Israel's hasbara efforts, say Buchwald and Greenberg.

As a side note it is amusing to me to note that the same kind of people who have no problem breaking every international human rights law also have no problem breaking copyright. Not surprised, just amused.

Here is an interesting tidbit:

Buchwald senses that the terror mantra may have worked last year but is no good anymore, given Arafat's death. He suggests delivering a positive message: telling the Palestinians, "Come, let's make peace. We want a good economy for you. We want a good economy for us. We've had enough war. Let's live together."

That old Elias, he is a funny man. Disingenuous shit that he is. You do not work for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs then preach peace with us Palestinians when the mission of the Israeli government, and Prime Minister after Prime Minister is to eradicate the last traces of Palestinians off the land of Palestine. Maybe Elias Buchwald knows something about Israeli policy we do not? Perhaps Elias Buchwald now makes Israeli policy with regards to Palestinians and not the Prime Minister. I doubt that. He says "Let's live together" as if the barrier to Israelis living amongst Palestinians has been Palestinians and not the pervasive destruction of Palestinian homes, the rape of Palestinian resources, the imprisonment of Palestinians, and slaughter of Palestinian refugees.

Lastly we have Helen Marlow. Her name doesn't bring up much usable data, but "formerly Phillip Morris spokeswoman and vice president in the giant tobacco firm, who dealt with the "anti-tobacco" wave" should be sufficient to show what her merits are to the campaign. She defends selling deadly poison to an increasingly anti-smoking USA. That's right, she defends causing cancer, arteriosclerosis, emphysema. Hell, by comparison defending genocide, breaking international law, and torturing children should be easy for her. Maybe her epitaph will say "I was doing a job. I was just following orders."

Let us review:

Elias Buchwald is a professional salesman. His job is to sell anything to anybody. We know he is a long time media volunteer for Israel, but aside from that his credentials are selling the unsellable.

Helen Marlow a shill for the tobacco industry.

Fran Oppenheim salesperson for Kraft Foods. Selling the crappiest food in the world.

If this is Israel's Branding Dream Team then you know that Israels case is extremely weak. It is like getting represented by Johnnie Cochran, you know the perp is guilty when Cochran represents you. We know Israel is a genocidal, law breaking, occupying country, which is only reinforced by the presence of Buchwald, Oppenheim, and Marlow who come to whitewash and prettify the strange fruit hanging from the trees.

Growing up Palestinian, in a firmly agnostic and socialist household gave me a lot of time to consider the world around me growing up. Between the Israeli Occupation that scarred us for the last 57 years, the innate conservatism of the Middle East, and the religious fundamentalism that is engulfing a region in extreme stress I certainly felt like a fish out of water. That is not the story though.

Living in Palestine leaves you with many things to ponder and often no time to ponder them. Even when you are doing absolutely nothing, especially when you are under curfew for forty days, you are worried about how things are going. So even when you think you have time to meditate on the world around you the intrusions of life under occupation take even that small luxury away. Sometimes to better grasp the situation you live in you have to leave and observe it with a distant eye. That, however, is also not the story.

The story is this: it is the unexpected encounters that so enrich your life. Even when you think your live is nice and tasty like rice pudding with raisins and almond slivers, that hint of cinnamon and a touch of dark chocolate powder make all the difference. Actually sometimes you don't even notice the tastes in the rice pudding proper until that cinnamon brings it out. Then you notice more fully how the raisins taste when they burst on your teeth and mix with the sweet, milky, starchy pudding. A little bubble of fruity goodness that hangs there.

I came across an article recently that made me appreciate my rice pudding better. I know Palestine. I can talk ad nauseam about policy, politics, history, intentions, motivations, fears, tears, jokes, etc. Palestine is what I do and yet I managed to miss the raisins in the pudding until I got a nice little hint of cinnamon that profoundly changed my perception of my situation.

Growing up I was involved in dialog groups with Israelis, and often came across Israelis. In the US I come across Zionists, wannabe-Zionists, and Israelis of different shades. It isn't an occasional thing to hear "What do you want? You lost the war. We won, now leave us alone." Often the variation is "We won the war, that's the way it is. Why try to change the unchangeable?" Mind you I always thought this line of argumentation so bizarre and brain damaged that it isn't worth a response. Now I can't. I realize now that these arguments aren't about me, it is about them. Whoever uses these arguments, and generally speaking the formula 'We can't change the world', isn't trying to quiet me. More specifically, they aren't trying to quiet me because of what I am saying or doing, they are trying to quiet the voices in their conscience that my actions or words bring up. They think their little talismans of defeat can keep away the ghosts of social responsibility.

That's what activism for social justice, freedom, and tolerance is; responsibility towards others and accountability for ones' own actions. When people discard their accountability and come up with 'Just let it go already' they want to taint you with their weakness and their lack of accountability. There is no place for them to feel comfortable with your demands, even if unsaid, so they try to put you in a space where you don't rattle their timid minds.

I don't quote religious texts except with irony or because something funny or dirty was in the pages, but the parable of the Good Samaritan is instructive and at least in some circles well recognized enough to make sense. So this dude from Samaria is going through some desolate valley and finds some poor schmoe in a ditch. Apparently this dude was beset by thieves and bandits and left for dead. So this nice Samaritan picks the guy up and takes him to a place where he's taken care of. In the bible there is a different version but that's really about heaven and hell, and sinning. I don't care if you sin. In fact I probably encourage it. All I want is that you go out and be activists for social justice. Let's get back to the story though; The good Social Justice conscious Samaritan helped the poor guy out because the Samaritan is accountable to himself as well as the world around him. Leaving the guy to die in some gully means that the next time it is he himself who could be the poor schmoe in the gully except there is no Social Justice conscious Samaritan to help him out. This is not a world a Samaritan or anyone wants to live in realistically.

We live in an interconnected world. We only survive because of the goodwill of others. You can hem and haw about it with political tracts, you can invoke Hobbes, Locke, Plato, and a whole bunch of other dead people but the social contract that binds us is simple: Don't allow me to be hurt and I won't allow you to be hurt. There is no need for philosophy courses or ethics manuals to make that clear.

Social responsibility and accountability towards oneself and to others isn't a luxury, and it isn't an affectation, it is a basic tool of survival in a dangerous world. Denying that impulse and drowning it out is denying tens of thousands of years of basic human survival.

Wouldn't it be the ultimate cosmic joke if we didn't die because of global warming, nuclear winter, or mutant bacteria run rampant, but because we pretended not to give a shit?