Prime Minister Olmert
"I think that someone has lost it in this country – it's becoming obvious that the Israeli government doesn't know how to defend the state of Israel on the political and explanatory front."
Zvi Mazel, Israel's former ambassador to Egypt and Sweden
In Losing The Media War, Israel Matzav discusses how Olmert is in full appeasement mode now, following the conclusion made by the IDF that the shelling of a home in Beit Hanoun was caused by a technical failure in their artillery.
IM notes the response from the Israeli leadership:
o Chief of Staff Dan Halutz has ordered all artillery fire into the Gaza Strip to be stopped "until further technical, professional and operational inquiries were completed."
o Defense Minister Amir Peretz has ordered that "all artillery fire into the Gaza Strip must first be approved by OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant."
o And then there is Olmert:
who is falling over himself offering more and more concessions in response to 'Palestinian' calls for mass murder of Jews. Tonight, Olmert apologized again for yesterday's shelling, and sent a message to 'moderate Palestinian President' Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen that he is willing to 'go far' in a projected meeting with Abu Mazen.No doubt."He will be surprised when he sits with me at how far we are prepared to go,” Olmert said Thursday evening. “I can offer him a lot."
This from:
the can-do guy who said that if:
"the terrorist organizations impose a violent confrontation, both Israelis and the Palestinians will have to bear the consequences."the visionary who declared in the beginning of August that:
Israel's success in Lebanon will create "new momentum" for his plan to unilaterally withdraw from most of Judea and Samaria.the keen tactician who said this week:
I am still proud to say that I was among the initiators of the Disengagementthe shrewd negotiator who promised:
There is an honest, real will on my part to give a lot and receive little in return.Olmert made that last statement back in June when he gave 375 rifles to Abbas.
This time, Olmert wants to release terrorists.
Israel Matzav links to a YNet News article Want to win media game? Don't apologize. Some advice is offered by Dr. Ra'anan Gissin, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's media adviser and a strategist who now works as a foreign media expert. He says that Israel needs to win not only on the military front, but the media front as well:
You must broadcast the images of the terror groups hiding their rockets and launching those rockets from those residential areas. The world doesn't see enough of those images. Take one cell, don't destroy it, follow it and then show the world the images of the rockets being fired from within neighborhoods. Because if you kill the cell, and the world never sees it – the world won't believe it ever existed."Zvi Mazel, Israel's former ambassador to Egypt and Sweden gets it.
...Gissin notes that Hizbullah invests 15 percent of its Iranian given 100 million dollars in operating the al-Manar television network. Israel's spokespeople need to be the right people for the job, says Gissin, not just "eloquent English speakers."
"The world must understand that the lives of Israeli citizens have become hell – they can't work, they can't live, not to mention the economic damage. If Livni and her friends were saying that, then our situation would be completely different."There is a confidence in the IDF that it can rebound and learn from errors in the war with Hezbollah."The world must be told in the clearest manner that the responsibility lies solely with the terror organizations, which bring it on themselves. Foreign Minister Livni should have convened the foreign press by that afternoon and explained to the journalists that terror groups operate from within the civilian population with the intent to draw the IDF there."
Mazel says that the world must understand that despite Israel's withdrawal from Gaza the Palestinians continue to relentlessly launch Qassam rockets at Israeli towns with the intent to kill.
The question remains whether Israel is up to the challenge of dealing with the media.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Media and Terrorism and Gaza and Olmert.
I think it appropriate here to mention an article on the front page of today's Los Angeles Times--which has become increasingly anti-Israel. In what I consider the only reasonable comment in the whole long article, (which was at the end of the article), there was a quote from a young Palestinian boy who hoped that his fellow Palestinians would stop firing rockets from his village, so Israel would stop firing at them. At least there was one young boy who knew what the whole "nightmare" was about!
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