Palestinian Arabs Not As Good At PR As We Thought?

The way it is supposed to work is that Israel is supposed to be bad at PR while the Palestinian Arabs are good at PR and at manipulating the media.

But that does not seem to be true over the last couple of weeks.

From the AP on March 18:

Arab child's sickbed is part of the battleground

Asil Manasra, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl, was in her eighth month of intensive treatment at an Israeli hospital for complications arising from a long bout of tuberculosis when she was abruptly forced to stop the visits.

A week after she was discharged, she died.

It's impossible to know how much longer Asil might have lived, but her family is convinced she is the first victim of a Palestinian decision that has cut hundreds of people off from proper medical care and has led Israeli hospitals to turn away those in need.

...Fathi Abu Moughli, the Palestinian minister of health, abruptly halted the arrangement following Israel's assault on Hamas militants in Gaza, which Palestinian officials say killed some 1,300 Palestinians and wounded thousands more.

Initially, Abu Moughli insisted the ruling was limited to those wounded in the war. He said more than 1,000 injured Gazans were transferred to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Morocco and other Arab countries so that they would not have to be treated by the same country that harmed them.

But in an interview with The Associated Press, he acknowledged that the edict was far more comprehensive, aiming to cut costs, rid Palestinians of their need for Israeli medicine and deny the Jewish state a "propaganda" campaign that improves its world image while the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority foots the bill.

From The Jerusalem Post, March 29:

PA dismantles W. Bank youth orchestra

Palestinian authorities disbanded a youth orchestra from a West Bank refugee camp after it played for a group of Holocaust survivors in Israel, a local official said on Sunday.

Adnan Hindi of the Jenin camp called the Holocaust a "political issue" and accused conductor Wafa Younis of unknowingly dragging the children into a political dispute.

He added that Younis has been barred from the camp and the apartment where she taught the 13-member Strings of Freedom orchestra has been boarded up.

...Ramzi Fayad, a spokesman for various political factions in the Jenin refugee camp, also condemned the participation of the teenagers in the Holocaust event, saying all the groups were strongly opposed to any form of normalization with Israel.

Well, that's good to know.

The concert took place at the Holocaust Survivors' Center-- as part of "Good Deeds Day"--which just goes that it's true what they say: no good deed goes unpunished.

Of course neither of these stories are going to result in bad PR for the Palestinian Arabs, for the simple reason that PR is neither good nor bad until it gets exposure, until the media covers it--and neither of these events is going to get that kind of coverage.

After all, Israel is not the one who did it.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Media Bias and Palestinians.