The foreign minister of Israel, which has hired several large PR firms to sway world opinion, said Monday he was not ready to meet Palestinian leaders for ceasefire talks as long as they were waging "media wars."
Shimon Peres told Israeli radio stations that he did not “understand the logic of the Palestinian officials…who ‘raid’ press microphones with provocative statements whenever they see them.”
“What do they want?” he asked, “Just shooting?”
The minister, who has been given the green light to start talks with the Palestinian Authority by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said that publicity campaigns would not help solve the crisis.
Asked to comment on reports that Palestinian officials, including President Yasser Arafat, were refusing to meet him, he said that in the last meeting with Arafat, the president told him that "my door is always open for you."
Peres said that he would meet Arafat “when there is a need.”
Israel’s image has been tarnished by what several international human rights groups have called its excessive use of force to end the Palestinians' 11-month-old uprising against 34 years of occupation.
But according to a recent report by the former public relations coordinator for Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Israel has already mobilized on a massive scale for its own "media war."
According to the report's author, Maggy Zwanger, the Israeli spokesman during the Gulf War, Nachman Shai, hastily organized a special media unit, not long after the UN Security Council last October condemned Israel for excessive use of force. "We assumed that the US media would be on our side," Shai told a group of Israeli officials in a teleconference, according to the May issue of Harper's magazine, cited by the report.
In early February, the Israeli Foreign Ministry hired the high-powered American public relations firms, Rubenstein Associates, and Morris, Carrick and Guma, to "enhance Israel's image," according to the Jerusalem Post.
Meanwhile, Zwanger's report, published at TomPaine.com, notes that, "Housed in a slick hotel in downtown West Jerusalem, the Israeli government press office daily cranks out reams of paper, faxed reports, e-mailed press releases, videotapes of Palestinian violence, and lists of government and academic sources ready to provide a well-packaged sound bite."
Meanwhile, hundreds of European and other activists are gathering in Jerusalem for a rally against Israel’s occupation of PLO offices in the occupied city, including Orient House.
An Italian leader of the protest told reporters at a press conference Sunday that their aim was to pressure their governments to do something to stop the Israeli aggression against the Palestinians.
Anti-occupation Israelis are also taking part in the rallies – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
