JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Rebranding Israel

By Ben Harris · March 19, 2009

I feel like I've read Ethan Bronner's story in yesterday's New York Times a half-dozen times already. With the country's international reputation sagging, Israel tries to tout its cultural and scientific achievements and put forth a different face from one beset by war and conflict; to, in effect, change the subject.

Bronner writes:
 

Its sports teams have met hostility and violent protests in Sweden, Spain and  Turkey. Mauritania has closed Israel’s embassy.

Relations with Turkey, an important Muslim ally, have suffered severely. A group of top international judges and human rights investigators recently called for an inquiry into Israel’s actions in Gaza. “Israel Apartheid Week” drew participants in 54 cities around the world this month, twice the number of last year, according to its organizers. And even in the American Jewish community, albeit in its liberal wing, there is a chill.

The issue has not gone unnoticed here, but it has generated two distinct and somewhat contradictory reactions. On one hand, there is real concern. Global opinion surveys are being closely examined and the Foreign Ministry has been granted an extra $2 million to improve Israel’s image through cultural and information diplomacy.

“We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits,” said Arye Mekel, the ministry’s deputy director general for cultural affairs. “This way you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.”
 

This is all well and good, but it's not exactly news. Israel has been trying to do this for years. Mekel was the consul general in New York in 2007 when the Foreign Ministry hatched the idea of the Maxim "Girls of the IDF" photo shoot. And Israeli tourism officials have been playing this game too in their television spots.

The real issue is whether, at a time when even Israeli cultural exports are deemed complicit with the occupation (see here and here), that remains a winning strategy.