“From the height of admiration after the Six Day War, Israel has hit bottom, sharing the position with the likes of North Korea,” writes Bernhard Lazarus in an essay entitled “Israel's Public Relations: The Problem and the Solution.” In a world where “politics is war by other means,” that is a problem.

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And the solution?  “A knowledge of history is essential,” he points out, “therefore it is the first thing one's enemies try to destroy… one can consequently claim that there never was a Jewish connection to the land – so then why should the Jews have it?”

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Here are some of the key points that he makes:

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• It is worth noting that the Jewish State was effectively created through the efforts of the countries of the world in San Remo and Geneva years prior to the Holocaust.

• Jerusalem, except for fewer than 200 years in the 11th and 12th Centuries, when it was the capital of a short-lived Crusader State, has only been a capital city under Jewish rule. At other times since the Roman conquest it was not even considered by Muslims, or anyone else, a provincial city of consequence.

• In the War of 1948-49, Jordan illegally seized Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish inhabitants, destroyed all the synagogues and on top of the ancient sacred Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, after taking ancient Jewish headstones to use as the floor of latrines, Jordan built a hotel.

• The aggression by Egypt, Syria and Jordan in June 1967 was overturned by Israel. Israel liberated Jerusalem, took control of the Golan Heights, from which Syrians had been shooting down at Israeli farmers, and entered the West Bank, which was under illegal Jordanian occupation.

• Anti-Apartheid movements in South Africa wanted equal political and other democratic rights for all -- irrespective of race -- but never advocated the destruction of South Africa.

• Israel currently has no Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the post of Minister of Information does not exist. This creates the message, as former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir put it, of being the "prime minister of six million prime ministers".

• An even more urgent condition is that Israeli authorities refuse to deal with the considerable number of renegade Israeli academics (and others) harming Israel on the international scene, presumably for their personal reasons.

 

The essay can be read in its entirety at https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9961/israel-public-relations