Sharon Tells His Aides to Take PR Offensive

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took time out this week from dealing with his nation’s security woes to address its public relations problems, putting the Foreign Ministry on notice that he is unhappy with its efforts to explain Israeli policies abroad.

Israel, Sharon admonished Director-General Avi Gil, should not explain its approach to the Palestinians solely in security terms. It should also always remember to stress what he said is the “Jewish right to the land” and what he termed the Palestinian Authority’s corruption.

The prime minister’s involvement in plotting public relations strategy underscores the importance Israel attaches to its international image at a time when its measures against the Palestinians face increasing criticism abroad. From the beginning of the Palestinian revolt more than 10 months ago, both sides have placed enormous value on gaining support for their policies from the international community, seeing the public relations war as equal in importance to the actual fighting.

Lately, Israel has felt the tide of international opinion turning against it. In what participants say was a sometimes tense two-hour session with senior officials at his house Monday, Sharon faulted both the Foreign Ministry’s message and its messengers. The criticism, participants say, concerned both style and substance.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who was at the session, disagrees with Sharon’s demonizing of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, his security services and bureaucracy, as well as with the prime minister’s refusal to talk to the Palestinians until all attacks on Israelis stop and a cooling-off period is observed. Peres tried and failed this week to win Sharon’s permission to open a channel of communication with Arafat.

Sharon and Peres agree, however, that international criticism is likely to intensify as it becomes clear that Israel has abandoned a cease-fire brokered by the U.S. in June, which never really took hold, and as the country continues to hunt down Palestinian militants.

Officially, Israel remains committed to the cease-fire. But this week, the army changed its rules of engagement, dropping restrictions on opening fire that were imposed when Sharon announced in May that Israel would observe a unilateral cease-fire.

The restrictions stipulated that soldiers could shoot at Palestinians only if their lives were in danger. Now field commanders can open fire on Palestinians they see as posing a threat to Israeli troops or civilians. Also this week, Sharon stopped speaking of exercising “restraint,” saying instead that Israel is pursuing “active self-defense.”

Facing what its intelligence services say could well be many more months of fighting, the government hopes to blunt international criticism with a more sophisticated public relations campaign.

Fewer soldiers in uniform will be put before cameras to explain Israeli actions. More women--including Deputy Defense Minister Dalia Rabin-Pelossof and female lawmakers--will be tapped as spokespersons. Peres has suggested mobilizing Israeli intellectuals, such as author Amos Oz, to make Israel’s case. The campaign is timed to coincide with the Jewish High Holidays in the fall and will be aimed at the American Jewish community.

Sharon wants it to stress the righteousness of Israel’s cause.

“The prime minister said that we don’t emphasize enough that this is our birthright, this is not just a security issue,” said Raanan Gissin, a Sharon spokesman who participated in the meeting.

When Palestinians claim that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are built on Palestinian land, Israeli spokesmen should note that “we recognize that there are other people who live on that land now and that they are entitled to rights by living on that land, but the whole land of Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish people,” Gissin said.

The heightened concern with public relations is a response to “efforts to de-legitimize Israel, to mobilize anti-Semitism against Jews and Israel, a systematic campaign to try to isolate Israel. Fighting this is as important as fighting terrorism,” Gissin said.

He cited a lawsuit against Sharon in a Belgian court as an example of anti-Semitism. The lawsuit was filed by a Palestinian survivor of the massacre of refugees in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Sharon, who was Israel’s defense minister at the time, is blamed for failing to stop Israel’s Lebanese Christian allies, the Phalangists, from carrying out the killings.

Denmark’s reluctance to accept a former head of Israel’s domestic security agency, Shin Bet, as an ambassador and moves to equate Zionism with racism at an upcoming United Nations gathering on racism are also evidence of growing anti-Semitism, Gissin said.

“We are trying to counter the anti-Semitic wave that is now engulfing Europe in the guise of international lawsuits,” he said.

But even within the Foreign Ministry, some senior officials say that no public relations campaign can protect Israel’s image if the world sees its policies toward the Palestinians as too harsh.

“When things don’t go so well in the political and diplomatic arenas, there are certain politicians who say it is probably the fault of the public relations system,” said one senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They think that if we only find the tools to effectively explain our position to the world, everything will be great.”

Writing in the Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, Shlomo Gazit, the retired head of military intelligence, said that even though he believes that Israel’s “focused elimination” policy against Palestinian militants is justified, the policy is causing too much damage to the nation’s image.

“The use of heavy weapons--attack helicopters or tanks--against a single terrorist creates the image of an Israeli Goliath fighting a Palestinian David,” Gazit said.