By Ted Belman
A few weeks ago, after MK Erdan was appointed Hasbara Minister, I complained Erdan’s Hasbara budget is much too small. Erdan had been given $25 million in the first year to fight BDS and I wrote it should be more like $250 million.Then I started a Petition to PM Netanyahu, We demand that you vastly increase Israel’s hasbara budget.. In it I referred to the many articles Martin Sherman had written on the subject. Sherman famously asked for a billion dollar budget arguing that the expenditure should be seen as part of the Defense Budget.
And now Phyllis Chesler has added her voice in her article, Israel Needs a Global “Iron Dome” – Against Defamation
What We Must Do
As Jews, we are commanded to stand against evil in our time; we are not commanded to complete this work.
Although I certainly support it, I do not believe that bravely standing up at Berkeley or San Francisco State and holding an Israeli flag is equivalent to “taking back the campuses.” Nor do I think that training a handful of future students to engage more effectively in on-campus shouting matches or counter-demonstrations will do the job. Nor do I think that documenting the Big Lies—something I and others have done—is enough.
We need the equivalent of a global “Iron Dome” to protect Israel from defamation.
We must outwit the opposition globally—which is their chosen playing field. We need a worldwide, multi-language, pro-Israel, pro-America, pro-West, unbiased “al-Jazeera,” a TV and internet station that focuses not only on Israel but also covers the world—but when it comes to the Middle East, simply tells the truth. This may cost billions of dollars each and every year.
This cannot be done on the cheap and it cannot be staffed by con artists of “sensation.” This must be a sober undertaking of high quality. We need team players, strategic thinkers, not breakaway egotists. We have the talent, we lack the money.
We need funding to de-program all those who have been brainwashed into this mass anti-Zionist psychosis. Campus wide mandatory all-day Teach-Ins must be held every single semester on at least 2,000 American campuses (less than half of the existing 4,500 campuses).
This is barely a start.
The true history of the Middle East, including the history of Jews, especially that of the Jews in Arab and Muslim countries and the true history of religious minorities in Muslim countries must be taught in the West. In order to balance an unbalanced view of history, we must teach students and professors about Islam’s long history of imperialism, colonialism, conversion via the sword, anti-black racism, slavery, and religious and gender apartheid. We have the talent, we lack the money. Above all, we lack unity.
We must also shed our illusions—permanently. We cannot expect that conditions will always improve, or that one country or another will always be a safe haven for Jews. We have repeated our history many times.
Our ancestors suffered in exile for more than two thousand years, and while we are privileged to live at a time when our homeland has been restored to us, it was foolish to have thought that Jew-hatred would suddenly become extinct or that Israel would not remain under siege.
As Jews, as Israelis, as members of a nation holy unto God, we must understand, and never forget, that ours is an eternal struggle.
@ babushka:
BB:
I think Israel already has that kind of power. But for a long time now, the country has fallen under control of worms who substitute double-talk for meaningful Jewish nationalist action, and who repeatedly disgraced themselves, the Jewish nation, and the Jewish state by licking the figurative asses of the goyim while turning stone-like faces to their own Jews.
What Israel needs is a Jewish version of Harry Truman, who had common sense enough to know the difference between bullshit and facts; and who had the courage to fire popular but worthless big-shots such as General Douglas MacArthur; allowed nobody to shove him around; and who meant what he was doing when he put up the desktop sign that said:
“The buck stops here.”
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
…development of military technology so intimidating that the enemies of Israel are afraid to aggress against the Jewish State.
A billion dollar budget to fund a hasbara (propaganda) campaign for the Jewish state to fight the anti-Israel BDS movement?
This amounts to little more than scatter-brained nonsense. Reasons:
1) Regardless of its funding levels, any anti-BDS campaign will accomplish little more than enriching some high-priced American-based public relations agents, and possibly help some if the worthless gang of Jewish community would-be “leaders” feel a little better about Israel, for whatever that might be worth.
2) All of you who read these comments must know that the Moslem world in general and the Arab Moslem world in particular will never make true peace with anybody, and especially so with the Jewish State of Israel. So Israel can never permit any Arab state to assemble itself on any of the lands west of the Jordan River. So ultimately, those land parcels must be annexed to the State of Israel and filled with an expanding Jewish population. So what happens then to your billion dollars per year propaganda campaign?
3) A billion dollars per year will be much better spent on more Jewish housing all across Area C — which is the key to permanently controlling all Yesha — along with roads to better interconnect those Jewish settlements, Jewish-owned commerce and industry to employ and support those Jewish communities, Jewish-owned farms, a Jewish-controlled water supply, and Jewish militiamen and militiawomen to shoot dead any Arab enemy who contends against their Jewish presence. And so on.
The only substantive answer to Jew-hatred — which is what the BDS is all about — is to build up Jewish national power. There is not now and never has been any adquate substitute for power. So start building just that, and forget idea of trying to purchase good will.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI