A few days ago, IDF soldiers helped a Palestinian woman give birth, and saved her baby’s life as well. The mainstream media ignored it.
Yesterday, an Israeli woman went into labor and had her baby in a Palestinian hospital. The wire services are all over it.
What’s the difference between the two stories? Well, first of all, the IDF saving a baby goes against the narrative. Secondly, the Israeli PR machine is practically nonexistent, while the Palestinian PR machine is always there, always ready with a quote, and constantly feeds stories to the media. And lastly, well, the media have a problem with Israel, as the anti-Israel slant of most news stories shows.
Just look at the subhead on the CBS news AP feed: “Israeli Woman’s Birth In Palestinian Hospital Warmly Welcomed With Official Visits, Flowers.” The narrative? The friendly Palestinians are ready to be good neighbors with Israel. Why, Mahmoud Abbas even sent flowers to the woman. And told the hospital not to charge her.
Now, the story about the Palestinian woman whose baby was saved by the IDF? You can’t find it outside the Israeli and Jewish media. It’s in JTA, the JPost, Ynet, and a few other spots. So whose fault is it that this story didn’t get carried?
Israel’s. Where is the PR from the IDF about soldiers saving a baby’s life? Where are the news releases and pictures of cute babies? Why is there not a constant flow of good news to counter the bad news that the media pounds us with? Hasbara is not working.
This is an argument that you’ve seen throughout the JBlogosphere, and it’s one that Israelis need to finally have among themselves. Years ago, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. was visiting my synagogue, and a fellow congregant and I were trying to impress upon him how Israel was losing the PR war. He kept repeating the figures of the polls that show Americans support Israel, always, over the Palestinians. Not the point. The point is that Israel is constantly demonized, and the Palestinians are constantly whitewashed. Take this story, for example. The media show how friendly Abbas is, sending flowers and comping the hospital bill, but that same media did not take much notice ofwords like these:
“We have frankly said, and always will say: If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it,†Abbas told reporters in Ramallah.
You had to go to the Israeli press for that quote. I can’t find it anywhere else.
There’s one last angle of this story that doesn’t get very much play: The woman in question converted to Islam, and married a Muslim. That made a world of difference in how she was treated. Just ask Gaza’s Christians. Or the Israelis who make a wrong turn in the West Bank and have to be rescued by the Palestinian security forces.
I’m certainly not a raging feminist but I, for the life of me, can’t understand why ANY woman would convert to Islam.
Hubby insisted of course. Either she converted or he wouldn’t marry her; I’d bet that was the deal. Now she’s not a Jew anymore, so she may be welcome in Palistan. But when Abbas said “no Israelis” he meant Judenrein.
Curiously enough, any call that no Arab should live in Israel would be greeted, justifiably, with condemnation. But it’s considered quite ordinary and unexceptionable for Arabs to make their state judenrein.
And this leads to one other curious thing about Arab propaganda–Notice they never even say, however sincerely, something like “of course Jews who choose to live in the democratic and secular Palestinian state will be equal citizens as long as they agree to be subject to the laws and customs of the Palestinian state.” Few Jews except haredi loonies would stick around to test out such an offer–but the Palestinians never even make it. That their minds don’t even come up with this as a propaganda talking point shows something significant about the Arab mind.
Alex,
And the fact that Western media and Western squishes never wonder why they don’t say something like that, says something significant about the squishy mind, too.