The biggest hasbara flop ever

In her 2005 book, "The Other War," the title of which refers to the battle between Israel and the palestinians for "media supremacy," Stephanie Gutmann describes the hasbara opportunities squandered in the Karine A incident.

Meanwhile, the ship itself had finally docked at the Israeli port of Eilat . . ., and the IDF press department, undeterred by the skepticism exhibited at the the press conference, was getting the arms cache ready for its big moment in the spotlight -- without any help from the division that had the best rapport with foreign diplomats and the press, the MFA.  "[The IDF] just didn't trust us," explained a foreign ministry official.  The rift between the two agencies was painfully obvious to the journalistic community when one of the reporters who had been at the Friday press conference called Gideon Meir, head of the MFA press division, for a statement about the significance of the Karine A, and Meir had to tell him that he hadn't heard about any ship capture and had no idea what he was talking about.  It was another incident that made the Israeli government look inept -- and therefore perhaps untrustworthy in its claims about the ship as well.

And later ...

Former IDF spokeswoman Col. Miri Eisen shudders when she talks about the Karine A affair, which she calls "the biggest [hasbara] flop ever."  . . .  The press conference in Eilat had been first and foremost a photo op made for Israeli television. The world audience had not been their first concern.

It would appear that it still isn't.  In an editorial comment today at the Jerusalem Post, David Horovitz is understandably livid over what he calls "a scandalous saga of withheld film."

Whichever Israeli officials took the ultimate decision to withhold, for hour after eternal hour on Monday, the IDF's footage of Israel's naval commandos being beaten to within inches of their lives aboard the Mavi Marmara, should be relieved of their responsibilities, effective immediately.

If you have not yet read this piece, please do.  The sense of rage and betrayal behind it is palpable and utterly justified.  Horovitz references similar failures during the 2006 Lebanon war.  And there are echoes of the failures in the 2002 Karine A incident, as well.

Let there be no doubt about this. The failure to release in good time the video evidence that showed exactly why Israeli commandos resorted to live fire aboard the Mavi Marmara, the video evidence that would emphatically have affected the way the incident was perceived around the world, was not accidental. Neither was it the consequence of some kind of bureaucratic snafu. Nor was it held back for technical reasons.

It was the result of a decision. The officials, in their various competing, conflicting, inadequate propaganda hierarchies, actively chose, after consultation, not to release it. (The Jerusalem Post's military correspondent Yaakov Katz provides some of the specifics elsewhere on these pages.) [Link: here]

Some of their considerations are not beneath contempt. There was a legitimate concern, for instance, that the footage, showing colleagues in such trouble, might prove demoralizing for Israeli troops. And some of their considerations are utterly contemptible, including the scandalous parochial obsession with local TV - the insistent, misguided desire to hold back dramatic material until late in the Israeli day, so that as many people as possible here will see it fresh on the 8 p.m. Hebrew nightly news.

This stuff matters.  It's inexcusable that Horovitz is still having to ask a lot of the same questions that Stephie Gutmann asked back in 2005, and that a lot of us have been asking for decades.

Israel will pay and pay for that failure [of the delayed footage] in the days, weeks and months ahead.

But will it spark the long overdue strategic overhaul of Israel's conduct on the "second battlefield?" Will it finally prompt the prime minister to establish a single, effective, properly resourced hierarchy to coordinate the way Israel presents and explains its challenges in the media, legal and diplomatic forums?

If past performance is any indication of future results, sadly, it won't.