|
|
 |
Online Only -- 12.28.00
Spinning a Biblical Battle -- In New York
Israeli government officials were afraid that the conflict in the Holy Land was making them look like Goliath to the Palestinians's David. So they convened a meeting with America's top P.R. doctors and brainstormed about their image problem.
|
By
This past fall, televisions throughout the world flickered with sadly familiar scenes -- stone-throwing Palestinian youths fighting with armed Israeli soldiers. As unrest spread from a Jerusalem holy site to the Palestinian territories, Israelis feared fallout from the violent images that were being broadcast to viewers around the globe. "We looked like Goliath and they looked like David," says Nachman Shai, the Israeli minister who coordinates the country's international information efforts. "David is always more popular." Desperate to win public sympathy and alter the course of the media war, the Israelis turned to those they thought could help them best: American publicity powerhouses.
On October 12, Shmuel Sisso, the Israeli consul general in New York, presided over an extraordinary gathering of about a dozen consultants who offered their expertise for free -- from Howard Rubenstein, who handles such high-profile clients as Donald Trump and the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, to Ken Sunshine, who advises Barbra Streisand and Leonardo DiCaprio. "When you have a war you need the best generals, and when you have a media war we need the best PR people," says Sisso, who at the time was fending off criticism that he was mangling Israel's relations with the international media. (Immigration absorption minister Yael Tamir recently told The Jerusalem Post that she blamed Sisso for "Israel's failure in the press war." At press time, Alon Pinkas, the present chief of staff to Israel's minister of foreign affairs, was due to replace Sisso.)
Neither Sisso nor any of the PR experts present was anxious to speak about the late-afternoon meeting, held in a conference room at the Israeli consulate in midtown Manhattan. When Brill's Content initially asked the Israeli consul for media and public affairs, Yehuda Ya'akov, whether such a meeting had taken place, he dodged the question, saying, "We prefer to rely on our own expertise."
Howard Rubenstein is more forthcoming. "It was a very unusual gathering of people with real savvy," he says, calling the group "top-drawer; you had a few hundred years of experience around the table." Howard Teich, an attorney and a former president of the New York Metropolitan Region of the American Jewish Congress, corralled many of the attendees. In addition to Rubenstein and Sunshine, they included David Garth, who did the media campaigns for New York politicians Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo, and Michael Miller, executive vice-president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.
For Israel's antagonists, this public-relations mobilization comes as no surprise. "There is probably no limit to the amount of time and money that [the Israelis] are going to be willing to spend on this project," says Hussein Ibish, the communications director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), "because the Israelis have long realized, and the Palestinians are beginning to realize, how decisive the battle for public opinion in the United States [is]."
It wasn't the first time that the Israelis solicited expert opinions on how to handle international PR efforts. In 1994 Rubenstein Associates assisted with press releases and arranged interviews for the Israeli consulate in New York, receiving $10,123.29 for its work, according to a disclosure filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Under FARA, individuals or organizations that provide public-relations assistance to a foreign government must disclose their work -- even if it is pro bono. (At press time, no public-relations firm had registered work for the Israeli government since the October 12 meeting.)
The American PR experts urged the Israelis to "be more proactive," Sunshine says, and "offer more immediate spokesmen" to respond to crises. Rubenstein's firm provided pro bono assistance in placing Israel's representatives in various media outlets. His son, Steven Rubenstein, one of the firm's executive vice-presidents, helped draw up a rapid-response plan that was distributed to Sisso and Shai. The younger Rubenstein advised the consul general on the subtleties of the American media, "from the news cycles to who the right reporters are to who over time has shared Israel's perspective." (When asked who the "right reporters" were, Steven Rubenstein declined to elaborate.)
The Americans counseled the Israelis "that the war of images was being won by the Palestinians," Steven Rubenstein says. "We felt people were missing the full truth and that if you could show a fuller picture visually, it would be easier to make the Israeli case." Sunshine suggested that Sisso place the mothers of two lynched Israeli soldiers on television. More unorthodox was Shai's solution: Partially as a result of the ad hoc expert panel's advice, Shai equipped 15 random teams of soldiers with video cameras to document attacks on Israelis. "What you didn't see on television [were] the shots being fired at Israelis," Shai asserts.
"We want those cameras to at least provide pictures of the armed Palestinians that the press routinely ignores." Shai suggests that arming soldiers with cameras isn't unusual: "In this case the media [are] the battlefield. The fight to get positive media is part of our military efforts."
But the ADC's Ibish sees these efforts in a different light. "One of Israel's greatest advantages over the Palestinians is their diplomatic advantage -- their ability to make sure the United States uses its muscle to keep all the other countries of the world and the United Nations out of this situation," he charges. "If the Israelis aren't able to prevail in terms of public relations in the United States, they might lose that advantage."
Ibish says that although the Israelis "are in most cases still considerably more advanced at this art" of communicating with the American public than their Palestinian counterparts, the Arabs are catching up. The ADC responded to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by taking out full-page ads in papers across the country in the fall and "weigh[ing] in very heavily," Ibish says, with op-eds and grassroots work. "It's the first time in a long time that an Arab organization has done a very large media campaign," Ibish says. "We've done that without consulting outside PR experts."
Since the October 12 conference, the Israelis have acknowledged that they could use help. They continue to receive counsel from American professional consultants; as of press time, there had been at least three follow-up conference calls with the PR experts. "There is no 'we' and 'they' when it comes to the media now....The local media and the international media [are] one entity," says Shai. "It's very important for us to get the American point of view....For that, we have to consult with American experts, and we do." 
|
|
|
Have an opinion about what you just read?
Join the discussion on our message boards.
a letter to the editor.
We post some of the letters we receive, and may edit for length and clarity. Please tell us if you don't want us to share yours. |
|
|
|
| DISCUSS this article on the message boards. |
|
| a letter to the editor.
|
|
| READ recent feedback.
|
|
