Is re-branding Israel possible?

December 9, 2005; 14:04 EST
1.

When people in North America think of Israel, they usually think of The Conflict - and don't think about what Israel really is: a modern country with cell phones, high tech, science, schools, good music, theatre, lots of TV channels, etc.

"This might be a long term strategic problem for Israel", told me the head of one of the many Washington think tanks in our first conversation. It was a bit of a surprise, as I asked him to outline the more serious problems Israel might have in America - but he was insistent.

"If you are going to get to the point that people only see you through the Israeli-Palestinian conflict", he said, "it will make you a nuisance, something it's better to forget all about".

Ambassador Gideon Meir, Deputy Director General for media and public affairs at Israel's Foreign Ministry, can't agree more. He is currently in the U.S., spending some time in Atlanta, Georgia, with a group of media professionals working in the various Israeli consulates across North America. His mission is an ambitious one, some might say an impossible one: re-branding Israel. He would like these younger Foreign Ministry spokesmen to try and concentrate on Israel beyond the conflict.

"I'd rather have a Style section item on Israel, then a front page story", he says.

The re-branding project is not new. A committee consisting of the General Directors of the Foreign Ministry, the Finance Ministry and the Ministry of the Prime Minister is working on it. A group of advertising experts volunteered to prepare the necessary campaign together with other steps being taken.

Is it a task worth doing? For sure. Is it going to work? To some extent it might. Meir tells me a story of his days in Washington, in the late seventies, as he was attending an event in an embassy of another country.

"The hostess told me, 'Look at us, our Prime Minister was here last week for a state visit, and all he got is a three lines item in one of the pages inside the paper. But you, whenever you have someone coming, you get a front-page headline'. You know what I told her? Take the headline and give me the three lines".

Or, for that matter, give New Zealand the headline, and let us have the Style section piece on tourism in the Galilee.

2.

A reader sent me the Bylaws of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), following my piece on the financial dispute between the attorneys for the two former employees Rosen and Weissman and the organization.

Section 18: "AIPAC shall, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, indemnify and hold harmless any person who is or was an employee or agent of AIPAC...against any losses, claims, damages, expenses (including attorney's fees) or liabilities, to which the ...employee or agent may become subject in connection with any matter arising out of or related to AIPAC, its business or affairs, except to the extent any such loss, claim, damage, liability, or expense is finally judicially determined to be primarily attributable to such...employee's or agent's gross negligence, bad faith, fraud, or willful misconduct or willful breach of such person's duties and responsibilities in any material respect."

So the question remains: Is it just a negotiation disagreement over fees, or is it AIPAC's intention to wait until the end of the trial and find out if it is "finally judicially determined" that the two former employees engaged in "gross negligence, bad faith, fraud, or willful misconduct or willful breach of such person's duties"?

People close to the organization hint it is more likely to be the first option.

3.

I have three pieces in the weekend print edition of Haaretz. One is an extended version of my new Spielberg movie review. One deals with the death penalty in the U.S. (it's only in the Hebrew version of the paper) And the third one (which you can read here) is an Op-Ed on the Gilchrist candidacy in Orange County, California, and the immigration debate. It's been written before Gilchrist almost won but then lost))

4.

My week long email exchange with Rabbi Eric Yoffie of the Reform movement ends today with a question on the ways with which to "maintain our connection to Judaism and the Jewish people"?

You can now read the whole Q&A session of the entire week.

My next week guest will be a representative of a younger generation of North American Jewry - as far from the "Jewish establishment" as can possibly be. Mireille Silcoff, a journalist and editor specializing in contemporary culture. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the new Guilt & Pleasure Quarterly, dealing with Jewish writing and ideas. Silcoff hosts and moderates a notoriously raucous discussion salon in Toronto (for full Bio go to Mireille's web site). As usual, we encourage those of you who would like to ask questions to start send them to rosnersdomain@haaretz.co.il. I hope it will be an interesting (and somewhat provocative) dialog.

Shabbat Shalom.