The Consul-General began with a description of how the Palestinians responded to Israel's disengagement with rockets. That gave me a minute to track down my last post about how it's an obnoxious waste of time to organize conference calls and then spend time discussing how the Palestinians responded to Israel's disengagement with rockets. And that isn't close to my biggest concern about this conference call.

This felt like - well, a lot like what I imagine San Francisco group therapy sessions feel like. Forced informality. Mantric emphasis on "comfort" and "interactivity." There were even obligatory gestures toward banal dialogue: the General Consul repeatedly asked people who opposed Cast Lead to speak up. With all due respect, no. There might be a place where Israeli officials give anti-Israel partisans the opportunity to vent at them. But that's not what we're supposed to be doing here. And in the meantime those people have DailyKos diaries where they can gleefully celebrate Israeli deaths and team up with anti-Semitic white supremacists.

Israel's new public diplomacy push is vitally important. It was showing some results during the first couple days of Operation Cast Lead, when the world tuned in and discovered that rockets had been falling on Israeli schools and hospitals for eight years. But a week later - an eternity in today's media environment - Israeli officials are losing the media war. They're losing it so badly that journalists have already had time to write process stories about how badly they're losing it.

If the Israel MFA wants to reverse that trend they're going to have to be serious about their new media strategy. Example: Robert Avrech blogs at Seraphic Secret and is an Emmy Award winning screenwriter. He was on the call and tried to make a point about the abysmal image management of Israeli spokespeople. In other words he tried to make a point about an area in which he is an acknowledged expert. First thing that happened: the Consul General apologized in advance for disagreeing with him. Come on. Nobody has time for this. There are places to spare people's feelings - as if Robert is so delicate that he needs that anyway - but that's not this place. Next thing that happened: the Consul General explained that - Arab accusations notwithstanding - the IDF does not intentionally cultivate attractive female spokeswomen. Because we wouldn't want that. Right after that: some kind of expression of faith in the ability of people to sift truth from falsehood. All of that was mere minutes after my attempt to discuss the way that arguments are circumscribed by the infrastructure of new communication technologies. My abortive attempt.

2,500 years ago Aristotle pointed out that, all things being equal, truth will defeat falsehood. The reason he said that was so he could immediately point out that things are almost never equal and that people who want to convey the truth need to learn how to package it. It turns out that Israel has made 90,000 "knocking on the roof" cell phone calls warning Palestinian civilians about impending Israeli attacks. The Consul General expressed confusion as to why that isn't more widely known.

References:
* America's Voices Conference Call - Operation Cast Lead [MR]
* Daily Kos Teams up With Neo-Nazi Group Stormfront to Defend Cynthia McKinney..... [Weasel Zippers]
* Schram: Israel is losing the PR war [Scripps]
* Anti-Israel Photojournalists Struggling To Cope With Extensive Israeli Humanitarian Measures, Low Palestinian Collateral Damage [MR]
* Memo To Israeli PR: Less Inaccurate Economic Talking Points, More Hot Israeli Chicks [MR]

Previously:
* Just A Reminder: Arab Media Is A Cesspool Of Genocidal Anti-Semitic Incitement
* Israel Launches High-Tech Public Diplomacy Outreach To Explain Operation Cast Lead
* Mere Rhetoric: Israeli PMO Posts Videos Of Yeshiva Massacre On YouTube (Plus: MR Going Offline Till Tuesday) [Videos]