"Beautiful Israel:" See it Here

One of the cheesier keepsakes I’ve ever bought in Israel came, not surprisingly, from a touristy shop on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda Street. A fridge magnet, it shows a zebra on a grassy veldt under the slogan, “Hello from Israel!” Of course there are no zebras in the Holy Land, but you had to stop and think there for a minute, didn’t you? Aside from gags like that, you’d be hard-pressed to find visual surprises among Israel posters, souvenirs and postcards. You can probably picture most of them without even springing for a stamp: sober depictions of daveners at the Wailing Wall; shots of dusty ruins; sunset glinting off the Dome of the Rock; cartoon maps dotted with little icons showing camels in the Negev and snorkelers in the Red Sea and so on. Flip through a...

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Hasbara? Leave it to the Canadians

Senior Editor Mandy Katz reports from Israel: Rather than presenting its case to foreigners, Israel should save its breath, a leading Israeli diplomat asserted last week. "Yes to public diplomacy, no to apologetics," former U.S. Consul-General Alon Pinkas told an audience assembled at Jerusalem's Begin Center to review new projects aimed at improving Israel's international image. "Let the Canadians defend their right to exist," asserted Pinkas. "Not us." His comments, reported in HaAretz, poured a surprisingly cold bucket of water on 150 fresh-faced university students finishing up StandWithUs, a year-long program in improving Israeli outreach. "Hasbara," he told them—using the term for Israel advocacy, propaganda or public relations—"is not a policy, but a Jewish state of mind." Pinkas's remarks may have shocked his immediate audience into temporary silence but are hardly new in the discussion of what Israel's international...

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