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Arnold Flick

Israeli PR and Hezbollah

As of now, the Israeli public relations agencies are again failing their task. Why is it left to US Senator Graham, writing in the Wall Street Journal, to alert the US public that Hezbollah is using civilian buildings, including hospitals, as storage and launch sites for its Israel targeted rockets? This storage technique was used by Hamas in the Gaza war, and Israel’s need to destroy them led to a terrible international outcry against Israel, “disproportionate force”…”civilian deaths”, that was of such power that it likely played a hand in a premature, i.e. non-victorious, cease-fire.

With this experience in recent memory, Israel should now be alerting the world to Hezbollah’s atrocity of hiding weapons among children and other non-combatants and of the civilian casualties that will result. Instead, Israel is silent to the world on this while its PR bureaucracy moves its papers from one desk to another and goes home for the day.

There are war clouds over the North and Israel has lost several wars from its inability to counter organized propaganda against it. Experience shows that the world press will favor the Arabs in an Israeli-Arab war. While hoping that war will not happen, it is nonetheless important that Israel, just as it trains its soldiers in anticipation of the worst, also starts its public relations early in preparation.

About the Author
Arnold L. Flick was born 1930 of secular, Zionist, Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. He has followed events in Israel since age seven when he first solicited for the “Jews of Palestine” on the streets of Los Angeles as a young member of Habonim. He was in Israel for four months 1990-91 and for two months 2002. He is active in the House of Israel Balboa park, a non-profit museum in Balboa Park, San Diego, that provides information about Israel to its 15,000 annual visitors.