Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

The State of Israel seems to be dire straits — it has an image problem. A survey last year revealed Israel as the least popular ‘brand’ in the world. Since then it has launched various programs to improve its image worldwide, each more desperate than the other. Here is a sampling.

Porno PR

Here is what YNet had reported earlier this year:

The Israeli Consulate in New York has come up with an ingenious idea to promote tourism to Israel in the United States: officials there have managed to twist the arms of the most popular US men’s magazine, Maxim, to write a feature about stunning Israeli models…[and] encourage American tourists to come to Israel cashing in on the country’s reputation for being home to some of the world’s most beautiful women.

Maxim editors initially rejected a proposal by the Israeli Consulate to cover the personal stories of famous Israeli models, but when the Consulate sent pictures of 12 carefully selected beauty queens, Maxim was quick to acquiesce…

The magazine is sending a team of three top photographers to Israel for a photo shoot of the models at several locations in the center of Israel…The project includes the production of a video featuring the models which the consulate plans to send to American television broadcasters.

The magazine has since published an issue covering half naked Israeli women soldiers . Even in Israel some thought it was stooping too low, but apparently the Israeli Embassy in the US is not constrained by any such concerns. Here is an image of a formal invitation sent for an event celebrating the publication of the ‘lads-magazine’ at the Israeli embassy.

Enlisting Racist Defenders

Earlier I had mentioned the curious phenomena of neo-nazi’s in Israel’s military (some with swastikas tattooed on their arms), but the real threat Israel has faced has never been physical — it is a political one. Faced with diminishing support in Europe, Israel once again resorts to the familiar tactic of crying ‘anti-Semitism’. According to its defenders, there is not other reason why anyone should find any problem with its brutal occupation, routine murder of children and stragulation of a whole native population. However, the choice for the new assault on Israel’s criticis could not have been more improbable. Chastising the Left for its purported anti-Jewish bigotry is none other than Richard Littlejohn, a man who has built a career on racist rabble-rousing and xenophobic attacks on immigrants. Channel 4, the putatively ‘liberal’ British channel, gets a cretinous bigot to smear critics of Israel, and conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism — and pontificate on ethnic tolerance!

Lets look at Littlejohn’s own record of tolerance.

On Rwanda: “Does anyone really give a monkey’s about what happens in Rwanda? If the Mbongo tribe wants to wipe out the Mbingo tribe then as far as I am concerned that is entirely a matter for them”.

On Palestinians: He has also called the Palestinians “the pikeys of the Middle East” and suggested that it was time to “wring [their] necks”. “Pikey” is a racist reference to Gypsies, one of Littlejohn’s pet hates, along with gays and asylum seekers. (Tony Greenstein)

On Lebanon: “Islamonazis are sophisticated propagandists and they know they’ll find a gullible audience in the civilised world for their carefully-strewn teddy bears, strategically-placed ‘Baby Milk Factory’ signs (in English) and wailing widows from central casting…Have you ever noticed how every time a coalition air strike goes astray in Iraq, it always manages to hit a ‘wedding party’? …Why is there only ever one child’s shoe in the rubble, never a pair? There always seems to be a broken medicine box, too, with a handy red cross – never a red crescent, mind you – on the lid, just in case we haven’t got the message…I use a rough rule of thumb whenever I watch television coverage of the Middle East. Anyone who pronounces Hezbollah as ‘Hiz-bull-arrrgh’ and Israeli as ‘Izza-ra-ay-lee’ is almost certainly telling lies.“

On Muslims: “here is a simple cut-out-and-keep guide to the two dominant branches of Islam: Sunnis are the peace-loving, Saudi-backed wing who brought you Al Qaeda. Shias are the peace-loving, Iranian-backed strain behind Hamas and Hezbollah. I hope that helps.”

The man’s personality was best summed up by George Galloway: “Littlejohn is a drivelling guttersnipe who long ago fell out of the gutter into the sewer . . . This man is a moron. This man is a boor. This man is an idiot”.

Iranian Jews

If there is one thing Israel has always done well, it is displacing native populations. Except its new effort to create refugees seems not to have borne fruit. Guardian reports:

Iran’s Jews have given the country a loyalty pledge in the face of cash offers aimed at encouraging them to move to Israel, the arch-enemy of its Islamic rulers.

The incentives — ranging from £5,000 a person to £30,000 for families — were offered from a special fund established by wealthy expatriate Jews in an effort to prompt a mass migration to Israel from among Iran’s 25,000-strong Jewish community. The offers were made with Israel’s official blessing and were additional to the usual state packages it provides to Jews emigrating from the diaspora.

However, the Society of Iranian Jews dismissed them as “immature political enticements” and said their national identity was not for sale.

“The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradeable for any amount of money,” the society said in a statement. “Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Iran’s Jews love their Iranian identity and their culture, so threats and this immature political enticement will not achieve their aim of wiping out the identity of Iranian Jews.”

The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv reported that the incentives had been doubled after earlier offers of £2,500 a head failed to attract any Iranian Jews to leave for Israel.

Iran’s sole Jewish MP, Morris Motamed, said the offers were insulting and put the country’s Jews under pressure to prove their loyalty.

“It suggests the Iranian Jew can be encouraged to emigrate by money,” he said. “Iran’s Jews have always been free to emigrate and three-quarters of them did so after the revolution but 70% of those went to America, not Israel.”

Iran’s Jewish population has dwindled from around 80,000 at the time of the 1979 Islamic revolution but remains the largest of any country in the Middle East apart from Israel. Jews have lived in Iran since at least 700BC.