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Israel's Unique Public Diplomacy Dilemma

(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Alan Baker - The initial few days of international sympathy and understanding for Israel's right to defend its population rapidly metamorphosed into a wave of condemnation. The change came with the deliberate propagation of a false and distorted equivalence between a terror organization blatantly violating humanitarian norms and a democratic state legitimately defending itself against terror. In so doing, the media chooses to ignore the Palestinian use of its civilian population as human shields and the blatant abuse of hospitals, schools, mosques, private homes, public buildings as rocket emplacements and weapons storage facilities, and the hundreds of kilometers of offensive, strategic tunnels under Gaza that endanger civilian life above. Public diplomacy should bring to the attention of the international community the extensive and illegal use and abuse of children by Hamas for military and propaganda purposes, as well as the illegal use of incendiary balloons and other anti-environment and anti-ecology weapons to destroy Israel's agriculture and to pollute its environment. The writer, former legal counsel to Israel's foreign ministry and former ambassador to Canada, heads the international law program at the Jerusalem Center.
2021-07-01 00:00:00
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