Hoary Bugaboo

 Re: “Israel’s Delegitimizers Are Gaining,” (Editor’s column, June 4), it is dismaying to see that, yet again, Israel’s rapidly growing unpopularity in the world being attributed to that hoary bugaboo, “bad hasbara” (i.e.,  public relations), rather than to its actual causation – Israel’s disastrously wrong-headed and self-destructive occupation of the West Bank and its blockade of Gaza.  

From reading Gary Rosenblatt’s column, one gets no sense that the real source of the worldwide opprobrium being heaped on Israel for its lethal response to the “Freedom Flotilla”—which Rosenblatt sees as “further proof that Jerusalem must change dramatically its hasbara efforts”—is its siege of Gaza that is immiserating the lives of 1.5 million civilians, and, by extension, the occupation itself.  And for all the misery the siege is causing Gaza’s civilian population, after three years Hamas is stronger and better armed than it was at the outset.
Without a two-state solution, which is achievable only through consistent and determined American diplomatic leadership, the efforts of those relatively few critics who genuinely seek Israel’s demise will continue to gather strength. No amount of hasbara, or the futile propaganda counter-offensive that Rosenblatt proposes, will stem that tide.

Steering Committee
J Street – NYC