Region | Palestinian Territories
Israel wages PR campaign against Gaza report
Analyst says Tel Aviv wants to prevent UN condemnation and avoid being held accountable for its war excesses
- By Layelle Saad, Middle East Editor, Gulf News
- Published: 00:00 October 28, 2009
- Image Credit: Reuters
- A Palestinian boy stands next to his family's house, destroyed during Israel's offensive in Gaza. Israel is under pressure from its Western allies to carry out its own inquiry into the war, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided instead to appoint a small task force to review the report.
Dubai: Israel is no novice to the world of public relations and lobbying, but threats of prosecution for war crimes in Gaza after the issuance of the now famous Goldstone report has driven Tel Aviv to intensify efforts to polish its image and to attack those who support it.
"Israel wants to thwart any UN condemnation or accountability to prevent such a matter from happening again," Sobhi Ghandour, director of Al Hewar Center in Washington DC, told Gulf News.
Just over a week ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed his cabinet, saying "our struggle is to delegitimise the continuing attempt to delegitimise the state of Israel."
Ghandour said the Israeli campaign has just begun and will only intensify.
Media blitz
"This is simply because the report refutes Israel's allegations of self-defence," he said.
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Last week, the founder and former chairman of Human Rights Watch Richard Bernstein, in an article in the New York Times, criticised his own organisation saying it was biased against Israel.
"The article came as part of the Israeli campaign, but Bernstein has not been an effective member since 1998," Ghandour explained.
Human Rights Watch on Tuesday rose to defend itself against allegations of partiality. "At the heart of our critics' arguments lies the view that we should hold Israel to lower standards," Executive Director Kenneth Roth said in an editorial published in Israel's left-leaning Haaretz newspaper.
But "a country's conditions do not remove its obligations under international law," he wrote.
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