| Haiti: An Israeli Public Relations Moment? |
| Written by Benjamin Joffe-Walt Published Wednesday, January 20, 2010 |
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Israel has without question been in dire need of an image makeover.
Israel sent more than 200 Israeli doctors, nurses, soldiers and volunteers to Haiti soon after the gravity of the damage in Haiti became apparent. Within two days of arriving, the Israeli delegation had set up a field hospital, administered emergency medical aid from the Port-au-Prince stadium and rescued over a dozen living survivors from collapsed buildings.
Jewish state's rapid and extensive response has hardly gone unnoticed by the country's media, diplomats and foreign advocates. Updates from Israel's delegation in Haiti have been sent regularly to hundreds of Israeli and foreign journalists via email, video, blogs and social networking sites.
Journalists were even sent a video of ZAKA volunteers somewhat unsuccessfully leading a group of Haitians in singing the Jewish song "Heveinu Shalom Aleichem", literally meaning "We have brought peace upon you."
But while praising Israel's response, critics say Israeli attempts to accent their aid to Haiti have been over-the-top, and accuse Israeli public relations officials of exploiting the disaster for political ends.
"The extreme right wing in Israel is using the Haiti operation to reframe the fallout from the Goldstone report in the eyes of the world," Dr Yoel Donchin, an Israeli anesthesiologist and a veteran of Israeli rescue operations told The Media Line. "They know the Haitians are not part of the agenda and this is just for propaganda. But if it's good for Israel they don't care."
"You can't save everyone, and anyone who has studied mass casualty situations knows that the first thing you have to do is not rush in but to send a small team to evaluate what is the best way to help in the long run," he said. "So the fact that Israel wants to race to be the first to be there means nothing in the big picture, because Israel is usually the first to arrive but also the first to leave." "If, for example, Israel were to bring water purification systems and chemical toilets it would be much more helpful," Dr Donchin said. "But their logic is that then it wouldn't get on the news."
Dr Donchin told of an incident in which the head of one of the delegations to a disaster area was asked to move oxygen tanks and doctors to make room for an additional TV crew, and argued that Israel had become a state that "insists on performing a good deed each day and helping the old lady cross the road, even against her will. "Like Everest climbers, Israel places her national flag at the peak to prove that the site has been conquered," Dr Donchin wrote in a Tuesday opinion piece in Israel's leading Hebrew news site YNet. "To publicize this physical achievement, media representatives, photographers, Israeli Defense Forces Spokespeople and others are brought along with the delegation." "Are we going to see the commander of the Israeli delegation on the evening news beside a compound with 500 chemical toilets? Unlikely," he wrote. "It is much more "media friendly" to show an Israeli hospital, Stars of David and of course the staff of dedicated doctors and nurses wearing their uniforms with an Israeli flag on the lapel."
600 readers responded to the article in its first 24 hours online and a number of other Israeli publications ran opinion pieces Monday and Tuesday accusing Israel of using the disaster for publicity points or of ignoring a humanitarian disaster on the country's front step in Gaza.
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