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BBC MUNDO RADIO
It was good to hear Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador to London, conceding on the Today programme this morning that the assault by his country’s naval commandos on a convoy of ships carrying aid to Gaza can hardly be deemed a triumph.
As Stephanie Gutmann pointed out in her excellent post yesterday, Israel’s interception of the flotilla has become a propaganda triumph for Hamas and its supporters, and a public relations disaster for Israel., which was no doubt the point of the exercise in the first place. Israel’s enemies set it a trap, and the Israelis obligingly walked into it.
The problem for Israel is that this is not the first time in recent memory that it has shot itself in the foot. The invasion of Gaza, the insulting treatment meted out to U.S. vice president Joe Biden during his visit to Jerusalem earlier this year, the use of British passports in the Dubai hit on a leading Hamas commander: Israel has developed a worrying habit of conducting itself in a way that even its friends find hard to defend.
The Gaza flotilla was a publicity stunt that was specifically designed to cause Israel embarrassment. But through Israel’s inept handling of the affair, which has resulted with the deaths of as many as 19 people, it has turned it into a national disaster. There were many methods the Israeli military could have used to prevent the flotilla reaching Gaza without loss of life. But they used a tactic that was bound to cause provocation, and are now paying the cost.
With U.S. President Barack Obama doing his upmost to humiliate Israel, these are dark days indeed for the Jewish state. All the more reason, then, that Israel pays more attention to taking care of its international image. In the modern, 24-hour news cycle, image counts for everything, and Israel now has a lot of work to do if it is to turn round its disastrous public relations image.
