…comes from a headline in the Jerusalem Post:

‘Targeted killings make PR difficult’

No shit!

The article itself is a little more nuanced:

“It is hard to expect people to feel empathy towards the children of Sderot [which is being shelled by the Palestinians] when the news pictures being sent from Gaza every day show children being killed or wounded in IAF operations,” one of the ambassadors said.

Nevertheless, Israel’s PR efforts must continue. And they’d better be good in order to compete with the Palestinians’ propaganda.

That Gaza beach media battle is still being waged, and the MSM has chosen to grasp at the straws proffered by interested parties over ferreting out and reporting the facts.

As Bret Stephens once wrote:

Defamatory innuendo–rather than outright allegation–is the vehicle of mainstream media bias.

There are a lot of problems with media coverage of the Middle East. The bias is not so much political as cultural—it’s a mind-set: Israel is Goliath to the Palestinians’ David. A lot of problems flow from that misapprehension.
On a practical level, here’s what the Flack recommends PR-wise to the Israelis:

[F]ind a way to step up your efforts to capture and quickly disseminate to the world media words and pictures of the damage these bombs bring (and don’t forget the heinous celebration by the bombers). Layer your “disproportionate” military response with an aggressive, but proportionate media relations response to balance the imbalance created by your (more media-savvy) attackers. In other words, stop letting them eat your lunch!

And he adds this photo:

The Israelis don’t think of themselves as victims. They have an antipathy to victimology. They may just have to bite the bullet, because I don’t see them coming up with an effective alternative.

PR victories matter. Their long-term effect is not calculable. The message you get out may not stick (in the Gladwell-ian sense),*** so it may not work out as a building block for your narrative. But in our world, you cannot opt out of the game. You have to play. And you have to play the game that’s being played, not your own game.

——-

***see Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.

If I were on a campaign to ensure that America acts morally in war, I would hasten to marginalize those who weaken the cause.

And I would start with the idiots who come up with ever more absurd moral crusades and ever more creative legal strategies aimed at undermining common sense. In this case, they’re trying to overturn the 5,000-year old eating habits of human beings:

Animal Rights Groups Ask New York to Ban Foie Gras

That’s me. So I was really happy to catch the wonderful documentary Billy Wilder Speaks last night in my hotel room. It was whittled down from a three-hour version shown on German television (the entire interview will be released later this year on DVD).

Wilder gave Volker Schlondorff a series of interviews in 1988, with the understanding that the resulting film wouldn’t be shown until after his death (so says a tidbit in the New York Times). Read about it here.

Better yet, try to catch it on TCM.

Also: buy Cameron Crowe’s book.