The report itself doesn't start out flawed.
Indeed, I have long said that Israel will do almost anything to gain world approval, no matter how many times Israel is shown that what they do will not win world approval. See: every failed peace negotiation, where Israel always shows up and makes offer after offer, each one better than the last, and even vacating large amounts of disputed territory unilaterally.
Israel does rely on tourism, although I imagine most tourists come for the biblical nature of the country rather than the skiing of the Hermon or the beaches of the Galillee. The Dead Sea is not an incredible destination, it's something you do while on tour. Instead, Israel has to prevent terrorism, and prevent the Islamic Waqf group from
destroying antiquities and
religious sites that
attract tourists.
Tourism has suffered in recent years. Despite so-called ceasefires, rockets continue to be launched on Israel, but in world opinion the
ceasefire isn't broken until Israel responds. - That's right, attacking people launching rockets at your citizenry might break the ceasefire. What's that? People launching rockets at city centers? Nevermind them, they could NEVER break a ceasefire, mmhmm.
(The same is true of the Fatah and Hamas civil war, where they declared a ceasefire, but sent no representatives to the press announcement to show it was genuine, and the wire stories have neat articles containing gems like
'despite fighting, ceasefire holds' (EDIT: That phrase was in there when I bookmarked the article. It since has been revised.)
The smiley face on the soldier is a little silly. Does Israel desperately want to improve its image in the world? Sure it does. Unfortunately, what that would require are steps that would render Israel vulnerable enough for Hamas and HizbAllah to complete their goals of the total destruction of Israel.
Some Europeans wonder why that removal of Israel from the map would be a bad thing?
Let me just say that the number of Christians in Nazareth and Bethlehem has dwindled very rapidly to a small number.
Few foreign pilgrims travel to Bethlehem - Yahoo! News -- few foriegn tourists travel to Bethlehem. Why? The story won't address it, but it's in part to the effect Hamas as an Islamic organization has had on the Christians there- Hamas promised to give 50K USD to decorate Manger Square for the holidays, and then welched on it. They've quashed any plans to decorate that were independent of the money being withheld.
O, Muslim town of Bethlehem... | the Daily Mail
"The sense of a creeping Islamic fundamentalism is all around in Bethlehem.
A mosque on one side of Manger Square stands directly opposite the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, while in the evening the muezzin’s call to prayer clashes with the peal of church bells.
Shops selling Santa Claus outfits and mother-of-pearl statuettes of the Virgin Mary have their shutters painted a sun-bleached green, the colour of Islam. And in the Al-Jacir Palace, Bethlehem’s only luxury hotel, there is a baubled Christmas tree in reception and a card showing the direction of Mecca in the rooms.
George Rabie, a 22-year-old taxi driver from the Bethlehem suburb of Beit Jala, is proud of his Christianity, even though it puts him in daily danger. Two months ago, he was beaten up by a gang of Muslims who were visiting Bethlehem from nearby Hebron and who had spotted the crucifix hanging on his windscreen.
“Every day, I experience discrimination,” he says. “It is a type of racism. We are a minority so we are an easier target. Many extremists from the villages are coming into Bethlehem.”
Jeriez Moussa Amaro, a 27-year-old aluminium craftsman from Beit Jala is another with first-hand experience of the appalling violence that Christians face. Five years ago, his two sisters, Rada, 24, and Dunya, 18, were shot dead by Muslim gunmen in their own home.
Their crime was to be young, attractive Christian women who wore Western clothes and no veil. Rada had been sleeping with a Muslim man in the months before her death.
A terrorist organisation, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, issued a statement claiming responsibility, which said: “We wanted to clean the Palestinian house of prostitutes.”
"
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is the group affiliated with Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas. Remember Abbas? He's the
moderate in the Palestinian Authority.
So, is it any wonder there's a tourism problem? An image problem?
I think the ad takes the wrong approach. Win a few wars instead of losing them, quiet things by winning rather than negotiating with people who refuse to take back their goals to destroy "the Zionist entity through violence" and you might have something that people can feel comfortable coming back to.
Unfortunately, the current path of appeasement is doomed to fail. Sooner or later elections will be held in Israel, and the national brand image will suffer for a while longer, because the Europeans won't like who will be elected. This will be ok, as long as the new PM renews the measures against terror rather than awarding those who commit such acts 100 million dollars as the current PM has done.
your hat.
Top
