She co-authored an excellent piece on the Apartheid comparison awhile back:
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2008/03/franchising-apartheid-why-south-africans/

It goes beyond that to studies of Jewish history in general, even in important cultures like al-Andalus (Moorish Spain.)

A student of mine has been studying this. She saw a program produced by BBC in which the contributions of the Christians and the Muslims were discussed but the Jews were totally absent,not mentioned at all - and of course the Sephardim were an important group in pre-Inquistion Spain and had lived there since at least Roman times.

I guess I am not totally surprised that the Brits would sort of leave the Jews out of an account of Andalusia (sigh.)

By the way this student's paternal family are Tunisian Jews. So little is known about their story. It's truly frustrating - and it's not as if people haven't written about it. It just isn't taught, it isn't part of "the narrative."

I guess it is inconvenient to mention Middle Eastern Jews or the contributions of Jews to Mediterranean culture?

Of course a lot of the Sephardic Jews were murdered in the Shoah - most of the Greek and Balkan Jews were killed and the Holocaust also affected North Africa. I just read that only about 200,000 Ladino (or more properly, Judeo-Spanish) speakers remain in the world.

Anyway, pogroms broke out in North Africa and in other Arab cities after WWII and there were threats against the lives of Jews in the Arab world even before Israel was established in 1948.

It's a scandal that this history isn't more widely understood but first - it has to be taught. One wonders what is going on at the university level?

This history just isn't even mentioned in discussions of the Arab/Israeli conflict and Israel is seen as a European or "foreign" entity even though most of its Jewish population is Middle Eastern.

Sophia's account is so depressing. Why would the BBC do that? Maybe it's adopting Arnold Toynbee's view of the Jews as an unimportant, marginal people.

Every time I hear someone tell me that he or she listens to the BBC, I wince. I don't always feel comfortable saying anything about it because I don't want to appear close-minded, and too many people say that CNN is overly oriented to US news. What English-language alternative could I suggest?

One friend of mine said that to a few days ago. He's a cultivated European who's lived around Europe and in the US for many years. What could I say?

In an earlier conversation, some months back, he referred to Palestinian friends of his having been "kicked out" of Palestine, and clearly he was very influenced by their account of the story. This guy is by no means an antisemite. Though he doesn't know much about Jews, his family hid Jews during the war, at great risk to themselves.

Anyway, I patiently explained how there were Palestinian villages that the Jews did destroy (I don't know how many), some of them for valid military reasons, but that the Palestinians left the area in 1948 for a variety of reasons, that not all of them were directly forced out by the Jews.

I recounted that point for him again a few days ago. Both times he listened politely, attentively, but was noncommittal in his reaction.

By the way, when I saw him a few days ago, we also got onto the topic of Jews being kicked out of the Arab world. Again, he listened politely, attentively, and this time sympathetically. Then he said, "I never heard about that."

This is a worldly, well-educated man past retirement age, and he never heard about that. That's so depressing to hear. Israel is doing a horrible job of hasbara, and so are the American Jews, for that matter. Perhaps the media are so down on Israel that they aren't really open to documentaries on the story.

One more thing on the point about the media not being open to stories on the Jews. I have a journalist friend who is friendly to Israel and to the Palestinians.

She was thinking of going to Israel to do something on African immigrants there (my friend herself is of African descent), but she also wanted to do stories on the high-tech industry and on cultural trends in the arts. My friend told me that none of the editors she pitched her ideas to were interested in stories on Israel's economy or cultural happenings. She had no takers whatsoever.

I think she said that they considered the high-tech story to be old, which struck me as strange because it strikes me as under-covered; not many people know that Israel has a thriving high-tech industry.

The only thing the editors she contacted wanted to hear about was the African immigrants. I think they expect to get a story of discrimination and oppression.

So hasbara may already be a lost cause, unless alternative media can be found that can reach audiences all the same. And I do not mean Fox News, which is rightly regarded as a joke.

I just read the article. What was depressing was the comments: all negative.

They didn't take her seriously at all, and accuse her of being naive or selling out.

One comment recalls a Palestinian who arrived a week late to a conference in Sweden because the Israelis blocked his travel. Does that sort of thing happen? If so, that's not too bright on the part of the Israelis.

Joanne, I read the comment thread and you're right, it's depressing.

But, I don't think Israel's hasbara or lack thereof should be blamed for media and academic bias that shouldn't exist in the first place. This bias extends to simply not telling significant aspects of history and thereby essentially erasing an entire people.

In the case of the highly influential Brits, not just their media but their corporate and political clout around the world, we need to be honest about their past treatment and view of Jews as well as Israel itself.

Britain has never had to confront itself regarding antisemitism. It's long past time too especially since overt antisemitism and violent anti-Israel eruptions have become more common. It's easy to blame this on Muslim and African immigrants but it's missing the point, which is the long history of European attitudes toward Jews.

British and French attitudes toward Jews combined with their overt Arabism and of course colonialism, the Sykes-Picot agreement, the pre and post-Shoah era, etc etc etc combined with open support of PLO by various politicians, academics and cultural icons and even, in 1973 of the Arab side have all resulted in the current disaster.

As for hasbara though - I do think the Israelis are missing the point with the high-tech angle.

Better they should be showing the people. Israel is demonized to the extent that nobody sees the human beings who live there, their highly variable and open society, their accomplishments and their histories.

I just had a thought. The converse is equally true. Not only have large segments of the Jewish population either been eliminated in fact or simply by being ignored in history and "news," but the "Palestinian narrative" has been to some degree created by a massive PR effort, heavily funded and supported by a dedicated UN agency and supported by multinational groups of NGO's and of course by blocs of states.

So one group of people is not only subject to serious attempts to eliminate them, another is the object of a huge international PR campaign that may not actually have created them but is certainly dedicated to their perpetual enshrinement as "refugees" and sort of a virtual Jesus. This is after of course, their having attacked the Jews/Israelis - so the latter day representation of Palestinians as victims of a crucifixion is really upsetting.

Is this designed to reverse the success of Israel and destroy it? It seems to me so highly prejudicial that I don't see how it can lead to peaceful solutions.

I use the religious imagery deliberately because Israel was destroyed before and renamed Syriana Palestina by Rome, and now we see people like Arafat go to the UN and claim that St. Peter was the first "Palestinian,".

And we see US and other churches provocatively employing anti-Jewish sentiment to attack Israel, and meanwhile the Palestinian Arabs have been re-created as the ultimate suffering and innocent lamb - which is historically and factually ridiculous - whereas the Jews have somehow magically been turned into Romans - or worse, the Nazis who exterminated Jews only a few decades ago. echoes of the old blood libel.

Why isn't this along with the massive UN support and dedicated agency, the combined efforts of academia and news media, pr firms and of course other Arab/Muslim governments with Western help NOT geared toward undoing Jewish self-determination or even existence in the Middle East? The flip side of this is Arab mistreatment of Palestinians in their midst - the continuing existence of "refugee camps," etc.

Maybe I am just paranoid. But it strikes me that all the paradigms of "oppressed people," which certainly apply to the Jews have been projected onto the Arabs and specifically the "Palestinians" who in 1948 were notably, just "Arabs."

The very term "Palestinian" has New Testament connotations but also, creating a people separate from other Arab communities has created an isolated and stateless community now numbering in the millions, all aimed at Israel.

All the tools of PR imaginable, the platform of the UN, state sponsored media and even the pulpit and the power of states seem geared to promoting the Palestinian narrative and furthering the destruction of the Jews, this time in Israel.

The wars of 1948, 67, 73 and the intifadas having failed to destroy Israel, we now see the probably more effective pr war, which has worked brilliantly against Jewish people for thousands of years, to the point where we are a mere handful in the world.

Like I said. Maybe I am just paranoid. But none of the above-mentioned PR seems calculated to produce a peaceful settlement to border issues, etc. or to further better relations between Israel and other Middle Eastern states.

Rather, it's demonizing or eliminating or totally ignoring the history on one people and creating/canonizing another. That is weird and I don't know if it has a parallel elsewhere.

For example even though Greece was conquered by the Turkish empire nobody tried to eliminate the Greek language or the Greek people or disappear/demonize their history, or deny their national rights even after they attacked the Turks and ethnically cleansed their Muslim population.

And, when people say "Greece", "Turk" doesn't immediately appear as a shadow. And even though Turkey killed over a million Armenians, whether or not to refer to this as a "genocide" continues to be an international issue. Yet Israel is routinely accused of worse.

Ideas?

Ideas? (#7)

In some ways the whole mythology you describe has expanded so much over the past 6 decades, esp. since '67, that it seems hard to envision a remedy.

Just like KFC is branded as the place for chicken,
Israel has become branded as the country that abuses
Pal.s and the "worst H.R. violator in the world."

Nothing about being comprised of mostly middle eastern jewish refugees, (at least until the soviet union exodus) and nothing about the amazing technological developement. ETC

ss