Explaining itself
Posted by middleeast on February 13th, 2012
Sir, – With regard to letter writers Sydney L. Kasten and Efraim A. Cohen (“‘Hasbara,’ and how!,” January 30), Kasten seems to think that digging up one article from a whole halfyear after the Six Day War, from a single newspaper in just one country, can undermine the universally known fact that Israel enjoyed astronomically-high Western popularity before the occupation of the West Bank and the settlement expansionism there.
Cohen, in saying that all countries use public diplomacy, blurs the meaning. He makes no distinction between the normal promotion of a country’s policies, which Israel used to do so successfully, and the two sad types of public diplomacy Israel uses today – explaining its right to conquer another land and people, and railing against the Western delegitimization (with which I disagree) that has come about as a tragic consequence.
JAMES ADLER