Nazi genocide and “girls in bikinis” failing to sell #Israel, experts say | The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/nazi-genocide-and-girls-bikinis-failing-sell-israel-experts-say
The conference heard from #Frank_Luntz, the prominent US Republican pollster, that Israel’s propaganda messaging was failing even among American Jewish students.
According to Luntz’s findings, only 42 percent of Jewish students believe that Israel wants peace, just 39 percent view Israel as a “civilized and Western country” and a mere 31 percent consider Israel to be a democracy.
As many as one fifth of Jewish students believe the US should support the Palestinian side and a similar proportion sees Israel as racist.
One of the conference participants told NRG that Israel’s tourism ministry “came out very badly.”
The participant characterized Israel’s marketing in these terms: “ ‘we have girls in bikinis, we have beaches, we have beer and bars – come to us,’ and this does not work.”
Indeed, Israel’s tourism industry went into freefall as a result of Israel’s summer 2014 attack on Gaza that killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children, and has still not recovered.
The conference was also told that instrumentalizing the Nazi genocide of European Jews – a favorite tactic to deflect criticism of Israel’s occupation and violent colonization of the Palestinians – is also not a winning strategy.
“They explained that the moment an Israeli speaker speaks about the Holocaust or about Nazis it hurts us, it doesn’t come across well on campuses,” one participant recalled.
#hasbara #propagande #Israël #échec
