Avigdor Lieberman Is Right on Target

Whenever people asked me why Israel has such terrible PR, my standard answer used to be: “The media is against us because they are all Leftists. It makes no difference what we do.”

That, of course, left out a very significant factor: the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the main architect of the Oslo Accords. Long after the Oslo Accords proved a spectacular failure, the Ministry continued to protect its myths, downplaying terror attacks, Arafat’s complicity and the fact that land for peace with the Palestinians not only didn’t work but made things horribly worse.

Take the Foreign Ministry’s sha-shtil (shhh!) policy of quick clean-ups and even quicker wrong-headed apologies for imaginary Israeli crimes. When Israeli buses blew up, they were dragged off the streets in record time. ZAKA teams gathered far-flung pieces of flesh and sopped up spilled blood; municipal street cleaners used machines to make quick work of the glass and nails. And before you could say Kaddish—or the foreign press could take a photo—all traces of Israeli suffering and death had been erased.

With Israel’s new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, I am beginning to hope for change. I can see some jaws dropping. Lieberman has been called corrupt, insane, a war-monger and a racist. The French want him fired. The Americans avoid him. As an Israeli citizen, I beg to differ.

In a September Yedioth Ahronoth interview, Lieberman gave us insights into the way he will run Israel’s Foreign Ministry. “I wasn’t elected so people would love me. I was elected to protect the State of Israel. If I would say: ‘Peace now, let’s give in, let’s give back,’ everyone would love me. If I would say ‘divide Jerusalem, destroy settlements,’ I’d immediately get nominated for a Nobel Prize. That’s the easy way. But it’s not my way. Sorry.”

Lieberman’s refreshing approach was evident in his strong response to an incendiary article published in Aftonbladet, one of Sweden’s leading dailies. In it, the IDF was accused of stealing organs from dead Palestinians during an alleged 1992 military operation. According to the article, “Young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open…. The families…felt that they knew exactly what had happened: ‘Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors.’” Juxtaposing the photos of the alleged butchered Palestinian victim and a New Jersey Hasidic man arrested on organ smuggling allegations this year, the article added: “We know that Israel has a great need for organs, that there is a vast and illegal trade of organs…that the authorities are aware of it and that doctors in managing positions at the big hospitals participate, as well as civil servants at various levels.”

In fact, Donald Boström, the story’s author, has said that he has no idea if any of it was true, that he was merely reporting what Palestinians said. Lieberman reacted unequivocally: He demanded a retraction from the paper, threatened to revoke its press privileges in Israel and called for the Swedish government to condemn the article. The paper refused to retract the piece and continued to ask for “an international inquiry” into Israeli “crimes.” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt ridiculously used the “freedom of expression” argument to defend Aftonbladet.“It is a shame that the Swedish Foreign Ministry does not get involved when speaking about blood libels against Jews, something that is reminiscent of Sweden’s position during World War II when it also did not intervene,” Lieberman said in a sharply worded statement. “Freedom of press means the freedom to publish truth and not lies.”

Lieberman threatened that there would be serious consequences for Israeli-Swedish relations. Bildt, who was supposed to make an official visit to Israel in September, got the message and canceled his trip. When a journalist asked if Israel’s new policy was to go to war over every little thing, Lieberman was clear: “That’s our new approach. Zero tolerance…In the end, people will get the message. I am getting the world used to the idea that they are going to have to treat Israel differently…I am fighting for our national honor.”

Perhaps, at long last, Israelis have elected a government that thinks the time has come to take a page from the Palestinians’ game book. Palestinians have been enormously successful in spreading their position—however truth-challenged and at times downright laughable it might be—all over the world, using every opportunity to get press.

Take, for example, the April 2009 protest of The Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid and Women in Solidarity with Palestine against the Royal Ontario Museum’s exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Calling the scrolls “looted Palestinian artifacts,” it demanded they be seized and returned to the Palestinians. Considering the scrolls were written by Jewish scholars 2,000 years ago, predate Islam and were purchased from a Bedouin, what can one say? I have not heard of any Jewish counter-demonstration. Jews, myself included, tend to pooh-pooh such ridiculous rhetoric, assuming intelligent people don’t need convincing of such obvious truths. In this, we all err.

Taking Lieberman’s lead, I suggest we all internalize a zero tolerance policy. That we, like the Palestinians, look for every opportunity to express our concern for world-wide terror and lies against the Jewish people. That we go out into the streets. That we write intelligent replies to counter hate-mongers. That we leave no wrong-headed editorial unchallenged, no news article’s faulty facts uncorrected, no anti-Israel campaign or protest or boycott unrequited. We should start cherishing Jewish honor, Israel’s honor. As Lieberman said, “Our national honor is a treasure. We need to guard it well.”

Naomi Ragen is a novelist and playwright. She lives in Jerusalem.