Israel
Deputy FM Ayalon Describes Facts About the West Bank In YouTube
Video
By
Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency
Jerusalem,
Israel --- July 19, 2011 .... Israel Deputy Minister of Foreign
Affairs Danny Ayalon released a new media video describing the
historical facts of the Israel Palestinian conflict in a concise,
easy to follow video on YouTube. The video explains where the
terms "West Bank", "Occupied territories"
and "1967 Borders" originated and how they are incorrectly
used and applied.
Ayalon explains that the idea behind the video is to disseminate
Israel's long-standing but neglected public affairs position,
in a creative way, to address the Palestinian attempt to have
a unilaterally-declared state recognized. In addition, when direct
negotiations will restart the historical context should be well
known to the interested general public, diplomats and media to
provide a greater understanding of the current situation.
"For too many years, our public diplomacy has been mainly
based on a 'peace narrative', where Israeli officials talk about
how much we are willing to concede for peace, while the Palestinian
public diplomacy is all about supposed rights and international
law," Ayalon told the Israel News Agency.
"It
is time for Israel to return to 'rights based diplomacy' and address
the facts, rights, history and international law which are little
known but give a dramatically different perspective to what is
currently accepted."
"Israel's case is harder to make in an era where context,
background and history are less important than an image or a headline.
Social media in general and YouTube in particular are major battlegrounds
in the clash of narratives and public diplomacy. It is vital that
a strong rights-based Israel presence is seen and heard, especially
for the social networking YouTube demographics who are more interested
in easy to digest explanations."
The video produced in English includes translations in numerous
languages including Arabic, Spanish, French, Russian and German.
The video is also being shown in hundreds of schools and educational
centers worldwide as part of their curriculum on the Israel Palestine
conflict.
The video was produced for the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
in cooperation with StandWithUs, an international organization
dedicated to Israel education worldwide, by filmmaker Shlomo Blass
of Rogatka Ltd and directed by internationally-renowned director
Ashley Lazarus.