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Commentary;
Israel National News columnist Gil Ronen writes about a Hebrew University study indicating that Israel’s image in the media markably declined after the expulsion, thus bursting another government myth regarding the so-called “benefits” of “disengagement.” MB
Study Shows Israel’s Image Got Worse After Disengagement, by Gil Ronen (Israel National News)
Excerpts;
A Hebrew University study showed that Israel’s image in American and British media got worse after the pullout from Gaza and the destruction of the Jewish communities there (the Disengagement). The researchers followed the way the mainstream media in the U.S. and Britain reported on Israel and the formal announcements made by the governments of both countries regarding Israel. The study dealt with a nine-month period, beginning three months before the Disengagement and ending with the elections in the Palestinian Authority.
Israel’s image was at its positive peak during the month of the Disengagement. During that period, the Foreign Ministry’s messages managed to resonate with the U.S. and U.K.’s media and their governments. However, immediately afterwards, the PA’s messages took the prominent lead once more.
The study’s author, Dr. Tamir Shefer, told NRG: “What we saw is that during the implementation of the Disengagement, when Israel was carrying out an initiative, it was presented well. As far as the world is concerned, what we see in the findings is that as long as we continue to ‘sit’ in Judea and Samaria and seal the Gaza borders, we continue to be presented in a negative light.”
When asked how he explained the decline in Israel’s image after a supposedly “good deed” like the Disengagement, Shefer said he did not have a total explanation for this. Israel is now presented as a Goliath, he said, more than before the Disengagement. “Maybe the very fact that we carried out a retreat and supposedly showed the world that we were capable of retreating raised the bar of demands from us,” he conjectured.