Saturday, April 24, 2004

Another piece of advice for the Palestinians: stop refererring to the Israelis as 'Zionists'. It may or may not be true that there is something called Zionism which has some religious/racist goals. But by repeatedly using this term, the Palestinians are lending credence to the idea that the issue is primarily a religious one, thereby strengthening the hands of the fundamentalists on both sides. What they should be doing is highlight the actions of Israel the country, treating the whole matter as a secular one. To be fair, I don't see how far they can take it, given that the Israeli state cannot be divorced from Judaism (and to think that only Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. are considered as religiously fundamentalist states). The Palestinians need some good PR, instead of flowery, meaningless rhetoric (I read somewhere that Arabic has such inherent attributes). They should start employing the services of some of those famous Washington firms (Hill & Knowlton, anyone?)