Recently, the Foreign Ministry of Israel released a cartoon mocking (Western) reporters, portraying them as clueless and ignorant.
The cartoon shows a blonde American reporter missing all of the obvious atrocities happening around him as he reports live from Gaza.
“We are here in the center of Gaza, and as you can see, people here are trying to live quiet lives. There are no terrorists here, just ordinary people,” he says.
In the meantime, a militant launches a missile in the background, and a Hamas official carries off an LGBT activist with a bag over his head, presumably for execution.
The cartoon was in English, clearly intended for a foreign audience.
It was released to preempt the publication of a U.N. Human Rights Council report critical of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip last summer.
Then, Israel released another cartoon this week. It was tweeted out by account of the Prime Minister of Israel (as opposed to Bibi’s personal account) and shared through their Facebook account. In fact, at the time of this writing, @IsraelPM has it as a pinned tweet and the Prime Minister of Israel‘s Facebook account has it as a pinned post.
The cartoon presents the case that Iran is just like ISIS:
“The Islamic State of Iran.
Like ISIS.
Just much bigger.”
Again, the cartoon is in English.
Neither cartoon got much of a warm reception online, or from the press. If Israel was hoping to change hearts and minds, they need look no further than the YouTube comments of the most recent video to see they fell short. It has twice the number of thumbs down as thumbs up, and that was the polite response. The comments are particularly nasty.
Many have compared both videos to be of the “South Park style.” Neither swayed anyone who didn’t already agree with their point, and both gave ample room for mockery, if not outright anger.
If nothing else, whoever was tasked with creating this videos should be reprimanded for keeping the comments section open on YouTube.
Follow me on Twitter @jlemonsk.
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