Israel urged to speak directly to Arab world

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Reporting from Jerusalem — Few countries are as active in courting international opinion as Israel. An entire ministry is devoted to a kind of global PR called hasbara, the Hebrew word for "explaining."

Israelis studiously track public opinion in the United States and Europe, and Israel's military has taken to using YouTube, Twitter and an army of bloggers to disseminate real-time updates around the world, sometimes in the middle of battle.

But the public diplomacy campaign, which has largely focused on the West, has ignored the Arab world, which many in Israel have viewed as a lost cause.

But now, as popular unrest, organized in part by the use of social media tools, topples long-standing Arab regimes, some say Israel has an opportunity to make use of those same tools to try to improve its image among its many enemies in the region. With political reforms promising to give Arab citizens a greater voice, some say that Israel's stability and security will rest partly on whether it can adapt its well-oiled PR machine to launch a new relationship with the Arab street.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-israel-arab-opinion-20110627,0,351608.story