I’ll leave Jewish American blogger Richard Silverstein to explain why the Israeli political elite live in a world where Rome burns and they blame anti-Semitism and mistaken PR:
I kid you not. This is a real story from Haaretz. Hard to believe that [former Australian] Mark Regev is such an obtuse idiot along with the rest of Israel’s hasbara apparatus, but there you go.
Before I cite the story, I should preface it by mentioning that Israel’s ironically named Gaza invasion, Operation Cast Lead, derives from (of all things) a children’s Hanukah poem by Chaim Nachman Bialik:
Teacher bought a big top for me,
Solid lead, the finest known.
In whose honor, for whose glory?
For Hanukkah alone.
Here is what I wrote on this subject at the beginning of the war:
It is just like modern Israel and Zionism to appropriate Jewish history, holiday and tradition to justify its own agenda. Quite macabre also to think that the IDF has defiled a delightful children’s poem by Bialik in order to convey the power of its onslaught against Hamas (”solid lead”).
Here is shmendrik Regev’s commentary on this subject:
Naming Israel’s incursion into Gaza Operation Cast Lead was a public relations faux pas, a top government spokesman said on Wednesday.
“I didn’t like the name,” Mark Regev, the prime minister’s spokesman for international media, told a crowd of some 150 listeners in English. “From a public relations point of view, it was a mistake.”
“”¦The Israel Defense Forces chooses its names by some computer or by some system which I don’t understand. And the truth is that the Hebrew name Oferet Yetzuka [referring to Hanukkah dreidels] sounds lovely. It’s the translation into English which sounds inappropriate.
Regev, 49, added that whenever he spoke to international media, he “never once said ”˜Cast Lead’ because it has connotations in English that are problematic”¦”
“The English translation wasn’t the most effective way to get our message out and it’s an important point because if you can control the terminology of the debate, you can win the debate,” he said.
Hmmm, calling it “cast lead” was quite problematic, eh? They could’ve done worse. They could’ve called it Operation Drop Dead or Vast Dread.… That would’ve really conveyed Israel’s intentions. As it was, I thought “Cast Lead” perfectly conveyed Israel’s intent to drill Gaza full of lead (as they indeed did).
It seems grisly to call this humorous, but it really is if you look at it in a M.A.S.H.-Catch 22 sort of way. The IDF always seems to provide dark comedy in spite of itself.
Indeed. As if changing the name of the damn war would have made any difference to how the world viewed it. These Zionists truly have no clue.