Netanyahu gets bounce from Iranian arms shipment
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's media campaign over the capture of the weapons shipment passed unnoticed by the foreign press, but reinforced his status in Israeli public opinion as "Mr. Security."
The Prime Minister’s Office was disappointed this week. It had learned that even after flying dozens of foreign journalists to Eilat on March 10, in a rented aircraft, the international media still wasn’t impressed by the capture of the Iranian arms ship Klos-C. The incident received only minor coverage in the US and Europe’s main media outlets, even after the booty display presented by the prime minister himself before the cameras, with an Israel flag and Iranian missiles behind him. Nor were they impressed by his ominous statement that Iran would be, in the future, smuggling nuclear suitcases as well.
Israel hoped that the seizure of the Klos-C will harm Iranian legitimacy, just as the seizure of the Karine A ship in 2002 was damaging to late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat. That didn’t happen. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to deem this media campaign as a public diplomacy failure, like other failures that Israelis have gotten used to over the past few years. In this particular case, the chances of the Iranian vessel becoming a hot item in the international media were small from the very outset. Nor does the labor strike by the Foreign Ministry’s staff have anything to do with the meager results of this campaign, despite what the staffers say. International coverage would still be sparse, even if the Israeli spokesmen would have been interviewed in Spanish, French and Italian.
The reason for the disappointing coverage is, first and foremost, the deterioration of Israel’s legitimacy around the world on the backdrop of the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories and the dead end in the diplomatic negotiations. Compounding this is the Western nations’ conciliatory approach to Iran, as expressed in the Geneva agreement, and of course, the crisis in Ukraine, which has taken over the international agenda and diverted the West’s attention from the Middle East.
Netanyahu was ultimately a victim of these circumstances, though some of them he has instigated himself over the past few years. Damage to Israel’s legitimacy in various international institutions emerged as a result of his avoidance of any negotiations with the Palestinians during his entire second term as prime minister, from 2009 to 2013.
