Branding Israel and Netanyahu : Jewish Blogger Conference 2008

A few weeks back, before leaving Israel, I was quite surprised to see what a “Jewish Blogger Conference” was when I entered it. I really felt like an outsider and in the first few minutes contemplated leaving and giving the whole thing a miss, but sticking around had its benefits and I got to see a few interesting things during the event.

I run a ghost website called Israelated that attempts to cover all English Israel related blogging and I thought this is more what the event would be about. I thought people would discuss community, blogging, platforms, social web and other blog stuff but it was something completely different. It seems that “Jewish” in this context generally meant religious American Jews who write about politics and religion either from the states or from Israel after making Aliya. I also think it would be safe to say most of them were right wing supporters and ironically somewhat nationalistic about Israel. Naturally, they seemed quite familiar with each other. But to me, that was a big miss, since the real so call “Jewish” blogosphere is so much bigger and more diverse than that. On a few different occasions during the event I was approached by bloggers trying to figure out what my name tag says and were quite appalled to hear that I’m an Israeli who lives in Taiwan. The event, mind you, was all arranged and sponsored by Nefesh Benefesh, an organization promoting Jewish “Aliya” return to Israel.

The most interesting lecture, in my book, had to do with “Israel Branding”. How the bloggers can work together with the Israeli government to promote branding Israel in a way that would overcome and maybe even use the very bad image Israel has as a tourist destination. It was especially interesting because this is exactly the issue I’m constantly concerned about in regards to Taiwan. While Israel “enjoys” endless negative publicity, Taiwan is very rarely mentioned and it seems nobody really knows anything about what Taiwan is. So, in a sense, both countries have similar, although different, problems with world wide public opinion. Here’s the video:

(I hope this has nothing to do with some of the new Israel tourism videos published on the main video sharing sites)

Another surprising incident that happened had to do with what they called a “special guest blogger” who came in last minute to share his thoughts regarding blogging and overtook the whole evening – former Prime Minister and current leader of the Likud party Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu. I first to say that have some serious issues with Bibi and it is after some deliberation that I finally decided to add his video here as he was clearly using the event to promote his own political message. It’s funny, though, that although the crowd was inherently his being mostly right-wing Likud supporters, he made the decision of lecturing his audience on their ignorance regarding Jewish and Israeli culture and talking for too long in an event that had nothing to do with him. I will say this though – although I strongly disagree with some of his political messages and was generally uncomfortable with his term as prime minister I generally agree with his somewhat Thatcheric economic direction and appreciate his ability to speak fluent clear English to represent Israel’s interests in world media (how would you compare that to Ma Ying Jiu and Taiwan?). The point he’s making in the following video regarding Jewish history and rights in Israel is – although simplified to an extent – an interesting historical message which is often overlooked or misunderstood (I recommend jumping to 28:30 and watch it till 39:50).

I wish someday the Taiwan blogosphere can pull off an English blogger conference.