David Parsons, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem
February 19, 2004

Like a magnet, the charred skeleton of a bombed-out Jerusalem bus is drawing thousands of pro-Israel activists to The Hague, Netherlands just as a high-profile court case opens Monday at the International Court of Justice on the legality of Israel’s "seam-line" security fence.

The twisted remains of bus No. 19 have become the focal point of an aggressive new approach to public relations by Israeli officials, determined to blunt criticism that the Palestinians are winning the battle for sympathy in the worldwide media.

Blown up in a suicide bombing attack on January 29 that killed eleven Israelis, the bus was sawn in half and flown to the Dutch city this week by Zaka, the ultra-Orthodox society that rushes to the scenes of terror attacks to identify and collect the often-scattered bodies for proper Jewish burial.

In a sign of increased Jewish/Christian cooperation in defense of Israel, the Holland-based group Christians for Israel International donated the funds to transport the bus to The Hague and helped obtain permission for it to be publicly displayed outside the quiet city’s famed Peace Palace and near the court hearings.

At a rally early next week, thousands of Israelis, Jews from the Diaspora and Christian Zionists will converge around the bus to hear speakers and hold up posters with enlarged photos of the 927 Israeli terror victims to date of the 41-month-old Palestinian terror campaign.

The Foreign Ministry and Jewish Agency have briefed scores of Jewish students that will be flown to Holland to recite for reporters the stories of each terror victim.

Dozens of other Jewish and Christian organizations and activists are trying to get into the act as well, presenting a challenge to the rally planners on how to synchronize everyone behind a single, compelling message to the press.

"We are trying to prevent more human tragedies," said a spokesman for Zaka this week. "We just want terrorism to stop."

Yet another challenge looms. After giving permission for the rally and other pro-Israel events centered around the bus, Dutch authorities are reportedly now worried about provocations by radical Palestinian sympathizers applying to stage counter-protests.

The security fence case that opens February 23, which is attracting broad media attention, has thus developed quickly into a public relations showdown between the pro- and anti-Israel camps, and Israel’s Foreign Ministry is hoping an aggressive new strategy will win the day.

Foreign Ministry Deputy Director-General for Public Affairs Gideon Meir presented Israel's plan to win the PR battle outside the court in a meeting Tuesday with the Knesset's subcommittee on foreign relations and information.

The aim of Israel's program is to "make the Palestinians regret the day they ever sent the matter to the court," Meir told the committee, which gave its support for the ministry's information plan.

Israel's sole message at the demonstrations is that the "fence stops terror," Meir said. He explained that all the pro-Israel participants are being instructed to focus on the victims of terror and stay away from political questions surrounding the fence debate.

Meir also responded to critics of Israel’s official public relations effort, widely seen here as failing to match the relentless on-message performances of Palestinian spokesmen.

He noted that this was the first time he had been invited to formally brief the Knesset subcommittee that oversees the Foreign Ministry’s media efforts, and that half of his paltry NIS 37 million PR budget is taken up by salaries alone.

Meir also showed the subcommittee glaring examples of anti-Israel media bias that persist despite his ministry’s best efforts, and spoke of a frustrating episode last year that prompted them to become more assertive.

On May 18, 2003, a Hamas suicide bomber disguised as a religious Jew exploded on a city bus at Jerusalem's busy French Hill intersection, killing seven passengers.

The Foreign Ministry has normally been sensitive to the families of terror victims, but this time it decided to distribute photos of the carnage that were more graphic than usual. And yet a prominent Spanish newspaper opted instead to carry a photo of the bomber’s Palestinian father kissing a youthful photo of him, accompanied by a caption that merely referred to him as one of the dead in the bombing.

"It was a turning point for us," said Meir. "We decided to become more aggressive in our approach."

Thus when a Palestinian policeman from Bethlehem exploded a bomb vest on Jerusalem’s bus No. 19 three weeks ago, the Foreign Ministry posted on its Web site some raw video footage of the bloody scene taken just moments later by a Reuters TV crew.

"Within days, we had over two million downloads of the video, and many people abroad began writing to express sympathy," said Meir. "Some told us, ‘We did not know the horror you were going through until now.’"

Ministry officials hope next week’s bus and photo display in The Hague will be just as powerful in conveying to the watching world a message of Israeli suffering that much of the media have deliberately suppressed so far.

David Parsons is the editor of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) News Service.