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Israel's Spokesmen to the Arab World

(Ha'aretz) Yoav Stern - Israel has three spokesmen to deal with 300 million Arab speakers around the world - two in the Foreign Ministry and one at the IDF. Major Eitan Arusi, the IDF spokesman in Arabic who was appointed four months ago, is the first person to fill this role. "One of my biggest concerns was that they [Arab journalists] would not want to interview a spokesman in uniform, an IDF officer, but the opposite was true. They are a lot more open than I expected," Arusi says. "In journalism schools they say 95% of the message is in the appearance. They attack me, cut me to shreds, but the fact that they have an IDF representative, in uniform, being interviewed for a satellite station being viewed by millions, is in itself an achievement," Arusi says. His mere presence on a live program creates situations that would have been impossible had there been no such IDF spokesman, such as when he is faced-off with a representative of Hamas or Hizballah, who clearly have different versions of events. Special importance is given to the military in the Arab world. After all, many of the leaders of Arab countries were military officers and some still wear uniforms. Furthermore, the world of Arabic language media has undergone a face-lift in the past decade with the appearance of satellite news, enabling Arab viewers to pass over official state news broadcasts.
2004-09-15 00:00:00
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