Activists rebrand Brand Israel conference as ‘Brand Apartheid’
Students disrupted a
Brand Israel conference at New York University, holding a silent protest while former Israeli ambassador Ido Aharoni closed the daylong forum last Friday with a summary of branding techniques applicable to the Jewish state.
With signs reading “Israel’s Brand: Stolen Land” and “Brand Apartheid,” the five NYU undergraduate students shuffled into the conference room and sat close to the front of the room, waiting for keynote speaker Aharoni to begin his closeout of NYU’s Places As Brands Conference before unfurling their signs.
The room was dismayed by the protest but the students remained steadfast, keeping their signs held high throughout Aharoni’s talk, despite attempts by a conference organizer to remove them.
“The whole purpose of [Brand Israel] is to gloss over any crimes and indelicacies in Israel’s image across the world,”
Rather than choosing to improve Israel’s global standing by ending its violations of Palestinian rights, Brand Israel aims to “to improve the country’s image abroad — by downplaying religion and avoiding any discussion of the conflict with the Palestinians” and representing the country “as relevant and modern rather than only as a place of fighting and religion.”
Aharoni explained Brand Israel in 2005, saying, “What the Americans are telling us loud and clear is that they don’t want to hear more about the conflict.” Outlining the Brand Israel strategy after one of Israel’s military assaults on Gaza, Arye Mekel, one of Aharoni’s colleagues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
told the New York Times, “We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits …This way you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.”
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Activists rebrand Brand Israel conference as ‘Brand Apartheid’