You don’t have to be an kneejerk anti-Zionist to feel a slight feeling of nausea from the way various official Israeli spokespeople tried to make PR capital this week from the IDF medical mission to the Philippines, a part of which was ravaged by Typhoon Haiyan.

To some this may sound churlish but for some reason, Israel is the only Western country I know that finds it extraordinary that armies can be used for disaster relief around the world. True, it’s called the Israel Defense Force because its main job is to defend Israel, but what other organization do you know that has the skilled manpower, the logistical capabilities and the cargo aircraft (or in the case of the American and British militaries, the ships) to carry out humanitarian missions of this scale? What better way to use the resources of an army and the highly-specialized skills of its personnel when they’re not fighting?

To be honest, the efforts of the various wings of the hasbara machine to capitalize on the mercy mission were not as farcical as those that were made four years ago when a similar task force was sent to Haiti following the 2010 earthquake there. Then the PR circus was so blatant, with the energetic cheerleading of parts of the Israeli media, that Channel Two’s “Eretz Nehederet” satirical show even lampooned the station’s own reporter for focusing on the Israeli operation rather than the human suffering on the devastated island. Whether or not the slight “toning down” this time has got anything to do with the fact that the media is focused on other matters, or whether it’s a conscious decision on the part of the government press operation to go a bit less overboard this time, the fundamental message remains the same – no one else goes around the world selflessly saving people from collapsed buildings and building field hospitals overnight as we Israelis do.

But of course that isn’t the case. It may surprise some Israelis to know that other armies (and of course dedicated NGOs of all sizes and shapes) routinely carry out these missions, often in places that haven’t reached the headlines because of some sudden natural disaster.

And while the IDF and Israel’s health system are particularly adept in the fields of emergency medicine and delivering complex healthcare solutions in difficult conditions, and there is nothing wrong with giving it credit for that, the fact remains that Israel currently dedicates only 0.07 percent of its GDP to aid for developing countries (and this includes the budget for absorbing immigrants from Ethiopia). The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the developed nations’ club that Israel worked hard for years to join, has set for its members a standard of 0.35 percent of GDP, five times the current Israeli level. So while it’s very nice that the parents of the Philippine baby named their son who was born in the IDF field hospital Israel, let’s not lose proportions. A high-profile rescue mission every couple of years doesn’t offset the woefully low Israeli investment in international aid.

Failed concept

But the anxiousness of government spin-doctors to wring every bit of positive publicity out of these tragic events betrays something even worse than the overt cynicism. It is a major symptom of the entire failed concept of hasbara that is constantly tripping Israelis up. Hasbara (literally “explaining”) is based on the belief that if we simply explain well enough to the world how wonderful we are, and how awful our enemies, the international community and public opinion, with the exception of a few dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semites, will not be able to help themselves but fall in love. All we have to do is to explain a bit better. And a rescue operation in Haiti or the Philippines is a godsend.

The inherent fallacy of this belief grows out of exactly the same kind of psychology motivating the movement to boycott Israel – if we can just explain to enough people how the Zionist project is inherently racist and fundamentally unjust, people will want nothing to do with Israel, its economy will begin to fail and multitudes of its “non-indigenous” citizens will flee the country. I never cease to marvel at how unwittingly both camps mirror each other. Both are flailing around, searching for new gimmicks with which to excite an increasingly jaded media and uninterested public.

Hasbaratists have another false belief. Not only must there be a way to explain Israel’s policies and convince the world of their validity, but if we go on enough about how Israel is startup nation, a high-tech paradise which has found the cure for cancer and keeps every smartphone and laptop in the world ticking, then people will not think of us a war-mongering, Palestinian-oppressing nation.

Well, the truth is that half the job has been done. I don’t think anyone has recently carried out any research on this but just from anecdotal experience, I have seen in recent years that most people’s first association nowadays with Israel, in countries around the world, is not the Mideast conflict or the occupation. Farmers in every continent know that Israel has the most advanced irrigation techniques, computer geeks are fully aware of its Internet technology, and gay people have heard of the mecca of Tel Aviv. Has that changed anything? Is Israel’s international situation any better (or worse?)

Israel is wonderful at some things and terrible at others. If it only managed to free itself from this infernal need to continuously prove itself to the world, maybe it could finally get down to actually fixing its very real problems for its own sake. Not for PR.