A Place to Stand

Another of my bright ideas.
Their problem is that though they can win any war they can't take the hearts & minds. For that they need some way to talk to the Arab people.

Israel should launch a geo-synchronous communications satellite (one that stays at all times over - not Bethlehem but the equator) and use it to broadcast to the entire Middle East. If a nation of Jewish entrepreneurs can't produce TV news that can whip al Jazerra, which is certainly whipping all the official state media in Arabia then they aren't the Israel we all know. All they have to do is put in the straight honest news the people never get to see plus a certain amount of juicy gossip about which Saudi prince is sleeping with which (or occasionally princess), how much is in Mrs Arafat's French bank account & which Moslem leader (not Arab admittedly) said they need to arrange the massacre of 5,000 of their own people to get sympathy.

For generations the various Arab leaders have been able to use war with Israel as a way of keeping their street in line. This would allow the Israelis to go direct to the people. Because a satellite beams straight down it cannot even be jammed the way line of sight broadcasts can. There is barely a single Arab politician who, if he roused Israel's ire, could stand a campaign exposing his corruption. Paradoxically Hamas would probably come closest because they are, by comparison, uncorrupt, but thems the breaks. Would the Arabs watch programmes from the hated enemy - I think so, after all Brits listened to Lord Haw Haw during the war. To keep an audience would depend on the Israelis treating their audience honestly but they are clearly more equipped to do that than the Arab leaders (& I suggest our own). If this worked the next middle east war would be between the Arab peoples & their leaders. Of course this assumes that Arabs are not congenitally wedded to a fundamentalist Islam & that as individuals they would like out of their medievalism. This is a matter of opinion but my opinion is that people are pretty much the same all over if you don't drive them into their cultural shells.

There is the minor question of getting from here to there. Israel has launched a satellite but they had to do it the wrong way (East to west up the Mediterranean) to avoid enemy airspace. This won't work for geosynchronous so the y would have to launch from Canaveral or Baikonur. I would suggest they should try for the Russian one. A rocket launched from the US would be seen as a US rocket with the Israelis piggybacking, one launched from Russia would, correctly, be seen as a primarily Israeli achievement & such an achievement itself would enormously raise Israel's standing.

Would Putin agree. There is only one way to find out but I think he would. He is an intelligent pragmatist & so long as they paid well I think he gains substantially. He would lose his Moslem friends, but they are more acquaintances than friends. He would gain Israeli friends & more importantly the US Jewish community would look on Russia in a considerably better light. Most importantly this would put the Russian space effort into a strong position vis a vis the US.

Launching from the US, while Israel's prime ally, would probably cost a lot more (NASA is an expensive mess) & take longer to make a political decision. I wouldn't even ask Europe - they would spend 20 years discussing the contract & then Malta would veto it. China, while having potential is still largely potential.

Of course the Moslem leaders would scream to the UN about Israel violating their cultural heritage but then one of the nicest things I have read about the middle east in recent years was when Bay Watch topped the Iranian ratings. All the same under the jibab.