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February 27, 2004/Adar 5 5764, Vol. 56, No. 23
Israeli PR aimed at reporters
JOE BERKOFSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - One year ago, Mark Bianu stood in a Haifa cemetery reserved for terror victims.
As a reporter for a local cable TV show, "News of the Day," Bianu, 29, already had covered three terrorist attacks. He remarked to a colleague at the rapidly growing cemetery, "Who knows - maybe tomorrow you or I could be buried under this mound," his mother, Florence, recalled in a recent telephone interview.
Last October, Bianu and his wife Naomi were having Shabbat lunch at Haifa's Maxim restaurant when a Palestinian woman from Jenin blew herself up nearby, killing the couple and 19 others.
Now Bianu and his wife are buried in that Haifa cemetery.
"I am trying to carry on his work," Florence Bianu said of her son.
Nowadays Bianu is part of a new effort to make the case for Israel's security barrier in painfully human terms, by telling stories of ordinary Israelis to Americans and media opinion leaders.
The move by the Israel Project, a nonprofit firm that advocates for Israel, joins several new campaigns to inform the U.S. media, and by extension public perceptions, about Israeli life behind the headlines.
Donna Rosenthal, an award-winning former Israel Radio and TV correspondent, said she wrote her new book, "The Israelis," an in-depth look at the many faces of Israeli society during the Palestinian intifada, as a "bible for journalists."
At the same time, Linda Scherzer, a former CNN correspondent in Israel, now is consulting for a new Internet venture to give newspaper editorial writers access to analysis and opinion pieces about Israel from some 400 news outlets worldwide.
Launched by Los Angeles TV producer Merv Adelson, Access Middle East, at www.AccessMiddleEast.org, "has been a good way to advance the story" about Israel to editorial writers.
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