Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir and the Foreign Ministry came under sharp attack by a key Likud Knesset member for what he said was on “inept information campaign” dealing with the war in Lebapon.
Dr. Eliahu Ben-Elissar, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, who was Israel’s Ambassador to Egypt and a former Director General of the Prime Minister’s office, blamed Shamir for not having convened even one press conference with foreign journalists to present Israel’s position. He also charged at a Committee meeting Monday that Shamir refused to deal with the subject of the information campaign at Cabinet meetings.
Ben-Elissar said that in view of this “ineptness” he did not understand why the Foreign Ministry was surprised that most of the international media expressed sympathy for the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Ministry, he said, should have prepared itself ahead of time for such a development.
David Kimche, Director General of the Foreign Ministry, replied that his Ministry was only one of the bodies dealing with information. He said the Israel Defense Force spokesman was in charge of briefing journalists in Lebanon, and not the Foreign Ministry. Ben-Elissar responded by noting that this was not an explanation. If it was a question of coordinating information for the foreign media, Shamir was the one who should have raised it at the ministerial level, Ben-Elissar said.
POSITIVE REPORT ON WORK OF MINISTRY
Sources at the Ministry expressed surprise that Ben-Elissar’s comments were leaked out of the Knesset Committee, since the meeting was a closed one. The sources said the Committee received a comprehensive account of the extensive work of the Foreign Ministry in the area of informational activity which resulted in public opinion surveys showing that support for Israel in the United States and Western Europe has not diminished since the war began in Lebanon.
The account also noted that Shamir devotes consider able time daily for interviews with the media, thus becoming Israel’s best known spokesman overseas, after Premier Menachem Begin.
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