Miri Eisin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Miri Eisin is a retired Colonel of the Israeli Army with a background in political science. She is currently an official spokeswoman charged with explaining and clarifying Israel’s perspective with regard to Israel’s international standing, with a particular emphasis placed on the ongoing Israeli-Arab conflicts. She is married and has three young children and spends considerable time with Jewish groups in Boston, U.S.A., and elsewhere across the world.
Miri Eisin is regarded as having a greater understanding about the situation in the Middle East than most commentators and spokespersons, and her articulate speaking style is much appreciated by her audiences. Miri Eisin has attributed some of this to her having emigrated from the U.S.A. to Israel when she was 9 shortly after the six-day war and thus has a certain degree of Amero-Israeli understanding that an Israeli-only person would not necessarily have.
Miri Eisin has featured in The New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC(UK), for example. Her biggest challenge is to get across to audiences--who don’t live under the threat of constant war and terrorism--the point that Israel is not asking for any conflict, but has to endure a conflict too often supported by international actors who consider Israel’s right to exist within the security of its own borders anathema to their goals.
This challenge is further exacerbated by the promotion across college campuses in the U.S.A. by radical Islamists and their acolytes, that it is legitimate to wage violence towards Israel. And that, to young American Jews, Israel has more of a sentimental value than the real value gained through first-hand knowledge of the country. This latter issue is partly due to the ongoing conflicts which have discouraged young Jews, and others, from travelling to Israel.
Nonetheless, in vino veritas, it must be said that some non-believers do consider Miri a rather trenchant and cold-hearted apologist of Israeli brutalities towards the Palestinian people. However, to assume as much, would be to concede the very notion of the Palestinian people, an existential quandary that is of course ultimately doomed to failure.
