For well over a decade I ran a media relations office inJerusalemon behalf of AgudathIsraelofAmerica. I used to think I did a pretty good job. Not any more.

For the past six weeks I’ve been watching from the sidelines as Ronit Peskin and Leah Aharoni have run a multipronged response to the well-oiled publicity machine that is Women of the Wall. Despite spotting WoW a 24-year head start they have managed in that brief period to completely reset the terms of the public debate. And they have done so while raising families and running their own businesses and without taking a penny in salaries.

A successful campaign to change public opinion today is not a matter of writing op-eds at a stately pace or putting together a documentary of traditional women speaking about what the Kosel means to them — all of which I once did. It is more like a rapid-play chess game. There is no respite. One has to keep changing tactics in response to shifts on the chessboard. An understanding of modern media and the ability it provides to reach large numbers of people quickly is absolutely essential.

Responses must be instantaneous. When police put a cordon around the Old City on Sunday Rosh Chodesh Tammuz in order to allow WoW to conduct their rites at the Kosel Leah Aharoni one of the founders of Women For the Wall (W4W) already had a piece up on the Jerusalem Post site within hours pointing out the heavy price of WoW’s “freedom” to worship as they wished — i.e. large numbers of Jewish men and women who wanted to daven at the Kosel that morning were unable to do so and school children from outside theOldCity were not able to get to classes.

After the OldCitywas closed down on their behalf WoW complained that they had been “caged in” at the Kosel. Ronit Peskin countered immediately at the Times of Israel that placed in a “VIP lounge” would be a more accurate description. Peskin was denied entry to that “lounge” to talk to the reporters who were there with WoW.

When WoW PR director Shira Pruce accused W4W of responsibility for a rise in violence against WoW since they began their activities Aharoni again pounced within hours. She pointed out on the Times of Israel Web site that WoW has been complaining of violence against them for decades and W4W came into existence just two months ago. She quoted extensively from such complaints both new and ancient. (Part of the media battle consists of knowing everything your opponents are saying or have ever said.) In short Pruce had conveniently forgotten all past complaints in order to delegitimize a group of women who have become a real thorn in WoW’s side.

Aharoni was able to point to videos of herself Ronit Peskin and a third member of the group Jenni Menashe telling chareidi young men at the Kosel to stay away from the WoW group. One of those videos had already been shown on Israel Channel 2 News and remarked upon by Shmuel Rosner a prominent Israeli journalist.

Aharoni and Peskin have been able to exploit WoW’s “Palestinian problem.” Just as the Palestinians consistently present one message in Arabic and quite another in Hebrew WoW has multiple — and often contradictory — messages depending on the audience they are addressing. At times they present themselves as seeking to liberate observant women from the patriarchy and expose them to feminist religious practice; other times they are ethereal spiritual beings deeply moved by the Kosel and acting well within the bounds of halachah. To raise large sums of money and provide the American Reform movement with a cause around which to rally WoW must present their worship as the civil rights struggle of our time and raise as much ruckus as possible; at other times they proclaim their desire to be just be left alone

But contradictory messages can be a problem if someone else is paying close attention to everything you say.

W4W’s efforts are taking place on multiple fronts: in the Knesset lobbying MKs writing op-eds for the local press — Jerusalem Post Times of Israel Maariv; being interviewed by the local and foreign media –— Army Radio Channel 2 Christian Science Monitor LA Times the Forward Le Monde German TV and a wide variety of Jewish religious sites; maintaining contacts with religious MKs and city councilors; connecting to Jewish women abroad concerned about the sanctity of the Kosel (via Webcam last Rosh Chodesh); writing explanatory materials on feminism for potential baalei teshuvah; and debating WoW in a variety of public forums.

The latter must be particularly galling to WoW who has had the world media eagerly lapping up their “freedom narrative” for 20 years with no one to counter it. Suddenly they find themselves before the international press atJerusalem’s Media Central together with W4W and the media is fascinated to see an earnest non-strident counterview.

At the recent Media Central event the foreign press was shocked when WoW refused to stay in the room during Ronit and Leah’s presentation and fascinated to see some of their stereotypes upended such as when W4W’s Leah Aharoni said there is something profoundly misogynistic about assuming that prayer is only meaningful when it apes that of men. When asked why her group rejects Robinson’s Arch WoW’s Peggy Cidor responded that it is too reminiscent of destruction. A German reporter asked her “But  isn’t it called the Wailing Wall?” Facing pointed questions for the first time the WoW representatives became testy.

Just contemplating W4W’s whirlwind of activity makes me feel old. And delighted that such talented young women appeared out of nowhere to carry the banner for preservation of the kedushah of the Kosel.

Scripted Suspicions

My friend Rabbi Avi Shafran Agudath Israel’s Director of Public Relations enjoys recounting the circumstances of his first contact with Rabbi Moshe Sherer. In the wake of the defacement and destruction of a number of bus stops in Jerusalem Rabbi Shafran who was then a high school rebbi in the local yeshivah inProvidence penned an op-ed in which he showed through a variety of thought experiments that most people have certain images that they find so profoundly offensive they would destroy them.

The piece came to Rabbi Sherer’s attention and as was his practice he immediately sent a complimentary note to the young writer commending his imaginative argument. But he appended to that compliment an admonition. He pointed out that Rabbi Shafran had implicitly assumed that chareidim were responsible for the vandalism as was widely assumed. But that had not been proven Rabbi Sherer insisted and should not be conceded.

Later the wisdom of Rabbi Sherer’s caution became clear when the perpetrators were caught and they turned out to be secular youth seeking to place chareidim in a bad light.

I was reminded of that story last week when Israeli police appeared to have solved a grisly crime. In the summer of 2009 someone attacked a counseling center of teenage deviants in Tel Aviv killing two and injuring 12 three critically. Before the blood had even been wiped from the floor various media outlets were rife with charges of chareidi culpability. And even those who weren’t sure that the actual perpetrators were chareidi insisted that chareidim bore responsibility because of their incitement against the deviant community.

Well guess what? The police made arrests last week. And it turns out that the attackers were not motivated by any phobias. Rather they were avenging the victimization of a relative by someone they expected to find in the club.

Not exactly according to the script we’ve been read for the last four years.

Politically Correct Monitoring?

President Obama is right.

There I’ve said it. And I didn’t turn into a bag of bones.

Responding last week to a reporter’s question about government collection of megadata about the telephone records of every US citizen — e.g. destination and duration of calls — and of the Internet use of foreign nationals President Obama admitted that he had come into office with a healthy skepticism about these programs — actually as a staunch critic would have been more accurate. But after actually learning something about the programs his assessment was “that they help us prevent terrorist attacks.”

We don’t have to take President Obama’s word for it. Michael Mukasey Attorney General under President George W. Bush pointed to at least one conspiracy to kill and maim New York subway riders thwarted by the monitoring the content of communications abroad.

I know I’d readily trade all my telephone information for being able to keep my belt in the airport rather than being separated out for a special search because my pants fell down and became “baggy.”

Before becoming too gushy about Obama’s commonsensical balancing of privacy vs. security in the case at hand however I like to add three caveats. First there would be a lot less concern about the government’s collection of data had the IRS scandal not demonstrated that government agencies with vast information collecting capacity can be used for partisan purposes.

Second had the president not spent so much time pretending that the terrorist threat has been significantly lessened on his watch there would be far less discomfort with the thought of the National Security Agency collecting vast amounts of data about citizens.

Finally I only hope that the president’s common sense has in fact prevailed over political correctness. One news site claims that mosques have been excluded from the entire surveillance program despite a number of terrorist plots having emanated from US mosques. (FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted in testimony to the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI did not know that the mosque where the Tsarnaev brothers worshipped had been founded by a convicted terrorist who had been treated until then as a “moderate Muslim voice” by politicians.)

Maybe that’s why the algorithms used to connect the dots of all those billions of pieces of data collected did not succeed in flagging the Tsarnaev brothers.