I’ve written a lot about the experience and I’m still as positive as I was that day. I’ve heard from many people who’ve bought electric cars, partly helped by my writing and I get a tremendously positive feeling when I hear those stories.

I have two new articles up today, the most comprehensive review of my year will be published a little later at Green Car Reports. It covers one year in a Better Place car.

I’ve also penned a companion piece for Times of Israel which answers a variety of questions that myself and fellow electric car pioneers get asked while we are driving and parking our cars.

Times of Israel blogger Sarah Tuttle-Singer posts about the “dirty H-word.”

Newsflash: I curse a lot. Like, a lot a lot — even to the point where a few friends have said “ya know, ya might wanna actually tone down the F*cks and Sh*ts. It cheapens your writing.”  (asterisks not in original, natch.)

Meh. Maybe they’re right – in fact, many of you may be doing fistpumps and saying “Hell to the yeah!” and “Testify!” or even… dare I write it… “Word!” right now.

But the thing is, I think a well placed so-called dirty word can actually enhance a sentence — it adds a surprising little twist, like fishnet stockings worn with a classy LBD and Mary Janes. It’s a Victoria’s Secret pushup bra – makes you look again long enough to pay attention and get the message.

But maybe that’s just me.

That said, there is one word that I don’t like to use because I think it cheapens the conversation.

Ready?

No, seriously, are you ready?

OK.

Hasbara.

(Shudder.)

Let’s break it down Wikipedia style:

HASBARA: Public diplomacy in Israel (Hebrew: הַסְבָּרָה‎ hasbará, “explaining”) refers to public relations efforts to disseminate information about Israel.[1][2] The term is used by the Israeli government and its supporters to describe efforts to explain government policies and promote Israel in the face of negative press, and to counter what they see as delegitimisation of

Israel around the world. Hasbara means “explanation”, and is also a euphemism for propaganda

Key word: “Explaining.”

Well F*ck that.

When you’re explaining you’re reacting to something. And when you’re reacting to something, you’re on the defensive. And, when you’re on the defensive, you are acknowledging blame.

Sure, Israel makes mistakes. Like. Any. Other. Sovereign. State. But PR defense strategy is obviously so not working.

Read the whole thing here.

While I agree with Sarah’s contention that anti-Semitism has mutated and become fashionable again “wrapped in an Israeli flag” (nicely put, and, heck, look at my last post), I have to admit Sarah’s post missed the mark for me.

Why? Well, for a start, Sarah does not come with any solution (and I do like me solutions to problems).

Not only that, but she really seems to be unaware of the true nature of hasbara (yes, I used the word, and I liked it.*)

I mean, what are blogs like Israellycool doing? We are engaged in a war online. And wars involve attack and defense. Accusations are leveled against us on a daily basis, and there are many people out there who would readily believe them if we did not react to them with explanations, rebuttals and facts. At the same time, we do quite a bit of attacking of our own, whether it be shining a light on the terrorist tactics of our adversaries or their propensity to lie (Although I suspect Sarah would characterize that as defensive as well).

Is it all worth it? Heck yeah. While I agree many are preaching to the choir, some of us are recruiting new choir members. Don’t underestimate the power of a good argument or sound rebuttal. And don’t underestimate people’s capacity to think. Sure, there are many whose minds are already made up – usually those who have a problem with Jews or a rather simplistic view of the world, where the ostensibly weak or aggrieved are always justified in their actions, no matter how morally repugnant. But if my 10+ years of blogging have taught me anything, it’s that there is also a significant number of people wanting to understand the situation better and open to facts, evidence and logical arguments.

Reacting to attacks against Israel online is not necessarily- as Sarah claims – acknowledging blame. I posit it can be the exact opposite. Take the recent example of the 11-month-old son of a BBC Arabic journalist, widely claimed to have been killed by shrapnel from the IDF. Pro-Israel blogs took the defensive step of arguing the likelihood he was killed by a palestinian rocket, ultimately resulting in the UN releasing a report confirming this. By tackling the accusation head on, we managed to not only defensively dodge a bullet (so to speak), but also attacked the credibility of Hamas et al by poking another hole in their credibility.

At the end of the day, those who want to find fault with Israel will do so, no matter what we say or do. But there’s also a bunch of reasonable people out there, so let’s not forget that.

Hasbara isn’t such a dirty word after all.

* with apologies to Katy Perry 

Rocks thrown from the temple mount by the Romans. We’re not leaving Jerusalem again, look at the mess!

Their hatred of Jews is holding Arab and Muslim societies back: so says Ahmed Hashemi. He has a piece in the Times of Israel “Anti-Semitism is why the Arab Spring failed” that’s pretty brave considering who he is. From his biography:

Ahmad Hashemi is a former Iranian foreign ministry employee who worked as an interpreter. He is currently seeking political asylum in Turkey and works as a freelance journalist.

About the Arab Spring he begins:

I was not as optimistic. I argued that, unlike Iran’s opposition Green Movement – which was an uprising backed by predominantly secular, middle class and pro-western layers of society – the major opposition forces in the Arab streets were made up of Islamists and even salafists from poor neighborhoods, not real forces for change for the good. I contended that circumstances were not ripe for a positive transformation and that quick and bloody change would only exacerbate the situation by bringing anti-West extremist elements to power.

My skepticism gained further momentum by hearing and reading news headlines such as: “With more than 2000 years of Jewish heritage, Egypt shuts down its last synagogue,” or “Attacks on Coptic places of worship continue,” and “Egyptian high profile officials call Jews `apes,`” and “David Gerbi, the Libyan-Italian Jew who returned to his homeland, receives death threats,” and “The last synagogue in Iraq is closed, signaling the end of a 2,700-year Jewish presence there.”

These and other similar examples were indications that not only were the remaining small Christian and particularly Jewish communities becoming extinct in the Muslim world, but the already low tolerance towards the “other,” was shrinking. This is the main reason I continue to believe that Arab uprisings are unlikely to bring any change for the better.

It’s a great piece and I encourage you to read it all. It would be tremendous if more than a handful of Muslims ever saw material like this. But there’s just one step missing. What is the common element that spans all these Arab uprisings and even non-Arab Iran? There’s only one inescapable conclusion: Jew hatred is baked into parts of Islam we have no chance of changing.

If we accept the structural problem within Islam, we can face it with honesty. Perhaps we can’t change it, but denying repeatedly that it’s there isn’t going to help anyone, especially those Muslims who want out from under the control of the fanatics who are gaining the upper hand today.

Better Place Renault Fluence ZE cars sold and awaiting delivery 27 Feb 2013 – Photo: Brian of London

Today I have a major piece about Better Place up on the Times of Israel again. This time the target is the woeful Israeli Government behaviour toward Better Place.

Despite professing that they want to move Israel off Oil, they’re making completely stupid moves that completely ignore the massive investment Better Place have made here.

An economic Iron Dome Israel isn’t using

There are so many very low cost or zero cost actions the Israeli Government could be taking if it is serious about kicking the oil habit: a reduction in company car tax for electric vehicles; parking price reductions; reduction in fees levied on Israel’s toll road; purchase for use by Government ministers and employees; legislation making it harder for condominium buildings to block installation of home charge points; stipulation to build charging infrastructure into new parking lots and many more.

None of these measures (all in place in various European countries) would come even close to matching the money Better Place has already invested in Israel. I’m far from an advocate of government intervention in markets, but Better Place’s current sales offer is attractive enough for the Government to lease cars for its own use. They are competitive with similar vehicles. France just ordered more than 2000 electric cars from Renault without a switch network in place!

When sold and bought in larger numbers, electric cars will become dramatically cheaper than existing oil cars. If we are serious about having any alternative to oil burning cars: this is the strongest horse to back with minimal short term assistance. Just the confidence given by the government leasing 500 cars would make a huge difference and actually save taxpayers money from day one.

For those of us happy owners who know the solution works, this continued lack of any interest in the success of this project by the Israeli Government borders on the insane or (and I’ll suggest this here) reeks of political corruption. Was it personal antipathy toward Shai Agassi or Idan Ofer? What is the reason. There is no logical way to profess the goal of reducing dependence on oil and then ignore the $500m investment that Better Place have made.

Read the whole piece and leave comments at the Times of Israel.

I also wish to expand on my thinking about government support later: as anyone who has followed me for a while would know, I’m most certainly a small government kind of guy so calling for government handouts is not my style.

If anyone who reads it has any connections that would like to translate and publish in Hebrew in one of the major Israeli papers, please get in touch with me.

Credit: Sunday Times

I have a new piece up on the Times of Israel about the notorious Gerald Scarfe cartoon published by the Sunday Times this weekend.

I detail the orgy of violence and mayhem caused by Jews and Israelis all around the world following it’s revolting publication.

OK, not really. But there were some very strongly worded tweets.

Portraying a hook nosed Bibi Netanyahu as building a wall against peace, cemented with the blood and dying bodies of Arabs was, perhaps, mildly offensive even if you voted for the other guy or gal last week. It was so awful that even Ha’aretz was forced to defend the artist.

The fact that Sunday was also the international Holocaust Memorial Day was, as Hilary Clinton might say “almost too delicious to believe my friends“.

Personally I was so incensed I decided to take my framed original sketch and animation cell by Scarfe from the film The Wall down from my office wall (it creeps my wife out which is why it wasn’t at home). I also wrote some things on Twitter and Facebook (this is far more productive than therapy and cheaper). I even personally tweeted to Rupert Murdoch.

Electric car company Better Place has failed to market their amazing product in Israel correctly. They can still turn it around and become a huge success.

While Israel is the Startup Nation, the vast majority of Israelis are not early adopters of new technology. They want to see something in the hands of millions of Americans before they will commit. And a completely new kind of car in Israel is a huge commitment.

A Startup Nation exists because Israel has a slightly high proportion of motivated people willing to take a chance. But those people willing to start their own companies and take chances are still a tiny proportion, even in Israel. You can’t make a business selling just to them.

So while it seemed obvious to start selling in Israel, those who live here see a more nuanced picture.

Do read it all.

Hummus can do that to ya.

Over the last couple of months there has been a lot written about Better Place, most of it pretty negative. It seems November car sales  in Israel pretty much dried up as big corporate clients, and the leasing companies they usually buy through, deferred taking new cars until the future of the company looks more secure.

This was underlined in a Ha’aretz ($) article with the mildly inflammatory headline “Israel Corp. threatens to stop cash infusion into Better Place”. Essentially they have given new CEO Evan Thornley until December to submit a revised business plan which seems reasonable following his installation in October. Green Car Reports has a fair outsiders take based partly on that Ha’aretz article.

Meanwhile, over the last few weeks, Evan has been dramatically cutting the staff at the Better Place head office in Rosh Ha’ayin. That is unfortunate but understandable as he has to find some way to stem losses while the company grows a customer base in Israel and elsewhere.

As A Customer in Israel

Email from Better Place in both Hebrew and English

As a customer, and within the circle of customers, I can tell you we are still a happy bunch. New switch stations have continued to open including (most significantly for me) two more on the vital Jerusalem Tel Aviv corridor. This virtually guarantees that I will only ever switch once on a Jerusalem and back trip. Existing customers, and those who’ve come on board including Israellycool co-blogger, Zionist Shark, are still overwhelmingly delighted with their choice.

In fact, as I wrote about our unusual meeting, the customers are mostly upset over the company’s poor ability to promote and sell cars! Just last night I spent 20 minutes on the phone talking to a prospective customer (he was given my number by one of the sales staff as I’ve agreed to this). The only thing holding anybody back at this stage, once they’ve driven the car and decided it fits their driving pattern, is the future security of the company.

An early niggle I had was that announcements of new battery switch stations were sent by email in Hebrew only and as an image precluding the use of Google translate. These announcements are now made in both Hebrew and English and the text is copy/paste-able and the emails still look pretty!

Answering Press

As an example of the sort of articles written about Better Place, I’ll give some comments on this one that showed up in Time magazine with the headline “A Smart Car Dream in Israel—Not So Smart, After All?”

After a brief description of Better Place’s system in Israel we get the following:

The only thing that’s missing is the cars — or, rather, the people who want to drive them.

….

But starting in Israel always looked like one of the soundest elements of his plan. The Jewish State is not only famed for its innovation

Israel, as a country, deserves it’s Startup Nation status, but that does not transfer to the whole population. Anyone who has lived here for a while knows Israelis are actually very slow, cautious adopters of new ideas and technology. It’s one thing getting people to load a new free app on their iPhones, its quite another trying to sell them a completely new transport paradigm.

And then think of the sizeable chunk of the population who are too religious to even use computers and will only buy a car with 8 or more seats for huge families!

I sell computers and I’m still selling and having customers demand XP: forget Windows 8, almost no requests for that yet.

Better Place should be criticised for not marketing properly in Israel: not enough and only in Hebrew. The early adopters (like me) are disproportionately Anglo and yet Better Place have never advertised in English (or Arabic or Russian which are equally good candidates).

I’ve answered dozens of questions when parked on the busiest predominantly Arab shopping street in Jerusalem (pictures here). There are sales centres in Jerusalem and Haifa but I’ve never seen any Arabic literature: it’s true many of the 1 million plus Israeli Arabs speak Hebrew but still, a sale is always easier to make if the seller goes the extra mile.

 “We do all the green things,” says a middle-aged woman who offered only her first name, Sarit. “We recycle. On camping trips we use only re-usable dishes.  We have solar water heating. We believe in it.  Does belief go anywhere?”   Not if you don’t buy.  She and her husband bought a new car six months ago, and settled on a Subaru over a Better Place sedan after her husband decided “the technology isn’t developed enough yet, and we’ll wait for the next generation,” Sarit says. “But I hope it works. It’s good for the environment.”

This quote rings true and speaks of the majority and thus contradicts the journalist’s opening statements! This is the Israeli mentality: startup nation applies to a small number of entrepreneurial free thinkers (what’s the French word for entrepreneurial). Israel may have a slightly higher number of those in the general population than average but we’re still talking exceptional not normal.

It’s become apparent that in reality “green” doesn’t sell (very much) in Israel: certainly not nearly to the extent that it does in some parts of Europe. Electric cars don’t have free parking, they pay the same road tax and so on: the government really hasn’t helped out to the degree that is happening in Europe.

I’m a small government kinda guy, I’m not asking for hand outs: I think Better Place offers a good enough deal now but the situation is not like Holland or Norway where EV’s are heavily promoted and subsidised by government fiat. The import duty tax break in Israel (which Better Place gets) is almost all there is and is worth less than government rebates in the UK or USA.

But the national security pitch appears to be getting no traction. In fact, the opposite may be true, the car’s local roots are proving a drawback. “I think Israelis have a thing for hating themselves and not appreciating things that come from Israel,” says Nitsan Avivi, editor of Auto magazine in Tel Aviv. “I think Aggasi [sic] made it look so dreamy at the beginning…we were always looking for the catch.” Indeed, the Hebrew press often appears to be rooting against Better Place. A recent column in Israel Hayom, the mammoth free-circulation daily owned by Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, listed only reasons not to get on board.

Treatment in the Hebrew press has been woeful and negative. In my cynical frame of mind I’d point out that car advertising is one of the largest single sources of income for the media in Israel and as Better Place haven’t done enough of that, they’ve not got any goodwill. This is unsubstantiated speculation on my part but you can see how it might work like this.

There was also a complete travesty of an article that appeared in Israel Hayom and seemed to be saying that because the weight of a battery does not go down as it was depleted (as the weight of fuel in an petrol burning car does) this somehow makes EV’s less efficient. Whoever wrote that hasn’t a clue about anything!

As an example, here’s a tweet stream by the environmental correspondent for the Jerusalem Post. She fires off a cost for the car that is wrong by 20% saying the car costs ₪150k when ₪120k is closer. For ₪150k you can buy it AND drive it for 4 years too. The fact that she doesn’t know the number and she covers Better Place indicates a huge problem! I really am not criticising Sharon Udasin at all: she’s a good reporter. It’s purely an example of where Better Place have failed to get any aspect of their offer out to the public.

I’m having very different conversations today: people are definitely thinking about it. The number one objection is long term viability of the whole company and that is ebbing after they confirmed a new finance round. Resale value of the car in 3 or 4 years is the only other unknown that people are genuinely asking about.

That Better Place have built this system and that it works so well is a staggering achievement. People genuinely don’t ask me if the system works any more: they can see I keep showing up on time to meetings!

But Better Place does not financially succeed or fail based on Israel. That never was the plan. Right now I think they’d rather have fewer customers but keep them all very happy (which they are doing) than drop the ball on customer service. Having visited China myself I can see how important that market really is. One small part of that market would dwarf Israel and make it completely irrelevant to the company’s long term success.

The other point I’ve been told about selling is the large fleets were only just starting to take cars but even when they commit to a large number like 125 in the case of Elco (very large company) they take 5 cars first and wait for feedback from those users: that can take 3 or 4 months. I have yet to find someone genuinely unhappy with the car or service and I really am looking and asking everyone.

Today Better Place is installing charge spots for owners of the Holden Volt plug in car in Australia. Their taxi trial at Amsterdam airport is being hailed as a success with 10 taxis averaging over 600km per day using one switch station. They certainly have a long way to go to profitability, but they are making many changes that make sense to me.

The new hotness frm @btrplc. Pleasure 2 drive & the idea of not having 2 pay 4 gas is truly intoxicating @brianoflondon twitter.com/ZionistShark/s…

— Zionist Shark (@ZionistShark) November 23, 2012

When I asked for the blog at the Times of Israel I was thinking more along the lines of Better Place and environmental issues. However that was put aside for my first post as there was a war on. I opened up by expanding on this Israellycool post about the BBC trying to get the IDF Spokesperson thrown off Twitter for a “threat of violence”

Here’s the start of my post, read the rest at the Times of Israel:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. – Jane Austen

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the BBC in possession of a tweet must be in want of a way to demonise Israel. – Brian of London

A week ago, thinking to expand outlets for my writing, I asked the Times of Israel if they were interested in a blog about environmental issues and electric cars written by a anthropogenic climate change sceptic.

It took a few days and in the meantime we’ve started and finished a whole war. Talk about war for the ADD generation. Not now, but at some point I’ll start discussing what proportion of the world’s transport runs completely on crude oil  (which pays for all the missiles that fell on us).*

So back to the real topic. As a former subject of the British Empire, I want to highlight what we can learn from one simple tweet from the BBC.

Right at the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defence, the IDF Spokespersons office tweeted the following:

We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead.

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 14, 2012

I didn’t like the message: I replied that it would be more sensible to tell Hamas’s people to give themselves and their weapons up.

The BBC, however, took a different approach and seriously implored Twitter to shut down the IDF’s primary information account for violating Twitter’s prohibition on “threats of violence”.

.@twitter bans “threats of violence”, but will it stop tweets by Hamas’s @alqassambrigade & Israel’s @idfspokesperson? bbc.in/Sso5cD

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) November 15, 2012

Read the rest.

One such event caught my eye yesterday when Ma’an news site published this piece:

Syrian prisoner due for release from Israeli jail

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — A Syrian man detained in Israel for 27 years is due for release on Thursday, prisoner affairs researcher Abdul Nasser Farwana said Tuesday.

Israeli forces detained Sadki al-Makt, 45, from the Golan Heights on Aug. 23, 1985. He was charged with establishing a resistance movement against Israel’s occupation of the Syrian territory and participating in anti-occupation activities, Farwana said in a statement.

An Israeli military court sentenced al-Makt to 27 years, and he has served his sentence in various jails in Israel, Farwana added.

Syrian SANA adds a few details:

QUNEITRA, (SANA)- After 27 years of imprisonment on charge of resisting the Israeli occupation and belonging to homeland Syria, long-time prisoner Sudqi al-Maqt has been released to embrace freedom and be back in occupied Golan.

Al-Maqt was arrested on August 23, 1985 and was sentenced to 27 years in jail on the charge of resisting occupation. He moved into several jails throughout the period of his imprisonment.

The released prisoner is from Majdal Shams in the occupied Syrian Golan. He was born in April 17, 1967 and was brought up within a family known for its struggle against the occupation in the Golan.

Obviously, this is the Arab narrative. Al-Maqt is a Druze from Majdal Shams, and as we’ve seen last year, some in the village are openly hostile to Israel, while others are reluctant to take sides while their relatives are within Assad’s crosshairs. So it comes as no surprise that Israel arrested Al-Maqt for “resistance”.

Cue Ynet, who having seen the Arab sources, report on the release by parroting the Syrian and Palestinian narratives without even blinking.

Report: Israel to release Syrian convict after 27 years

Sadki al-Makt, a 45-year-old Syrian convicted of taking part in anti-Israeli activity, is to be released on Thursday after spending 27 years in Israeli prison, the Palestinian Maan News Agency reported. A similar report was published by the official Syrian Arab News Agency. (Ynet)

Al-Maqt (the correct transliteration is with a Q) was Syrian for exactly 54 days in 1967, before it was won by Israel. The insistence of Arab sources in calling him a “Syrian” is the same as said sources calling Israeli-Arabs “Palestinians.” So while it is clear to me why he’s called a Syrian, it wouldn’t be inconceivable that the Ynet “reporter” thought he was an actual Syrian. The omission by Ynet of him being a Druze or residing in Majdal Shams certainly doesn’t help their case.

As an added bonus, the Hebrew version of the news flash got his name wrong.

Update: It appears that the Times of Israel have also fallen for the Arab narrative.

Israel released a Syrian citizen Wednesday after spending 27 years in prison for actions against the state. Sidqi Suleiman, 45, was originally from Majdal Shams, near the border with Syria. Druze towns in the Golan were preparing celebrations to welcome him back, Army Radio reported.

One would think that if you’re a “Syrian citizen” imprisoned for “actions against the state”, you would be released from a Syrian prison.

A revised Hebrew Ynet version now states:

Majdal Shams resident convicted of terrorist activity released from prison after 27 years.
Sudqi Al-makt, 45 ,from Majdal Shams who was sentenced to 27 years in prison after being convicted of terrorist activities against Israel, was released from prison after having served his full sentence.

Even Haaret’z Hebrew news flash gets it right:

The oldest prisoner from the Golan Heights, Sudqi Al-Makt from Majdal Shams, was released after serving 27 years in prison for security offences

So you can have an impartial news report in a few sentences. I guess we have idiots everywhere.