Advocating for reconciliation: Public relations,activism,advocacy and dialogue

Abstract

Traditionally, the public relations (PR) literature on activism tended to focus on organisational perspectives and organisational responses to activist group pressure. More recent studies looked also at PR practitioners as activists within their organisations or at their role in the service of activist groups. Ihlen and Verhoeven (2009) admitted that they ‘would like to see studies of this practice [activist PR] also become a “natural” part of public relations’ (p. 334). This article responds to them by researching the complex and diverse practice of activist PR. Using narrative inquiry to study a professional case, it demonstrates how, even when performed by the same practitioner, advocacy, persuasive strategy and facilitation of genuine dialogues may be used at the same time and ethically to achieve organisational goals and to seek social change. Through a case study, it foregrounds specific features of activist practice, practitioners’ motivation and their willingness to pay high costs for promoting a social cause. Although based on a PR activist experience in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the article suggests that the conclusions would be relevant to activist PR in many parts of the world.

Keywords

Activism advocacy dialogue public relations reconciliation

Introduction

Coombs and Holladay (2012b) observed that ‘Over the past two decades there have been a number of voices calling for more attention to the role of activists in public relations’ (p. 352). More specifically, Heath and Waymer (2009) argued that ‘obtaining the democratic exchange long championed by public relations’ required ‘seeing how and when activists engage in the dialogue that occurs on various issues. But we would be remiss if we ignore the promotional aspects of activism by only addressing their issue management’ (p. 195). This article supports these arguments by examining specific uses of advocacy and dialogue as components of activism. It is based on evidence from one public relations (PR) professional whose career encompasses services to commercial companies, to non-profit organisations and, more recently, to an activist group who promote reconciliation between current enemies. It shows how, by assuming the role of spokesperson for this organisation and by promoting the unpopular cause of reconciliation, the PR practitioner functioned as an activist. Her work for this non-profit organisation includes one-way persuasive advocacy tactics and fundraising together with dialogic activities that involve listening, sharing experiences, identifying with empathy and enabling more voices to be given attention.

The case presented is unusual. It concerns an organisation called Palestinian Israeli Bereaved Families for Peace (n.d.) or, in short, The Parents Circle – Families Forum (PCFF) (http://www.theparentscircle.com/). The PCFF consists of 600 bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families and has been advancing reconciliation, tolerance and peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people since 1994. The PCFF vision is to create a framework for a reconciliation process and to become an integral part of future peace negotiations.

The PCFF is managed by two co-directors, an Israeli and a Palestinian, working in two offices – one in Palestine and one in Israel. The PR practitioner, Robi Damelin, who is the focus of this research, joined the PCFF following the death of her 28-year-old son David in 2002. Since joining the forum in 2005, she has served as its spokesperson and international relations executive. David, a reserve officer in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and a peace activist in his civil life, was shot by a Palestinian sniper who was arrested in 2004 and sentenced to 11 life terms in an Israeli prison. Damelin insisted on communicating with the sniper and his family despite his lack of cooperation as she was determined to keep advancing the idea of non-violence and reconciliation.

Prior to her tragic loss, Damelin managed her PR agency in Tel Aviv, communicating on behalf of food industries, TV channels, publishing houses and tourism. She used her extensive PR skills in her work for PCFF to engage in dialogue as well as to influence attitudes and to further a political agenda aiming at peace and reconciliation. As she said in an interview, ‘The PR part of my life enabled me to appear in the media, organise events, and be creative in promoting the idea of reconciliation and dialogue’ (Damelin, 2014). This article uses evidence from Damelin’s experience to illuminate the role played by PR practitioners when they function as activists.

Background

The PCFF’s vision might be seen as idealistic in the hostile and violent environment that has characterised this region over the past hundred years. Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs have been entangled in a bloody conflict over lands and independent statehood claims that preceded and followed the establishment of the State of Israel as a Jewish state in 1948. The conflict continued on various levels and included periods of war as well as attempts to negotiate peaceful solutions. Following the 1967 war, Israel occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza and has been controlling the lives of Palestinians there ever since. In this environment of animosity, the PCFF’s message of reconciliation does not align with the mainstream discourse in Israel nor in the Palestinian society. Their message resists the commonly accepted narratives informed by fear, frustration and mistrust.

During the period of Damelin’s work for the Forum, Israeli–Palestinian peace negotiations have been deteriorating virtually to the point of non-existence. At the same time, violent terrorist activities and military operations have taken over the realities of life and public discourse. The majority of the Israeli public has increased its support for right wing political views that disengaged with any ideas on peace and reconciliation. More and more Israelis viewed Jews who collaborated with Arab Palestinians as traitors damaging to the Zionist enterprise of a Jewish state. In fact, since 1986, another Israeli organisation called Almagor has been representing Jewish bereaved families of terror and war victims while promoting militant nationalist messages. Their communications oppose the idea of reconciliation and support war on terrorist organisations and death sentences to terrorists. While Damelin, for example, accepted the 2011 release of Palestinian prisoners, bereaved families from Almagor demonstrated and lobbied against any release of Palestinian prisoners. Instead, they called it ‘moral bankruptcy’ and argued that the prisoners should not be allowed to return to their terrorist organisations and risk the safety of Israelis again (Altman, 2013; http://news.walla.co.il/item/2707141).

On the other hand, many Palestinians lost trust in Israeli claims to bring a peaceful end to the conflict. They, in turn, saw organisations, such as the PCFF, who worked with Israelis as fruitless and as betraying the Palestinian struggle for independence. In this hostile environment, the PCFF is actually functioning as an activist organisation, trying to influence public opinion and political decisions in both societies and around the world. They seek to promote the unpopular idea that a political agreement, based on human rights and a two states solution, would be the only effective way to end the conflict. Almagor can also be classified as an activist organisation trying to influence Israel’s public opinion and government, albeit it is in the opposite direction.

Literature review

L’Etang (2016) argued that ‘literature on activism, both in and out of public relations, is often functional, case-based, trait based, under-theorized, and often not critical’ (p. 33). Taking into consideration the fact that PR scholars’ interest in activism is relatively young, it might be argued that as long as factual knowledge of the actual work of PR activists is limited, it is impossible to theorise from it. This article provides evidence to highlight some of the issues and activities used by a PR activist based on a distinction made by Smith and Ferguson (2010):

Activist organizations use public relations for two primary, interrelated purposes. The first is to rectify the conditions identified by the activist publics. For example, environmental groups pursue environmental issues; anti-war activists seek an end to an armed conflict … The second major goal … is to maintain the organization(s) established to pursue the activists’ purpose(s). Or, more broadly, to sustain the movement. The principal purpose here is to secure ongoing support for the organization’s goal in the form of followers, volunteers, and monetary donations. (pp. 397–398)

The analysis of Damelin’s work that follows does lend support to the two goals identified by Smith and Ferguson (2010): her work consists of advocating on behalf of the cause and communicating with external publics as well as fundraising and recruiting support to enable the ongoing work of the PCFF. However, in this case, this article identifies a third major function: conducting internal and external dialogues and engaging the bereaved families from both sides in activities designed to increase understanding, sharing and forgiveness. This is significant since these dialogic activities do not use either persuasive communication or advocacy approaches.

Advocacy and dialogue: Conflicting roles and professional ethics

PR scholars often evaluate practitioner tactics associated with influence according to the service they provide ‘to society at large not merely the interest of the sponsor of those statements’ (Heath, 1992: 39). The identified tension between the practitioner’s commitments to the organisation and to society at large is as old as the practice of PR itself. Practitioners are often torn between their role as advocates for the organisations they serve and their responsibilities towards the organisation’s stakeholders and society at large. Coombs and Holladay (2014) capture the economic realities endemic in how this tension continues to play out:

While the codes of ethics suggest that practitioners should consider the interests of society as a whole, obligations to clients are mentioned more frequently than obligations to the public interest. The reality is that the practitioners work for the client. Who pays the practitioners salary? It may be unrealistic to expect PR professionals to disregard ‘who pays the bill’ in favor of the public interest. (p. 49)

According to Reber (2013), advocacy is considered by many scholars as ‘the essence of public relations and … persuasion does not have to be unethical’ (p. 14). Can practitioners indeed use persuasive communication on behalf of organisations and at the same time build trustworthy relationships with the organisation’s stakeholders? Can they indeed serve society without using manipulative tactics or marginalising critical voices? Bowen (2008) argues that not only have they to make their commitment to society a high priority, but also they should take responsibility for the organisation’s ethical conduct and serve as the ethical conscience of the organisation. Taking responsibility for the ethical conduct of the organisation involves the prioritisation of social goals over immediate organisational interests.

The dual obligation to serve client organisations and the public interest – especially when their needs diverge – can confuse both practitioners’ understandings of their loyalties and the profession’s ethical standards. Parsons describes the challenge for practitioners as juggling loyalties to self, employer/client, the PR profession and society and concludes, ‘Finding the balance requires a close understanding of how you as individual approach thinking about ethics’ (Parsons, 2008: 28). Fitzpatrick and Gauthier (2001) observe that practitioners ‘need guidance in reconciling the potentially conflicting roles of the professional advocate and the social conscience’ (p. 201). They go on to suggest a theory of PR ethics based on responsibility to specific publics who are affected by the organisation’s decisions rather than on an ambiguous commitment to an ‘intangible society’ (Fitzpatrick and Gauthier, 2001: 207).

Advocacy implies the dissemination of information by PR professionals with a clear goal: to advance specific organisational narratives intended to achieve specific outcomes that the organisation has identified as its best interest (e.g. an agreement, consensus and a supporting environment for the organisation’s decisions, policies and actions). For Reber, the assumption is that in practising advocacy, practitioners tend to ignore stakeholders needs and ethical conduct: ‘Advocacy is persuasion and persuasion is asymmetric communication and inherently unethical’ (Reber, 2013: 14). Hypothetically, a balance of power between two parties that try to persuade each other might exist. Democracy is based on the idea that everybody is entitled to raise their voice and to try to persuade each other. However, in reality, we often witness imbalance of power, and persuasive communication tends to be used more effectively by powerful organisations that can afford PR services.

If persuasion is perceived as asymmetrical, the opposite concept of dialogue is perceived as symmetrical (Pieczka, 2016: 77). Pieczka (2011) argues that ‘Concepts of symmetrical communication, relationship management, and responsibility, which have been fundamental to the trajectory of public relations development since 1970s, overlap with the key concerns of the theory of dialogue’ (p. 109).

Dialogue implies a different and more ethical approach: ‘In a profession beset by criticism for spinning the truth to portray bad news as good and good news as better than it is, public relations embraced dialogue’s emphasis on equity, agreement, and mutual benefit’ (Stoker and Tusinski, 2006: 160). Indeed, PR literature debated the relevance and meaning of dialogue to the discipline with a tendency to discuss dialogue as an ethical direction for the profession (Pearson, 1989; Pieczka, 2011, 2016; Stoker and Tusinski, 2006; Taylor and Kent, 2002, 2014; Theunissen and Wan Noordin, 2012). For PR scholars, ‘Dialogue is an ethical process or orientation towards others that tries to avoid treating people instrumentally or letting the more powerful take advantage of the less powerful’ (Kent, 2013: 257).

Stoker and Tusinski (2006) identified dialogue with the two-way symmetrical model (Grunig, 1989) and argued that ‘Like Habermas, Grunig defines communications as a process that leads to mutual understanding’ (p. 159). They criticised this approach since

public relations infatuation with dialogue may create unrealistic expectations for organizational and individual communication. Indeed, adherence to dialogic approaches, such as the two-way symmetrical model, though well intended, may actually cause public relations to slip into simple quid pro quo relationships. (pp. 173–174)

However, in the context of this article, the PCFF dialogues are understood in the Buberian sense rather than the two-way communication model. Approaching PR as dialogue is based on philosopher Martin Buber’s famous ‘I–Thou’ relations. Kaufmann (1970) describes Buber’s distinction of different models of dialogue, between

the ‘genuine’ dialogue of the I-Thou relations, which is the deepening of mutual presence, and technical dialogue, which aims at objective understanding only. The latter would be devisable into the logical, which unfolds in itself, and that which – whatever it may be termed – seeks the human Other for confirmation and/or opposition. Opposed to both of these is monological thinking, which is sheer subjectivism and which often disguises itself as dialogue. (Kaufman, 1970: 58, quoting Buber, 1929)

Buber’s description of the different dialogues is helpful for analysing PR involvement in specific dialogues. Genuine dialogue requires an open conversation aimed at increasing understanding of the Other with no attempt to persuade or to achieve specific outcomes. The participants in dialogue are committed to a process of listening to each other with empathy and to making sincere efforts to understand each other as the sole goal of the conversation.

A more recent protagonist of the concept of dialogue as a form of ethical communication was the philosopher Jurgen Habermas (1984). Burleson and Kline (1979) usefully summarise Habermas’ four requirements for dialogue as follows:

First, all participants must have equal opportunity to initiate and perpetuate discourse, that is employ communication speech acts. Second, all participants must have an equal opportunity to put forth assertions, challenges, explanations, interpretations … the third requirement holds that all speakers must have an equal chance … through the expression of intentions, attitudes, feelings, and other representative speech acts. This requirement ensures the freedom [italics in original] of the speakers. Finally, participants must be equal with respect to power. (p. 423)

Pieczka and Wood (2013) identified ‘the transformative power of dialogue’ (p. 166) in an action research project that used dialogic techniques for education about alcohol. To them, the reciprocal understanding and relationships building of a face-to-face dialogue are methods for change although dialogue should not have specific goal or outcome. Pieczka (2016) clarifies this point: ‘dialogue is deemed to have happened if the parties have cooperated, irrespective of the outcomes’ (p. 78).

This article examines the work of a PR practitioner who used advocacy and persuasion for a social cause, raised funds for organisational maintenance, as well as facilitated dialogues. The article will contend that there was neither conflict nor ethical challenge around her different roles. Indeed, it uses the case to demonstrate how dialogue, persuasion and advocacy can be ethically harnessed for achieving the goal of an activist organisation.

Activism

Along with the PR literature’s greater acceptance of a role for activists, there have been calls for practitioners themselves to be more activist. Postmodernist and partially critical approaches to PR expect practitioners to challenge unjust decisions and practices made by organisations and act as activists (Berger and Reber, 2006; Coombs and Holladay, 2012a, 2014; Holtzhausen, 2000, 2012; McKie and Munshi, 2007). These approaches align with PR researchers’ emphasis on a dialogic approach to the role.

According to Bourland-Davis, Thompson and Brooks, communication is a central and, in some cases, the most important feature of cause-related groups. For some activist organisations, their messages are the major ‘product’: ‘In using communication successfully, the activist organisation has the capacity to change societal discourse’ (Bourland-Davis et al., 2010: 409). Effective PR service is therefore vital to these organisations and the practitioner is more likely to play a leadership role in this environment.

Coombs and Holladay (2012b) identified PR activism as one of the roots of the profession in the United States:

The dominant corporate-centric view of U.S. public relations history often claims that public relations developed as a response to activists who attempted to interfere with business operations … By alternatively grounding U.S. public relations history in the works of activists, we open possibilities for re-imagining the field and legitimizing activists’ works as a positive, central component in public relations theory and research. (p. 347)

For Coombs and Holladay (2012a), there has been ‘an emerging body of activist/activism public relations research’ (p. 886) that has taken place mainly in the new millennium. It has been accompanied by calls for PR research to address activism and how activists utilise PR. That call is being answered but slowly. Demetrious (2013) states that ‘within the domain of public relations there has not been enough reflectivity or deliberation of activism and its relationship to social change’ (p. 7).

In fact, the scholarly discussion on activism in PR considers the topic mainly from the perspective of antagonistic relationships between corporations and activist groups. It is analysing corporate PR response to activists that put pressure on corporations and the possible role of the practitioner as a change agent within corporations (Coombs and Holladay, 2012b; Demetrious, 2013; Holtzhausen, 2012). Looking beyond the corporate context, Smith (2013) mentions the impact of activists groups on social changes that were made possible, thanks to activism for ‘women’s rights, civil rights, consumer safety, environmentalism, and the anti-Vietnam War protests’ (p. 6). However, there is scant discussion on the role of public relations professionals in such social change movements and their professional experiences. Demetrious (2013) criticises corporate PR effort to ‘manage’ activists group and control their activities arguing that not only are activists legitimate but ‘they are essential to nourish democracy. Without activists identifying and progressing issues of social, political and environmental significance, there would be inertia, repression and stagnation’ (p. 53). Her book offers extensive analyses and theorisations around the relationships between corporate PR and activist groups and examines the use of public communications by leaders of activist organisations. However, it does not look at the work of professional PR practitioners who serve activist groups. This is the focus of this article.

Smith describes how activists use PR to influence public opinion and to maintain their own base. This description focuses on activists’ tendency to use aggressive tactics:

The iconic images of activists tend to involve mass protests or violent demonstrations. However, activists use a variety of strategies and tactics to pursue their goals. Some tactics are confrontational, including boycotts, demonstrations, and symbolic events, which are often designed to dramatize an issue or galvanize public attention. (Smith, 2013: 7)

Holbrook goes further by arguing that ‘After all, terrorism can be seen as a form of violent fringe activism in pursuit of political and religious causes’ (Holbrook, 2014: 146). In sharp contrast, Holtzhausen’s (2000) postmodern perspective ‘opens the door for public relations practitioners to act as community activists, an approach that is not only radical but also ethical and desirable’ (p. 99). In her postmodernism, PR should challenge unjust decisions and practices made by organisations and enact the concept of ‘ethical conscience’: ‘It should be the responsibility of the public relations function to create opportunities for dissent, for opening up debate without forcing consensus, to create possibilities for change’ (Holtzhausen, 2000: 105). Holtzhausen further states that ‘Postmodern ethics are about the individual resisting power’, and so, in practice, she expects practitioners ‘to include as many different voices as possible or at least present the voice of the Other in the organization’ (Holtzhausen, 2012: 65).

Some scholars doubt that the expectation from practitioners to act as activists is realistic. Coombs and Holladay (2014) ask whether practitioners can ‘fulfill the expectations of postmodern PR theorists?’ (p. 57) or challenge management to change its practices. They doubt that practitioners have the power to do so and would need to take personal risks to promote changes: ‘PR professionals are paid by the organization. Hearing the concerns of a variety of groups is time consuming and costly. Is the organization willing to pay practitioners to do this?’ (2014: 57).

The rest of this article seeks to add to this debate from a different angle. Based on an interview with a PR practitioner, it contributes a non-corporate context for the discussion about the way activists use PR. It examines PR work for a sociopolitical activist movement that tried to influence public opinion and pressure government decisions. It also offers an example for PR activism that uses dialogues rather than the violent or aggressive tactics often associated with activist PR. It exposes inherent issues for PR practitioners serving activist organisations and identifies their challenges in pursuing a demanding, and financially unrewarding, career. It hopes to initiate further investigations into this important component of PR.

Method

The article draws from an extended interview with Robi Damelin, conducted in Tel Aviv on 9 December 2014. The researcher sought to identify her motivation and career choices and to analyse the different PR activities used by a peace activist to promote an organisation and a social cause. Chase (2011) gives the use of a personal story in qualitative data collection method the title of ‘narrative inquiry’ (p. 421) and positions it as ‘a field in the making’ (p. 430). It is a method used as ‘meaning making through the shaping or ordering of experience’ (2011: 430).

This article focuses on PR practitioners’ experiences via narrative inquiries to enable researchers to gain deeper, and more finely grained, understanding of specific issues for the profession. Nevertheless, Chase’s (2011) advocacy of the approach includes attending to an ethical challenge involved in narrative inquiry:

Unlike qualitative researchers in general, who usually present short experts from interviews or fieldwork in their published work, narrative researchers often publish or perform longer stories from individuals’ narratives. This increases the risk that narrators will feel vulnerable or exposed by narrative work. (p. 424)

To address that issue, the article was given to be read and approved by Damelin before submission for publication. Along similar ethical lines, a personal disclaimer needs to be made in relation to this research: the author has known Robi Damelin since the 1990s when we both practised public relations in Tel Aviv, long before Damelin joined the bereaved families circle. We used to discuss issues of professional ethics, relationships with journalists and the challenges for women in the agency environment. She has always come across as a creative and reflective practitioner who followed her principles and cared about professional ethics.

In addition to Damelin narrative, the article used media items covering PCFF and media interviews with Robi Damelin as sources of information.

The evidence: Activism in practice

Motivation

At the time when she was the owner and director of a PR agency serving clients in the business sector in Tel Aviv, Robi Damelin responded to a knock on her door. She opened it to find IDF soldiers who carried the news about her son David’s death. Her first response was ‘You may not kill anybody in the name of my child’. She immediately denied any right for revenge and rejected the possibility of her son’s death justifying a violent response. David was a reserve officer and was manning a military checkpoint in the West Bank when he was shot by a Palestinian sniper. In his civil life, he was a peace activist and joined a group of officers that objected to serve in the Occupied Territories. Her immediate response, which she herself can’t remember saying, explains Damelin’s strong political credo and commitment to values of peace and justice throughout her life. She identified the roots of this credo in her privileged upbringing by a Jewish family in South Africa and her growing resentment towards the unbearable injustice of the apartheid regime she discovered there as she grew up: ‘I remember the racism, but it was very easy to avoid seeing it. Similarly, in Tel Aviv today, people don’t see the difficulties of life in Hebron [for Palestinians]’ (Ben Simhon, 2009). Interestingly, Holtzhausen (2012) also attributed her academic interest in activism to her South African background.

Damelin immigrated into Israel in 1967 and for some time worked as a volunteer in a Kibbutz adopting its communal egalitarian lifestyle. She had two boys and eventually divorced and supported herself as a PR practitioner in Tel Aviv for over 20 years. In 2012, 10 years after the death of her son and following a failed attempt to communicate with her son’s killer, Damelin went back to South Africa to learn about their Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s efforts in overcoming years of enmity. Her journey was documented in a film called One Day After Peace directed by Erez Laufer and Miri Laufer (http://onedayafterpeace.com/). The trip reinforced Damelin’s belief in the possibility of a better future. In her written notes about the film, she expressed her emotional conflicts and motivation:

The journey to South Africa, and the realization that all bereaved mothers, no matter where they come from, share the same pain was an affirmation that what I am doing in my life today after the loss of David is worthwhile and important if we are to prevent others from experiencing loss … South Africa opened possibilities for trying to heal the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine. We learned that even the most cynical and angry people who had suffered as a consequence of the system of Apartheid, still understood that without the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there would have been a bloodbath. I learned that the promise of amnesty to the perpetrators was the only way to get to the truth and that also posed a moral question. (Damelin’s notes on the film One day after peace on http://onedayafterpeace.com/notes.php)

Damelin paid the ultimate price for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. After her son’s death, she found no point in serving commercial organisations and closed her agency. As she explained in an interview to Justvision.org ,

I worked for National Geographic, the History Channel, food, wine and all the pleasures of life, and also in projects that had to do with co-existence with Palestinians who were citizens of Israel. I was not involved in politics but did a lot of volunteer work – it was part of my identity. But I lost all the joy associated with work. My priorities have changed. Sitting in a meeting about marketing wine seemed to have nothing to do with me. (Gal, 2005)

By joining the PCFF in 2005, she gave meaning to her life:

The work I do for the PCFF is the only reason I have to get up in the morning. I feel that I have to do it. It is an obligation. It is not something I do for anyone else. It is my personal vocation. (Gal, 2005)

The turning point that convinced Damelin to shift from serving companies to work for the PCFF was when Damelin’s PR agency organised an event for the organisation Children of Peace that brings together Israelis and Palestinian citizen of Israel:

I suddenly realised that this was the only meaningful work I could do. This was about people who usually do not meet each other. I realized that this was an opportunity for the development of friendships and trust and empathy. Because of my background in public relations I was approached by other non-profit organisations that offered much better paid jobs [than the PCFF] but they had no significance for me. All my professional life I helped people appear in the media. I understood that I had the ability to communicate with people and let them see the picture from a different perspective. (Gal, 2005)

Damelin’s motivation to give up income for the sake of meaningful activist work is clear. It is a result of her deep-rooted values and belief in human rights, a traumatic loss and a need to fill her life with a meaningful vocation. She feels ‘in integrity with the PCFF message’ (Damelin, 2014) and no conflict between her commitment to the organisation and to the social cause. PR practitioners who serve activist organisation often accept lower, or no, pay and are probably motivated to make this choice by a strong need for self-fulfilment, an alignment between their set of beliefs and the work they do to advance a social cause, and they relate to their work as a personal vocation.

Strategies and tactics

The PCFF goals are to stop the circle of violence by engaging in dialogues between Israeli and Palestinian bereaved families, dialogues with external audiences, especially youth, and by influencing both societies to move towards reconciliation and peace. PCFF is not affiliated with any political party but promotes a clear political agenda similar to left wing party platforms. Most PCFF members believe in the establishment of two states for two peoples and the signing of a peace treaty as the only solution to the conflict. Members demand to be included in any formal and informal peace negotiations and to be heard by politicians who would manage such negotiations. They want to exercise their unique power to influence a decision that would prevent more bloodshed.

The organisation utilises all resources available – in education, public meetings and the media – to spread the idea of reconciliation as a prerequisite to achieving a sustainable peace. PCFF uses strategic persuasive peace communication in political debates while reaching out to diverse stakeholders. The strategy prioritises opportunities for dialogues and unique events that attract media attention rather than aggressive tactics.

Dialogues that are conducted internally between members of PCFF (i.e. the bereaved families from both sides) have no specific agenda and focus on sharing experiences and listening. The external dialogues that PCFF members conduct with groups of non-members of PCFF are different – they have a clear agenda and use the dialogue to persuade participants to believe in the possibility of reconciliation and peace. Those external dialogues are held at schools or in the street with passer-by residents.

The strategy around the external dialogues is inclusive, and all segments of society are invited to participate. This includes the Jewish settlers that do not believe in peace because ‘They are an important stakeholder and we need to listen to them and include them in any future negotiations. They agree to participate in our open dialogues only because they realize that we listen to them’ (Damelin, 2014).

Another major educational project engages 16- to 17-year-old students in both Israel and Palestine and is conducted via schools. PCFF creates opportunities for these young people to meet and conduct dialogues. Through this project, PCFF reaches 25,000 students annually. Most of them would not have another opportunity to meet with the ‘Other’ and to listen to the Other’s narrative. The meetings with representatives from the PCFF provide an opportunity to rectify the dehumanisation of the enemy in the conflict and to promote the agenda of peace.

PCFF major messages are presented in slogans that are published in three languages on publications or posters:

We Don’t Want You Here (The PCFF is a membership organisation that does not wish to grow. The goal is to reduce the number of families entitled to membership.);

It Won’t Stop Till We Talk;

Remembering the Victims. Fighting for Peace;

Bereaved Families for Peace, Reconciliation, and Tolerance.

Advocacy

Damelin uses diverse and creative tactics to advocate on behalf of PCFF. The messages get publicity through media relations, social media, public speaking (locally and around the world), art projects, exhibitions, films and more.

Examples of PCFF advocacy for a specific agenda are the political demonstrations members take part in or organise. During Operation Protection Edge 2014, for example, Israeli and Palestinian members of PCFF held daily peace vigils in Tel Aviv. Another example was the Monument for the Future Victims of the Conflict that was erected to influence voters during the recent Israeli elections campaigns. The monument project was conducted with the help of local branch of the advertising agency Saachi & Saachi and stood in the centre of Tel Aviv during the week preceding the elections – from International Women’s Day on 8 March 2015 to the election day on 17 March. The Monument consisted of a room showing the multiplication of graves via mirrors, a shocking vision that sent a strong message – ‘WE Don’t Want You Here’ – engraved on each grave.

In addition, as a non-profit organisation, PCFF and Damelin depend on fundraising to support specific projects or the ongoing work of the organisation. Fundraising is sometimes intertwined in actual activities and helps raise resources mainly from the European Union and US Aid. Some activities might not benefit the PCFF directly but rather create joint projects for Palestinians and Israelis, for example, the PCFF Women Group that has been meeting since 2006 has recently launched an embroidery project that put together the traditional embroidery skills of poor Palestinian women with the design skill of Israeli fashion students:

Everywhere in the West Bank I saw women producing wonderful embroidery but they had no market for selling it. We are now embedding the embroidery in fashionable garments that we will market in the US so that the Palestinian women will enjoy nice income. (Damelin, 2014)

Such a project is supported by donors who recognised the value of it, thanks to effective communication.

Another example is the Cartoons in Conflict exhibition that Damelin organised in 2009. It featured the works of 44 renowned international cartoonists who contributed cartoons stating their perspective on the conflict:

It was a funny and painful exhibition that we showed in Israel, the US, and Europe to promote our message. It exposed the absurdity of the war. We also produced a catalogue and a calendar for sale to help with fundraising. (Damelin, 2014)

The cartoons exhibition was one of many projects that Damelin initiated using contributions from famous artists and donors. She explained her fundraising success as based on her PR skills: ‘The chutzpah (impudence) I gained in PR helped me “sell” the idea of reconciliation’ (Damelin, 2014).

The PR tools of media relations, articles, Facebook posts and blogs are used by Damelin on a daily basis, similar to the work she has been doing for commercial organisations before she became an activist practitioner. A recent example is an item Damelin wrote to mark the 50th anniversary of the occupation in which she criticises Israel’s extensive investment in Jewish settlement in the West Bank, relates to the international boycott on Israel’s products and states that Israel ‘as the stronger of the two parties should look for a solution to the cycle of violence’ (Damelin, 2015).

Public speaking

Over the years, Damelin developed PCFF’s reputation in the region and all over the world. She has often been invited to speak in international forums, universities, schools, churches, synagogues, mosques and to accept awards in recognition for the PCFF work. The PCFF is strict about including two representatives in speaking missions anywhere, a Palestinian and an Israeli. An example is Damelin working with Bushara Awad, a Palestinian whose 18-year-old son, Mahmoud, was shot by a sniper during clashes with Israeli soldiers in 2008, to speak in the prestigious Women in the World Summit in New York on 22 April 2015. Women from over 20 countries came to the summit to tell their stories. They were activists, CEOs, peacemakers, entrepreneurs and firebrand dissidents. Damelin and Awad were on a speaker list that included actors Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren and Barbara Streisand as well as political leader Hillary Clinton and Dr Edit Schlaffer, founder of Women without Borders. Together with Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian whose daughter was shot dead by Israeli police in 2007, Damelin went to Los Angeles and Washington where both were interviewed on National Public Radio and got national coverage following their public speeches. The PCFF was recognised in meetings with influential personalities such as Pope Benedictus the 16th, Bill Clinton and Leonard Cohen who recognised the PCFF in his concert in Israel.

Films

The PCFF was involved in the production of several films that documented the organisation’s work and the members’ stories. The list of these projects includes a documentary film produced in 2012 called Two Sided Story documenting the PCFF History through the Human Eye project (directed and edited by Emmy award winner Ben Mayor). The film records dialogue meetings of 27 Palestinian and Israelis aiming to acknowledge the narrative of the other (http://www.theparentscircle.com/Twosided_en.aspx?ID=50#.VXVSq9KqpBc).

The production of a short film in 2013 documenting a PCFF youth camp was posted on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaD4Go7wmd8), and Within the Eye of the Storm is a documentary produced in 2012 (directed by Shelly Hermon). The film presents Bassam and Rami, a Palestinian and Israeli, who set out on a joint journey to humanise their enemy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9xidxIkmUs).

Dialogue as an alternative

The PCFF conducts internal dialogues with members and external dialogues with other audiences. The internal dialogues might be classified as genuine according to Buber’s terminology as they involve only listening and sharing with no agenda. The external dialogues are more about advocating the PCFF agenda. Damelin (2014) described the PCFF members’ dialogues as a tough challenge:

In the bereaved families’ dialogues there is no equality – we are the occupiers and they are the occupied. We try to avoid a patronizing approach and respect all. The shared pain is equal and explains the trust we developed over time with each other. The pain keeps us closer. We try to see in each other the human being not the enemy.

Damelin (2014) links the ability to conduct deep painful dialogues to her PR skills:

as practitioner I have learnt to listen first, not to come up with my just narrative but rather identify the subtext of what the client or the journalist was saying. I also have learnt the importance of telling the truth. This is actually what we do in dialogues.

Different kinds of internal dialogues are conducted within the PCFF project called History through the Human Eye that enables each side to learn about the narrative of the other:

We made an effort to study the histories of each side and to discover the Other’s perspective through visits to both sides and lectures by historians. This project involved 140 people over a year and produced empathy but not agreement. (Damelin, 2014)

Dis-consensus is accepted as part of the dialogue, and no persuasive communication is employed.

The dialogues the PCFF conducts with external audiences use persuasive tactics. Thus, during the 2014 war in Gaza, the PCFF erected a protest tenet in the centre of Tel Aviv and for 70 days conducted dialogues within this tent with passers-by, Israelis of diverse affiliations and opinions. PCFF members held vigil, coming every evening, setting up the tent and banners, putting out chairs and telling their stories to guests. Palestinian families participated even during the war:

Israelis who did not trust any contact with Palestinians cursed us. They called us Nazis and traitors because we were sitting with Palestinians. We kept cool and invited these people to speak to us within the tent. A settler started to ‘vomit’ his pain and I responded by expressing my identification with his pain. Having to leave your home in the Occupied Territories is indeed hard. But then I said – maybe we should think about the future. I told him about my son’s conversation with a settler on the night before he was killed and the discussion they had on Jewish philosophy. This settler became emotional and invited me to visit him. (Damelin, 2014)

Another form of dialogue is included in the PCFF Narrative project that involves personal storytelling. Since 2010, hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian groups of students, grandmothers, political leaders, artists, social activists, medical staff and others participated in this project. Damelin (2014) explained the principles by which she facilitated these dialogues: ‘I have learnt how to do it with patience. Not “I know what is best for you”, but rather listen, identify the common experience, understand, share the pain, and approach the dialogue with empathy’.

Another dialogue is conducted online on Facebook and called Crack in the Wall. The PCFF Facebook community acts to create a ‘crack’ in the wall by engaging Palestinians and Israelis in dialogue and providing a platform to express themselves in their own language then translated to the other side. More than 28,000 Israelis and Palestinians, not just the bereaved families, connect via the PCFF page.

Costs

As noted before, Damelin’s motivation to give up her commercial agency and become spokesperson for a non-profit activist organisation was unique and influenced by her life-long values, traumatic loss and a need to use her PR experience for a meaningful cause. However, there might be other PR practitioners who out of personal vocation would use PR skills for activism or become activists themselves – as full-time job or pro bono.

Conclusion

Coombs and Holladay (2012b) observed that despite the rise of interest in the role of activists, it still remains marginal in history and in research: ‘Activists are still treated as obstacles to corporate objectives that trigger the need for public relations. Greater recognition should be given to the contributions activists have and continue to make to the development of U.S. public relations’ (p. 352).

This article responded to their call in a different environment than the United States but sought to introduce insight relevant to PR and activism anywhere. By examining the experience of one practitioner who became an activist, this article explored the conditions that enable PR activism, the costs for the practitioner and the special gratifications that practitioners gain in the sector. It analysed Robi Damelin’s work for insights into the use of PR tools in activism. As a practitioner who serves an activist organisation, she actually tries to achieve the goals for the organisation and society at large at the same time. The contradiction between these goals, which so often characterises the corporate environment, is not a problem for the activist practitioner. The ‘dual obligation’ to serve the client organisation and society as described by Coombs and Holladay (2014) does not present a challenge to the activist practitioner. The ability to identify with the social cause and the organisation message is a strong motivation and gratification to Damelin.

The use of advocacy tactics as well as genuine dialogue by the same practitioner for the same organisation at the same time did not cause any tension or challenge for the practitioner. Activists need to use advocacy to promote the cause, to raise funds and to keep the internal members united. At the same time, they are able to facilitate dialogues that have no agenda and use listening and sharing instead of persuasive communication.

Moreover, the PR literature’s frequent assumption that activists often use confrontational and sometime violent events to deliver their message (Smith, 2013: 7) was not supported by Damelin’s experience. Her major tools are listening, sharing experiences, empathy, understanding and respect for the Other. Those are the principles of a genuine dialogue (Buber, 1965: 19) that has no agenda and does not try to use persuasive communication to achieve a goal. The option of using dialogue instead of aggressive tactics needs to be explored further.

According to Day et al. (2001), ‘Ethical practice for the field of public relations will require practitioners to be facilitators of dialogue and listeners as much as speakers’ (p. 409). Damelin’s narrative describes her approach to facilitating dialogue in the utmost genuine respectful way while recognising the power differences (Habermas, 1984) within the dialogue group and accommodating for it. Her experience suggests that activist PR might be using ethical and effective communication with no conflict (Fitzpatrick and Gauthier, 2001) between her roles as advocate and dialogue facilitator.

Above all, the unique narrative of Robi Damelin provides an opportunity to identify some differences between PR practice in commercial as distinct from activist settings. Her description of her experience working in both environments emphasised the differences: her identification with the activist organisation and the message, her willingness to sacrifice income for the gratification involved in working for a cause that she trusted and believed in and her ability to protect her integrity and to avoid conflicting roles. She found the commercial environment less meaningful and less gratifying. These differences need to be studied further to fully understand the unique requirements and experiences of activist PR.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Author biography

Margalit Toledano, APR, Fellow PRSA, PRINZ, is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management Communication at the Waikato Management School, The University of Waikato, New Zealand. She has been accepted as a member of the College of Fellows of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) in 2007 and of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand in 2012. In 1993–1996, she served as President of the Israeli Public Relations Association. A book she co-authored with Professor David McKie (Routledge 2013) is titled Public Relations and Nation Building: Influencing Israel.

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