BAG MAN:

Basketballer tells black Atlanta about 'the paper bag' (HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, May. 2, 2004, Jerusalem Post)

Whenever LaVon Mercer, former Hapoel and Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball star, speaks on behalf of Israel to members of his local black community at churches and schools in Atlanta, he tells them about the paper bag.

"What's the paper bag?" he asks, anticipating the question.

The answer, it turns out, depends on your perspective.

A paper bag conceals its contents. Therefore, he explains, "To an Israeli it looks like it could be a bomb. To an American, what does it look like? A paper bag."

An Israeli after a 14-year career here, army service, and his own identity card, the dual-citizen tells the audience, "What you see might not be what I see."

And that is the guiding principle of his work as a "PR ambassador" for the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, which brought him to Israel this week for Independence Day and the Final Four basketball tournament.

Mercer knows that what the black community in the southern United States sees about Israel on their TV screens – and hence believes – is quite different from the reality here. "They see a very negative impression of what Israel is doing in the West Bank area [such as] Israel shooting little kids [throwing] rocks," he said. "They don't understand the rocks are really M-16s with live ammunition."

Like the media images he's trying to combat, Mercer knows that he, too, has a bias. But his is strictly "pro-Israel." That's part of why he started speaking out in Atlanta well before the consulate asked him to serve as an official representative this past year, and part of what has brought him back to Israel on three occasions since leaving in 1994.

Think there's anyone doing anything similar in Europe?

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 2, 2004 11:13 AM