Spare Darfur, Spare Iran

This just in: "the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) will roll out a public awareness and advocacy campaign aimed at focusing attention on the gathering threat of a nuclear-armed Iran to Israel, the Middle East and the world"("ADL Campaign Says 'No' to Nuclear Iran," 5 September 2007). Yikes. What will the campaign consist of?

In the campaign's first phase, 6,000 synagogues, JCCs, Hillels and Federations across the country will receive the poster in time for the Jewish High Holidays.

Coinciding with the poster distribution, advertisements are slated to appear in Jewish newspapers during the week of September 4-7 in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Florida, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, New Jersey and San Francisco.

The campaign's second phase will focus on reaching the broader public through ads in major newspapers and other media. All of the ads and posters will include a link to a section of the League's Web site at www.adl.org/Iran devoted to explaining the issue and what is at stake if Iran obtains nuclear weapons. ("ADL Campaign Says 'No' to Nuclear Iran")

It looks like it will be like the execrable "Save Darfur" campaign multiplied many times over. (For information about the problems of the "Save Darfur" campaign, see, for instance, Stephanie Strom and Lydia Polgreen, "Publicity Campaign on Darfur Angers Relief Organizations," International Herald Tribune 1 June 2007; Michael Friedman, "Darfur: Give Them a Megaphone Instead," MRZine 30 June 2007; and Sam Dealey, "An Atrocity That Needs No Exaggeration," New York Times 12 August 2007).