It's a totally undeserved bad reputation. I came to Israel 3 yrs. ago. It's a very normal place. Certainly not perfect, but not unpleasant. People are generally very nice, friendly, & honest. Most services work well. I came here from an Arab country & there is absolutely no comparison - much as I was used to a different life-style, daily life here is not stressful as it was back home. I hate the food but that's a minor complaint. Here, I don't have to pay bribes for everything I do, I don't fight over prices of everything, taxi drivers don't try to cheat me (generally), every conversation doesn't end up in an argument, people feel free to tell you what they think, & much more. People who have such a bad opinion of Israel have never been here & so really don't know what they are talking about, they just rely on BS in the media. I'm sorry I didn't come here long ago.

Is subject to others ignorance. Media manipulation by anti semites. If not for the terrorists, Israel would be perfect. Messy thing this democracy, the 'job' of the Pals is terror, and that's ALL they do. Peace is impossible when the Pals do everything to avoid making peace with Israel. The goal is to destroy Israel and in the process, they destroy themselves. If ever they decided to act as normal people, the Israelis would welcome them with open arms. They choose their own woes and losses. Nothing will change until THEY change.

Shame for what? For protecting our people, for accomplishing so much in the 58 years Israel has been founded? Show yourself, Sara? Where r u from and why the hatred?

ALL DECENT PEOPLE I KNOW LOVE ISRAEL, SO IF THE STUPID RADICAL EXTREMIST TERRORIST DO NOT SUPPORT YOU... WHO CARES?

I love Israel and I think all the people that respect life understand Israel positions and actions. QUE VIVA ISRAEL!

Now you idiots can finally understand it isnt arabs and muslims who hate your country its the whole world. 4 of the 35 were muslim countries that means 31 were not. Even in the states we know what kind of people you really are. Its not because were stupid or ignorant or racist. Its because you are stupid ignorant racist murderours. You destroyed an entire country and said you were fighting terrorism. BS. you all know that israeli's and lebonese are kidnapped all the time. Heck your country made kidnapping LEGAL. You guys are a joke. HAHAHA. You think anyone who isnt jewish or just uninformed believes your lies. hahahaha. Im sure you guys will call this article rubbish and biased but how can a poll be biased. Your lucky they didnt poll lebonan, or jordan, syria, iran or iraq. This was consecutive lowest rankings bye the way so everyone hated you even before the war. Lol. anyways i tried to go on the website to check out the list to see who was ranked low but you have to be a subsriber so if anyone knows please tell me.

Bibi Natanyahu! If you guys don't elect him, hell, we just might, even if we have to change a law here and there. Schwarzenegger for President; Bibi in charge of the military. What a combination!!!!

lets see which country has a good reputation? name one by one in line and we see. ofcourse you guyz are just being concious of nothing.

Any country that decides to say ill things against ISRAEL should beware!

To all the detractors , look first at the UN [ not pro Israel ] report of quality of life : Israel 23 Th out of 156 countries Oil rich Kuwait 33 , Bahrain 39 , and so on . Not wondering that Israel has a bad name . TV will not show the magnificent Israeli Arab's villa's around Jerusalem , not sensational , better to show slumps . What people are seeing is not the fine side of Israel , the life , the Hi tec , the culture . They do'nt know that the per capita number of issued books in Israel is ranked the highest in the world . People do not know us , even not know Jews [ question to me , some 10 years ago : is christmas also a Jewish hollyday ? ] When something happens in a country , not only Israel , outside this country reports are always exagerated . Sensation ! What we have to do : more PR . And this i'm saying already many years . Emigration ? I came only 5 years ago . Fantastic to feel at home .

Almost every talkback blames others than Israel in this problem. What about self inquiry, HUH? We have made this problem ourselves. Why people in belgium, nedelands, france don't like us? Only 25 years ago we were at the top list in those countries... Let's think about it: They are suffering from Arabs. Most of the inmates in their prisons are Arabs... so how come they hate Israel. the 1 enemy of those? We made it. We can change it. This is our peoblem, nobody's else. The best PR in the world couldn't change this situation - which is made by our stupidity, arrogance, selfishness. Among all countries in the world, Israel is the only one where the young generation is more religious and extrimist than the older! THE ONLY COUNTRY. Even Iran's young generation is much more moderate, free, intelectual comparing to the old one. Don't you think it is... somthing to be considered? Perhaps we have a problem here? And why is that it's impossible to have a rational debate with an israeli withous getting into violence? Why we must scream at each other every time we have a problem? Why we have so much hate against good people, who came here from far away, and are the most hated group in Israel for no reason at all? (russians) Why comments on this one would probably be: "Another self-hating jew...". Why can't we face the fact that we are on the wrong side of the street. While other countries go on, became more liberal, invest more in positive factors, we only think about our security problems... while our money goes for corruption, Haredim, settlements, more. Look at us: Haredim are stopping Gay parade with violence; settlers are making hate, racist comments - and not only comments; 18 innocents died hurribly in... and who the hell cares? ; we have the most violent teens in the whole world; our prisident is a rapist, our PM is a curropted man, our MKS are bunch of I don't want to even start on this issue; we don't care where a city in Israel is under a constant threat and no-one cares except a weapons-dealer billionair who wants to take over; and this is only the beggining of what we show to this world. So no wander israelis are in the very bottom of any list - very much beside the arabs, and miserable countries in the third world. We look bad, we smell bad, and this is not a propoganda. This is the reality. I hate to say it, but lt's face the facts: we have some good people, but many of us are BAD. And they are NOT the minority. It's time to change all that, and the first step toward a change is an admission in our own problems. So let's change ourselves, and even if the Arabs will spend a 1,000,000,000,000*billion dolars on PR every year we will still be very close to the top. What we show to the world, that's excatly what we get. As simple as that.

It has nothing to do with PR...we happen to do a lot of bad things and no amount of PR can compensate for that

I don't know Hashem from mazel tov from roshashana from goy. (Ok, that's a slight understatement.) But I do know that Israelis/Jews are a plucky bunch, have set the standard for surviving just about anything, and that, when all is said and done, you live and die by what's in your head and using it. Sometimes, it looks a little slow in coming, but in the end, that instinct always seems to assert itself. Nature rewards brains, not brawn. If that weren't so, we'd all live on the planet of gorillas or elephants.

better come up wih a cheap, efficient, clean alternative to oil. Then the whole world will love you!!! Get it? It's all about oil.

The world wouldn't like us no matter what we did. We have G-D on our side & we will win.

Absolute disinterest and arrogance for any criticism since the beginning makes Israel hated by (almost) all. Thinking that with US money and backing all can be solved by force was wrong. So you can continue to say that everyone is wrong except you and that any criticism of zionism is anti-jew, it's not the PR its the actions that count.

A main reason that people don't like Israel is because of misrepresentations, not only of her actions that are repeatedly taken out of context, but of her obligations vis-a-vis the other parties in the region and the UN. This misrepresentation is both manifested and encouraged by people's understanding (or rather, lack thereof) of the wording of UN resolutions: Take your example of UNSCR 242: It discusses withdrawal from territories, NOT 'the' territories. According to the wording of the resolution, the withdrawal from territories (aka, merely a land-for-peace deal) is meant to facilitate peaceful resolution, which reminds us of the Palestinians' oft-glossed over duty in this resolution. 242 calls for Israel to withdraw to 'secure and recognizable' borders. Pal groups like Hamas, by denying Israel's right to exist, don't even allow for recognizable borders, not to mention their lauding of suicide attacks belies the 'secure' part of the sentence.

I love Isarael,my non jewish European friends love Israel and my colleagues who do business in Israel love the country &it's people.These polls are a bunch of nonsense and should not be listend too.Israel ,we think you are great!

When "our" own academics from Tel Aviv and Hebrew Universities travel across the world lecturing every single ear what a bunch of heartless conquerors we are...? Difficult to expect from others what we cannot acheive for ourselves. Hate towards anything religious, zionist, right wing and tradiotional runs rampant in Tel Aviv, Haifa and anything in between You bet

You suffer from occupation? Interesting. The Palistinian" Arab didn't suffer from Occupation from Jordan, even with "Black September". Maybe you don't remember, but Jordan captured what you call the west bank in 1948 and that which was Palistine became Jordan. No problem disolving Palistine at all, huh Palistininan, as long as thge Racist ,bigoted Arab is the occupier. I guess you are a muslim because the christian Arabs I talk to suffered. Why is that, Palistinian? Is that because you are so fair and innocent? You are lucky the Jews do not seek revenge like the Arabs would.

You exagerate , most of the lectures given abroad are not political , but scientific . And The attendants have much to receive from us . There are some who with their "human rights" thinking talk as you say . They receive of course a warm reception by their same direction oriented listeners . What's with PR , and not only Israeli or Jewish , is that , lets say , on a pro X manifestation , speakers and crowd are already convinced . So Israeli PR abroad , the same thing . When Bibi for example holds a speech anywhere , the crowd is pro Israel . He do not need to convince them any more . The Israeli PR must try to convince anti Israeli's . Not easy , but possible . PS Please do'nt mix anti Israeli , anti religious , left wings in all your writings . Are you suffering of paranoia ?

Coming from one of the countries where Israel is a real bad brand, I must say that the voices coming out of Israel is not very helpful. Talkbacks here illustrate the point. It's always "We are right and they are wrong" "God promised us all of Palestine and the arabs have stolen it 2000 ys ago" "Every critic of Israel is antisemite" and so on. Even the results of this survey is interpreted as the rest of the world being wrong. Like any madman would claim.

I grew up and lived many years in Scandinavia so I need your cultural background. Yes, Israel has its bunch of own rude people and wackos but so do Norway, the US, France, Egypt and every singel country in the world. The problem with people like you is that you take for granted that your Norway should exist but think that you have the right to question Israel's right to exist, which pisses of most Israelis, myself included. The media in Scandinavia and the rest of Europe ( I am not even mentioning the antisemitic media in the Arab world) is demonizing Israel and Israelis on a daily basis and presenting a false image of Israel as a country of "murderers" and "oppressors". Neither Norway nor any other country in the world would accept the daily terror that Israelis have to live with. There is also a tendency in Europe to conceal anything positive about Israel including denying the Israeli origin of IT-inventions and medicial equipment, culture etc which is popular in Europe. Personally I don't care what Europe and your Norway thinks but until Norway and the rest of the world learns to respect Israel, don't count on any positive responses from mainstream Israelis.

Definately we should improve PR. Not all the attendants in congresses and lectures around the world share the same preconditioned idea. Unforntunatelly, more than one aquired his anti israeli stand from listening to one of our sad@sses emmisaries. Been there, believe me. Remember Rachel Giora? Now on the second topic, i dont think it's paranoia, i think we fail to show the world what they expect from us to live up to: they also want and need Israel to be a Jewish State, not just any other nation. There are plenty of those. Our mission is ours, if we do not shed light onto them, they'll remind us we're not doing our job well. Behaving towards our sworn enemies in a "human rights UN" fashion wont do anyone any service. Look at Begin's leadership. His strong stand did well for Israel and ME alike. This is our tiny country, our shared heritage, those who want to dismantle its light and spirituality calling religious Taliban, right wingers fanatics and so forth, strip Israel of its unique mission. We are all entitled to our own opinion, but we should never forget our individual and collective purpose on this life on earth.

Look at YNET: one of Israel's major portals to the world ........and arrive at your own conclusion Who cares if BBC CNN and ASS news broadcasting are owned by arabs When we DO own something (ynet), see HOW we show ourselves :-(