The recent announcement of a European boycott of Israeli companies with activities in Judea and Samaria has once again highlighted the state of Israel’s public diplomacy: failures keep on coming and the situation never seems to improve. Much to the contrary, the BDS movement keeps getting stronger, Europe intensifies its pressure on Israel, events such as the flotilla or the Goldstone Report portray Israeli soldiers as war criminals.

Sharing a love for music – and head-banging – two Israeli and Palestinian rock bands have joined forces to take a “message of coexistence through rock’n’roll across Europe,” The Guardian reported on Monday. The Israeli band “Orphaned Land” and Palestinian group “Khalas” both believe that music is above politics, religion and conflict and should bring people together.

The Foreign Ministry last week opened its first “virtual embassy” – a Twitter account through which it hopes to conduct a dialogue with the people of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain. The new account is called Israel in the GCC – the Gulf Cooperation Council, an umbrella group for every Arab state in the Gulf except Iraq. These six Sunni Arab countries have a mutual interest with Israel: coping with the Iranian nuclear threat.

The US is to host talks with Israel and Palestinian negotiators in the next week following a breakthrough in the drive to revive the moribund Middle East peace process. John Kerry, US secretary of state, called the move a "significant step forward". The agreement, announced on Friday evening after four months of intensive diplomacy, fell short of a hoped for face-to-face meeting between leaders of the two sides.

For two weeks, American Voices offered performing arts lessons to 300 Iraqis from across the country. Classes were taught in the areas of jazz, piano, classical symphony, theater and hip hop & breakdance. I was essentially the Assistant Director of the YES Academy, and a veritable public diplomacy camp counselor. We also held smaller mini-YES Academies for close to a week in both Baghdad and Kirkuk -- the latter of which I ran as well.

The US National Football League (NFL) has become the latest terrain in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinian-American player Oday Aboushi as the target. Several sports articles have questioned Aboushi's views on Palestine and his ties to Palestinian organisations. Most recently, Jonathan Mael, the new media co-ordinator for Major League Baseball, compared Aboushi to an ex-NFL player charged with murder. He later apologised for the tweet.

By the end of Netanyahu’s speech, online audiences seemed to have forgotten about the performance that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, gave on the same floor the previous day. Despite his fiery rhetoric, Ahmadinejad did not manage to spark nearly as much Internet interest as Netanyahu. Unlike the Iranian president’s speech, Netanyahu’s presentation, with its accompanying visual prop, was perfectly suited for the “Twitterverse.”

Israel needs a more unified public diplomacy policy, Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Committee chairman Yoel Razbozov (Yesh Atid) said Tuesday. Following a meeting with government offices and NGOs dealing with hasbara (public diplomacy), Razbozov appointed MK Dov Lipman (Yesh Atid) to coordinate with them ways to work together to improve Israel’s image in the world.