Diplomacy: Taking a more nuanced look at Israel
Israel’s consul-general in New York Ido Aharoni advocates shifting Israeli advocacy on campus from angry confrontations on the quad to showing Israel’s relevance in students’ lives.
NEW YORK – Spend any time at all in the US speaking with pro-Israel American Jews and one theme constantly emerges: Israel is losing the campuses.
If it is distress over the annual anti-Israel “Apartheid Week,” annoyance over Palestinian students disturbing high-profile Israeli speeches, or votes in student government bodies about disinvestment, the overall impression is that American college campuses are a beehive of anti-Israel activity. The concern expressed by many pro-Israel supporters in the US is simple: Tomorrow’s leadership cadre is being trained today at America’s universities, and they are being poisoned by a virulently anti- Israel atmosphere.
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Ido Aharoni, Israel’s consul-general in New York, who spends hours upon hours on American campuses, has a much more nuanced – and as a result more sanguine – view of things.
Indeed, Aharoni has a whole different idea of what needs to be done on the college campuses: less trying to outshout radical Palestinian supporters on the tree-lined quads, and more quietly trying to make Israel relevant for the vast majority of students for whom the Middle East is distant and far down on their agenda.
“In today’s tech environment it is not about winning debates, but building relationships with people with influence and relevance, people who matter,” Aharoni says in his spacious office just off New York City’s 42nd Street. “The public debate on the quad is not where the battle should be waged. Fighting the fight and arguing the argument will never produce the leapfrog effect for Israel.”
While Aharoni does not discount the need to fight against moves such as divestment votes at the University of California at Berkeley, he maintains that crisis management should not take the place of a long-range strategic outlook. And that long range strategic outlook on campus should focus not on winning debates about the “conflict,” but rather on making Israel relevant.
A generational shift is taking place among Israel’s supporters in the US, and is changing the way people look at Israel, Aharoni says.
“Jewish kids are connected to a different kind of Israel. A cool Israel, an Israel of opportunity. They have a relationship with Israel different from their grandparents – not victimhood and survivability. The conversation needs to be in a different context, of a place where they can express and fulfill themselves, can start a business, can have a good time.” Without mentioning any names, Aharoni – a seasoned diplomat – discounts arguments by those like Peter Beinart and J Street, who say that young American Jews are turned off by Israel because of its right-wing political tilt.
“Those who think that what will create the attraction to Israel is a different political view on the conflict are dead wrong,” he says. “It is not about Right or Left, the very topic is a turnoff. We have to broaden the argument, and make Israel something relevant to them.”
Constantly talking about the conflict – the Palestinians, Iranians, Syrians and Egyptians – is counterproductive, he says. “Let’s celebrate what we have, the assets what we have, not what we don’t have.” The vast majority of the public, he continues, reacts to the constant debate about the conflict with fatigue, and that leads to “moral equivalence and apathy.”
“Just by the way we constantly talk about what is bad with the other side, not what is good about us, we allowed the other side to brand Israel as a ruthless occupier and aggressor, and played into their hands by insisting on continuing this debate. Rather than saying ‘stop the debate,’ [we need to] begin a conversation about what we bring to the table as a country.
We have the goods, and when you discuss the goods publicly, you see the results immediately,” he says.
In other words, don’t allow the other side to define Israel as being only about Mideast strife. “No country, movement or city wishes to be defined only by its problems,” he says. “By constantly arguing with the world, trying to win a debate, we were playing into he hands of our adversaries, allowing them to define who we are. We were defined as country without mercy and compassion making no contribution to the world, while the opposite is the truth.”
Aharoni, who studied marketing and has been involved in Foreign Ministry efforts over the years to “rebrand Israel,” said that the first rule in marketing is that if you don’t take the proactive approach and define your identity to the world, the competition will do it for you.
By sabotaging Israeli speakers, holding events such as Apartheid Week and leading divestment campaigns, Israel’s opponents are trying to define Israel for the public.
“Speaking only about the situation allows the other side to define you. It reinforces the context: tension, danger and strife, and you are alienating those in the middle,” Aharoni says.
And the middle is both immense and the key.
Aharoni says that research conducted in the US regarding where Americans stand in terms of their relationship with Israel found that there were three distinct groups.
“Israel’s support base is about 20 percent of the American people.
They are with us, no matter what we do: we go to war, make peace, they care about us,” Aharoni says, adding that there are many Jews among this group, but also many non-Jews as well.
On the other end of the spectrum, he says, are what he terms the “unreachables,” some 8% of the American people who “disagree with us, no matter what we do. We went to Oslo, and that was not good enough. Of course when we went into Gaza that was not good.”
According to Aharoni, these people will not like whatever Israel does. “We are on the wrong side of their narrative,” he says. “We call them the ‘unreachables’ because there is nothing we can do or say to convince them otherwise.”
And in the middle, situated between those who love Israel and those who hate it, is the vast middle – 72% of the American people.
“We call this group ‘at-risk.’ What is the risk? The risk is not that they will join the 8%, the unreachables; the risk is that they will be alienated from the 20%.”
Aharoni says research shows that the same themes, messages and arguments that are music to the ears of the 20%, fall flat on those in the middle, and are actually alienating them. “Not because they are against Israel,” he stresses, “but because they are different people, they care about different things.” On campus, he says, the 8% – the unreachables – are very vocal and high-profile.
“What do we do as a community on campus?” he asks. “We do the human thing, the natural thing.
Instinctively when agitated, we respond to the source of the agitation.
As a result, we spend a lot of energy trying to deal with the Noam Chomskys of the world and the like. I say it is a huge waste of energy. Don’t waste your energy on the unreachables. There is nothing you can do to change their minds.”
Instead of focusing on and responding to the 8%, Israel needs to concentrate on the middle and “find a way to be relevant to them, and the key word is relevant. If you are not relevant, forget about it.”
And where does this relevance come from? Not from harping endlessly on the conflict, but of targeting areas that are important in the eyes of the students. This means bringing in niche speakers who can talk in a controlled environment – not necessarily in large, campus-wide events – about Israel in the arts, Israel in the sciences, Israel in business, Israel in hi-tech.
Explaining this paradigm, Aharoni says the consulate has “targeted MBA programs.” The idea, he explains, is to “get them to feature Israel as part of their curriculum, get them to go to Israel as part of their curriculum. We want to trigger their professional curiosity regarding Israel.”
“While most Americans, particularly American Jews, are highly supportive of Israeli polices, many of them find it difficult to relate to Israel’s persona. One of our researchers summed it up: Americans support your policies overwhelmingly, but are not interested in having a beer with you after work,” he says.
If you want students to connect to Israel, he explains, you have to talk to them about things they are interested in, and not all – or even most – American students are interested in Mideast geopolitics.
“They care about human rights and the environment,” he says.
“They care about the good life, lifestyle and leisure, music, fashion, food product design: these are the things we need to celebrate.
“We’ve got the goods, not the other side. But we are not selling it.
“And I say stop defending, and start selling.”
@ Eric R.:
Eric, you don’t understand. There has always been pockets of Jews that were observant such as in Russia, but that is not enough. The Jew is viewed by the All-Mighty as one organic and spiritual being. We are all guarantors for one another. The religious and the secular alike perished in the Holocaust. We need to all be on the same page in terms of observance. The only time in history that we came close to this state was during the Davidic and Solomonic empires and during that time we were on top of the world until the observance waned and we all know how that ended. Look, the Torah tells us this plainly over and over again but it always seems to fall on death ears. We’ve tried all else. Why not try this?
Yidvocate Said:
No it won’t. It certainly did not stop it in Tsarist Russia, when most Jews were observant.
Nothing will stop it. Only the Jewish threat to obliterate the world (with the nukes that Israel may or may not have) can at least hold it in check.
I agree with this. It preserves free speech as well.
The secular American Jews are a vanishing breed.Their place is being taken by more traditional,religious Jews.Religious Jews are having the big families.The trouble with the secular Jews on campus is that they come from a neurotic background still stuck in the 19th century shtetls of eastern Europe.They believe in nothing more than success in the material world.These secular Jews Have been brought up to be ashamed of being Jewish.They believe in nothing of substance & as a consequence they themselves are nothing.Aside from some smarmy left wing cliches & slogans they are morally empty.It has been said that”a person who believes in nothing is capable of believing anything”& that is what most of these secular Jewish students are about.Or as Ralph Peters,in a slightly different context,said “the Moslem Terrorist are not much but they are something & you can’t beat something with nothing”A policy of presenting Israel in a peaceful & positive way may influence a small percentage of these lost souls & is worth the effort.But a large part of these Jewish students,like their parents,are morally & emotionally bankrupt & beyond redemption.Like the Hellenized Jews of Biblical times they will disappear & leave room for proud,believing Jews to take their place!
@ Yidvocate:
I don’t know your first name but by G-d you got that right.
You all no doubt saw the blog going around supposedly appearing in a Spanish newspaper. It may not have but the article says a lot.
States Europe had no problem with the Holocaust, getting rid of a people who had so much too offer the world and was a total asset to humankind.
No, they did nothing to stop it. Then they settled for the muslims. They are a useless bunch, most living off of the government, committing crimes against society, rape, you name it. By golly they got what they deserved.
Such foolish discussion! Does anyone really think that in a world where one tiny nation that has given more to the world than any other people, and that is a free and liberal democracy, is roundly demonized by the entire world, while a primitive, death cult society that worships death, that handed out candies at the news of 9/11 and has contributed nothing but the airplane hijacker and suicide bomber to the world, any appeal to marketing or the truth will hold any sway?
I maintain this antisemitism is a spiritual force that defies reason and can only be rectified by Jews adopting a Torah lifestyle and observance. This and only this will stop the scourge of antisemitism.
Israel perhaps should drop the nuclear ambiguity if she really has nukes, you know 🙂 and emphasize her military might. “Destroy us, and we take the world down with us. We die, you die.”
You probably can’t appeal to the intellect of leftists, so the only thing you can appeal to is their sense of self-preservation.
Highlighting typical muslim endeavors:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/RtgbvotqVFE?rel=0
I definitely think it is important to expose Israels achivements and ongoing interests in areas which everyone identifies as positive, productive and contribution to global advancement for all. It is difficlt to view such a positive entity as being evil.
It is also important to contrast this with the focus of the enemies regarding their behavior generally and in the same areas. How they do nothing positive only evil.
it is also important when countering arguments of the enemy to do pot, kettle, black to demonstrate absurdity in short sound bites. How those who talk about apartheid are maintaining JEW FREE zones everywhere they exercise control. How their accusations when turn back on themselves show that they are guilty of their own accusations: e.g. arab psrticipation in israel vs jewish participation in gaza, pa west bank and jordan. Proof of thepudding demonstrations to discredit BS homilies.
I think this is a narrow market with large expenditures on a small group. Printed materials which condenses arguments could be helpful.
This group could be better educated to disseminate to their classmates.
Destroying the credibility of the detractors would help by demonstrating how they lie. A great help is showing Israels advancements and humanitarian efforts, neither of which the enemies can show. A group shown clearly to do good is hard to imagine as evil.
I think they should get more professional third party research done by marketing professionals who can identify problems objectively and identify creative solutions. These solutions don’t sound very professional. Most Israel hasbara is not professional by US standards. (like those diagrams)
Obvious to those who care about the truth but they are few and far between.
All countries go to great effort to sell themselves to the world and to make their markets and countries appealing to tourists, investors, and attracting the best people in the world of science and technology, etc. So there is always an advantage to marketing a country’s assets. In the case of Israel, the achievements are prodigious and easy to highlight.
Israel, in my opinion, has fallen short by not recognizing that there are people out there in the big wide world willing to speak up for and defend Israel – they have been ignored in favor of a certain pernicious and destructive pandering to leaders who do not have Israel’s best interests at heart.
One can make many scathing and derogatory truthful statements about Islamic countries, religion and politics but at least Muslims have a common goal to pursue the expansion of their religious/political base with bloody determination. The big Sunni-Shia division never gets in the way of their larger global conquest.
Jews, on the other hand, seem to relish disunity and are always overly concerned with how they are perceived by non-Jews. That is what the article once again reveals – a built-in shame for defending Israel by confronting the lies of others. In the end, Jews are neither loved by a world raised on the antisemitic stereotypes of Christianity and Islam, nor are they able to mount an honest defense because they are filled with angst about what others might think/say about them defending their own. We need to stop worrying about the rights of people who hate us and want us dead.
In other words, appeal to the shallow and self-absorbed. How about simply telling the truth that Israel has the moral highground and her enemies are evil. This fact is self-evident.If people can’t see the clear moral distinction then something is wrong with them. Israel shouldn’t have to sell itself.
I agree, there is no harm in highlighting Israel’s impressive and prolific accomplishments but let’s not kid ourselves, it is precisely those accomplishments which incense Islam. How dare Jews, the uber-infidels in Islamic eyes, be so successful. Especially in a region where Muslims are propagandizing the world into thinking that it is their entire Caliphate! Must be, according to Islamo-fascists looking to wipe out Israel, that Israel has stolen from Muslims and succeeded at the expense of “Palestinians.”
I have known of a few incidents where Jewish groups on campus were warned not to go on the offensive and I know of money that tactically goes to leftist university creations to promote the narrative, as they call it, from the Islamist perspective or a “balanced perspective” as it is sometimes known.
It seems that Jews are forever looking at the world through the eyes of others, always making sure to please others. This misguided behavior and dangerous route leads directly to self-humiliation and self-annihilation.
Dean Said:
I agree with your analysis. But I also believe good news drives out bad news and when you don’t take advantage of the attractive assets you do have, you miss out on telling others your side of the story. This is something Israel hasn’t been doing much of and taking a defensive attitude hasn’t helped its case. For the Jewish State, the best defense is a good offense.
A good marketer highlights the virtues of his product and explains why people should buy from him. When you create good expectations about you, people will buy. Its human nature and something Israel needs to do more often.
This is the Jewish State’s greatest advantage over the Arabs who have nothing attractive to offer. Israel must not allow the Arabs to look better than they are.
What makes the writer think that a good news presentation about Israel will not also be violently blocked by Muslims and leftists? One cannot avoid confrontation when you are attacked.
Replacing the weak, defensive, unsupported measures on campus today (mainstream groups refuse to fight and refuse to support students who will) with parallel programs to make Israel relevant to young people is all well and good but those demonizing and vilifying Israel will not stop.
The leftist approaches to ignore reality and try to re-create a fantasy that your average student can miraculously identify with has been proven ineffective in past PR campaigns that have replaced activism with a hedonism. One campaign highlighting Israel’s sexiness, wealth and accomplishments served to reinforce the have vs. have not situation between Israel and the enemies of Israel and failed miserably. Jealousy and envy play a big role in the hate directed at Israel. Turning the other cheek and pretending that we do not have to specifically address the nasty BDS and IAW is living in a dream world. The fence sitters will see Israel’s success as one more negative. They will see Jewish students inability to defend against criticisms in their campaigns as more evidence that Israel’s position in the world is untenable and on shaky ground.
What should be happening but which is anathema to liberal Jews is a counter IAW campign showing the bloody events and cruelty of Israel’s enemies and what it will mean for students to graduate into a world where sharia and jihad dominate the world scene. It is also fine to show off Israel’s accomplishments at the same time but one should not lie about Israel – showing Israel as a loving, welcome, open country can be refuted but showing Israel as a strong, thriving democracy that will work hard to maintain its survival is closer to the truth we want to project. No country can survive if it is all give and no take.
What this article is trying to say is that we have lost the war and so why not throw in the towel before we have waged even one formidable battle. It is telling students not to fight but rather to enter the world of make believe where life is beautiful and without confrontation. The fact is that with or without any protest measures against IAW, it will expand with the expansion of Islam in America. Muslims hate Jews and, as part of the overall package, this fact should be brought out with the words of Islamic texts highlighted and emphasized for everyone to see.
The mainstream Jewish groups want to maintain their easy lives of high salaries, honorary dinners, political shmoozing and peace at any cost to our pride, identity and success. It has amounted to a disgusting display of cowardice, silence and sha-shtil.
I have been saying this all along.
Too often Jewish groups try to fight anti-semitism with hate crime laws. These laws backfire.
The same hate crime laws which prohibit Holocaust Denial in Europe, also prohibit criticism of Islam.
You fight error with truth, not repression.
This is a better approach.