Israeli hasbara fails for one simple reason: People who obsessively try to justify themselves sound like someone who really does need to apologize • Sovereign states do not jump through hoops, explain or ask permission – they act, do what needs getting done and nonchalantly brush off the criticism • The best hasbara is none at all.
When the Israeli Prime Minister got up in the United Nations and asked “In what moral universe does genocide include warning the enemy’s civilian population to get out of harm’s way?“, he made a number of embarrassing rhetorical mistakes, especially when one recalls that Binyamin Netanyahu is considered a virtuoso in the field. He repeated the absurd accusation of genocide to an audience which included those who may not have heard it, and by even referring to it, gave it validity.
He also asked a question whose answer, especially considering the audience, was far from obvious. They might reply, much like Jon Stewart, “where can they run?”, thus turning Israel’s sincere attempt to protect civilian lives into a cynical PR exercise to “adhere to international standards” without really intending to avoid civilian deaths.
Worst of all, he is effectively asking permission. He places himself at the judgment of his audience. Even if the crowd itself were on his side, this is nevertheless a fundamentally flawed approach. It grants the crowd power that no self-respecting state would grant it. Whether Netanyahu appeals to his citizens or judges, he should be placing before them afait accompli and not a murky vote. The right of Israel to defend itself should not even be up for debate. To take it off the agenda, Israel needs to do a very simple rhetorical move: Take it off the agenda. The idea is so absurd it’s not even worth addressing.
Sovereign states don’t ask permission. They don’t spend all their time justifying themselves or asking for sympathy. They know they’re right. Their right to exist, the right of their citizens to life, freedom and happiness are so obvious to them that they do not feel the need to have these confirmed by their neighbors and allies. Sometimes, when they really cross the line in defending those rights, they ask forgiveness. But even then, usually they don’t.
Israeli hasbara emissaries are dedicated and talented people who simply don’t understand the fundamental problem in always trying to be right: It’s not believable. When the Deputy Spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry tries to explain in a TV interview that Hamas threatens Israeli children while arguing that Israel is doing its best to protect the children on both sides, she loses credibility for both parts of her argument. A sovereign state whose children are truly threatened does not do a body count before opening fire – it opens fire blindly, indiscriminately, in an unstoppable rage.
Israel’s ability to stop, take a deep breath and act as the responsible adult turns the threat it claims to face as not truly a threat on the most basic emotional level of any parent, of anyone with a conscience who knows that if it were their country, they would demand the terrorists’ head on a platter. Because the Spokesperson is seen as a liar, faith in her claim that Israel is avoiding attacking civilians is also damaged. And if you’ve been following Palestinian spokespeople abroad, or more – even the responses on social networks, including in Israel, the arguments that Hamas deliberately endangers Palestinian children are rejected as unbelievable. The facts themselves mean nothing whatsoever. The idea that anyone would deliberately endanger their children – like many human horrors – simply does not register with people.
Netanyahu’s speech is a shining example of a fundamental flaw in Israeli hasbara: It doesn’t stop apologizing and asking for support. It never stops asking for permission. Other heads of state used the UN platform to tell other countries what to do. If we were a normal country, our Prime Minister would point to his audience with an accusatory finger and say, “you did this!” He would accuse the “moderate” Palestinian leadership of giving its children over to Hamas with their never-ending recalcitrance.
It is past time we stop apologizing and start accusing the real opponents of peace. “Moderate” Abu Mazen.
He would make full use of the equating of Hamas and ISIS, and organization seen as a strategic threat to the West, by making clear that the failure to stop the former is a direct cause of the rise of the latter. He would make clear that to protect themselves they need to ensure that Israel, which stands on the front lines of the Islamist assault on the Western world, needs to be defended. As a statement, not a request. A demand, not a plea.
Our real problem is not anti-Semitism, the Muslim or even the settlements. Our real problem is our desire to be loved. By arguing that Israel is a small country surrounded by enemies and in need of allies we neglect the fact they need us no less than we need them. Just to show how desperate we are to be liked, as opposed to any other country on earth, we see the virulent criticism against our country as something positive to be listened to and absorbed. As though there is truly “constructive criticism” in the messy and Machiavellian world of international politics.
The EU has an article in every “association agreement” it reaches with Middle Eastern countries which deals with the preservation of Human Rights. Only with Israel does the EU threaten every so often to suspend the agreement for violating this article. Only is Israel subject to the possible of harming of bilateral ties based on an issue not directly connected to them. Does anyone seriously doubt that the human rights situation in Israel is better than in Egypt or Algeria? Does anyone doubt that Israeli criticism of treatment of immigrants in Europe would be contemptuously rejected (justifiably!) as an unjustified attempt at interfering in another country’s internal affairs?
What’s Our Dignity Worth?
The “start-Up Nation” of Israel has invaluable assets for a declining Europe. It provides a unique contribution to the west by fighting emerging Middle Eastern threats as the only western forward post in the region with intelligence and operational capabilities which are second to none. It even has what to contribute in helping to ensure and improve moral standards in fighting terror. Time and again, we try to cooperate with a world which speaks of morals and justice but in truth is run primarily by “honor, fear and interest.”
We are so desperate to be a member of the club of liberal democracies that we don’t even try to use these assets as the price of admission, but forgo them in the pointless hope that we’ll be loved enough on the merits to be allowed to join. We reject with contempt the idea of tying our support for fighting just causes in exchange for support in fights no less just.
American “hasbara” in action: the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.
Photo: US Navy (CC by 2.0)
Even the most moral countries (which are not Israel) see first and foremost to their own interests. They have no incentive to help Israel when the price for this is paid in negative public opinion in their own country and abroad, when they can get what they want from Israel for free. On the contrary, they have an incentive to force Israel to standards no other country is held to – and Israel agrees to them far too often.
After the Six Day War (in other words, right after the infamous “occupation”), we were admired the world over. Now we’re just repeatedly used. We sullied the victory – not the Arab states, not anti-Semitism and not even “Peace Now.” Israel. The Israeli leadership which keeps begging for the world to “recognize Israel’s right to exist” are helping to cause horrific damage to Israel throughout the world.
Sovereign states don’t ask permission, and Israel – as opposed to many other countries – has nothing to apologize for.
English translation by Avi Woolf.
Apropos this subject. Can you name another country on the planet that asks the world for the right to exist?
Arnold Harris
Stalin was ready to ship all the Jews to Siberia before he died. Remember Kagenovich, his henchman who was complicit in the slaughter of millions. Do you admire him too?
@ akoven:
I was not going to invest valuable time on this, yet, must be done. I resigned from the Likud and its Central Committee some 5 years ago, after many years of work in the party. I did that as Sharon, his criminals, Netanyahu, Olmert, Livni, Ezra, etc, took over there. Sharon and his son, Olmert and his gang, Ezra and 9 others are gone. Livni will soon be political history as well.
Netanyahu, survived by hook & crook as he is a superb TV face, cardboard prop and red marker presenter, palabra fellow. Among us that know him for decades, a speechster. Full stop.
I would hire him to sell ice to the penguins. He is in turn totally unfit to govern in Eretz Israel.
That is why the zombied voters will choose him out of the cesspool that is Israeli politics.
You do read the news I presume?
akoven Said:
Actions speak louder than words. Netanyahu is big on words. However, the electorate will mull what Bibi actually DID or did not do. He can deliver a speech, but could not deliver Pollard. At Wye, Bibi was promised Pollard’s release. When President Clinton cowardly reneged after CIA director Tennet’s threats, Netanyahu signed the Wye Accords anyway. Netanyahu is a victim of self inflicted wounds. When Sharon was setting the stage for a timed process to approve the withdrawal from Gaza, Netanyahu deliberately procrastinated along with Ya’alon and allowed Sharon the momentum to pass the measure in the end despite their phoney objections and last minute walk out for political purposes. When Israel was being pressured by obama for freezing Jewish construction, Netanyahu made grest speeches about how Israel would not yield the right to build in it’s homeland, but what happened?? He then released terrorist murderers of Israelis who subsequently returned to terrorism AND with an extremely short period of time gave obama his construction freeze. Then, there is the most recent Gaza War. Netanyahu did not finish the job and the tunnels are being rebuilt with Israeli provided concrete. bibi talks proud before the UN about how Israel will not bow down, then he apologizes to Erdogen for The Flotilla incident. It would have happened again except for one organization, not The GOI and Bibi, but Shurat HaDin and Nitzana Darshan Leitner.
Ted, I am a big fan of Netanyahu. I think he one of the most admirable and respected statesmen in the world today. You harassing his elocution, does little to improve the situation in Israel.
This article provides excellent advice.
Only people who want nothing to do with the rest of world would not want present Israel position. This does not mean you have to be an apologist or give in to people with different opinions. Bennett is an example of strong non apologetic presentation. Why let the world hear only one side of the story.
There are more Arabs and Muslims, and anti-semites in the world so we have to work hard and smart.
Hasbara is a reaction formation to global AntiSHEMitism **.
How many times can UN Ambassador Ron Prossor give the same speech, same for Netanyahu. It is obsolete.
Sha’i Tekoa for UN Ambassador.
Watch his lecture, ‘The Phantom Nation…’** on you tube and buy his book, if you wish to support his valiant effort, ‘exclusively through Amazon’.
Peres should be sued for the Oslo treason and aftermath, even if it does not get to square one.
Einat Wilf, a retiring Labour MK said as reported by JPOST:
@ Ted Belman:
Positive, self centered, intelligent and assertive diplomacy is a must.
Regrettably our leadership does not do that at all and engage on cowing, apologizing, accommodating, negotiating away our national Heritage, performing cowardly gestures, etc. That is not diplomacy at all.
Only when the “rubber bullet” ranks will be removed and replaced we can turn that corner.
Martin Sherman replies.
Shirley Lewis writes:
I am anti-hasbara,
At best it’s a job of NGO’s not governments.
That said:
If you want to know what someone really thinks of you, look at what they’re willing to believe about you.
Points critical to hasbara:
1. Never apologize
2. Be aggressive
3. Do what the other side does – start hitting below the belt, making derogatory statements about the Pestilinians and their leadership, attach a nickname to each one, for example: Abu-Mazen a.k.a. “Yertle the Turtle”, Saeb Arikat a.k.a. “poor replica of Jozef Goebbels”, PA a.k.a. “terrorist gangsters/kleprocrats in Armani Suits”, and so on… start inventing facts, invent history, twist facts (nobody will be bothered to verify anyhow) but make sure you are doing it repeatedly and consistently. After a while people will believe you. This propaganda style has been adopted by the other side with astonishing success. Do the same.
It’s about time someone said it: Hasbara is nonsense, destroying your enemy is not.
Denis MacEoin writes to the last comment:
Email from Rona Hart.
email rec’d.
email received.
@ NormanF:
Your analysis is entirely correct, Norman. And the way Russians handle their enemies is one of the reasons I respect them more than just about any other Europeans, either in Western, Northern, Southern or Eastern Europe.
It is also one of the reasons I respected Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin as the greatest leader in the long history of the Russian state and nation. I truly don’t give a damn about how many Bolsheviks he bumped or how many others he put to work in the Gulag Archipelago. When Hitler’s legions came to the gates of Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad, there was only one that that counted. That was the numbers of T-34 tanks and artillery pieces could be manufactured at Tankograd, the great armaments-manufacturing and steel-making complex at Chelyabinsk, and how many tough fighter and bomber aircraft could be manufactured in other plants all across eastern Russia and western Siberia. If he, the national leader, or his armies, or their sources of supply had faltered anywhere or for any reason, Hitler and his Nazi murderers would have taken and held the whole country, and there would not have been any remaining Jewish refugees to come out of Europe after the war, because the Nazis would have killed every last one of them.
If Putin is half the great man that I think he could be, he will restore that grand and great name to the Russian city built along the lower Volga river, the site of the greatest and most terrible battle in history: Stalingrad.
And do I want to see the Russians take back their Russian-populated parts of eastern and southern Ukraine? You can bet your ass I do.
Power is all there is, or ever will be. Either you have it or you don’t, because it is the one thing in the world that can’t be faked.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
@ ArnoldHarris:
The concepts you mention are the only ones worth adopting for us. The enemy must be terrified by us. It used to be that way until the Peresite infestation took over.
@ NormanF:
We are in the same wavelength. My commanding officer while I was in Tzahal was one terrible, fearsome fighter, Druse. He lead us into the Lebanon I war and we made sure that the enemy would never forget it. We won! Since Oslo the “rubber bullet” generals took over. They now reach “cease fires”.
As all of you who read my comments almost certainly know by now, I always have thought that propaganda is a useless effort to make up for weakness in purpose or policy, and as such, when applied to a national or state cause, is an equally useless replacement for national will as an embodiment of state power.
If you have power, and are willing to use it in support of what should be the national will of the reborn Jewish nation, then you don’t need hasbara. And if you don’t power, or you have power but lack the will to use that power, which is more likely in the case of the present-day State of Israel, then you will lose in any event.
The government and a major proportion of the Knesset voters of Israel, irrespective of every good thing that they claim is being accomplished, act like nothing more than assholes who want to be beloved. And they seem to want this more strongly than they want to be powerful, strong, and safe.
As for the struggle against the local Arabs: Instead of reading about how a carload of Arabs attacked and firebombed a Jewish-owned car, critically injuring a young girl and killing her father. The truth is, I turn my attention away from this, because I would much prefer reading about how a carload of Jews attacked a totally innocent Arab family and killed every fucking one of them with submachine gun fire. Does reading that make me sound cruel? I sure as hell hope so, because that’s the way I feel. You will never win this war unless and until you learn how to terrorize your enemies, to the extent that they would go to any lengths to avoid coming into conflict with any of you.
That also goes for the young yeshiva bocherin, whom I am led to believe would rather get slaughtered then to learn how to kill, and to do just that in any circumstance that threatens them with personal injury, which almost always means death in the Middle East context.
The more power you have, and the greater the extent to which you will be respected, and the greater the degree to which you are respected also implies the greater the extent to which you will be loved.
Sounds perverse, doesn’t it. Well, remembering life on the streets of Chicago when I was a kid, it sounds perfectly normal to me. In any case, no matter what the hell any of you think about these matters, that is exactly the kind of person that the Jews of the future must learn to be, if there is to be any Jewish future.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Shmuel,
See my comments on the “Straightforward Message” thread. If you’re in the right, you don’t need to explain why you’re right; its self-evident.
Only Jews believe if they’re not loved, they must capitulate. The Russians are not loved these days and they’re toughing it out. Being loved is not high on their list of priorities.
As you may have noticed I never touch the “hasbarah” subject precisely because I agree with the writer. Very good article.