It's Not the Hasbara, It's the Reality

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
11 August '10

Hasbara or Pro-Israel PR has become the great obsession of Pro-Israel activists and the Israeli government. One article calls for Israel to spend as much effort on communicating its message, as it does on its defense budget. Another castigates the many failures of Israeli diplomats in getting their message across. Still another features Frank Luntz who has been brought to tell Israeli leaders that they need to use kinder and gentler language to win the debate. Stop saying "security" and start saying "protecting innocent life", and everything will be well. Except of course it won't. Because the problem is not in the message, it's in the reality.

No doubt Israel's PR could use some work. Like most Western countries, Israel's diplomatic corps consists of incompetents who are there as a political favor, and left wingers who are good at what they do, but hate their own country and sympathize with the enemy. Like most Western democracies confronting terrorist groups, it also suffers from allowing a plurality of opinions, which means there will be no shortage of Israeli politicians, activists and reporters who actively work on behalf of the terrorists. On top of that the personality of the average Israeli has much in common with that of the average New Yorker, while the terrorists have no shortage of Marxist academics educated abroad who know exactly how to talk to European diplomats and reporters.

But none of this is really the point, because Hasbara is not really the point. Israel is not suffering from a communications problem. It isn't losing the debate because it can't get around to explaining that terrorism is wrong. It's losing the debate because the media and Western governments don't agree that terrorism is wrong. They don't agree that Israelis shouldn't be under fire or that terrorists shouldn't be rewarded for killing people. The terrorists aren't scoring points because isn't communicating its message. The terrorists are scoring points because their core audience in Europe and in some cases America, agrees with their message.

Israel has repeatedly shot itself in the foot PR wise, but no more so than most of the countries it's trying to convey its message to, have. Because the PR really doesn't matter that much. Whether or not people take Israel's side or that of the Muslim terrorists has little to do with the PR, and a lot to do with their politics, their view of Jews and Muslims, and the legitimacy of terrorism.

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