Is Israel's PR war inherently unwinnable or is Israel’s public diplomacy simply incompetent? - by Evelyn Gordon

...In other words, they effectively declared that Israel had no right to defend its border by any means whatsoever–even with non-lethal means like tear gas–unless it could somehow achieve the impossible feat of guaranteeing that no Palestinian would ever be killed under any circumstances. And if the only way Israel can win the PR war is leaving its border completely undefended, that war would indeed be inherently unwinnable; at least, among this portion of its critics.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
03 June '18..
Link: http://evelyncgordon.com/baby-layla-shows-whats-wrong-with-israels-pr/

If there’s one thing Israel advocates agree on, it’s that Israel lost the PR war over May 14’s violent demonstrations in Gaza. Everybody from the U.N. Security Council to a New York public high school mourned the 62 Palestinians killed as innocent victims, even though 53 belonged to terrorist organizations. And with Hamas planning another demonstration on Tuesday, a battle has been raging over whether the PR war is inherently unwinnable or if Israel’s public diplomacy was simply incompetent.

The correct answer is both. And nothing better illustrates this than the story of the Palestinian baby allegedly killed by Israeli tear gas.

Israel’s critics immediately seized on the death of 8-month-old Layla Ghandour as proof of its malfeasance. As the New York Times wrote, “The story shot across the globe, providing an emotive focus for outrage at military tactics that Israel’s critics said were disproportionately violent.” The Times of Israel noted that “Her funeral was filmed and featured on global TV news broadcasts and newspaper front pages.”

Soon afterward, however, a Gazan doctor suggested that she most likely died of a congenital heart defect rather than anything Israel did (a theory later apparently accepted even by Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which last week removed Ghandour from its list of people killed by Israel).

What happened next was surreal: The doctor’s explanation was immediately seized on and disseminated worldwide by both official Israeli spokesmen and Israel supporters overseas as if it somehow mattered whether Ghandour was killed by tear gas or a congenital heart defect. In other words, Israel and its supporters implicitly accepted the view of the anti-Israel mob. Had the baby truly been killed by Israeli tear gas, presumably Israel could legitimately have been considered culpable.

You cannot win a PR war by fighting on the enemy’s side

Israel has one huge advantage in this war: All the claims it can and should be making against the Palestinians are true, whereas Palestinian claims against Israel are frequently egregious lies. But the Palestinians tell their lies consistently and wholeheartedly, never offering any support for Israel’s truths, whereas Israel tells its truths sporadically and half-heartedly, while offering frequent support to Palestinian lies. And as long as that continues, the lies will be victorious. You can’t win a PR war by fighting on the enemy’s side.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
12 June '15..

Israel needs to stop arguing the Palestinians’ case and start arguing its own

Responding to last week’s column about the importance of stressing Israel’s achievements rather than its failures, a reader wrote that while she agreed with me, this alone wouldn’t suffice to fix Israel’s broken public diplomacy. And of course, she’s right, because that column addressed only one of two major flaws in Israel’s public diplomacy. The other is no less important: Quite simply, Israel needs to stop arguing the Palestinians’ case and start arguing its own.

I can’t think of another conflict in history where one side devoted so much time and energy to selling the world the other side’s narrative rather than its own. And then, after two decades of actively supporting the two most important Palestinians claims against it, Israel actually wonders why the world views it as the villain.

Claim number one is that the West Bank and Gaza are “occupied Palestinian territory.” This is a crucial issue, because if Israel is just a thief occupying stolen Palestinian land, then it has no right to retain any of this land or set any conditions on its return, and deserves opprobrium for even daring to pose such demands. In contrast, if Israel has a valid claim to these lands, then it’s being laudably generous in offering the Palestinians a state there and has every right to impose conditions on this generosity, like retaining certain areas or demanding specific security arrangements.

Official Israeli spokesmen don’t back this Palestinian claim in so many words. But they do talk constantly about the Palestinians’ “right” to establish a state in these lands, while talking only sporadically about Israel’s own legal and historical rights there. And needless to say, Palestinians don’t return the favor: They talk constantly about their own rights and never about Israel’s rights.

Moreover, Israel’s talk of Palestinian “rights” actually undermines the credibility of its own claims. After all, if Israel truly has the best legal claim to the land, why would Palestinians have any right to a state there? So by declaring that Palestinians do have such a right, Israeli spokesmen imply that even Israel doesn’t quite believe its own claim.

Thus for most of world, deciding who really owns the land becomes a no-brainer: The Palestinian claim looks much stronger. After all, both sides agree unequivocally that the Palestinians have rights there, so that must be true. In contrast, Israel asserts its own claims only half-heartedly, while Palestinians deny them outright; hence Israel’s claims seem dubious.

Or in other words, Palestinians are fighting the PR war full-time on their own behalf, while Israel is fighting only part-time for itself, and part-time for the enemy. And needless to say, that’s no way to win a war.

Why Israel is losing the information war by Caroline Glick

...Our leaders and spokespeople cannot win the information war by devoting themselves to pointing out the West’s hypocrisy and double standards, or the rank mendaciousness and bigotry that stands at the core of their approach to Israel. No one ever won a war by only playing defense. And we won’t win this one by explaining why we aren’t war criminals. We will only begin to make progress when we define the goal of our hasbara as forcing an unwilling media and international community to discuss the truth by taking deliberate actions that will make it impossible for them to ignore it.

Prosor at UN discussing
Hamas war crimes

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com..
20 August '14..

For most Israelis, the international discourse on Gaza is unintelligible.

Here we were going along, minding our own business.

Then on a clear night in June, apropos of nothing, Palestinian terrorists stole, murdered and hid the bodies of three of our children as they made their way home from school.

Before we could catch our breath from that atrocity, they began shelling our major population centers with thousands of rockets, missiles and mortars, and infiltrated our communities along the border with Gaza through underground tunnels to kidnap and murder us.

And as the Palestinians did all of these things, they used their civilian population and the foreign press corps as human sandbags. They ordered their own people not to evacuate their homes from which Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad terrorists launched their missiles, rockets and mortars at Israel. And they launched missiles at Israeli cities from outside the hotel where the foreign reporters were staying.

It doesn’t take a PhD to understand what the game is. And Israelis – even many with PhDs – understand what is happening.

This is why so many Israelis are up in arms about our government’s failure to impact the wall of lies that comprises the discourse on Israel in the Western world.

The knee-jerk reaction of many Israelis to the sight of UN officials, CNN anchors and New York Timesreporters accusing us of committing war crimes is to blame ourselves.

Our hasbara (public diplomacy) is a catastrophe, our defenders are incompetent idiots, we moan and scream.

But the truth is not so simple. Our speakers have gotten much better over the past several years. Some, like ambassadors Ron Dermer and Ron Prosor and IDF Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, are excellent.

Israel's "Lousy PR"

JINSA
Report: #1,002
30 June '10

In a strange conversation, a journalist called to ask how badly Israel's image had been damaged by the flotilla incident. Our first thought was, "Not as badly as if the precedent was set for ships to land in Gaza without Israeli inspection, or if the millions of Euros in their pockets had actually reached Hamas." But that wasn't what he was asking. He really wanted to know whether countries or people who had previously "liked" Israel "liked" Israel less now, and if Israel would have "done better" if it could have explained itself better.

It was, in fact, the dreaded "Israel's lousy PR" question.

In a second strange conversation, an admittedly cynical diplomat told us to disregard the posturing anti-Israel statements at the European Parliament, the UN Human Rights Commission and other international bodies. "People don't really know anything, they just say things." But, he added, Israel couldn't expect to get a fair shake in those places because it doesn't spend enough time making its case to European diplomats.

Again, "Israel's lousy PR," was the issue, not the reality of the Arab/Islamic threat to Israel or the reality of Israel's defense.

Our belief is that the flotilla incident actually made people and countries behave more like themselves.

There are those inclined to dislike Israel for ethnic or religious reasons; or because they see only the limited view of Israel their media-controlling governments want them to see; or because they reflexively support people who look sad.

There are those, on the other hand, who are inclined to appreciate the difficulties of Israel in the Middle East and find in Israel a like-minded, democratic ally under attack by radical forces that also threaten the West. This group often includes post-Soviet countries including Poland and the Czech Republic, and in this case includes Italy and The Netherlands.

And there is a third type, those who travel in groups or packs - among them the media, Western Europeans, and left-wing Democrats - who don't necessarily want Israel to disappear; and who do in fact understand the substance of Israel's difficulties; and who would never think of themselves supporting Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran; but who can't defend Israel in public because it isn't fashionable; but won't condemn it more than absolutely necessary; and will still do business with Israel where they find it useful. Cynical diplomats often find themselves here.

(Read full report)

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Israel's PR Is Not the Problem

Ted Belman
American Thinker
27 June '10

When Israel loses yet another PR battle, many of her friends complain that she is partly to blame because she is woefully inept when it comes to PR. I am not one of them.

Glenn Jasper, Ruder Finn Israel, recently suggested that Israel should have all its spokesmen deliver the same message. After all, that's what the Palestinians do. That might be a good idea, except that Israel is a nation of presidents, and each president will deliver his or her own message. They can't be disciplined.

Alex Fishman suggested that Israel should consider the PR battle as more important than the military battle and organize accordingly.

Hence, the manager of this war on our side should not be the army via the IDF spokesman, but rather, someone on the highest national level, with the best professionals, who would have the knowledge and ability to write the "scripts" for the war and enforce them on all our executive arms, including the army.

Good as these suggestions are, they don't go to the heart of the matter.

(Read full article)

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