In Middle Eastern reality, the nice guy finishes last

...Are we afraid that the Europeans will boycott us if we tell the truth? I have news: the only way to get them to not boycott us will be to give up and die. Then some of them, perhaps, will feel sorry for us as they do for the murdered victims of the Holocaust (although, truth be told, a considerable number of Europeans believe that the fewer Jews, the better). Are we afraid of Barack Obama, a true believer in the Palestinian cause? What will he do, help Iran get nuclear weapons? Are we afraid of the UN? Will they issue another report to buttress the big lies of of our enemies?

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
19 June '15..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2015/06/in-the-middle-east-the-nice-guy-finishes-last/

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. — Mark Twain

…in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility. … the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. — Adolf Hitler

From the 1960s, inversion of truth and reality has been one the most favored propaganda methods of Israel’s adversaries. One of its most frequent expressions has been the accusation that the Jewish people, victims of the Nazis, have now become the new Nazis, aggressors and oppressors of the Palestinian Arabs. — Dr. Joel Fishman (2007)

The big lie and concomitant reality inversion has been a fabulously successful propaganda strategy for our enemies. One common inversion is to accuse Israel of the very crimes and intentions of their Arab enemies. So Zionism is equated to racism, Israel is accused of being an apartheid state, and Israelis are said to be trying to commit ‘genocide’ against the Palestinian Arabs.

And of course there is my personal favorite, “the IDF deliberately targets children,” an accusation reminiscent of the medieval blood libels:

If there ever was an inversion, this is it. No better example can be given than the recent murder of five members of the Fogel family, where one of the perpetrators returned to the house to kill a crying baby, and one said that they would have killed two other children if they had known they were present. There was the recent murder of a child when an antitank missile was fired directly at a yellow school bus. And there have been any number of ‘actions’ like the Ma’alot massacre, the Bus of Blood, the attack on the nursery at Misgav Am, etc., in which the victims were primarily children. — Vic Rosenthal (2011)

There are several reasons this technique works so well. As Mark Twain noted, it’s easy and quick to spread a lie; but refuting one effectively requires time and research, which in itself can be challenged. The paradigm case of the lie that won’t die is the accusation that IDF soldiers shot young Mohammad al-Dura in 2000, as ‘documented’ by the original ‘Pallywood’ video. Even after it was definitively proven that fire from the Israeli position could not have hit al-Dura, it remains a worldwide article of faith that this is the correct interpretation.

Hitler, who incidentally was accusing the Jews of lying in the quoted passage — and thus inverting reality — seems to have understood the technique well. In addition to the credibility a lie gets from its audaciousness, he observed that even when a lie has been refuted, “traces” remain, perhaps a propensity to believe similar lies.

There is also the “when there’s smoke, there’s fire” effect. Anti-Israel propagandists don’t just tell one lie, they tell hundreds. When one is refuted, others pop up. Someone who isn’t aware of the strategy might easily think “there has to be something behind all this.” There is, but it is an orchestrated campaign of lies.

And then we have what I call the “divorce court fallacy.” If the two sides have diametrically opposed positions, an observer is tempted to think that the truth must lie somewhere in the middle. But this is not the case if one side is audaciously lying and the other is telling the truth (or close to it).

Needed - Intellectual warriors, not slicker diplomats

...the function of diplomacy – particularly public diplomacy – is akin to the traditional function of the air force. For just as the classic role of the air force is to provide ground forces the necessary freedom of action to attain their objectives, so the classic role of diplomacy is to provide national policy- makers the freedom of action they require to attain the objectives of that policy.

Martin Sherman..
Into the Fray/JPost..
14 February '13..




War is a continuation of politics by other means. – Carl von Clausewitz, On War, 1832

Politics is war conducted by other means. – David J. Horowitz, The Art of Political War, 2000

Frederick the Great, who reigned as king of Prussia (1740-1786), famously remarked that “Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.” Today, over two centuries later, it would appear this relationship has been entirely reversed, and that “Arms without diplomacy is like music without instruments.”

Arms without diplomacy

In a recent opinion piece (Jerusalem Post, January 7) titled “Why Jews are so bad at PR,” Shmuley Boteach asks, with evident exasperation, “What good is having Apache helicopter gunships, or Merkava tanks, to defend your citizens against attack if you can’t even use them because the world thinks you’re always the aggressor?”

The last several weeks have seen a spate of similar articles, berating the dismal and dysfunctional performance of Israel’s public diplomacy – reflecting, one hopes, growing public discontent at the deplorable state of affairs that has prevailed in this sphere for decades.

Regrettably, it appears that these – richly deserved – rebukes have been largely limited to the nation’s English-language press. A Google search I conducted on major Hebrew media outlets showed that far less attention seems to be allotted to discussion and analysis of this critically important component of Israel’s strategic capabilities – revealing what appears to be an alarming lack of awareness of, and/or interest in, the topic among the Hebrew-reading public.

Difficult to overstate the gravity

It is difficult to overstate the gravity of Israel’s public diplomacy debacle, and to grasp the ongoing official disregard of the strategic dangers that its continued neglect is creating.

Indeed, well over half a decade ago, in an article called “Public diplomacy: the missing component in Israel’s foreign policy,” published in a well-known scholarly journal, Prof. Eytan Gilboa issued the following ominous warning: “The lack of an adequate PD [public diplomacy] program has significantly affected Israel’s strategic outlook and freedom of action.... Any further neglect of PD would not only restrict Israel’s strategic options, it would be detrimental to its ability to survive in an increasingly intolerant and hostile world.”

While nearly all the recently published critiques did a good job in their diagnosis of the malaise, I fear the prescriptions many of them suggested for its remedy are hopelessly inadequate, and reflect a serious underestimation of the depth and the scale of the problem.

Plosker - How the Mavi Marmara Sank Israel’s Public Diplomacy

Simon Plosker..
The Times of Israel..
13 June '12..

That State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss report into the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident has pointed to a severe shortfall in Israel’s public diplomacy comes as no surprise.

For those of us involved in Israeli public diplomacy in the non-governmental sector, the weaknesses were only too apparent at the time. For hours after the news broke, we were glued to Internet sites, Israeli TV and international news stations. Conflicting casualty reports were thrown around and the only thing that was clear in the confusion was that Israel was facing a potential catastrophe from a PR perspective, not to mention the other ramifications.

Fresnozionism - Why Israel fails in public diplomacy (and strategic action)

Fresnozionism.org..
14 January '12..





Martin Sherman writes (“Comprehending the incomprehensible — Part I“),

For anyone seeking the principal reason why Israel is losing the public diplomacy war, the answer is difficult to accept, yet very easy to prove.

Israel is losing the battle because it doesn’t want to win.

Sherman’s thesis is tightly argued. I’ll summarize:

If an organization wants to achieve an objective, it will allocate resources to it. Israel’s budget for what Sherman calls ‘public diplomacy’ and I call the ‘information war’ is minuscule. The state is able to come up with large sums of money for such things as the withdrawal from Gaza or building the security barrier, but the Osem company spends two to three times as much promoting its ‘Bamba’ snack than Israel does telling its story to the world.

Since everyone admits that this is enormously important, why isn’t more funding provided?

Sherman suggests that the explanation for this criminal negligence is the same as the solution to these additional paradoxes:

• Why a country that displays such technotactical brilliance is afflicted by such strategic imbecility;

• Why hawkish candidates consistently win elections, but then immediately adopt the failed policy of their defeated dovish rivals;

• Why the doctrine of political appeasement and territorial concessions is repeatedly and consistently disproven, but somehow never discredited – and certainly never discarded;

• Why the Israeli political establishment has not embraced more appreciatively and mobilized more effectively the huge potential in the support of communities such as the Evangelical Christians across the world, and particularly in the US, as a strategic asset.

Sherman blames “the decisive role that civil society elites have in setting the direction of the country’s strategic agenda – no matter who gets elected.” And he adds that “this is a role that is not only decisive, but also in many ways detrimental, dysfunctional and at times disloyal.”

Gordon - Re: Failures in Israel Advocacy

Evelyn Gordon
Commentary/Contentions
27 November '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/11/27/failures-in-israel-advocacy/

Matthew’s critique of Israel’s latest PR fad is spot-on: No campaign can succeed without addressing the fundamental issue of the Jews’ “right to self-determination in their homeland.” But there’s one simple thing both Israel and Jewish organizations could do to improve the situation: stop appointing official representatives who actively promote the anti-Israel case. Consider two examples: former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gabriela Shalev, and Zoe Jick, New York regional director for the World Zionist Organization’s Department of Diaspora Activities.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in August, Shalev said Israel shared the blame for the Palestinians’ statehood application to the UN, inter alia because it put “new things on the table, like the requirement that Palestinians recognize Israel as the homeland of Jewish people, which to my mind is superfluous.” If even Israel’s former UN ambassador deems this a “new” and “superfluous” condition that contributed to stymieing peace efforts, you can’t blame the general public for thinking so. Yet Shalev is wrong on both counts.

First, far from being a “new” condition invented by the Netanyahu government, this demand originated with the Olmert government – the very one she served. As leaked memos from the Palestinian negotiating team revealed in January, Olmert’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, repeatedly raised the issue of Israel as a Jewish state with her Palestinian interlocutors, though to no avail: They replied that while they couldn’t stop Israel from calling itself Jewish, the Palestinians would never recognize it as such.

Fundamentally Freund: Thinking Outside the 'Hasbara Bubble'

Michael Freund
JPost
18 August 09

Always on the lookout for a chance to talk up Israel while traveling abroad, I decided to utilize a recent appointment with a physical therapist in Manhattan for more than just a stretch of my stubborn hamstring. As this licensed professional politely twisted me into seemingly impossible contortions, perhaps mistaking me for some out-of-costume comic book hero, I ignored the desire to scream and instead asked what his impression was of the Jewish state.

"Israel? That's near Gaza or something, isn't it?" he said, applying yet another sideways yank to one of my legs, which quickly began to resemble those obtuse angles we had learned about way back in high-school geometry.

"Yes," I practically screeched, while quietly praying that his knowledge of human anatomy surpassed his acquaintance with Middle Eastern geography, "that's correct."

"And aren't they fighting against you, or at least they were?" he asked without any sense of irony as he applied a technique to my lower body that I was sure had originated with the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi of the Iraqi insurgency.

In between bouts of occasionally gut-wrenching pulls and stretches, I proceeded to give him a brief discourse on the history and intricacies of the Arab-Israeli conflict. How effective it was I cannot say, though thankfully it did appear to distract him somewhat, giving my tormented muscles some much-needed relief.

Finally, before parting, he told me that he had always liked Israel and wanted to visit, and truly hoped to make it there someday.

AS I hobbled down onto the busy streets of New York, I began to consider the anecdotal evidence that I had just gathered regarding Israel's status in the minds of Americans, and what lessons could be learned about our efforts at hasbara, or public diplomacy.

Here was a well-educated non-Jewish professional in media-saturated Manhattan, where hardly a day goes by without various media outlets bashing the Jewish state, and yet he nonetheless felt a basic sense of sympathy and even support for our predicament. And while he would apparently have trouble finding Israel on a map, let alone understanding the intricacies of our military, diplomatic and political challenges, he had heard of our little country and thought of it as a place he would very much like to see.

This scene repeated itself - minus the leg stretches of course - in various other conversations that I had with a range of people in the New York metropolitan area. Clearly, there is a lot of general backing out there among the American public for the Jewish state, much more than perhaps many of us suppose.
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