Lose-Lose
In any type of conflict, an ideal strategy is one that
places your opponent in a lose-lose situation.
In military combat, this might involve trapping your enemy
so that his army has only two choices: advance and be decimated, or retreat and
get cut down while racing away in disordered flight. In the first Gulf War, General Norman
Schwarzkopf successfully shattered the Iraqi army not just through superior
firepower, but through maneuvers that left his opponent no choice that did not
involve annihilation.
Tactics that place your foe in a lose-lose situation are
also common in other sorts of combat, such as the propaganda warfare carried
out daily against Israel. For example, a
rhetorical maneuver proponents of BDS like to use is the claim that the fight
against them demonstrate their own success, leading to questions like “Why
would Israel’s supporters put so much effort into fighting BDS is it wasn’t
effective?”
The brilliance of this maneuver is that it places Israel’s
friends in a lose-lose situation: either fight against BDS and be used as
evidence of enemy strength, or ignore it – which effectively hands the field
over to that enemy to do as they like.
The recent flare-up over two BDS-supporting Congresswomen
visiting Israel put the Jewish state into a similar lose-lose situation: either
bar the pair and have condemnations rain down or say “Yes” to the visit and
allow your foes to travel the region ginning up hatred. While many pro-Israel activists helped blunt
the effectiveness of this propaganda attack (by, for example, exposing the
anti-Semitic nature of the organization that was sponsoring their Israel trip),
that represented after-the-fact repair work in a situation where the enemy had
already set the terms of engagement.
Unfortunately, I can’t think of many situations when Israel
and her friends were able to perform this same trick. Perhaps this is because our opponents can
count on a pliant media to parrot their messages while treating anything our
side says with skepticism. Or maybe we lack
the cynicism reflected in the other side’s willingness to use the suffering of
others (including one Congresswoman’s own grandmother) to further their
cause.
Israel’s limited options also reflects the power dynamic of
the war against the Jews. While huge
investment has been made in portraying Israel as powerful (and privileged), that
has been done to mask the fact that the world’s sole Jewish state has had to do
battle with 20+ Arab states allied with several dozen more Muslim ones who
control not just half the world’s oil reserves, but also major international
organizations like the UN. Given this, the majority of Israel’s energies must
be invested in manning the siege walls, a
defensive strategy that limits offensive choices that could pin down our foes
in a lose-lose situation.
And then there is the reality that while Israel’s enemies
are at war with the Jewish state, the reverse is not true. As mentioned previously,
the dream come true for nearly every Israeli (and every Israeli supporter) is
to see the nation living at peace with her neighbors. This is a worthy goal, but does not lend
itself to the sorts of propaganda tactics used by enemies who want to see
Israel become an object of hatred and ultimately destroyed.
That said, it is possible to isolate and brand an enemy
(such as the BDS “movement”) that doesn’t necessarily require us to ferment
hatred against those we ultimately want to live in peace with. The fact that most people on our side refer
to BDS as anti-Semitic has already gone a long way to freeze that project and
define it in our own terms. We might
also be able to do a little Jiu jitsu at their expense, insisting that the very
existence of their program demonstrates that Israel must be fabulously
successful and beloved (otherwise, why run boycotts and divestment campaigns against
it?).
The only trick with any techniques to place our opponents in
a lose-lose situation in a propaganda war of their own making is to repeat our
talking points incessantly, never replying to the other side’s charges and
ignoring anything the other side tries to say in their own defense. This is
obviously not the stuff of dialog, but dialog only takes place between people
playing the same game and if the BDSers want to continue their propaganda
warfare incessantly, our response should be an even more incessant
counterattack.