Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
Those speaking for Israel to U.S. audiences tend not to understand the historical lens through which Americans view the world, or the racial viewpoint that they tend to apply to international conflicts. They do not understand that the visuals that communicate security and control to the Israeli public – like images of soldiers with Gazan detainees – show Americans subjugation and oppression. Even if they can speak English, what is their audience going to hear?Some of the foreign-born Israeli spokespeople do get this, and have catered their messaging to America and the English-speaking Western world. At the forefront has been the former news presenter Eylon Levy, who, whether you agree with him or not, has managed to get the Israeli perspective across without descending into Netanyahu's farcical "total victory" messaging.If there is someone still willing to stand up for Israel internationally who speaks perfect English, has a firm grasp on America's liberal values and can meet Netanyahu's stringent purity test – will they please stand up?
This was published right before the news that Levy had been suspended from his role, either for a tweet to British Foreign Secretary David Cameron that wa impolitic but accurate, or reportedly because Sara Netanyahu disliked his position against judicial reform.
Either way, it is a huge blow to Israel's efforts to get its message out to the Western world.
I have my own frustrations with Israel's messaging, as I have had for years. In this war, even though it is better, it still has not been effective.
Here are some of the points that Israel needs to get across, that so far have been failures.
Israel needs to emphasize the necessity of destroying (or at least fatally crippling) Hamas. This is a valid military goal under international law; without that Israel is keeping the door open to more October 7ths. Allowing Hamas to regroup is not an option and that point must be made.
Comparisons with Al Qaeda are useful. The group had to be effectively destroyed after 9/11. A recently declassified document gave a good definition of Al Qaeda's irrelevance nowadays, saying the terror group "has lost target access, leadership talent, group cohesion, rank-and-file commitment, and an accommodating local environment." That is a good list of what is necessary for Hamas to no longer be a threat, both short and long term.
Israel needs to educate the Western world as to the reality of how wars are fought. This narrative has been taken over not by military experts but by human rights leaders who do not understand war. We see people who have never seen a battlefield confidently declaring that Israel is not doing enough to minimize civilian deaths. The message that needs to be expounded is that urban warfare is extraordinarily difficult, and that fighting an enemy that hides in extensive tunnel networks is virtually unprecedented.
Beyond that, the world doesn't quite understand the depth of Hamas' evil. This is the first war that has been fought with the goal of maximizing the number of deaths on one's own side. It is the first war where an immoral actor uses morality as its major weapon - to pressure Israel into abandoning its primary goal because Israel does not want to kill innocent civilians. Hamas' depravity is given lip service in the context of October 7, but no one is emphasizing how shameless it is towards its own people. Hamas has billions of dollars and has stolen hundreds of millions more, all to attack Jews - and hardly any to protect or help its own people.
One of the points I made early in the war has barely been mentioned anywhere else: things were getting better for Gazans, consistently, before the pogrom. More jobs, more imports, more exports, more movement than at any time since before Hamas took over. The "siege" was effectively over. Hamas decided to throw all that away. But even worse, Hamas only kept things relatively calm in Gaza to fool Israel into thinking that it cared about the welfare of its own people. It doesn't. It looks at Palestinians as nothing more than potential recruits and at the very least, useful human shields who are worth more dead than alive, more valuable suffering than happy.
No one is talking about logistics, “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics, ” said
General Robert H. Barrow, Commandant of the Marine Corps in 1980. Logistics for the military in an environment like Gaza is incredibly difficult, and the logistics involved in safely transporting aid to civilians while Hamas is trying to disrupt that very movement is an order of magnitude harder. When Israel turns back a convoy carrying aid to parts of Gaza, it is not a capricious decision just to make Gazan lives difficult - it is based on the environment, the safety of the convoy, and the potential for disruption by Hamas. So many things go into so many decisions, and none of them are "let's make Gazans suffer." The more people know about the reality of war and logistics, the more they can understand Israel's position and predicament.
The narrative that the IDF acts without thought, or with malice towards civilians, is insane - as well as antisemitic. Israel is spending countless hours trying to minimize civilian casualties, and every one is the result of Hamas decisions to use Gazans as one of their war weapons, as literal human shields. Isrel has layers of decision points, and layers of lawyers, to ensure that everything they do is by the book and legal under the laws of war. That message is not getting through.
When an incident occurs, like the stampede that allegedly killed over a hundred Gazans, the IDF has been better at responding as quickly as possible but it needs to do far more. It needs to be transparent about each investigation and it needs to be as honest as possible.
The IDF is a professional army. A lot of people are involved in every decision, and these people want to win the war with a minimum of collateral damage. Any story that says otherwise is an antisemitic conspiracy theory, where every layer of the IDF bureaucracy is implicated in war crimes and none of them speak up against them. The inner workings of targeting, of internal investigations, of the detailed amount of work involved is not being publicized.
Israel also needs to emphasize Hamas lies. The very people that are being trusted by the news media and NGOs for casualty statistics regularly issues absurd press releases that are provably false. Israel needs to go on the offense and issue fact sheets showing how Hamas lies and why anyone believing them is simply not paying attention.
And finally Israel needs to show that its statements in previous wars, that were equally discounted as "hasbara," nearly all ended up being proven true. The skepticism of reporters towards the IDF might be justified if there is no track record, but there is. There is no comparison between the historic veracity of Israeli and Hamas statements.
Israel hatred won't go away, and those who suffer from Israel Derangement Syndrome won't change. But there are plenty of people in the West who are only being swayed by reporters who do not understand the reality.
The facts are on Israel's side. But they must be presented in a way that understands how Western journalists and politicians think, or else they all drown in a sea of lies.
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