OPINION: Israel – winning the military battle, losing the PR war
Israel’s apparent disinterest in its own global image is making a war that’s already tough on the ground, even tougher, argues Jonathan Baz
While visiting Israel ten years ago, I wanted to take the old (slow) train from the coast, winding beautifully up through the mountains to Jerusalem. Full disclosure – I love railways and their history and this 19th century line had long fascinated me. With the new fast rail link from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem poised for completion, I knew that the old line’s closure was imminent.
Staying in Herzliya, I arranged a taxi to take me from my hotel to the town’s railway station nearby. When the car arrived the driver made conversation, asking me where I planned to take the train to and I told him of my ultimate destination, Jerusalem.
We set off, but glancing up a few minutes later I noticed we were speeding along the motorway to Jerusalem with the train station far behind us. I remonstrated with the driver that I wanted the train, but he was having none of it. He told me I was mad, that the train takes forever, and that nobody takes that train anymore anyway. After much persistent insistence he reluctantly turned around and took me to the station where I (just about) managed to catch my train.
The reason for this brief travelogue? At the risk of bringing down the wrath of the politically correct brigade, it is not unfair to suggest that Israelis are famous for being sometimes rude and occasionally just a little bit arrogant. And the chutzpah of that Herzliyan cabbie who wanted to drive me all the way to Jerusalem in defiance of my wishes, is a glorious example of that rudeness.
But you know what? For the most part we love the Israeli people precisely for that chutzpah.
For a country that for all of its 77 years has faced existential threats from its neighbours, in circumstances that most of us in the diaspora can barely comprehend, one can argue that they are entitled to have little or no time for the relative luxury of the everyday trivial courtesies of life.
But in the light of Hamas’s ghastly and worsening propaganda campaign, much of it based on wicked lies that are eagerly disseminated by much of the West’s mainstream media who have no interest in fact-checking, Israel’s apparent disinterest in their own global image is making a war that’s already tough on the ground, even tougher across an increasingly hostile West.
For the last 20 months Israel’s military and intelligence successes have been unsurpassed. The IDF and the Mossad have displayed bravado and genius in the Beeper attacks, the planned and targeted dismantling of the leadership structures of Hamas and Hezbollah, Operation Rising Lion against Iran and, more than a year ago, the remarkable rescue of hostage Noa Argamani from her captors. And all of this achieved against a backdrop of horrific urban warfare that has still resulted in one of the lowest civilian to combatant fatality ratios ever recorded, defining Israel’s defence establishment as amongst the world’s finest.
But if Israel’s military achievements have bordered on the miraculous, the country’s ability to effectively manage its own image on the world’s stage has been diametrically appalling.
One could argue that pitched against the Israel-hating guns of the BBC, CNN, The New York Times and suchlike, any battle to promote the State of Israel is almost unwinnable. And with so many people, especially Generation Z, now receiving their news, or rather, “being influenced” by social media, the PR battlefield is a brutal, immediate and worldwide landscape.
Never have the two phrases “a picture tells a thousand words” and “a lie can be half way around the world before the truth has even got its boots on” been so true as in last week’s tragic example of Mohammed Zakariya Ayyub al-Matouk, a child born with serious genetic and neurological disorders. Pictures of Mohammed were published across the globe, falsely describing his condition as a consequence of famine in Gaza, with all outlets resolutely ignoring the facts behind the poor lad’s inherited disabilities.
Rarely has a modern-day blood libel been so egregious – and yet where was Israel’s response? For a nation whose intelligence capabilities are so revered, it is hard to comprehend how the country can repeatedly allow itself to be so blindsided, globally humiliated and slandered with such lies.
London has a football club, Millwall FC, who are famous for proudly chanting: “No-one likes us, we don’t care”. It is as if a “Millwall mentality” has permeated to the very core of the Israeli establishment. And that is nothing to be proud of.
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