United States President Joe Biden spoke with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on October 25, 2023, and, among other matters, emphasized that “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people or their legitimate aspirations.”
A few days later, Jake Sullivan, US national security advisor, added to that, pressing Israeli leaders to “make sure to distinguish between Hamas and the Palestinian people whom Hamas does not represent.”
Israel was presented with a rare hasbara (public advocacy) opportunity – and dropped the ball. After all, hundreds of demonstrations had already taken place globally and petitions were signed that did not make any distinction between Hamas and the “Palestinian people.”
Israel was charged as engaged in a “genocide” and the Hamas human rights violations were none of these people’s concern.
“Public diplomacy,” the current term for hasbara, is all too often reflexive and reactive. Most involved in the effort do not sit around and attempt to put themselves in the shoes of those seeking to damage Israel’s image and undermine the justice of Zionism and the actions required by the security forces or the government bureaucracy to assure Israel’s sovereign rule. Their habit is not to assume what form the next attack will be but they do try to prepare to be able to provide data based on the last attack.
While easily being able to agree to the concept that Biden and Sullivan were pushing, Israeli officialdom could also have, whether by itself or through others, highlighted several basic themes that would provide Israel with an advantage over the Hamas version of the conflict by spinning off their words.
For example, the fact that Hamas actually won the Palestinian legislative election in 2006 (there were no other elections). Or that just this past year, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas twice openly denied the Holocaust and claimed Israel had carried out 50 holocausts on the Arabs of Palestine. Or that, as Palestine Media Watch (PMW) and MEMRI sites display, there is a steady stream of hateful, antisemitic, and Holocaust-related incitement propagated to the Hamas-controlled populace of Gaza, as well as to the PA-controlled sections of Judea and Samaria where Palestinians live.
Can we really distinguish between the two?
The 1,000-plus Nakhba terrorists who crossed into the communities facing Gaza were products of the educational programming of Hamas. They made phone calls home to mothers and fathers to bask in their praise for murdering, raping, and burning Jews.
The onus should be on Hamas to disprove their organization and on the rest of the populace, who year after year present themselves in the tens of thousands to cheer on Yahya Sinwar (Palestinian politician and leader of Hamas) and his gangsters.
TO MY way of thinking, hasbara must deal with four major themes.
First, one must do the best to disprove “non-facts.” Ever since the 1920s, the case for Arab Palestine has been based on purposeful misreadings of history, misinterpretations of law, and lies about events.
Here is an example that denies Jewish national identity and what the League of Nations noted as the “historical connection” of the Jewish people to its national homeland. On the official PA TV network on October 24, its political commentator Kamal Zakarneh said: “Europe and America succeeded in getting rid of the Jews, whom they themselves view as human waste, and they threw them out into Palestine.” This is not an accidental misspoken characterization and it has worked itself into the camp of the progressives.
It dovetails, as Gil Troy wrote a decade ago, with a “perpetually hysterical narrative that nazifies Israel” and, I add, dehumanizes Jews. In trying to prove that narrative, the pro-Palestine propagandist is, whether Arab, Jewish, or other, at least by my definition, hateful, irrational, and evil.
It was a non-Jew, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), who made the best hasbara case on this. He was critical to the extreme of the Biden administration forcing the delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. He tweeted, “That’s sending mixed messages... Neither England nor the United States sent humanitarian aid to Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or Imperial Japan.” Van Orden spoke forthrightly and with little compunction.
The second action is to present your case within the parameters of the situation and its immediacy. This needs to be undertaken persistently and consistently. Do not wait to respond but act preemptively.
Israel’s norm has always been to stop short of formulating a forthright and unabashed presentation on behalf of its rights. Too often, it also appears to be overly careful to take care that the “other side” can never be neglected.
Thirdly, sow doubt and showcase the unreliability of the opposing side. Point out the fallacies and the prevarications. Establishment public diplomacy shies away from any even minimal attempts to deny the underpinnings of the staged “Palestinian nationalism” and the other related narratives.
When reports came out that Hamas was blocking foreign nationals from leaving Gaza, the opportunity immediately arose to adopt a phrase such as “the reverse-Hamas-blockade of Gaza” and to promote it on multiple levels: governmental, NGOs, academia, and media staff. This was not done.FINALLY, THERE is the need to reset the message and the Zionist narrative.
Rami Ruhayem, a BBC correspondent emailed the corporation’s staff that they should be using the terms “settler-colonialism” and “ethnic cleansing” in their coverage of Israel.
Jews are not “colonialists” and “occupiers” in their homeland but it is rather Arabs who engaged in wars of conquest that took them to Toulouse, France in 721 and to the gates of Jerusalem in 638 and of Vienna in 1683. Until the 1920s, they were southern Syrians.
History is on Zionism’s side.
Indeed, if anyone in this conflict is engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing, it is the Arab side.
Zionism’s hasbara is an ongoing campaign. From British media barons Lords Beaverbrook and Northcliffe to correspondent Vincent Sheean to Alfred Lilienthal in the past, and to the Mehdi Hassans and Jewish Voice for Peace of the present. We cannot let this information front perform weakly or deficiently.
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and opinion commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.