Comments on: It’s a New World, Bibi

By: Billie Kozolchyk

Billie Kozolchyk — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:22:47 +0000

not a long comment… Hasbarah, hasbarah, hasbarah. As mentioned above, in addition to hasbarah, advocacy in the form of letters to the editor, guest opinions, phone calls, etc. is what we can do. I do it all the time and have been published 99% of the time. But it is extremely important that what we communicate does not make us look like attack dogs, but educators. For example, over the years (I’ve been at it for years), since I live in the southwest, I have mentioned the fact that solar energy and drip irrigation were both developed in Israel. When I hear someone say, “I didn’t know that,” that’s good news.

By: Michelle Perris

Michelle Perris — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:25:57 +0000

Dr. Gordis is right. Israel needs to adapt itself to this not-so-new world.

One area that needs vast imprtovement: The HASBARAH – educating both deciusion makers and the publics in Europe and North America about why we do what we do. Having lived over 30 years in the US, I was often frustrated to see how poorly our position was presented by Israeli officials. I am sure that Dr. Michael Oren, our new ambasador to the US, can and will do a lot to ameliorate this situation.

By: Mike Harris

Mike Harris — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:15:11 +0000

I interpreted this piece somewhat differently than a lot of the other commenters here. I don’t see it as a call to Israel to acquiesce, to not make waves, to apologize for acting to defend its citizens, or to give in where Israel’s vital interests are at stake. But I do see it as a call to recognize that there are certain realities in the world:

1. Hundreds of millions of Arabs and many more Muslims; only 12 million Jews, half of them in Israel. And the Arabs not only have resources, but they also have non-state actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah who have no accountability to anyone except their Iranian masters and are thus free to use civilians as human shields. So the playing field is not level either by resources or by available tactics.

2. Israel is (at least at the moment) uncomfortably dependent on American goodwill and American weaponry.

So Daniel is right– Israel needs to be thinking and acting ahead of the curve. I personally thought that Bibi’s speech was excellent in that it clearly laid out where Israel’s vital interests really are– and I don’t think it was too little too late. The several weeks before that were a diplomatic disaster as Bibi failed to recognize point #2 above so allowed himself to be trapped into a pointless spat with the US government about settlements. Instead of saying “no”, he could have said “yes, but” and then put together a list of demands on the Palestinians (such as an end to incitement in official media) that would have moved him from a position of weakness into a position of strength.

The government and the foreign ministry have, for too long, failed to adapt– not in the area of policy (though maybe there too) but in the area of media relations and of hasbarah. Just like the IDF won great victories in 1948 and 1967 by being smarter and more determined than its enemies, the government must recognize that public opinion is also a battlefield. I agree with Mike Stein’s comment above about the need to engage much more seriously in this propaganda war.

Another related point is that those on both the left and the right need to be very careful about how their comments play out in the forum of world opinion. Where I live (San Francisco area), the anti-Israel crowd loves to throw out quotes from Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, et al that make Israel (rather than Iran, or Myanmar, or Libya) look like the most evil society in the world today. Yet when I was in Israel last week and noted this to an acquaintance who actually knows Levy, he tells me that Levy is a Zionist and a patriot who really loves his country. Assuming this is true, the problem is that Levy is writing for an internal (Israeli) audience that shares certain understandings but he appears to be completely unconcerned about the effect that his words have on an audience that does NOT share even the basic principle of support for the existence of Israel. Similarly, those on the right who promote caricatures of Obama in Arab headgear should ask themselves how they think that will play in an America whose support is vitally important to Israel.

By: Brynn Olenberg Sugarman

Brynn Olenberg Sugarman — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:29:45 +0000

The key is not to acquiesce but rather the opposite…i.e. for Israel to do what the rest of the world does, most recently Azerbajan: tell the world,especially the current American president, to go take a long walk off of a short pier…

When we beat our own breast and conform to PC nonsense with “ashamnu” we encourage the kind of irrational double standards which an anti-semitic world heaps upon us.

The more we make it clear that we have absolutely nothing to apologize for, the more the world will see reality through OUR eyes. Just look at how much the undeserving Palestinians have gained through chutspah and self-aggrandizing,not to mention deceit.

Self-confidence is everything. Our tendency to accommodate those who outrageously and unfairly condemn us is only the last vestige of the shtetl mentality which must be shed and discarded.

By: Shelley Starman-Onsrud

Shelley Starman-Onsrud — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:48:07 +0000

Adapt–give in–like Jews have always done? Don’t make waves, and don’t fight back against the anti-Israel propaganda. This approach gets us nowhere. In fact it’s self-destructive. It abets our enemies. We need to raise our voices. Let people know that we do not accept a double standard that makes Israel the “bad guy.” We cannot cave in to demands that are unreasonable.

By: Gary Rappaport

Gary Rappaport — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:52:40 +0000

Reading to the end, I finally got the impression that the point of your essay is that Israel needs to get more aggressive and proactive vs. reactive in its propaganda war. A conclusion I quite agree with.

On the way to your conclusion you create a lot of soft sounding, feel bad stuff that has generated most of the above comments.
In this regard you might take some lessons in composition from Bibi?

Besides the goad, you might encourage your leadership to say things like those of the American contributor to ‘Jihad Watch’ named Hugh Fitzgerald. He wrote a marvelous piece at: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026795.php#more.

Or would his material be too bold?

By: Sheldon Fischer

Sheldon Fischer — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:57:55 +0000

Yes, we are now seeing the fruits of 30 years of unremitting propaganda against Israel on the part of the European press; left wing blogs (and I am a liberal!), non government organizations (NGO’s), the UN and its committees, etc.
I do write letters to the editors complaining about the tone of the articles in the Washington Post and I have even called columnists when they publish supposedly objective articles about the “settlements”, etc.
We all need to write such letters, maybe even once a week and maybe we will have a “still small voice” that will be heard.

By: Zev bar-Lev

Zev bar-Lev — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:25:57 +0000

One dimension not mentioned in the Gordis article or the comments is that the shift towards more tolerance of mullahs and less tolerance of Israel is not a random reconfiguration of very complex ideologies: It is a shift to the left, which has occurred in the American govt, as it had earlier on US campuses, in US media, etc.

It is particularly unfortunate that so many American Jews have encouraged and participated in this shift over many decades, as Jews did in the early years of the USSR. I hope it will not end as badly.

By: Mike Stein

Mike Stein — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:47:36 +0000

What we need now is not to give in to an unacceptable “new reality”, but to harness the talents and resources of our community in a “Manhattan Project” to make the case for Israel and to effectively engage in the propaganda war that the Arabs have been willing by default.
Israel is a country that should be admired and respected by the entire civilized world for the many contributions it has made to the betterment of all mankind in science, technology, medicine, agriculture, etc. etc. as compared to the Arabs who give us overpriced oil and terrorism.. The fact that reality has been turned upside down must convince us that we have been doing something wrong, and/or we haven’t been doing it right. so far, the Arabs have had the yidishe kups and we have been too divided and incompetent.

By: Saul Goldman

Saul Goldman — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:13:21 +0000

It is not a new world, at least if you take history seriously. It is the same old world, only the clothing styles have changed. We tried to make believe we were different and that the Zionist achievement created a new Jew that we called Israeli. But, we remain the old shtetl Jew,and this implies that we retain the old complexes such as victory guilt and the old style shtadlan diplomacy. We are different and the world will always see us as Jews. Accepting this as integral to our foreign policy and especially the way we train and educate our soldiers is essential. This conflict is not about territory; it is about ideology. It is about people who are transparently enslaved to an ideology of domination against a people that are free. But, these days freedom is too costly not only for Jews but for Americans as well. So in order to make this uncomfortable truth go away, make the Jews go away.