(Tablet) Richard Hanania - A narrative has developed that Israel needed to do a better job of making its case in the international media. Sniping about shortcomings in messaging can be constructive, but more often it distracts from the underlying forces that have created so much pressure on Israel to not fight the war in Gaza in the way that would be necessary to win. To see global hostility toward Israel as primarily a problem of optics rather than something deeper is to miss the entire essence of the conflict, and why the world cares so much about it in the first place. If one believes that Israel's optics problems in the current war are the result of flawed public relations, consider how the nation was treated before it began. The UN General Assembly adopted 140 resolutions on Israel between 2015 and 2022, twice as many as on the rest of the world combined. Media coverage shows the same disproportionate focus as the activities of international institutions. Information is filtered through various ideologies and in many cases a worldview that centers Jews, or white people with Jews as proxies, as a fundamental cause of many of the problems humanity is facing. Most of the international community is committed to anti-Western, Third Worldist, or antisemitic narratives for one reason or another. These are forces beyond the ability of any spokesman of the IDF to control or significantly influence. The bad news is that most of the world is going to hate Israel no matter what. At the same time, the U.S. is really the only country outside the region that matters. The best thing individuals can do to shape public opinion in Israel's favor is to be more confident and assertive allies. This involves not granting the premise of moral equivalency between Israelis and the Palestinians. A nation defending itself and inflicting collateral damage is not the same as a movement with exterminationist goals, which seeks to slaughter innocent people as an end in itself. Friends of Israel must push back on any ideology that emphasizes Western wickedness and identity politics, of which hostility to the world's only Jewish state must be a byproduct. These larger battles will ultimately determine whether Israel can in the coming years continue to count on the U.S. as an ally. The war in Gaza has captured the attention of the world because Israel has emerged as the main avatar of Western civilization.
2024-05-23 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive