Rebranding the Israeli Narrative

The time has arrived to simply stop and read the writing on the wall, assuming it’s not too late. We must re-evaluate, re-calculate, and radically change what we do in response to the tsunami of Jew hatred that has swept the world whether it be in Israel or in the streets of Brooklyn, or anywhere in the world. Albert Einstein was quoted as saying that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. This is a fair representation of how Jewish leaders and Jewish organizations including Israeli governmental agencies keep responding to today’s anti-Semitism with yesterday’s obsolete and ineffective apologetic thinking.

Jewish leaders, NGO’s, academicians, governmental agencies, and pro-Israel organizations must change and adapt their manner of responding to the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic narratives that have blurred the distinction between classical anti-Semitism, anti-Israel, and anti-Zionism. Jews, Israeli’s, and Zionists have all become “guilty by association” of one another. The process of “detoxifying” the Israeli narrative portrayed in progressive circles (including Jewish progressives) must be a strategic goal of the State of Israel. Unconventional yet empirically effective “info-war” techniques should be utilized for their efficacy in changing attitudes, perceptions, and prior biases. Developing. Designing and deploying persuasive/compelling communication strategies should be utilized not only to influence how the Israeli narrative is perceived but critically how one “feels” about them.

The rational and need: The perspective and perception held by NGO’s, academicians, the broadcasted and printed media, and social media regarding Israel can be a powerful tool in shaping public opinion. The ideological positions held by many if not most in key positions within the progressive side of the isle demands a radically new approach. The transformation of long held narratives and perceptions requires a pro-active and planned intervention that will result in a shift in long held views and prior biases. Importantly, the narrative representation of reality cannot be evaluated or challenged empirically or with dry facts and “hasbara”, but rather whether the message or response is coherent and ‘rings true’. The efforts to present the Israeli narrative through the prism of facts and truths has failed to alter or change the progressive understanding of the Israeli narrative.

Today’s progressive media organizations blindly and willingly accept and promote the Palestinian culture of deceit. The efforts of the State of Israel to show malice and the lack of factual and historical truth within the Palestinian narrative does not resonate within the progressive mind set and is incongruent to the progressive intellectual predisposition. Due to this predisposition, in the eyes of the progressive world, Palestinian terror is a legitimate response to the continued occupation of the occupied territories thereby absolving the Palestinians of any and all accountability for their actions. Only the State of Israel is held solely responsible and accountable. The logical extension of this narrative leads to the understanding that only the “undoing” Israel’s establishment and existence as a Jewish State will satisfy minimum Palestinian expectations and demands.

Information warfare: Propaganda in its most basic form is the use of a public persuasion means for political ends. Propaganda is a type of communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented.

Propaganda can be found in news and journalism, social media, governmental agencies, advertising, entertainment, education, and activism; often associated with material which is prepared by governments as part of war efforts, political campaigns, and health related campaigns. During the 20th century, the English term propaganda was often associated with a manipulative approach, but historically, propaganda has been a neutral descriptive term of any material that promotes certain opinions or ideologies.

When it is conducted in war, it is called psychological warfare. Although these are the classic definitions, the problem is that the reality is very flexible and changing constantly. Propaganda usually is not about a change from stark black to stark white or vice versa, but rather a strengthening or weakening of positions along the spectrum of conflicting ideologies and is an enormously powerful social science tool. Propaganda can be far more sophisticated than our primitive notion of Hitler waving and ranting. Almost every person is prone to being influenced at some point, yet everyone thinks that they are immune to such persuasion—and that is what makes them so vulnerable to propaganda.

A primary working principle of psychological warfare is to adapt your cause to both the local and contemporary cultures. When the cause célèbre of the 60s was colonialism, the Palestinians played up the notion of Israel as a colonizer; when human rights became the dominant cause, Israel was accused of human rights violations. And although at one time apartheid was only associated with South Africa, once it ended there, the PLO engaged in a “replacement oppressor” narrative with Israel taking South Africa’s place as the world’s number one purveyor of apartheid. In recent years the Palestinians have shifted vocal support for the annihilation of Israel to Israel being an illegitimate state due to her abuse of Palestinian human rights; same goal, different path to achieve this goal. The easy refutability of these libels have proven to be totally ineffective only because propaganda is about imbuing beliefs and emotions rather than facts.

Persuasion (a palatable synonym of propaganda) is also a powerful social science tool. In the past 150 years, it has developed unprecedently into a powerful social and political weapon. Channeling this technological know-how to develop an operational model that incorporates our ideological and political goals, will enable implementing “info-war” model to our advantage—which in our case is a safe, secure Israel and a safe, secure Jewish people in their respective countries.

In order to be able to overcome and outmaneuver the methodology and tactics that are being used against us, it will be necessary to “reverse engineer” the false and manipulative narratives that have been so successfully applied by our enemies. The State of Israel and the Jewish people around the globe are finally coming to this realization, albeit half a century too late. This fact presents the enormity of the challenges facing Israel and the Jewish world, incorporating all facets of the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-Zionist narratives in the converging spheres of; media, social network, academia, progressive politics, social, religious, and cultural.

Anti-Israel propaganda has permeated every single facet of American (and Western) society including: labor (longshoremen’s refusal to unload an Israeli cargo ship and a national teacher’s union putting to vote a harshly anti-Israel resolution); sports (boycotting Israel at international competitions); cultural events (Roger Waters’ campaign to pressure musicians to boycott Israel, and a Swedish art museum glorifying Palestinian mass murderers); higher education (universities outright banning pro-Israel speakers and allowing extremely violent Arab and leftist “protesters” to attack pro-Israel speakers, driving them off campus); science (calls for boycotts of leading Israeli research institutes and termination of cooperation agreements); and numerous other examples. Israel has consistently forfeited her leverage in the world of technology, medicine, research, and military development against supporters and funders of the Palestinian and anti-Semitic coalitions. Without thinking twice or remorse, we simply let them “off the hook” consequentially further empowering their supporters and resulting in even more aggressive tactics/attacks against Jews and the State of Israel.

Progressive narratives embody fundamental assumptions by which any and all actions by the State of Israel are interpreted and presented negatively by the progressive media and within academic circles. Techniques based on Psychological Warfare and the application of “Info war” can provide an effective response to deafen the dissonance that automatically erupts with Pavlovian consistency when pro-Israel, and pro-Zionist narratives are expressed. Continuing on the current path of appeasing those at the forefront of Jew hatred demanding the end of Israel as the nation of the Jewish people, will only wet their appetites to question Israel’s legitimacy and continue to threaten and attack Jews wherever they may be. An endeavor of this magnitude can only be executed by Israel’s governmental agencies or non-governmental NGO’s in Israel who have a formidable reservoir of manpower capability with experience in the field of “psychological warfare” and the “info-war”.