Image is nothing, moral clarity is everything
It is the most natural human reaction after someone experiences trauma, loss, and heartache to reach out, to want love, sympathy, warmth, and comfort from friends, family – even strangers. We all need people to reassure us that they feel our pain and that they care about us.
Gidon Ben-Zvi
But that most basic of human needs, to not be alone, cannot be the basis for a country’s security because it leads to cloudy, even incoherent decision-making that sacrifices the well-being of the people a duly elected government is obligated to protect.
People here are grappling with Hamas, a terrorist organization that has repeatedly made clear its singular intent: the obliteration of Israel. As such, our leaders must do everything necessary to first destroy Hamas and then prevent the group from ever rising again.
But the fixation on gaining the world’s sympathy is distracting Israel’s leaders and policymakers from the time, resources, and strategic thinking needed to focus like a laser on the monumental task at hand.
And leadership matters. Prior to the outbreak of America’s War of Independence against Great Britain, revolutionaries who supported a break from the mother country had not even achieved a majority. It took the leadership of George Washington to sway most Americans as to the rightness of his cause. This steely resolve resulted in European powers such as France, Spain and the Netherlands becoming critical American allies.
About 150 years later, Americans were again seriously divided – this time over what the role of the United States in World War II should be, or if it should even have a role at all.
That attitude changed following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The mission became, across party lines, to defeat the Nazi menace in Europe. Only after Democrats and Republicans alike made this historic decision did the country’s leaders galvanize the American public around the war effort by using a vast array of media.
Israel experienced its own Pearl Harbor on October 7, 2023. We here are yet to witness that kind of inspirational, generational call to action. Instead, the country’s leaders have seemingly prioritized the winning of a so-called media war that is being waged against certain international news outlets.
And it has been for naught. This week’s announcement that Israel’s Public Diplomacy Ministry will be shuttered is effectively an admission by the government in Jerusalem that the official effort to rally international support for the Jewish state has been an unmitigated failure.
But is it accurate to hold Israel’s Public Diplomacy Ministry responsible for the skewed reporting of foreign news outlets about Hamas’ brutal attack on southern Israel, during which 1,400 people were slaughtered, thousands were injured, thousands more were displaced, and over two hundred people were taken hostage?
Countering media bias with facts, which was the Israel’s Public Diplomacy Ministry’s mission, only speaks to the faithful and converts no one to the side of freedom, democracy, and Jewish self-determination except the duly converted.
There was no sophisticated media campaign to make that case in 1947 when Israel, impoverished and isolated, was attacked by five Arab armies openly committed to destroying the new Jewish state, which had just declared its independence.
This massive undertaking was executed without a public diplomacy department. The military effort on the ground, fueled by an uncompromising sense of moral clarity, took precedence. How Israel’s War of Independence was reported on internationally was an afterthought.
In the hours after the Hamas invasion of Israel, I was inundated with well-wishes and support from old friends and professional colleagues from the United States. But since then, the prayers of peace and solidarity with Israel have been replaced with the standard images of picnics, pets, nights on the town, and high school graduation ceremonies.
In other words, these good people from my past life as an American have moved on with their lives.
Meanwhile, the lives of Israelis are mired in a waking nightmare. Healing for us, our ability to get on with our lives, will begin once Hamas is eliminated from every corner of this country.
Most people outside of Israel who tune in for a few minutes of news do so after another long day at work or school. Their thoughts are on immediate concerns: what’s for dinner, that pile of unpaid bills, a child’s failing grade on a math test, an argument with a spouse, a difficult boss, a difficult course, plans for the weekend.
If Israel wants this majority to wake up and listen, it needs to deal with Hamas by establishing clear goals and implementing a consistent plan of action. Only then will the country succeed in penetrating the fog of moral relativism around the world that has clouded over the justness of its cause: freedom from terror forever more.
By acting with conviction and moral clarity the Jewish state will finally refute the poisonous, farcical ideas perpetrated by the New York Times, the BBC, and others.
I found myself nodding yes or saying no to much of what you say, Gideon.
Propaganda is an all-important part of war and already over the years the Palestinians have played their cards well in this regard.
While we cannot bend over backwards to explain ourselves, it is of crucial importance that we state the facts as they are. What people end up doing with that information is beside the point here. Without it, we only contribute ourselves to the entrenched ignorance that abounds and the willingness of the world to make up their own story. We must fight with words in this world of so much untruth, disinformation, misinformation … it is important.
As to those you refer to who come home after a hard day’s work, have a look at the news, then tend to ordinary life, this is not how most Jews in the Diaspora (at least in Australia) have responded to the Hamas obscenities and the war that has followed. We have been dumbfounded, dazed with horror and grief at the unspeakable acts that have taken place; yes, we perform some elements of ordinary life as we go, but we do not put to one side the enormity of Israel’s pain and anguish and the existential war it must wage. We live with it every day; it’s the first thing we think of on waking in the morning. And we do what we can from here, especially in combatting those who present unjustly a ‘proportionate’ view of what took place or avoid the facts as they are. The BBC, and even the ABC here, et al, have been breathtakingly biassed, and unprofessional, in their reportage, which has only gone to incite division in our societies. It is shocking and must be remedied.
Am Yisrael Chai.