Israel Losing the Media War
As happened when Israel attacked Lebanon several years ago in an attempt to severely weaken, even destroy the terrorist organization Hizbullah, international media and public opinion are increasingly sympathetic to the suffering of Israel’s enemies.
Al Jazeera, the BBC, CNN and other major international and national networks are focusing on the suffering of Gazans, and they neglect to cover the suffering of Israelis due to Hamas’ rocket attacks. Israel is increasingly portrayed as a country that bombs children, women and the elderly, civilians in other words, rather than terrorists.
This is a major problem: we already see public opinion shifting in favor of the Palestinians rather than Israel’s offensive. The more news outlets show photos and videos of killed Palestinian civilians, the more support for Israel will drop and Israel may very well end up isolated, despite America’s current support, which is due to end January 20th when Barack Obama takes office.
Al Jazeera, for instance, calls the attack “War on Gaza.” Note that they do not call it a “war on Hamas,” or “on extremists,” but on Gaza as a whole. This is the picture most mainstream news outlets are painting for the public.
Anti-Israel and pro-Palestine protests have already taken place in Arab and Western countries, which are likely to increase in the coming days. The longer Israel’s attack continues, the more international media show evidence of Palestinian suffering and the more Israel acts as if no humanitarian crisis is taking place in Gaza, the more people will turn against the Jewish nation-state, which could very well result in yet another PR victory for a terrorist organization.
Israel has to ensure that, whatever happens, it wins the PR war. This means that it has to make clear, time and again, that it cares greatly about Palestinian civilians. It has to give evidence to mainstream and new media of Israeli support for innocent Palestinian civilians. It has to make sure that there are enough doctors in Gaza who can then help wounded Palestinians.
At the same time, Israel will have to show, with photos, videos and personal testimonies, that the attacks were absolutely necessary. It could even take reporters with it during the invasion: let them film the fighting themselves, so they too will see that the Palestinians have more weapons than they like to admit, and that the attack was provoked by Hamas’ refusal to do business with Israel and its constant, daily aggression toward its neighbor.
Israel has to, finally, do something about the information war. It has to make sure that foreigners see that they too are suffering and that they are taking care to prevent civilian casualties and suffering. If it is seen as the aggressor, as it currently is, it will have great trouble finding diplomatic solutions in the year ahead.
To reiterate my response to your last paragraph concerning Israel’s burden of proof- what you are requiring is impossible, like basing a system of justice on every man proving himself innocent of crimes rather than have a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Israel does allow investigations of questionable events such as the school incident, so it’s not as though the IDF expects to be assumed to be innocent of all wrongdoing. But it’s impossible to fight the propaganda battle in the manner you suggest, whereby Israel would have to always be assumed to be the aggressor and then prove that her actions are justified.
And by comparison, how many investigations does Hamas conduct into the targeting of its weapons against civilians? Zero. Well, I guess they do probably try to conduct some investigations to improve their targeting so as to kill even more civilians…
This is yet another relevant point of comparison that anti-Israel zealots refuse to engage. It is particularly relevant to those who claim equal fault on both sides.
A big part of the problem, in my view, of the consternation over Israel’s military incursions (and holding her to an impossibly high standard) is that it distracts from where I think Israel SHOULD be held to higher accountability, which is the nonmilitary political process by which the relations with the Palestinian refugees have been handled. Certainly the security problem is wrapped up in that, but as I stated in a previous discussion I think that Israel’s greatest failing has been her ambivalence (sometimes bordering on outright hostility, among certain political factions) to a strong and independent Palestine. There too, perhaps holding Israel to the highest possible standard might be an impossible burden- but I think it’s in that area where she’s fallen far shorter of a reasonable burden than she has in the military responses to Palestinian aggression.
So when the discussions get bogged down into what we believe the rules of engagement ought to be for the IDF, I think we get off track from the more important issues.
Tangential to this discussion- am I the only one seeing a lot of shifting in public opinion, with liberals becoming more critical of “Zionism” but at the same time, perhaps the beginning of unravelling of some of the support that Hamas usually has enjoyed? What I mean by that is that some of the Arab nations have been a lot less enthusiastic in support of Hamas or condemnation of Israel than they normally are in these situations (probably due to their growing concern over Iranian hegemony) and even the Palestinian people seem to be showing signs of waking up to the reality of Hamas’ ruinous hold over them. As examples of this, I’ve seen two separate accounts of family members cursing Hamas (not the Jews) for the deaths of children that have occurred, an account of two witnesses (who are remaining anonymous due to fear of reprisal) who reported seeing mortar fire coming from the UN school which provoked the IDF response yesterday, and then this morning also read of six Palestinians who were executed by Hamas for being informants to Israel. Perhaps a tectonic shift is occurring?
C Stanley, thanks for the explanations. By burden of proof on Israel’s shoulders I did not mean that Israel is part of a system of justice that in a very prejudiced fashion assumes it is guilty before its innocence is proven and I am pretty sure Michael did not mean that when he critized Israel for the bombings right after the evening prayer. Israel is not left out alone without the chance of explaining itself to people. Noone is announcing Israel as the cause of today’s bombings. To the contrary, we are repeatedly indicating that Hamas is the main cause.
What I am trying to say is if Israel is under the constant attack of accusations from different parts of the world whether or not it is providing the best effort in its own power to minimize the collateral damage, then I guess Israel owes an explanation to these goverments or people, not that it has to explain itself (as I indicated before). However if it is concerned by these accusations, it will be the wise thing to do.
As for comparison to Hamas’ investigations, Jason, noone is questioning Hamas’ pure evil actions here as far as I am concerned. Hamas is not acting humane at all and we know that he does not care for his own people or any other person for that matter. He uses human shield to protect himself as well as to conduct a very successful pr propaganda. So even if he tried to reason himself in his actions, I guess we would not take him seriously. We already know the hard cold facts, we already know that he is the main cause for all this and we already know that he could not care less for the lost civilians.
However Israel is in a different position. If Israel is indicating that it is not responsible for the bombings of today (which we know that is the case) and Hamas is, then Israel should better explain itself to world and make people see its side of the story as well. Noone is blaming Israel for attacking Gaza today but people are critizing Israel’s tactiques. Just because Hamas is inhumane and evil does not mean that Israel should act the same (not that I am saying that it is acting that way, it sure is not) and it should also be no surprise to Israel when people are expecting explanations from Israel but not from Hamas. People do not need to hear from Hamas, they know who Hamas is. They need to hear from Israel though. At least this is my humble opinion.
I disagree strongly, Elif, that the international community should have two different sets of expectations. We should not say, Israel is trying to be humane and act in accordance with international law, therefore she should be held to the highest standards, but Hamas is just being Hamas as usual. Hamas should forego any chance of legitimacy when it acts as it does, and the Palestinian people as a political entity should forego any protections of the UN (that’s not to say that the people should not recieve humanitarian aid- but they should not be able to petition to the UN for condemnation of Israel’s actions, as they often do.)
You seem to be saying that you feel Israel wants it both ways- to be able to take certain actions when necessary without having to explain them. I don’t see it that way- I feel that Israel does explain but certain elements in the media and of the left political sphere will never accept those explanations as sufficient (that’s what I meant by having to prove innocence, which is impossible.) The way I see it is the other way around- that Hamas wants to be able to act with complete irresponsibility (like a child that evades responsibility when the adults say he/she is too young to understand or act in a more mature manner) but also to insist that the international community and UN require the utmost of responsibility from Israel.
Please understand- I’m not talking about you, or Michael- I’m commenting on the general worldwide public responses that we generally see in regard to the conflict.