The only war the Israelis conceded might actually be the most important one.
I have been advocating for Israel for decades and the one thing I have never understood is the completely idiotic way that the Israelis have done advocacy for themselves.
I could write a novel with examples of Israelis dropping the ball in the information war, but the most damning thing is simple and its something I have said for years.
We are losing the battle for hearts and minds to terrorists who have raped women, sexually mutilated men, and murdered children.
Think about that for a second. A country that should be known for its outsized contributions in science and technology, and for its steadfast refusal to lower itself to the level of its enemies, is instead vilified and accused of some of the most ridiculous nonsense (training dogs to rape palestinians comes to mind). Mohamed Al dura, somehow, became taken as fact when the story was easily debunked using science and ballistics, Hind Rajab, a story with not a shred of physical proof and filled with more holes than the car they showed, somehow got a movie made about it.
Think about that. Hamas has lied during every single conflict about casualties yet the mainstream media accepts their lies at face value. Meanwhile the Israelis, who have been validated after every conflict as being honest to a fault, are still treated as if their claims are the ones that need validating. So many examples.
Israel should be known as a shining example of what indigenous people on their ancestral lands can accomplish with strength of will and purpose. The regaining of a daily use language, the protection of sacred sites, the creation of a nation state where Jews are able to manifest authentic Jewish identity with no checks, should be emulated by indigenous people everywhere. Instead we are constantly inundated with claims of Jews being “white colonisers from Europe” with ridiculous assertions like “DNA tests are illegal in Israel because they don’t want people to know they are European” or “Jews are all allergic to olive trees.” And the people fighting those moronic assertions are often at a loss because the assertions are so ridiculous. 30-second Google searches debunk those claims.
Now I could repeat the same things over and over, talk about how Jews run some of the best PR firms in the world and how Jewish advocates have always been effective at the grassroots level. I could talk about how the Jewish legacy orgs have been far better at raising money and paying their upper management obscene amounts to “manage “ antisemitism while sidelining the most effective advocates out of jealousy, envy and outright idiocy. But what’s the point? We all know that already.
I could wax eloquent on how far too many Jews learned the wrong lessons and hitched their wagons to progressive causes because progressive sounds modern and liberal but in reality just pushes victimhood. They wanted so badly to be accepted by the left that some of them threw their own people under the bus. By doing so, they gave the far right easy wins and propaganda. Make no mistake the real horseshoe theory is rooted in Jew hate, we see that with the woke right and the left suddenly buddying up so that they can focus on their real enemies – Jews.
I have been involved at the grass roots level and have attempted to help the Israeli government by offering to help them understand indigenous protocols when dealing with indigenous people. They are often well meaning but just make so many mistakes that its mindblowing because they just don’t learn from them. I have gone so far as to give them a literal blueprint on how to get indigenous people onside and keep them there. I gave them the simplest most truthful argument that exists, the argument that destroyed the central argument of the Palestinianists, that Jews are foreign colonisers. That argument is simplicity itself: Jews are from Judea. I started talking about this when the only other people using this language were Jewish lefties who nobody listened to because they were considered fringe weirdos, even though every single Jew I have ever talked to understood what I was saying almost immediately and would say “That’s exactly how I feel, I just didn’t know to use those words.”
Now I want to be clear, I don’t really care that my name isn’t a household name. Among the people who matter my name is known. But doesn’t it seem odd that the first guy to talk about this stuff and the guy who makes the argument better than anyone else, is actually not well known to the mainstream in Israel advocacy? Does it seem odd that people who have literally quoted me verbatim without attribution and often screw up the argument and do more harm than good are making MY arguments and doing so poorly? By the way, that’s not hubris, I actually do make the argument better than anybody else, because I spent hours thinking about this stuff before I ever spoke up about it. I considered it from every angle. I never say anything that is inconsistent because I understand the subject on a level that most don’t.
I have literally had advocates quote ME to ME, and not just the other side, which is always funny. But when I see advocates talking about ancestral heartlands and using the paha sapa and Temple Mount as examples, I am usually happy because the goal was always to mainstream this language. But when I see them attribute someone else? That is actually kind of annoying, mostly because I see people monetising advocacy and treating it like a competition and not a cause. Worse yet, some of them take things I taught and “give it their own spin” and often they screw things up by contradicting the actual argument.
For instance , indigenous status is site specific, it is vital people understand that, and we must always apply consistent standards. But too many Jews like to play devil’s advocate and they don’t like hard and fast rules, so they try to be cute with nebulous statements. And that ends up delegitimizing the argument. Even if unintentional. Arabs are in fact indigenous, to ARABIA. Arabia is not the Levant. Jews and Samaritans are the only indigenous people to Israel, it’s that simple.
Anyway, how do we change this battle for hearts and minds? Is it lost?
First we have to take back language, and precision is vital. Second we need to understand the enemy and its goals, and third we have to fight smarter not harder.
My plan remains the exact same, and I will post some of it here for the first time in public because clearly I was unable to find anyone to invest , but maybe someone else can.
First, create a group whose only goal is to refute misinformation across social media platforms. Build a website with the most recent arguments and nonsense being spread and the best arguments against them. Make it simple and easy for anyone doing social media advocacy to find the right facts and sources so that they can use them. Make reading lists and provide quotes and sources. Call it counterwiki or whatever you want. It needs to be 100 percent factual so that anything on that site is airtight, cited and sourced.
Second, that group needs to have researchers who are on social media and seeing the up to the minute arguments and claims so that the website can be updated in real time. Have a page for updates for the newest bullshit stories. This group needs to have access to Israeli ministers who have up to date information, so that the ministers can be kept informed about what’s being said in real time. To avoid apologizing for things that never happened.
We dont need to do rework or reinvent the wheel, so having a campus person would be simply to work with groups like Stand with Us and SSI.
Next, you create a working group with representatives from every group currently working in advocacy, and you make it clear that anyone not working together will simply be excluded. This is a cause not a competition, and orgs will be judged by the work they do, not by what they say. This working group would focus on information campaigns, and events both campus and community. With a coherent message. Use each org’s strengths.
Get writers writing. We need more books, Tv shows , movies, and video games to have Jewish content that isn’t vile or stereotyping. The level of ignorance about Jews has been a boon to our enemies and our biggest stumbling block, because Jew haters rely on that ignorance to push their nonsense.
Build relationships. The strongest non-Jewish advocates do it because we have Jewish people who are like family to us. We do it because it’s the right thing to do and we see this as a struggle involving morality and ethics. Not just common values but common heritage. We need to make sure that people understand that. We have been losing people on the right because somehow the other side has pushed that the West and Israel do not have common cause or common values. We need to fix that immediately.
There is much more but I think that suffices for a start.
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