How to Stop Losing the PR War  

We know we are in trouble when the US media decides to depend on Peter Beinart and John Stewart to help the American public determine whether Israel is or is not acting morally in conducting the war with Hamas.

Earlier this week Beinart was hosted by Stewart on his syndicated “The Daily Show” for a dialogue on what Israel is presumably doing to the residents of Gaza.   While I am no fan of Beinart’s I used to like Stewart’s acerbic wit until he decided this week, with Beinart’s help, to become the local negative arbiter of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Stewart self-identifies as a “bad Jew.” The sort who would, as he said om the show “Start Passover with a meatball parmesan hero sandwich.”

“People yell at me about what I say sometimes about Palestine and what’s going on in Israel and they call me a ‘bad Jew,’” Stewart said on Monday’s episode of The Daily Show, speaking to Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart. “Apparently, you can lose points.”

During that session, which took place after public statements had been made by American Jewish leaders and some of the major religious movements that there is starvation in Gaza, Stewart came as close as he could without saying so specifically to declaring that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.  You know the kind of statement that begins, “I don’t want to say the word but……”

Yet US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, an avatar of MAGA politics on Capitol Hill, went one step further this week becoming the first Republican in Congress to describe the situation in Gaza as a “genocide,” breaking sharply with her party in an indication of growing skepticism on the right about Israel’s conduct of the war.

“It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct. 7 in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza,” Greene said in a social media post on Monday evening.

Her comments drew a clear contrast with the vast majority of Republicans in Congress, who have made unqualified support for Israel a hallmark of their foreign policy approach. Many of them, including Ms. Greene in the past, have attacked Democrats who have criticized Israel as antisemitic and sympathetic to terrorists. The vast majority of Republicans have not budged from that stance, although many are wavering.

Even US President Trump got into the act in remarks made as he left Scotland to return to the US, saying that there is certainly starvation in Gaza and America will be supplying food to address that issue.

As if this was not enough, in a new report issued earlier this week the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem described the development of a “genocidal regime in Israel, working to destroy Palestinian society in Gaza.”

Simultaneously, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) has published a legal-medical analysis documenting what they term is the deliberate and systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system. Both Israeli organizations call on Israelis and the international community to take immediate action to stop the genocide, using all legal tools available under internation law.

The B’Tselem report further states: “An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads us to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.”

All the while our leadership claims there is no starvation in Gaza.  As far as we can tell if there are people there who do not have food to eat it is because their leadership, the Hamas political echelon, either makes it difficult for them to access food or steals the aid and then sells it for exorbitant prices to the hapless residents.

As for the genocide accusation, while our critics love to use the term, what is happening in Gaza is absolutely not the carrying out of a policy to rid the strip of its residents.  The only one of the parties with genocidal intentions towards the other is Hamas, where it is part and parcel of their charter.

What do we do about this?  How do we even begin to reverse world opinion where the narrative seems to be so well controlled by our enemies?

I am not sure we can do so, but we need to try. Our government needs to understand that investing money in public relations is no less important to our survival than buying F-35 fighter jets.  We need to engage the best, most experienced people there are in the world to help us in this fight.  And I don’t mean the brother-in-law of a minister who happens to live in New York and works for “Hole in the Wall Public Relations Ltd.” in SoHo.

We need Edelman, Weber Shandwick, Fleishman Hillard, Ketchum, or Ruder Finn and pay them whatever is required to make Israel’s case professionally and competently.  We dare not act as if this is not important enough to fund because our long-term successful existence here depends on public relations just as much as it does on a prepared military.

Sadly, this country has never seen public relations as something that demands professionalism and a budget to match.  Then again, none of us can remember when our image has been so battered and antisemitism so ascendant as a result.  The reality today is different than anything we have seen in the last 77 years and the sooner we realize it the better off we will be.

It is critical to remember that when reality and image conflict, it is image that controls.  Right now, ours is in need of a nothing less than a frontal lobotomy.