The Tragedy of Israel’s PR Campaign

For a fuller treatment of the current flare-up in Israel and Gaza, read this previous Article.

Likewise, this PR phenomena was also subject several previous articles, including

But for a briefer note, a response is needed to the flood of ridiculous posts…all over my social networks, and all over cyberspace. Constantly, Israeli officials, United With Israel types, and amateur independent Israel supporters with good intentions, barrage the world media with tragically ironic or simply absurd statements….

“No country would tolerate hundreds of missiles…” um right no country would… except Israel who does.

“Israel has the right to defend itself” we keep screaming into the nothing, while we then refuse to defend ourselves.

this isn’t debate club, this is a real war… and we need to really win it or we will really lose it.

Completely confusing to me are those constantly badmouthing our enemies… “look how savage they are.. look how mean… look how they faked these images, don’t believe them!”. um… who cares?! ok they are really mean… some of them Photoshop images… so? Do we expect the world to then say “ok… go ahead and murder every Arab in Gaza and the West Bank, we had no idea they were photoshoping images to make Israel look bad!”?

Or for someone who supports a palestinian state to suddenly be convinced to not support it because some Arab somewhere lied about an image of arabs being bombed… it’s ridiculous.. the point is that the air force is bombing them.. and they would like it to stop so they post pictures, true ones, fake ones… whatever…if anything these posts (ours) strengthen the arab cause.

What if a Jew spread a fake picture of an Arab killing an old lady? Has Israel lost it’s right to exist or to defend itself because of it?

we are not making any real points that lead to any conclusion supporting anything on our side.. (for those, read my blog), we are just whining pathetically. Jewish victim mentality at its best.
The strangest to me are the ones (posts) competing with the Arab world for suffering. These posters are having a terrible time because our F-15’s bombing Gaza are much more effective than the flying tin cans that Hamas is sending our way…

So to their great dismay (look how backwards we have become!) Israelis have yet to die in the recent Qassam shelling (though there has been serious and critical injuries), while our Air Force has killed quite a few Hamasniks in gaza so far. Thus though in reality this would indicate we are winning (back in planet earth, in war one would prefer enemy casualties to casualties among one’s own people), in this strange PR universe we are losing… every time there is a successful strike on a Hamas target and 5 enemies are killed, we lose more.. and every time the sirens go off in Tel-Aviv and the qassams fail to kill anyone we drag further behind in the score board.

To me, this is more sickening than anything else going on. Yes, ultimately, the qassams so far are not that big a deal… due to their bad aim, and our iron dome, the flying tin cans can’t seem to kill too many people. As much as the Hamas wishes otherwise.

Though there has been wounded and millions and millions of dollars of damage (everything from factories and gas stations to cars and private homes have been hit); More than anything, they are a great psychological weapon. The urban populations of Tel-Aviv and its surroundings run around in panic as you hear the sounds of the sirens and then missiles raining down on your otherwise cosmopolitan western city, you hear the loud bangs, you see the flashes and even when the iron dome intercepts them, that just adds to the loud noise and general feeling of being under attack. But yes, in the grand scheme of things they are pretty meaningless, so what?

Hamas did not become our enemy two weeks ago when it started shelling us with qassams in the most recent occurrence. The US does not wait for al-Qaeda to be able to bomb Los Angeles to go after it. Hamas is our stated enemy (since its inception in 88 and its declaration of war on Israel) regardless of the qassams, at the moment this is the best they can do…together with kidnappings, murder and suicide bombers. I am sure if we continue to give them time and do nothing but complain about our right to defend ourselves, they will improve.

The iron dome itself is a sign of our ghetto mentality. No country on earth is protected from neither ballistic missiles nor small rockets to the degree Israel is. For small rockets, I’d say no other country is protected at all. If Mexico started shooting ketushas and kassams into the US, they would all land.

The protection is deterrence. If a country starts shelling its neighbor, one can expect the aggrieved neighbor to send in its army in retaliation (especially when it is the stronger party militarily). Not us….

We will spend billions to intercept the $10 flying tin cans with $100,000 high tech missiles (the price has been coming down)… our iron dome alone is enough to bankrupt us with Qatari oil money buying the $10 flying tin cans. Finally realizing this, the iron dome no longer intercepts kassams unless the system calculates they will land on urban areas… that way saving some money when they harmlessly land on open fields.

But the whole thing is part of our endless refusal to do anything on the offense… we just keep hiding behind fences, barbed wire, thermal cameras, iron dome… we keep withdrawing from land and building more and more walls on the smaller and smaller land we have left…. meanwhile we continue to scream about how mean our enemies are and how much a right to defend ourselves we have…

not to mention most puzzling continue to be upset that the qassams are not causing as much real life suffering in our cities as the atomic bomb did in Nagasaki. oh how we would love those pictures… then we could post some real suffering on FB and tell the world that Hamas is really really mean!!!
At this rate Israel does not have much of a future left… we need to change our efforts from endless whining, to demanding that OUR leaders… not those of the US, Europe, and not those of Hamas… but that our leaders do what they keep claiming so forcefully that we have a right to do, defend ourselves!

We continue to say that we support Bibi and the Israeli government no matter what they do.. well no, there is a limit… and I will not support Bibi if he refuses to defend the nation that entrusted him to lead it. Mr. Avigdor Lieberman and Naftali Bennett seem to be close to the breaking point in tolerating the lack of action.

I don’t want a Prime Minister that makes everyone proud by explaining to CNN that Israel, like any other country, has a right to defend itself. Call me crazy, but I’d like a Prime Minister that has Israel defend itself when attacked.

After you do so, and achieve the word that Israelis have forgotten exists, a word they used to know so well; Victory….after that it is tautological, de jure, and irrelevant that you had a right, like all other countries, to defend yourself. You just did.