By Evelyn Gordon
\n19 July 2010<\/p>\n\n
In yesterday`s post, I focused on a disturbing incident described by PR guru Frank Luntz in a Jerusalem Post interview \u201d\u201d an incident in which American Jewish college students proved utterly unwilling or unable to defend Israel. But Luntz also offered a constructive strategy for how to improve this situation.<\/p>\n\n
Again, he used an example to illustrate his point: a meeting with a group of \u201chigh income, high education, politically connected\u201d\u009d Brits who were \u201cso hostile to Israel\u201d\u009d that \u201cI The results surpassed his wildest expectations: at the end, \u201c28 of the 30 said, \u201d\u02dcHow dare Israel negotiate with these people? Though Luntz did not elaborate, it The third, and perhaps most important, reason was excellently explained by another PR professional, Sarah Kass, in a Jerusalem Post article last month. The title says it all: \u201cIt`s all defense, all the time.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n\n Israel`s enemies, Kass explained, are conducting a classic PR offensive, designed to keep the focus relentlessly on Israel and away from themselves. Thus they never talk about themselves; they talk only about Israel.<\/p>\n\n Israel, however, does the opposite: it talks almost exclusively about itself, constantly trying to defend its own actions rather than focusing on its enemies` actions. And to listeners, Kass noted, this just sounds like \u201cwhining.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n\n What Israel should be doing, she argued, is exactly what its enemies do: focusing relentlessly on the other side. For only in that context \u201d\u201d a battle against a truly evil enemy \u201d\u201d can Israel`s defensive measures ever be understood.<\/p>\n\n \u201cThe country has a winning story that has nothing to do with anti-Semitism or the Holocaust,\u201d\u009d Kass concluded. \u201cIt has to do with the degeneracy of globally coordinated fanatics who seek their own death and wish to take the world down with them.\u201d\u009d Essentially, that`s the same point Luntz was making.<\/p>\n\n But this is a story the world doesn`t know \u201d\u201d and never will unless Israel and its supporters start telling it.<\/p>\n\n {} {} {}<\/p>\n\n First published in Commentary`s blog: Contentions\nCopyright by the author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Itd given up \u201d\u00a6 There was no message that resonated remotely well with them. And I finally said \u201d\u02dcto hell with it. We<\/code>ll give them the Hamas Charter\u201d\u009d \u201d\u201d or, more accurately, a \u201cword for word\u201d\u009d version taken from Hamas<\/code>s website and then \u201cedited down to one page.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n\n\u201d\u009d\nLuntz<\/code>s point is simple: when people have preconceived notions about Israel, its very hard to dislodge those notions \u201d\u201d to convince them, for instance, that Israel did not wantonly target civilians in last year<\/code>s war in Gaza, or has not created a humanitarian crisis there by its blockade. But it is possible to persuade them that no matter how bad Israel is, its enemies are much, much worse \u201d\u201d and therefore even someone who dislikes Israel should nevertheless back it against those enemies.<\/p>\n\ns not hard to see why this should be so. First, people generally know much less about Hamas or Hezbollah than they think they do about Israel, so there are fewer preconceived notions to try to dislodge. Second, Israel<\/code>s enemies truly are evil and make no effort to hide it, so the case is easy to prove.<\/p>\n\ns very hard to dislodge those notions \u201d\u201d to convince them, for instance, that Israel did not wantonly target civilians in last year<\/code>s war in Gaza, or has not created a humanitarian crisis there by its blockade. But it is possible to persuade them that no matter how bad Israel is, its enemies are much, much worse \u201d\u201d and therefore even someone who dislikes Israel should nevertheless back it against those enemies.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}