Israel is grievously mishandling the fight for the public opinion in the aftermath of October 7th. All these photos of hostages, parades of women in bloody pants imitating rape victims, pouting about pro-Palestinian protests – it’s all a mistake. Israel chose to position itself as a victim, and that’s not going to work.
Here’s why.
First of all, Israel isn’t pathetic. This whole pretending to be Anne Frank schtick is unconvincing because today’s Jews aren’t Anne Frank. Israel isn’t pitiful. It has Mossad, world’s best medicine, nuclear weapons, and the garden it created in the desert. Chances that Israelis will out-victim Palestinians are non-existent. You can’t project an image of strength and excellence for 75 years and then expect everybody to see you as piteous and abject.
Another problem is that competing with Palestinians in what concerns the victim count is an exercise in futility. Life has different value in the two cultures. Palestinians can come up with a thousand dead to each Israeli victim of October 7 on the spot. They will roll out every dead, wounded, dispossessed and upset since 1948, and there’s nothing to respond to that.
So what would be a good alternative?
There’s an easy answer that was provided fairly recently by the United States.
Remember 9/11? A lot more victims than during October 7. But did Americans paper the capitals of major cities with photos of the dead? Stage shows with people throwing themselves out of windows? Ask the world to pity them? Collect footage from anti-American protests around the world and pout over it? Ask to be counted as an oppressed minority overseas?
No, of course not. Because nobody will ever pity the United States of America. It’s not going to happen. The price of being the superpower, the superstar, the leader, the achiever is that nobody will pity you even in your very pitiful moments. When you suffer, you can’t suffer like a victim. You have to do it like a superstar, a champion, a winner. You can’t beg for compassion.
Remember the position that the US took pretty much immediately after 9/11? The narrative was “we are fighting terrorism. We are saving the world from terrorism.” That’s what Israel should have done. “We love Palestinians, Palestinians are great, we are helping them to free themselves from terrorism.” This should be a conversation about terrorism. And the pro-Hamas bastards know that this is the killer narrative. They go nuts whenever you mention the word “terrorism.” Don’t compete with Palestinians in the victim status. Be their kind, compassionate protector.
I’m not saying don’t go into Gaza and blow the Hamas evildoers to smithereens no matter what the cost. I’m saying do all that but change the narrative. I can’t look at these “Jewish students hiding in a college library from a bunch of campus protesters” debacles anymore. They make me want to go re-watch movies about successful Mossad operations for images of Jews who are good at something.
Clarissa's Blog 
Totally agree. Things begin to change for victims only when they abandon victim mentality. This is especially true of israel, a country that was founded on the very concept of “Stop being a victim”.
I used to be like that myself: a victim wallowing in my self-pitying victimhood status begging for people’s compassion. It’s been a long journey but I’ve never looked back.
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We have all seen that sitting in a refugee camp since 1948 complaining about Naqba leads to more sitting in refugee camps and nothing else productive.
Nobody would be supporting Ukraine if Ukrainians just sat there complaining. It’s the incredible bravery and resilience that so impressed the world.
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Yep. The so-called “Palestinians” have spent the last 75 years deliberately and repeatedly refusing legitimate offers of statehood because they prefer sitting in misery and playing victims.
This cycle has gone through three generations now, yet no new Palestinian leaders have grown up to lead them out of the morass.
Dreidel
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“Palestinians are great, we are helping them to free themselves from terrorism”
Would never work because it’s paternalistic and colonial and muslims, at the collective level feel humiliated when being helped by non-muslims so aid to muslim countries or letting in lots of muslims as immigrants in non-muslim countries doesn’t make them happy it fills them with anger and dreams of revenge (similar to russian in this regard).
Muslim governments have been slaughtering muslims like it’s going out of style for the last… how many years and not a peep. Israel responds to a primitive terror attack and it’s the end of the world.
I honestly don’t see any way to fix the situation that’s acceptable to civilized people….
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Agree with cliff.
Also, Israel is not America, especially regarding our history of land conflict in the Middle East and the way we’re viewed by Muslims around us.
“We love Palestinians, Palestinians are great, we are helping them to free themselves” would never work. This narrative would be never internally accepted in Israel since we Israeli Jews think quite the opposite, and one cannot as a society convincingly project a 100% lie.
Even had we believed and adopted it, this wouldn’t help. From Palestinian supporters’ pov, the one way Israel should help Palestinians is by freeing the land “from the river to the sea,” or at least returning to 1948 or 1967 borders as the first step in this process.
// Palestinians can come up with a thousand dead to each Israeli victim of October 7 on the spot.
True. They can also come with a thousand claims, some true and some less so, against the “we’re saving Palestinians” narrative. For instance, “Israel is the one which victimized Palestinians to begin with” (partly true) OR “terror is the answer to occupation.”
There is no winning PR strategy at all, imo.
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“We’re here, we’re in charge, and you can deal with it or leave” seems reasonable in this case.
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““We’re here, we’re in charge, and you can deal with it or leave” seems reasonable ”
I like it! It does seem reasonable and is a better deal than they’d get from any Arab country (pretty much all of which hate Palestinians).
But tankies have latched on to Palestinians and essentially worship them as divine beings (I’m not being hyperbolic, I wish I were… but….)
I also like “civilization vs savagery” but the left (and governing classes) of most ‘western’ countries prefer savagery to civilization…..
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One thing that I can stop thinking about given the emerging details of the atrocities committed by Hamas on unarmed Israeli civilians, is how incredibly disarmed these people were.
Of all people on earth, I would have thought Israeli civilians would be some of the most well armed and trained in the world. For a population that has countless times been massacred, I would have thought being armed and self-sufficient in defense capabilities would be at the very top of their list.
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Israeli civilians, including people living near the Gaza Strip, rely on IDF and security services to stop attacks.
There was an increase after 7.10 : “Gun permit requests since October 7 equivalent to number in previous 20 years. Over 236,000 people apply for licenses, as Ben Gvir seeks to arm civilians despite warnings that weapons will be used by criminals”
Regarding armed civilians and the terrorist attack in Jerusalem two days ago:
// Family says Yuval Castleman, killed after taking out terrorists, was ‘executed’
Castelman was hit by soldier who apparently mistook him for a terrorist during Jerusalem attack, but footage shows him unarmed, with his hands in the air prior to being shot
…
Both soldiers had been on a break from fighting in the Gaza Strip, and were heading back to the front line when the attack occurred.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/family-says-yuval-castleman-killed-after-taking-out-terrorists-was-executed/
I read comments by Russian speaking Israeli Jews like:
“Why did it happen? Because if you don’t shoot the terrorist who killed a pregnant woman at a bus stop, tomorrow he will be released in exchange for our kidnapped in Gaza. In short, our “humane” laws are killing our best people…”
And people demanding death sentences for terrorists.
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“Israeli civilians, including people living near the Gaza Strip, rely on IDF and security services to stop attacks.”
What a horrific lesson to learn that you should never rely on other entities for your protection.
Here in the US, most if not all Jewish politicians are rabidly anti self defense. It really boggles my mind and it’s something I cannot understand.
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Maybe it’s just what happens when you build your identity around being a victim.
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@ed
“Here in the US, most if not all Jewish politicians are rabidly anti self defense. It really boggles my mind and it’s something I cannot understand.”
The ones you are talking about are Liberal Jews, i.e. people who identify as Jewish on a purely ethnic basis, even though they have no real belief in the tenets of Jewish law and do not practise the faith in any meaningful way if at all.
This is a very American thing, like Italian-Americans three generations removed from their immigrant ancestors who insist on telling you that they are Italian event though they do not speak the language, have never been there, have no idea what Italy is really like and feel that they are Italian because of their surnames or because of some vague culinary heritage of bastardised recipes handed down by their nonnas…
The Jews you have in mind entertain a vague romantic notion that as Jews they are – and have to be – the defenders of human and civil rights. It’s easy to understand why they are “rabidly anti self-defense”: for the simple reason that they feel they are the “good guys” and want to show the rest of the world how good they are. Many of them are also rabidly anti-Israel, in case you didn’t know.
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What’s confusing is why anybody would conflate “good people” with “unarmed people”. What the heck kind of heroic ideal is that?
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Italians are great at maintaining the love for their culture even at a multigenerational remove. The only language at my department that is supported by a group of people in the community is Italian. They are grandchildren of immigrants, they don’t speak the language, but they put a lot of money and effort into keeping our Italian program going. I only wish the many Hispanic immigrants in the area did something to support Spanish. We have a plethora of prizes and awards in Italian and only one in Spanish, and that one was endowed by an American teacher of Spanish.
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“So what would be a good alternative?”
Not this….. I was sort of thinking it might be parody…. but apparently he thinks portraying Jews as making lists of people to take revenge against is…. not pathological?
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