A new report out of Israel and the same response.
I have a buddy who was quite the cyclist. He once did an organized ride from Boston to San Francisco. He later went all around Europe on his Trek touring bike. In Madison, we rode frequently through the beautiful countryside. I would pass him going up the hills on my light racing bike, and he would fly by me going down on his heavy bike. While in Europe (before the days of the Euro), he went into a store to buy his standard bread, chocolate, and Coke. When he came to pay, he was shocked at how expensive the food was. He asked the store owner why he had to pay so many French francs for just a couple of items. “Because you are in Switzerland and you have the wrong currency.”
The Israeli news websites are abuzz with a new, definitive report on Hamas’ sexual violence on October 7, 2023. Much of the data for the document came from Hamas itself and its highly recorded activities on that awful day. On the one hand, the report is important, as all history needs to be accurately documented for posterity and to prevent lies and misrepresentations. On that score, no doubt the efforts will be well worth the painful investigations behind the words and images. On the other hand, the report will do nothing. The U.N., for quite some time, completely ignored Hamas’ widespread sexual violence. The “Me Too” crowd never said a peep. Many people, including lefty women, said that no such attacks took place. “Israeli women are too ugly.” “It’s Zionist propaganda.” The zero-sum crowd invented claims of IDF soldiers raping Gazan women, a lie that was exposed as fraudulent. And for those who made such claims, the report will do nothing. And it will do nothing because their activities and statements are based on hating Jews and Israel and not some academic, factual investigation.
“Hasbara” in Hebrew means explanation, and in a broader use of the word, public relations. Israel is generally considered a failure in the world of PR. I have seen arguments as to whether the failure of Israel to get its side of the argument out front is due to inherent Jew hatred of many people in the audience or a failure on the Israeli side to get the facts out by competent purveyors of information. I remember my late father once asking me if Israel had any English speakers who did not talk as if they had marbles in their mouths. And in those days, he was right, that many top Israeli politicians were not very good English speakers. Listening to them was painful, and one wasn’t sure what he had just heard. But today, such is not the case. Many Israeli spokespeople are native English speakers, and many public Israeli figures speak outstanding English. When Israel gets a repeated black eye in the public relations world, the failure may be partially the messenger, but often is due to much of the public not being disposed to hearing what Israel has to say. And this report, and I expect that it is accurate to a fault, will not help in the bigger argument over Israel and her popularity.
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Various reports claim that Israel is still very popular among American citizens. Others claim the opposite, with Democrats having a majority with an unfavorable view of the Jewish state. As is known, the outcome of a survey is very sensitive to the way and the specific language used. “Do you support the child-murdering, bloodthirsty state of Israel?” Such language might bias the respondents’ answers. But all things being equal, the people who hate Jews and Israel are not going to be moved by the new report. They will ignore it or claim that it is built on lies. Even if they are presented with incontrovertible evidence of Hamas atrocities, they will punt: Yeah, but the Jews deserved it, or it’s all overblown, or how many German women did victorious Soviet soldiers rape (apparently around 2 million)? Rashida Tlaib (D-Ramallah) never accepted that the rocket that fell in a Gaza hospital parking lot was fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and not Israel. Even intercepted conversations from PIJ terrorists in which they admitted that their rocket failed did not cause her to either retract any claims of an Israeli atrocity or admit that she had been wrong. She had a window to blame Israel, she did so, and when the window shut due to facts, she just moved on—without fixing the lies she had put forth.
The hospital story is typical of Israeli Hasbara failures. An event occurs. Israel is blamed. Israel starts on its back heels. She claims that she is innocent. The original charge was that Israel intentionally fired a missile at a hospital and killed 50 people. Then it morphed into the parking lot. Then it went down to 15 people. And finally, it was PIJ that did it. But it was too late. The damage was done. Israel was considered a war criminal that intentionally attacks hospitals (forget about the proven Hamas activity in Gaza’s hospitals), and Israel and Israelis are evil. This report falls in a similar category. Already within days of the pogrom, there were eyewitness accounts as well as first-responders’ descriptions of horrific attacks against women. The Jew haters deflected. Hamas and the Palestinians had to be protected at all costs. Everything that 6,000 deranged Gazans did was justified. Gaza was an open-air prison (with nice restaurants and expensive cars)! Settlers! Colonizers (even though for 20 years, not a Jew was in Gaza)! Showing that Hamas was not busy in a purely military program but was involved in horrific, subhuman sexual violence against Israeli women just would not fit with the program. So the rapes and murders were ignored or described as baseless. So, once again, long after the horse has fled, Israel has closed the barn door: we have a report! We have proof! We have collected evidence and testimonies! You guys are still back there? We’re wearing Hezbollah headgear now. We’ve moved on to the next lies about your people and country.
Throughout modern sports, there have been players and teams that have been considered cheaters or thugs. So one team plays by the rules, and the other, or a portion thereof, does not. A certain Green Bay Packer had a list of Bears players to send to the hospital. That list was in the form of his hand towel with numbers on it, with Jim McMahon’s #9 at the top of the list. He manhandled the Bears quarterback and threw him to the turf three seconds after a play had been called dead. McMahon was not only injured, but he never recovered to play as he had during the Super Bowl run. The pro-Palestinians are not interested in reports or facts or right or wrong. They use Qatari money, the Muslim Brotherhood organization, and dumb university administrators and politicians to move forward endless lies about Israel and Jews. A recent violent protest outside of a New York synagogue had nothing to do with the generally quiet Gaza or the fighting in Lebanon. It was an organized attack against Jews, and reports and statistics mean nothing to the brutes who violently attacked some of the counter-protesters present. I never thought that I would see a Jewish girl thrown to the ground in the America in which I grew up. Obviously, I was too optimistic in my hopes.
While I applaud those who put together the new report, one shouldn’t think that it will make any difference. Those who hate Jews will ignore it, while those who experienced the horrors already knew the truth.
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