Truly proactive PR can’t just be about ‘peace’

boycott/divestment/ sanctions (BDS) conference at the University of

Pennsylvania has prompted much discussion about the need for a proactive

public relations strategy rather than a reactive one. I couldn’t agree

more. Disturbingly, however, even many “proactive” strategies are

largely reactive: They focus almost exclusively on portraying Israel as a

seeker of peace, in obvious reaction to the world’s tendency to blame

Israel for the conflict with the Palestinians. And by adopting this

strategy, Israel advocates are essentially adopting its enemies’

definition of it: a country defined solely by the ongoing conflict.

A column

published in these pages last week offers a perfect example of the

problem. In it, Natalie Menaged described how pro-Israel groups on 75

college campuses across North America are responding to Israel Apartheid

Week by organizing Israel Peace Week, which “revolves around a simple,

yet often understated message: Israel wants peace and has demonstrated

its willingness to make painful sacrifices for peace.”

That, of course, is true, and it’s certainly a significant element of

Israel’s identity. But it isn’t the only one, or even the most important

– nor should it be.

A campaign that views Israel primarily through the prism of its

peace-making efforts ignores most of what this country is about. And it

thereby reinforces the perception that Israel is

defined mainly by the conflict. If even its advocates treat Israel’s

efforts to solve the conflict the most noteworthy thing about it – the

thing they most want to share with their peers on campus – then why

should those peers think otherwise?

The problem with this is twofold. First, it forces Israel onto a playing

field where it can’t win. For if Israel’s sole claim to support and

sympathy is its “willingness to make painful sacrifices for peace,” then

it will inevitably face constant pressure to make more and more such

sacrifices in order to retain the world’s support and sympathy. That’s

precisely what’s happening now in the realm of international diplomacy:

After Israel withdrew from every inch of both Lebanon and Gaza and got

only rocket fire in exchange, the world didn’t turn around and tell the

Palestinians, “okay, now it’s your turn to demonstrate your bona fides”;

instead, it pressured Israel to demonstrate its bona fides by making

further concessions – a freeze on settlement construction, additional

handovers of territory to the Palestinian Authority, etc. – just to lure

PA President Mahmoud Abbas to the negotiating table.

Sometimes, Israel can acquiesce in these demands. But inevitably, the

moment will come when it must say “no” to protect its own vital

interests. The current American/European/Palestinian demand that it

agree to a border “based on” the 1967 lines is a perfect example: Israel

cannot accede to this demand, because it considers the 1967 lines

indefensible. Yet its refusal has led many Westerners to view it as

unwilling to make the requisite “sacrifices for peace” – and hence,

undeserving of support even by its own advocates’ definition.

Even more problematic, however, is that this focus on the conflict makes

people view Israel as an “abnormal” state. After all, many other

countries also have conflicts with their neighbors. Yet nobody dreams of

defining them by their willingness (or lack thereof) to make “sacrifices for peace.”

India and Pakistan, for instance, have fought three full-scale wars

since their mutual establishment in 1947, plus an ongoing, lower-level

conflict in Kashmir that has killed more than 47,000 people over the past 65 years and continues to claim hundreds

of victims each year. Yet when people think of India, the Kashmir

conflict is rarely the first thing that comes to mind. Instead, they

think of India’s thriving multicultural democracy, its booming high-tech

industry, its enduring pockets of poverty, its award-winning novelists,

its Bollywood movies, and so forth. Similarly, people don’t define

South Korea by its unresolved war with North Korea, which has thus far

lasted 62 years with no end in sight; they think instead of its

flourishing high-tech economy and vibrant democracy.

This abnormal perception of Israel helps fuel the growing discourse over

whether it – alone among the nations – has a “right” to exist. When a

country is seen in three dimensions, the very idea of it ceasing to

exist seems like an abomination: How could anyone countenance the

disappearance of, say, India, with its rich mix of people, cultures,

religions, industry, politics and arts? But when a country is reduced in

the popular mind to nothing more than an endless war with its

neighbors, then its eradication starts to sound logical rather than

appalling: If Israel has no existence beyond the conflict, and the

conflict is clearly undesirable, why not just solve the problem by eliminating Israel?

The truth, of course, is that Israel is vastly greater than the

conflict: It is a vibrant democracy in a despotic neighborhood, a

stimulating mix of different religions, nationalities and cultures, a

flourishing first-world economy, an endless fount of innovative products

and technologies that benefit the entire world. It is also the gripping

story of a people reconstituting itself as a state after 2,000 years of

exile, a people that picked itself up from the ashes of the Holocaust

and defiantly started anew. And once, not so long ago, this was how the

world saw it, too.

Nowadays, so much of the world does define Israel by the conflict that

its advocates neither can nor should ignore the issue, and activists

like those behind Israel Peace Week deserve full credit for their

efforts. Moreover, even those who want to shift the focus away from the

conflict find it difficult when so many prominent Israelis –

politicians, journalists and academics – still talk and act as if

Israel’s policies on the peace process were the be-all and end-all of

its existence.

Nevertheless, the focus must be changed if Israel is ever to win the

public relations war. That doesn’t mean abandoning conflict-related PR,

which remains important. But in any truly proactive campaign, the main

story shouldn’t be about what Israel isn’t – a brutal, oppressive

warmonger – but about all the wondrous, exciting things it is. 

The writer is a journalist and commentator.