By Aviva Lee
SAN DIEGO — There is most assuredly a case for the Sovereign State of Israel. In the winter of 5770 or 2009 C.E. at the Jerusalem screening of a documentary based on the Alan Dershowitz book, A Case For Israel an esteemed panel gave its own erudite analysis of the past, present and future of the governance of that tiny patch of earth.
In large part, no doubt, most of the audience agreed with the content of the documentary and the comments of the panel. As one of my colleagues said, “They are speaking to the convinced.” And this is certainly true at events of that nature – especially in Israel, and most particularly in Jerusalem.
From Ambassador Dore Gold, now President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, underscoring his position on Saudi Arabia with quotes from his book, Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports The New Global Terrorism, to Dan Diker, Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs also at the JCPA, explaining that the Sovereign State of Israel was like a battered woman, there was little question in my mind as to with whom I disagreed.
It was not that I disagreed with either Ambassador Gold or Dr. Diker, in theory or practice as it pertains to acceptable alternative solutions for a secure Sovereign State of Israel. Nor was the existential uneasiness I most assuredly felt as I watched the documentary and listened to Alan Dershowitz and others speak during the documentary, originating from a difference of ideological or political opinion. Still and yet the uneasiness which I felt that evening was very real. Truth be told however, I had felt it long before.
The apprehension I felt concerning the fight against a global jihad began several years earlier in fact. I remember the evening well. Because it was on the occasion of a televised address, from a French owned hotel in WashingtonD.C. by Hanan Ashwari, one of the globe-trotting female mouth pieces of Yassar Arafat while he was still alive. And as Hanan Ashrawi stood in front of the cameras speaking near flawless English, dressed to the ‘nines’ right up to her diamond pendant earrings my long held suspicions were clearly confirmed.
Even back then, I was of the opinion that we had been almost entirely outwitted in the fight against a global jihad. I believed then as I believe now, that this is due almost entirely to our own strategic errors in the electronic media arena. This largely because while our blue ribbon journalists were publishing via the printed word and garnering book contracts and while our esteemed former Israeli diplomats were racing through the halls of the U.S. Congress with well written brochures, penned by the experts in Israeli diplomacy, the Arabs were on the television, radio and the Internet fomenting hatred of Israel and of the West – in most any language – to anyone who would listen!!!
My job is to write, and in that writing I rarely take up my pen before connecting the dots. It took very little effort on my part to connect the dots that morning between the hours of one and two a.m. The appeal in English by the costumed Ashrawi was in fact not being given to recruit agitators in the Middle East. Clearly, the address was intended for an American audience. So, all one had to do to determine the ‘target audience’ was ask, “Who is watching television in the U.S.A.in these post-midnight hours”?
And most assuredly, the Jihadist’s English speaking “target audience” has been more than just mildly receptive in the past fifteen years. Statistics will bear this out with but a little research. Conversion to Islam on the university campuses of America was up and rising. Dissention toward Israel, was and is still heard in the halls of elite universities by academics exercising their own right to freedom of speech on American soil. And in some instances those same academics have squelched the same right of students who dare to publicly disagree with them whether in the lecture hall or out.
So where are the late, late night, and early, early morning broadcasts stating the case for the Sovereign State of Israel? Those broadcasts did not exist then and very few exist today. And within the various Israeli and American NGOs out there marketing the “Truth”, we have a very subtle mix of ‘in house’ competition. After all, the security of Israel is very much a marketable and profitable commodity, just like any other product marketed. This subtle competition also complicates the approach to the strategy of a digital war which must be waged against the virtual global jihad.
And so, at the Jerusalem Theatre as I sat there that winter evening looking at the big screen filled with larger than life shots of Alan Dershowitz, Carolyn Glick, Dore Gold, Natan Sharansky and others I still had a sick feeling quell up in the pit of my stomach because it was all too apparent that in marketing the Sovereign State of Israel, the experts on the home team were still off the mark in selecting their target audience. And in my mind, history will certainly bear out that this is one of the single most important reasons we still lag so far behind in the virtual war on terror. We have the target audience all wrong. Why with the lessons that we could learn from those marketing gurus inside every terrorist organization on the planet are we still preaching almost exclusively to the “convinced”?
One point of successful strategy that even the staunchest of Israel’s enemies has mastered is the selection of their target audience. And per annum, they have spent billions of dollars getting their message across to a relatively young audience across the globe. The age range is between three and thirty-six. And with the advent of every social network on the Internet our enemies successfully market their mantra of hate to a still younger and younger target audience. When are all of the Pro-Israel and Jewish NGOs dedicated to advancing the security of the Sovereign State of Israel going to begin targeting the world’s young children with their message? When are all of those NGOs dedicated to stating the case for Israel going to develop a message for the world’s young children who have up to now been spoon fed the Sunni-Shia version of history for this tiny patch of sacred ground? When are all of the globetrotting journalists and diplomats networking with the elite, the rich and the famous going to learn that the future success of our position lies in the hearts and minds of the very generation they are now marginalizing? Or are we simply going to wait until America, Europe and Asia are each Islamized, and then throw up our hands and ask how it happened?
This question brings me to the comments that same evening of Dan Diker. Which comments by the way, I disagreed with when they came out of the mouth of Carolyn Glick years before when she was speaking in public at the Jerusalem Great Synagogue. I don’t suppose we will ever know if Diker was stating his own views that Israel behaves like a battered woman or if he was simply parroting one of Glick’s lines. Whatever the case maybe both Glick and Diker were wrong in their analysis and characterization.
Comparing the Sovereign State of Israel to a battered woman goes to the heart of part of the problem with our approach toward the virtual war on Suni-Shia terrorism. Not only did Glick state that Israel behaved like a battered woman she also continued that “like the battered woman who thinks if she was just prettier or changed this or that attribute that her abuser would stop.”
First let’s get one thing straight – few, very few battered women think that they are being abused because they are not beautiful or because their abuser prefers blonds instead of brunettes. Most abused women know that they are being abused because they are living with a very, very, very bad person. Most if not all of them stay in the relationship because of their desire to have children in a marital relationship, or their desire to keep children under one roof or an inability to provide for their children without the primary income of their abuser. The Sovereign State of Israel does not depend on Sunni-Shia terrorists for economic viability or societal approval within the Middle East, individually or collectively. To purport any parallel between the reasons the Sovereign State of Israel is still seeking security and peace with her neighbors and the reason the battered woman remains in an abusive relationship is like drawing a parallel between day and night. And what is worse is that to draw such a parallel hurts the case for Israel!
Front and center to the debate on the right of Jews to a sovereign state on this tiny patch of ground, with a united Jerusalem as her capital is the question which I have asked many times at many press conferences. I have asked journalists from David Horowitz to Elias Zananiri. And I have asked equally well known diplomats. “Did we Jews hurt our own status as a fledgling nation state when we abdicated the very history of our existence here for the three thousand plus years by casting aside our identity as ‘Palestinians’?” The honest answer has always been an unequivocal, “Yes.” Even David Horowitz answered, ‘Well, perhaps so – after all the “Jerusalem Post” was once called, the “Palestine Times.” And a former deputy director with the MFA under a past government answered the question with an echoing, “Absolutely” – while explaining how the Sunni-Shia agenda has always included a ‘right of return’ only for those Jews who had lived here two years prior to the British occupation ending.
If you have any doubt as to the validity of this scenario just take a quick poll. The next time you are at a Kiddush or concert or online ask a few people under the age of twenty-six about the identity of we Jews as Palestinians. I have done so many times. On average only one in ten young people know the facts. Most recently, I asked a young Israeli third year college student raised in Jerusalem by very educated parents if she was aware that the identity cards issued by the British during their occupation here, labeled her own grandparents as ‘Palestinian.’ The wide eyed response I received was, “No – the Arabs here are the Palestinians!” Why did those founding this country and most of the subsequent contemporary citizenry decide that ignoring our own Jewish identity as Palestinians would help secure our seat in the Community of Nations as the Sovereign State of Israel?
And if we have effectively buried our contemporary history under British occupation here how can we expect the listening world to consider as valid a case our history rooted in ancient days?
True enough, some Jews have argued that we are going to be hated in any case. Some have argued that it is a matter of semantics. But not so among those neighboring nations who have always counted us as their enemy. For it is among the fathers of the Suni-Shia anti-Israel mantra that the cornerstone of contemporary Jewish identity as Palestinians is and always has been deliberately suppressed to this very day.
So, when we get serious about winning the battle for our identity – because that is where the battle for our survival in the new arena of global jihad will be won or lost – then we will need to chant loudly and without restraint that we Jews were also identified as Palestinians. We Jews are the ones who were marched back to Rome by our conquerors of yore. And it was those same Roman conquerors who named this land –“Palestine”.
Yes, as individuals we should live in the present. But, collectively we must also remember our history. And as concerns the Sovereign State of Israel we are remiss in using mass media to remind our own citizens – let alone the rest of the world that this tiny strip of land labeled by the Roman conquerors as “Palestine” was for ages and ages inhabited by we Jews before and after being conquered.
Rather than live in the present the Sunni-Shia Muslims around us want the world to go back five hundred years to validate an Islamic presence here. If history is an appropriate tool for validation then we must ask the world, ‘Why trace citizenship back only five hundred years?’ Why not trace citizenship and ancestry all the way back to the Temple Mount? Why not trace it all the way back to when the Romans laid siege to the walls of Jerusalem? Why not trace it all the way back to every drop of Jewish blood that washed the hooves of the horses of every Roman soldier that entered our most cherished city and burned it to the ground?
The fact is that our neighbors are not only glad, but ecstatic that those Jews with a voice still have not echoed the Truth in halls of the world, where the Sunni-Shia mantra has revealed only part of the history for this tiny stretch of soil. And thus, we have played into their hands by not speaking as loudly or as passionately as they have spoken.
If we Jews want to stem the tide of Anti-Israel propaganda then we must, individually and collectively – and to the same extent – use the same media which is used by our enemies and begin to re-educate the listening world with the facts concerning – not only who we are today, but also who we were yesterday.
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Lee formerly freelanced in Israel and now is on a visit to San Diego County. Your comment may be placed in the box provided below.