Sunday, August 11, 2013

More Homeless Reflections While Waiting for the Plane - Hasbarah Musings, Revisited

I have noticed that the previous post has a very large amount of views, for my humble little blog. I am slightly bewildered that it is being read so much - feel free to drop a line, y'all!

There is an important subtext to the previous posting, one that begs to be explained. I owe the kernel of the matter to something I read, and much of the ideas expressed here come from different things I have read as well - but as usual, I forgot where I saw them...I will try to track it down and post it in an update or future blog post for those who wish to read the source/s themselves.

Israel has existed on three planes - independent power [think David/Shlomo and the Omride Kingdom, for example], as a secondary power [when reliant on patron states and shaky alliances], and in exile. All three have occurred numerous times, and today's state is no different in its 'Matzav'.

Israel today is an independent power in some respects, and a secondary power beheld to its patrons in others. Yes, TzaHaL is a fantastic army (despite itself, sometimes). Yes, our economy is world-defying. Yes, we are the second most educated people on earth. Yes, yes, yes. We also tread precariously on a tightrope, alone and adrift in world foreign affairs - much as we (sickening sweet and smarmily) proclaimed the "unbreakable alliance" between the USA and Israel, the truth is that the US forges its own Middle East policies, that are not always in line with our own. A look at the US' recent Egypt fiasco, in which they chose to back the Muslim Brotherhood despite 50 million people taking to the streets against them, and then doubled down when the army stepped in, is illustrative of this. The same can be said in Syria, where the US is (tepidly) arming an Al-Qaeda based movement (Jabaat Al Nusra) that is fighting Assad (and Hezbollah). Neither of these moves are in Israel's direct interests (the Muslim Brotherhood was a state sponsor for Hamas - wondered why Morsi was made the guarantor for the rocket firings stopping? Those are his underlings firing them. Same in Syria - it is Al Qaeda that would turn the Golan Heights "hot" again, not Assad). Yet we are reliant on US intervention in the Middle East more than many hotheads care to admit (here's looking at you, crazy rightists who want to dictate terms to the US) - and not for silly things like military aid and block development grants.

The Middle East is THE fracture line in world politics - the 1967 war was where the Russians tried to turn the Cold War hot, for example. There were tens of thousands of Russian "military advisers" armed and in uniform in the Sinai - Israeli SIGINT [signal intelligence] was picking up Russian on the radio waves! There were also Russian planes flying over Dimona before the war started. Russian military hardware is a staple in Arab armies (remember those S-300s that Israel is bombing in Syria right now? Or the MiG that landed in Israel in 1989?), and so is Russian fingerprints on the oil markets (something that Vladimir Putin manipulates in order to keep Russia from collapsing - it is no accident that he is the CEO of Gazprom, and that this was the first real step he took when he assumed power in Russia).

Russian propaganda is also responsible for a fair share of the anti-Semitic vitriol that we see pouring out of the mosques and halls of power (since the two are often quite linked) in Arab countries. The linkage of "Great Satan" to "Little Satan" is by design - what better way is there for the USSR to stir up anti-American sentiment in the Middle East?
(The remaining share, especially the Muslim Brotherhood's dissemination of anti-Semitic propaganda, comes from the Nazis - http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/the-roots-of-antisemitism-in-the-middle-east-new-debates).

The same is true today, only the Russians have been replaced by Iranian funded terror groups. Hizbollah is a naked Iranian proxy, which was made redundantly obvious by its continued involvement fighting for Assad [himself an Iranian client] in the Syrian Civil War, and other groups (Hamas' funding, for example) have extensive ties to Tehran as well. Israel cannot remove the Iranian threat on its own - Iran lies outside the reach of the IAF (well, there are 25 planes that can reach Natanz, but that is it - the mainstream F-16s and other fighter planes that Israel uses would need to refuel three [!!?!] times to reach Iranian targets; the odds of receiving refueling rights in Jordan and/or Iraq are close to zero). Even if they could, the resulting Shi'ite outrage would be devastating for Israel - think hundreds of suicide bombers (the Shia adore martyrdom; they take their inspiration from Hussein Ali, their founder, who fought a battle guaranteed to end his life at Karbala), throngs of crazed jihadis massing in Lebanon and Syria, and massive planned unrest/"intifadas" in Yehuda v'Shomron. The Jordanian Palestinians could potentially riot as well, spilling the war over another border - King Abdullah has perhaps a tenuous grip on his country right now, as evidenced by the reactions his parliament had when an Israeli newspaper leaked details of his agreements with Israel.

So Israel, besides being caught up in the usual intrigues of the Arab world, is caught between the almost one hundred year old battle between Iran and the US - and it needs the US to protect it. It does. In this arena, we are still a secondary power, and we are still dependent on American wants, desires, and policies.
[Why do you think that, pit'om, Bibi is back "negotiating" with Indyk (himself the architect of the failed "Dual Containment" policy of the Clinton administration regarding Iraq and Iran) and Kerry and Abbas?]

This is the precarious position Israel finds itself in today - stuck reliant on others for its security and safety, in a world where non state actors and rogue governments conspire to annihilate her, as a secondary power in an arena that is increasingly growing crowded. I leave the military and foreign policy machinations to those who know what they are doing - I am not sure it i my place to comment on them.


However, I can, and will, remark on the effects of the Hasbara campaigns on this situation.
It is here that Israel's naive and idealistic Hasbara tends to do her its biggest disservice. Engaging in a protracted battle with the shillers of anti-Israeli screed, on their own turf, where they control the terms and field, is clinically insane - and each successive failure, in which "human rights" and "genocide" are used to smear Israel and the counterargument fails to deflect it, only weakens the support that Israel retains in the places it needs it most in its current situation.
Instead of debating on college campuses, why not identify and invite (ala a birthright style, all expenses paid trip) students who are pro-Israel to come connect with our culture, our narrative, our history? They will be far better advocates than our own, and wherever they go in their lives, they'll take it with them. Instead of taking to the journalists who slant their coverage regardless of what actually happens (hello, BBC and Tom Friedman), why not emulate what Naftali Bennett and Michael Oren did on TV during Operation Defensive Shield? Instead of trying to answer smears, why not simply report on the facts, building a coherent narrative and message, and stay on track? As Karl Rove, and Nixon before him, and LBJ before him [remember the famous nuclear commercial with the little girl?] have shown, you cannot disprove a negative. <This idea, of Hasbara being scatterbrained and lacking coherency/consistency, has been made numerous times before by others, as well.> And lastly, instead of relying on AIPAC, Saban, Adelson et al to fly politicians in to Israel, why not do it ourselves? Create a "task force" that links MKs and policy wonks to Congressmen and women, and give them the royal treatment when they are here. Between the students and the politicians, we can get much, much better results than we do now.

Fight the battles you can win. Engage in a tactical, strategic plan. Execute. Put resources where they are used best. This is a recipe for success.

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