By Tsvi Bisk. This is an Exclusive Four part series on Information and Hasbara:what to do and what not to do. Tsvi Bisk is an Educator, Lecturer, Futurist and Author. Negative Hasbara
link to : PART I
link to Part II
link to Part III
Solution II – Negative Hasbara
But it is the second leg of Israeli Hasbara that must be jacked up – the neglected but vital aspect of negative Hasbara designed to make our enemies distasteful to reasonable men and women. We have ignored this because it is “not nice” and Jewish people do not like to do things that are “not nice”. We are afraid of being accused of being racists or of undermining the peace process. When Israel wanted to publicize the corruption of the Palestinian Authority we were pressured by President Clinton not to do so because it would hurt the peace process.
This non-disclosure hurt us. The second Intifada actually started with protest demonstrations by Palestinians against the corruption of Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, which Arafat turned against us when Sharon visited the Temple Mount. As an aside, I would say that such stupidity on our part will always negate both positive and negative Hasbara. As Napoleon’s minister, Talleyrand once said: “Monsieur, it is worse than immoral, it is stupid.” I would posit that it is not so much the so-called immorality of Israeli policy that has turned off international public opinion, it is its stupidity.
As far as not being “nice” I advocate that our negative Hasbara must be as ruthless and cynical as that of our enemies (who are not worried about being “nice”). This does not mean it must sacrifice the truth or factual accuracy (as do the postmodernist apologists for the Arabs) it just means it should be unashamedly one sided – OUR side.
How might we conduct such negative campaigning? Let us take a page from our enemies and encourage objective observers to write books similar to The Israel Lobby by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. For a scathing debunking of the Walt/Mearsheimer argument I recommend L. King’s review on the book’s Amazon site: http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/product-reviews/0374177724/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar
King’s review could be expanded into a book. Perhaps a revised Israeli Hasbara consortium could set up its own Middle East Studies program and give people like Mr. King a grant to write such a book: it might be entitled The Anti-Israel Lobby & its Miscontents.
We might sponsor the writing of other books such as: The Crisis of Islamic Civilization: the Cultural Origins of Jihadism modeled on the classic The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich by Prof. George Mosse, which was a critical analysis of German cultural pathologies prior and parallel to the rise of Hitler. I would suggest giving grants to self-critical Muslims to write such a book.
The Crisis of Islamic Civilization would demonstrate that certain psychological pathologies inherent in Islamic culture are a result of not having been able to integrate into modernity and have been the primary cause of the social and political pathologies currently affecting Islamic societies. Some of this analysis could be based on Bernhard Lewis’s book What Went Wrong (Weidenfield and Nicolson, 2002), which was an historical investigation of Islam’s failure to deal with modernity. A particular portion of The Crisis of Islamic Civilization might sum up the thrust of the book:
For every Muslim killed by Israelis, British and Americans since 1950 a hundred Muslims have been killed by our fellow Muslims. 50,000 gassed in Yemen by Nasser in the 60’s, a million killed in the Iran-Iraq war in the 80’s; 200,000 killed in Algeria in the 90’s; Saddam Hussein’s slaughter of his own citizens; tens of thousands killed in sectarian Sunni Shia strife in Pakistan and Iraq. Over 8 million Muslims have been killed by our fellow Muslims in this period, compared to 60,000 by Israel (mostly on the battlefield).
Compared to unsubstantiated Western contempt for Islamic culture, real internal Muslim contempt is striking. This intra-Muslim contempt is exemplified by Wahabi Sunnis destroying Shia shrines in Saudi Arabia as well as the persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Ahmadi sect of Islam from various Muslim countries.
Muslim contempt for non-Muslims has been even more prominent. Muslim Sudan murdered over one million non-Muslims in southern Sudan. Muslim Taliban committed the greatest cultural atrocity of the 21st century when it blew up Buddhist statues, which were one of the wonders of the world. This aroused no Muslim indignation, but caricatures in a Danish newspaper moved millions of Muslims to demonstrate, riot and boycott.
Our culture of self-pity and denial as well as our inability to engage in constructive self-criticism are the true enemies of Islam. The Muslims themselves are the greatest enemy of Islam, not the Zionists, the Americans or the British.
I would also provide grants to Black intellectuals to research the Arab slave trade, which preceded and outlasted the European slave trade. High powered PR could turn a book entitled The Arab Slave Trade into a best seller. The following quote might reflect its theme: “The Arab Slave Trade lasted from 700 to 1911 AD. It has been estimated that 14 million slaves were sold and that 14-20 million African men, women and children died throughout this period”. Another ‘bestselling book’ we could finance might be entitled Arab Oil Politics and Africa. This book could demonstrate how Arab oil politics, especially the boycotts of the 1970’s had contributed to Africa’s economic misery.
I would suggest the financing of another publication: Cultural Imperialism and its Impact on Modernization in Africa. This would treat both European and Islamic cultures as foreign implants in Africa and their relative impact on Africa’s attempts to modernize. Statistical comparisons of the economic and social development of Christian and Muslim areas of Africa would not be favorable to Islam. Qualitative comparisons regarding the status of women and attitudes towards secular education would produce even more negative results. The consequences of Islamic missionary success in Africa and Christian missionary success in China should also be compared. One of the conclusions of the book should be that one of the biggest impediments to African development in the 21st century has not been the legacy of European imperialism, or the neo-colonialism of international corporations as much as certain Islamic cultural attitudes.
Such initiatives might go a long way to eroding the “solidarity” many Blacks in the West have with the Arabs.
A series of exposé books and television programs dealing with the Palestinians could also be produced. For example, A History of the Palestinians would include statistics about the hugely disproportionate aid they have received compared to other refugee groups following WWII. Another comparison would show how by 2006 the Palestinians had received four times as much aid per individual than Europe had received under the Marshall Plan. A particularly revealing chapter would deal with how UNWRA bureaucrats helped Palestinian politicians misrepresent demographics in order to get more money from the international community. UNRWA should be revealed to be a corrupt, inefficient, self-serving and self-perpetuating bureaucracy that has a vested interest in preserving Palestinian suffering. Various Internet blogs have been doing just that – it is time to put these revelations on steroids in order to delegitimize UNRWA’s historical role.
Another book taking the same line could be The Enemy Is Us – a Critical View of the Palestinian Problem. It would deal with the harm done to the Palestinians as a result of the forgiving attitudes of the international community.
Additionally, Palestinian Refugees – the Great Hoax would also compare the per capita aid given to other refugees (in Africa and the refugees of the India Partition tragedy in particular). We should cultivate a public debate on how the disproportionate preoccupation with the Palestinian problem and Israel-bashing had diverted attention from other humanitarian crises. How much airtime and print space has been given to the Palestinians and the Lebanese war compared to that given to, for example, the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Injustices to the Palestinians should not be denied or dismissed – especially if perpetrated by the Israelis. But it should no longer be taboo to point out that past injustices do not release a nation’s leaders from making rational policy decisions based on the constraints of political reality (a point as relevant for Israeli leaders as for Palestinian). Arafat’s rebuff of Barak at Camp David out of fear of his own people should be compared to Ben Gurion’s fearless acceptance of the Partition Plan and his battle to sell it to a hostile Zionist leadership.
We could also make better use of existing organizations such as: The International Association of Jewish Lawyers & Jurists www.intjewishlawyers.org and The American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists www.jewishlawyers.org. They should be commissioned to answer the question: Does the U.N.’s Historic Treatment of Israel and Certain Consequences and Interpretations of this Treatment Constitute an Accumulative and Ongoing ‘Bill of Attainder’ and Violation of Constitutional Principles.
Bills of Attainder are laws especially designed to impose legal sanctions or disabilities on a particular individual or class of people. They have been unconstitutional in the Anglo Saxon legal tradition since the Magna Carta and are specifically banned in the English Bill of Rights and in the American Constitution.
The contemporary interpretation of UN General Assembly resolution 194 calling for the return of Palestinian refugees to their former homes in Israel could be interpreted as an example of a Bill of Attainder. No similar resolution exists for the 20 million refugees of the Indian partition or for the 9 million ethnic Germans expelled from their ancestral homelands in Eastern Europe following WWII. Moreover, implementation of 194 (as interpreted by Israel’s enemies) would have meant the destruction of the Jewish State. This would have been a violation of the UN Charter declaring the right of every People to self determination.
The Palestinians can achieve self-determination without the ‘right of return’ to Israel, while its implementation would, in fact, deprive the Jews of their right of self-determination. Resolution 194 can be interpreted as unconstitutional on two grounds: it is a Bill of Attainder, the implementation of which would result in the death of a sovereign state thus violating the UN Charter.
The very existence of UNRWA could also be seen as a Bill of Attainder. It is the ONLY refugee issue with its own UN agency. Every other refugee situation around the globe is handled by The United Nations Refugee Agency, otherwise known as UNHCR or The United Nations High Commission on Refugees.
Moreover, UNRWA defines Palestine refugees as persons who lost home and livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict, as well as their descendants. Palestinians are, therefore, the only group whose descendents can inherit refugee status from parents and grandparents. Using this definition, UNRWA estimates there are presently 4.5 million Palestinian refugees. The UNRWA definition was made in-house by UNRWA bureaucrats and has no standing in international law or any international protocols or conventions on refugees
UNHCR, on the other hand defines refugees as follows:
“A ‘refugee’ is a person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country.”
Using this definition – which reflects international laws and conventions – there are at most around 300,000 Palestinian refugees over the age of 63. The rest of the so-called refugees are stateless persons (unless they have attained citizenship in another country). Indeed even amongst the 63-plus group, those who have attained citizenship in other countries are not legally refugees. All of this might be included in Palestinian Refugees – the Great Hoax.
We must organize a campaign to defund UNRWA and place the Palestinian refugee question under the aegis of UNHCR and force the UN to defend this incongruity. Israel might also consider agreeing to let all Palestinian refugees (as defined by international law, which would be 300,000 senior citizens) to return to Israel and declare the refugee problem to have been solved. No reparations or money for their resettlement would be provided by Israel until the issue of reparations for the expulsion of over a million Middle Eastern Jews (whose descendents now number in the several millions) is addressed (finally putting this issue onto the international agenda). If Europe or any other factor wants to finance the Palestinian resettlement, let them do so.
This would stimulate a broader debate. Is international governance majoritarian or constitutional? Are the rights of states, nations and peoples to life, liberty and a land of their own unalienable, constitutionally guaranteed and indifferent to majority whim, or are they dependent on the will and agreement of the majority (the automatic majority of the General Assembly)? Would African Americans have achieved their full civil rights if the American system had been majoritarian and not constitutional?
Other international NGOs should be the target of negative Hasbara with the express purpose of putting them on the defensive in all things related to Jewish issues. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) would be one example. It is well documented that the organization had knowledge of the Holocaust and declined to publicize it to the world, claiming that International Law forbade them to do it. This is especially bizarre as the ICRC has since often accused Israel of crimes. The ICRC did not protest when the Swiss State refused to give refuge to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. The Swiss sent them back to certain death in Germany. At the time the ICRC was a statutory body of the Swiss state. The Red Cross flag and the Swiss flag are the same. The Red Cross sent Swiss physicians to treat Nazi troops on the Eastern front and some ICRC officials aided Nazis to flee to South America after the war.
The ICRC hired Francois Genoud, a notorious Swiss Nazi, to work for them in Belgium after the Holocaust. To see how sordid this individual was, access the following from Hitler’s Swiss Connection, by David Preston (Philadelphia Inquirer Jan.1997)http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis//Holocaust/swiss-and-hitler.html.
These little known facts should be widely publicized. The book by Jean-Claude Favez The Red Cross and the Holocaust, Cambridge University Press, (1999) should be reissued. As a consequence of all this publicity, the ICRC would become more wary of their criticism of Israel, to the benefit of Jewish Hasbara.
We could publish a yearly Arithmetic of Tears report. It would quantify the airtime and print space devoted to various crises around the world in relation to the number of dying or suffering in these same crises. It would take particular notice of the reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. A survey reviewing twenty years of Amnesty reports (between 1986-2006) could add up the print space devoted to Rwanda, Darfur, and human rights in the Muslim world and compared it to the print space devoted to Israel and Palestine – without comment. Funding sources of these and other advocate organizations should also be publicized as well as the political biographies of its activists – also without comment. When asked about the report, Israeli and Jewish spokesmen should reply ‘no comment’. Our silence should be deafening. The facts should speak for themselves. Israel would cease to be the object of sanctimonious condescension.
Honest criticism of Israel would be to the point and thus beneficial for the health of Israeli democracy. For example, when Amnesty condemned Israel for its treatment of foreign workers and its poor record in stopping the trafficking in women for the sex trade, decent Israelis applauded. This has been a disgrace and an affront to Ben Gurion’s vision, not to mention to Jewish tradition. When Amnesty ceases its disproportionate Israel-bashing, it will begin to fulfill its proper role as an international oversight organization on human rights and Israel, as other democracies, will benefit.
This campaign should include debunking the canard that Zionism is a colonialist movement. We should publish a booklet entitled The Differences between Zionism and Colonialism and distribute it freely. It would make the following points:
- Every colonial enterprise represented or derived from an existing mother country or group of countries – Zionism did not.
- No other colonial enterprise viewed itself as returning to its homeland – Zionism did.
- No other modern colonial enterprise was driven by the desire of the colonizers to escape persecution and discrimination – Zionism was.
- No other colonial enterprise viewed its colonial ambition as being part and parcel of their national cultural, psychological and moral renewal – Zionism did.
- No other colonial enterprise satisfied itself with only one colony – Zionism did.
- No other colonial enterprise desired so passionately to settle a land devoid of natural resources – Zionism did.
- No other colonial enterprise desired to create an independent state (all the others saw themselves as dependent colonies of the mother country) – Zionism did.
- No other colonial enterprise desired to create an entirely new society – Zionism did.
- In other words, Zionism is unique (just like the rest of Jewish history) and thus the Middle East conflict is unique.
The idea behind the above campaign is for Israeli and Jewish PR to go on the offensive – to be aggressive, to put all factors hostile to Israel on the defensive. All of this is possible right now. This is not a ‘futuristic’ plan – it is implementable as of tomorrow.
Tsvi Bisk is also the author of “The Optimistic Jew”
