The victories of narrative dominance that have been gained by those promoting an Arab Palestine are impressive. A whole new generation of diplomats, politicians, and academics has grown up absorbing the New Speak version of an Arab Palestine.
At this moment in time, one cannot even dare to deny that there exists a country called “Palestine,” that it has been around forever, that there are people called “Palestinians” and, most importantly, that the state’s character is Arab. It is heretical to argue with that.
Moreover, that narrative success not only asserts control over the discourse but, in parallel, creates a demotion of the Jewish storyline. Jews do not possess an inalienable right to return to their national homeland. They are not even a national grouping. They cannot possess a Jewish state.
Worse, the ongoing failure of Israel’s messaging, through failed public diplomacy campaigns, through a hollowed-out school educational curriculum, both in Israel as well as Jewish schools abroad, and through politicized media programming, has incrementally assisted that demotion of the Jewish and Zionist history of this land and the Jewish people.
Not only have facts been ignored, inverted, and misrepresented, but the narrative of a presumed Palestinianism has also awarded them protection and immunity from all the evil deeds that the Palestinian community has committed since 1920 and even before. Their dominance is almost at the level of supremacy.
Furthermore, that narrative did not only relate to minor historical episodes but sought to undermine and deny the entire premise of Israel as the state of the Jewish people. Whereas the argument, among Jews as well as friends and foes, used to be whether Zionism was feasible, today the dispute is whether we have the right to even claim a state.
Benny Morris, in Australia’s Quillette recently, noted there are two basic ways of viewing the Zionist enterprise. The first is as “a crime/mistake from origin, a colonialist venture designed to dispossess an indigenous people.” The intention was to plant a “European polity in the midst of the tumultuous Arab and Muslim worlds.”
The second way was admitting that Zionism had been a “noble cause” meant to “provide the world’s most oppressed people with a safe and creative haven” that would become “a ‘light unto the Gentiles’” but “took a ‘wrong’ turn that blighted the enterprise.”
There should be another way, one more assertive of Jewish rights.
Rewiring the narrative
Historically, the relative success in the turnabout on Israel and Zionism has been a long process. Even if we ignore Jewish anti-Zionism thinking, amongst Jews as well as non-Jews, or take into consideration general anti-Jewish sentiment whether racist or religiously-motivated, surely we are in a very different place as regards control of the narrative.
In a recent piece posted in the +972 Magazine, we learn that France’s Rima Hassan, European Parliament member representing the La France Insoumise party, wants to break four taboos in the French public debate on Palestine.
They are: recognizing Zionism as a colonial ideology; defending the right of return; discussing the legitimacy of armed struggle; and moving beyond the two-state paradigm.
That is not a simple alteration of a narrative but, as the chant that has been increasingly sounded at anti-Israel rallies is formulated, Zionism must be eliminated. We are back in the 1950s and 1960s with the “Throw them into the sea!” sloganeering.
Yet, because of the internal squabbling in Israel over policies, the fundamental truths of the Zionist narrative have been misplaced in our public diplomacy material, as well as the fierce willingness to engage in confronting the waves of lies and fabrications assertively. It appears the “in” thing is to appear at the Oxford Union in evening dress.
Rabbi Irving Greenberg, however, provides another problem. Appalled by Hasan Piker’s claim of how much better Hamas is than Israel, he writes in the LA Jewish Journal on July 16 that Piker’s political voice promotes a “toxic narrative … untethered from reality.”
Piker, he continued, is an example of how “Palestinians’ allies have led [the Palestinians] to the dark side of their national aspirations – destroying Israel rather than building their own potential state.”
Greenberg does not address that toxicity’s success. He does not ask if that negativity should be a cause to punish those exploiting such a message or if, and he is a rabbi, an ethical conclusion could be drawn that should advance the idea that an Arab Palestine state would be immoral.
There exists a major underestimation of the damage and danger the Palestine narrative dominance represents. And now that the pro-Palestine camp has reduced the rhetoric to a zero-sum situation, demanding our elimination and that our existence as a Jewish state must be denied, the hasbara (public diplomacy) approach of defense and explaining Israel’s actions needs to be refashioned.
Money is available. According to reports, since October 2023, upwards of $100 million has been allotted to hasbara efforts, most on social media platforms. I probably haven’t seen all the output, but I am confident little of it was framed in an attack mode.
We need to be past that stage of weak, explanatory public diplomacy. Attention must be shifted. The burden of proof and defense must be placed on the pro-Palestine side. Should a Palestinian national identity of less than 100 years be preferred over a 3,000-year Jewish national identity?
Were not the Arab Muslim conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries the real colonization process in the Middle East?
Who is truly engaged in an “ethnic cleansing” if not Palestinianism? Who initiated genocidal violence, beginning in 1920? Should not the side that violates agreements be punished? Should a constant rejection of diplomacy and willingness to compromise be tolerated?
It is time to make major changes in attitude and approach and to reassert Zionism’s narrative.
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.