Posted on 05/23/2021 12:13:04 PM PDT by Conservat1
Speaking to their nearly hundred million followers on social media, they have vilified the Jewish state with an all-consuming hatred.
From the beginning of my rabbinic career, I focused mightily on public relations and disseminating the Jewish message to the world. I was accused of being publicity-hungry and of shallowness. But I knew that the one area where we Jews have so significantly failed was in public relations. And this has been true throughout the centuries.
Only one nation has ever been accused of murdering God: The Jews. And our inability to properly respond to so heinous a charge – how can anyone murder an infinitely power being – brought centuries of devastation to our people. Then they accused us of being vampires, of murdering Christian children to suck out their blood. No other nation has faced a similar blood libel, which led to the spilling of countless quantities of Jewish blood.
Now Israel is fighting a genocidal enemy in Hamas, a bloodthirsty death cult with a genocidal charter calling for the extermination of Jews wherever they may be found, including in the United States, Europe and Australia.
Hamas aids and abets honor killings of Palestinian women whose only crime is to have a boyfriend. They slaughter LGBT Palestinians. They are ruthless and brutal to the wider Palestinian population, robbing them of the international funds sent to give them a better life and using those funds instead to fire rockets at Jews, to murder as many of them as they can.
You would think that the choice here between good and evil would be stark and direct and that the world would stand with Israel. But precisely the opposite has occurred, as Israel is now being portrayed as trying to “erase” the Palestinian people.
TAKE THE example of Mohamed Hadid, the multi-millionaire father of supermodels Bella and Gigi Hadid, all of whom are vilifying Israel with gusto to their tens of millions of followers on Instagram. Last week he actually wrote, “No one should be allowed to erase a race… you can’t close your eyes… the Pope did in WW1 and WW!! And the rest of the world stood by silently….”
This is the ultimate blood libel, falsely accusing Israel, the only free society in the Middle East, of genocide. Hadid shockingly compares the Holocaust of six million Jews to Israel fighting back against the Hamas rockets intent on murdering children. It takes an incredible audacity to accuse the Jews of perpetrating a Holocaust of the Palestinians. This antisemitic blood libel about the Jewish people should be rejected by all people who value truth and human rights.
Instead, the blood libel is spreading.
His daughters, Bella and Gigi, joined by the singer Dua Lipa – who is purportedly dating their brother – have become an unholy trinity of Hamas terror-splaining
It-girls engaged in the outright demonization of Israel and the Jewish people.
Speaking to their nearly hundred million followers on social media, they have vilified the Jewish state with an all-consuming hatred.
They accused Israel – a nation built in large part by Holocaust survivors – of ethnic cleansing, even as millions of Jews in Israel descend from refugees savagely forced out of every Arab land. They condemn Israel for the military checkpoints that were erected only after 700 innocent Israeli Jews and Arabs were blown to bits by suicide bombers on buses and cafés, many of them sent by Hamas. They call Israel an apartheid state, even as it is the only country in world history to airlift Africans into freedom and sets the standard for multi-racial and multi-cultural coexistence, with millions of Christians, Muslims and Jews - black and white – living side by side as doctors, teachers and soldiers.
THEIRS IS a malicious ignorance. If Bella, Gigi and Dua cared about Palestinians, they’d condemn Hamas, a bloodthirsty death cult whose brutality toward women and tolerance for honor killings of young Palestinian girls is an abomination. They’d demand that Hamas stop its use of Palestinian children as human shields for military stockpiles and rocket launch pads, cease its regular murders of LGBT Palestinians, and reverse its denial of the Palestinian people’s right to elections, after fourteen autocratic years. But those demands don’t fit into a campaign that’s solely about hating and defaming Jews.
Worst of all, in defending the Hamas terrorists, Bella, Gigi and Dua make themselves apologists for the genocidal aspirations of Hamas, whose charter calls for the murder of Jews “wherever they are found.” Hamas seeks nothing less than a second holocaust: 3,500 shrapnel-packed rockets should be more than enough to prove they mean it.
Americans are used to seeing shallow celebrities peddling scams like the 2017 Frye Festival, as Bella and Gigi infamously did, or embarrassing themselves with their political ignorance. But serving as apologists for genocidal terrorists takes celebrity abasement to a whole new level.
But that’s my whole point. The Jewish state is the only nation on earth of whom it is acceptable to falsely malign as genocidal murderers, even as Israel is easily the most righteous nation in the entire Middle East and one of the most humane on earth.
WHY IS this happening? It’s easy to simply blame antisemitism, and no doubt that is a big part of it. But the truth is that we Jews have never believed in the importance of Public Relations and getting the truth of our message out. While Hamas arguably has hundreds of celebrity social media influencers – with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers who peddle their lies – Israel has virtually none.
When for decades I cultivated celebrity friendships for the Jewish community and Israel, I was criticized for being too involved in Hollywood, which lacks substance. But witness where we are now – where even Gal Gadot, the world’s most famous Israeli actor, will write on Instagram of how her family is under attack and suffering but will still not come out with a full-fledged defense of Israel as a righteous democracy fighting a terrorist tyranny.
And then there is the fact that for four years, Trump administration personalities were so effective at defending Israel – from Mike Pence to Mike Pompeo to David Friedman to Nikki Haley to Jared Kushner to Ivanka Trump to Jason Greenblatt and more – that we in the Jewish community got lazy about doing it ourselves. Now that they are not in office, Israel is being vilified in the media with few to defend her.
If we are to win this public relations battle, we in the Jewish community have to make public relations a priority. We have to win over celebrity influencers to the justice of our cause. We have to learn how to master the levers of television, op-eds, broadcasting and social media – not to manipulate the truth, God forbid, but to establish the truth: that Israel and the Jewish people are a moral and righteous light unto the nations, and that Hamas and the other Islamist terrorists are a cancer to freedom and a threat to the entire civilized world.
And the Jews keep voting with their Rat enemies.
American Jews have squandered most of the good will the rest of the world’s Jews created by supporting Liberal, progressive values.
The Rabbi should ask his good friend and college classmate Cory Booker for help. Oh, my mistake. Booker is a Progressive Democrat so no help there.
“The Jewish state is the only nation on earth of whom it is acceptable to falsely malign as genocidal murderers,” -— How does the left characterize past American treatmwnt of American Indians?
Maybe because the Israeli Jews stopped being Socialists and became ardent capitalists, or that the bond between Israeli Jews and American Jews became frayed, or that living 300 years in a peaceful and tolerant land like America made our Jews soft, you can't picture any salutes to Israel in today's Hollywood (unless the Israeli government provided the underaged children for them to molest).
Eventually, USA will use sanctions against Israel unless the Jews decide to leave the country and give everything to Palestinians.
For Israel, I don’t believe this is a winnable message contest, nor do I believe Israel is missing much if anything by somehow failing in an infinite and unending messaging campaign supported by literally every organ of mass media. There’s a lot more money in spreading hatred. Thus I wouldn’t criticize Israel for failing to get out the message any more than I would criticize Woody Allen for losing a WWE match with Hulk Hogan.
For pity’s sake, if you can’t get American Jews to wholeheartedly support Israel better than 25-75% or whatever the number is, how do you expect to get a world in love with groupthink and disdainful of any and every Judeo-Christian value to support Israel? The world hates Christians, too, in case it isn’t clear. The ideological battle in terms of messaging is a lost cause. Israel has to kill or attrit its many enemies until they temporarily stop. Fortunately, they realize this.
Bttt.
5.56mm
Boteach could give Schumer a run for the camera!
When Jews are accused of killing Jesus just use the Christian Bible to refute them. It teaches that the Christians sin put Jesus on the cross because He died to redeem us to the God of Israel.
Besides that Herod was an Edomite not Jewish.
the justice of our cause?
—
you want justice for your cause? then wipe out Hamas to the last man, woman and child. All else is a fail.
Those American Jews who know how to do “PR” work are doing it for silly Hollywood actors and businesses. It will be interesting to see how many offer to use their skills to help defend against these malicious anti-Semitic smear campaigns. I have my doubts but will withhold judgment to see
I don’t know whether there are many Israelis skilled in this kind of work. There must be some. And certainly the national government in Jerusalem could give “image defense” better attention? I heard from a couple of folks that they think this would be a thankless exercise because nothing can shut up the Nazi/IslamoNazi/mass media propagandists. My view is that even if the enemies can’t be removed more vigorous public image work would still be helpful.
There are countless millions of good Christian and other righteus people doing whatever they can do help Israel, including with some accurate positive publicity. This helps immensely as the smaller numbers of Jews cannot do everything all by themselves.
Powerful article. Expect zero support from the vast majority of American Jews.
“The total collapse of Jewish and Israeli PR”
As long as people are reading the “American” Thinker, the “National” Review. and the “American” Spectator, there’s nothing to worry about.
I don’t know what this dope is talking about. Several times every year I read about a highly successful Jewish PR campaign to save some guy named Barabbas from certain death — at the hands of the mighty Romans, no less. :-P
The Celebrity-chasing Boteach is very tiresome and tedious indeed. He wouldn’t be able to think at all if there wasn’t a celebrity helper he could conjure up somewhere.
The Celebrity-chasing Boteach is very tiresome and tedious indeed. He wouldn’t be able to think at all if there wasn’t a celebrity helper he could conjure up somewhere.
Arab / Islamic bigotry Hadid Family version. Hadid sisters are dahgters of Arab Palestinian mohammed Hadid and their brother Anwar Hadid dates (already Muslim by origin) Dua Lipa.
Message to Israel-supporting JEWS:
You WILL NOT state the hate-mongers. They cannot be stopped - they have far too strong now to have to listen to you (and you guys helped tremendously). But you do, for now, have the power to QUARANTINE them to a political ghetto, where they can spew their hate at each other, but not be able to destroy our society or Israel.
So you may want to consider putting aside your social issues ‘sisterhood’ with them for a while (maybe permanently), while you move over to working with people who both support the United States and support Israel, because neither will be around much longer if they’re not stopped (and don’t think you’ll be left alone either, you never are).
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