The Public Relations War

As a physical war breaks out on the streets of Gaza between Israeli soldiers and Hamas terrorists, a different kind of war is being waged across the world: the Public Relations war. This PR war is not one of rockets and missiles, but of news organizations and bloggers, the battle of information and perception. Over the past 60 years, Israel has unquestionably defeated its Arab enemies from a militaristic standpoint; however, with the same fervor, the Arabs, with the continual support of the majority of Europe and the United Nations, have indubitably succeeded in influencing world opinion in their favor.

To start off, it is generally accepted that the Arab Palestinians are a distinct ethnicity and people from their Arab neighbors. False. In 1948, the Arabs living in the British Mandate of Palestine were no different linguistically, culturally or religiously than Arabs living in surrounding lands. Thus, the status of the Arab Palestinians in the UN as a separate ethnicity worthy of its own state is misleading, for this ethnic group already has multiple states. Not to mention the fact that Jordan is precisely an Arab Palestinian state. It was created in 1922 with 78 percent of the original British Mandate of Palestine, yet the British crown installed a Hashemite monarch and changed the name to Jordan, thus creating the perception that it was not a Palestinian state. This despite the fact that Jordan today is still composed of a majority of Palestinians.

Even more fundamentally, the word Palestinian used to describe only Arabs is disingenuous. It creates the sentiment that there was once an Arab State of Palestine before the wretched Jews arrived and expelled everyone, a common thought amongst hundreds of millions in the world. Not only was there never an Arab State of Palestine, but in fact the Jews who lived in the British Mandate of Palestine before 1948 were called Palestinians as well. Moreover, tens of thousands of these Jewish Palestinians bravely fought for the British crown against the Nazis in World War II, while the leader of the Arab Palestinians was in Berlin with Hitler. Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, also known as Hitler’s Mufti, supported pogroms against innocent orthodox Jews throughout the decades before World War II, including the Hebron Massacre of 1929.

This history is important because what the Western media propagates, through outlets such as CNN, BBC and UN organizations, is that all of the problems in the region today are due to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza following the Six Day War in 1967. Another fact unmentioned is that it was Egypt and Jordan who originally “occupied” the West Bank and Gaza after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, placing these people in refugee camps under horrid conditions, not allowing them citizenship to their respective countries nor any basic human rights.

There is no doubt that Israel has at times been overzealous in its fight for survival. However, while it has made mistakes throughout its history, it has done remarkably well by any standards of human rights given the consistent existential threats it has faced. If we were to put every society and every army under the hate microscope, under which the world continuously submits Israel, we would be stunned at Israel’s comparative humanity. Another pertinent fact: Arabs, whether from Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt or Syria, have brutally murdered more of their fellow Arabs than Jewish Israelis have in the past 60 years (see Hama Massacre of 1982 and Black September in Jordan in 1970 for two examples), yet the world is up in arms when the Jews defend themselves.

News organizations like CNN, BBC, the Guardian and Spain’s El Pais purposefully distort the facts on the ground, over-emphasize Arab civilian casualties and only “report” stories that will paint Israel in a negative light. Case in point: recently a UN humanitarian vehicle was fired at while crossing into Israel from Gaza at the Eretz border crossing. The UN immediately blamed Israel, claiming an IDF tank shell had hit the truck and killed two Palestinians, whereas the Israeli medic on the scene claimed Hamas snipers were responsible for the fire. The aforementioned news agencies, before clarifying the discrepancy, immediately rushed to print how the IDF had attacked a UN vehicle carrying food and essential supplies to the suffering Gaza population. A few hours later, the story was inexplicably removed from each outlet’s websites. The reason? The two Palestinians from the truck were being treated at an Israeli hospital for gunshot wounds to the chest. If an IDF tank had fired a shell at this truck, the people would have suffered far worse injuries. Thus, the UN spokesman lied and the news agencies ate it up in order to deliberately smear Israel as a Nazi-like state, a reprehensible, yet frequent slur nowadays.

This story is not an isolated incident, but part of an intentional campaign of deception to influence world opinion in the Palestinians’ favor. If peace were ever able to occur, these Western journalists would have to sheath their pens and cameras and become truly objective. The reality is that Hamas, like Hezbollah, is a parasite that advocates death rather than life, and it must be exterminated if the Palestinian people are ever to live in peace. The perception to many is that Hamas and Hezbollah are freedom fighters against the fascist Israeli government. What a shame for the world.