Israel is engaged in a life and death struggle. On a constant basis, citizens of the Jewish state are subject to everything from shooting attacks to suicide bombings. On an equally frequent level, Israel is assaulted in the pages of the world’s press and on the screens of the world’s televisions. While Israel has occasionally responded militarily to the former threat, it has completely surrendered the field to the latter.
In boxing, even the finest defensive fighter must exhibit some offensive skill in order to be successful – and so must a state counter the deliberate lies and poisonous propaganda spread by its antagonists or stand defeated in the realm of popular opinion. By remaining passive, Israel has allowed Arab views to stand virtually unchallenged.
One of the ways to change this situation is by imitating the foe and mounting a continuous public relations offensive. In order to influence the average mind, certain facts must be stated over and over again and as often as possible; information needs to be condensed in such a way as to be accessible to a broad public. Emotional veins must be tapped and simplicity emphasized, thereby putting facts in a form more palpable to a mass audience.
To start with, the word “Palestinian” must once again be returned to its traditional position as an adjective referring to Jews and things Jewish (as in the “Palestinian Talmud”) and not to a specific Arab subgroup. The bogus nature of said subgroup, its lack of historical roots, and its existence as an essentially political weapon used to scourge Israel at the bar of world opinion must be endlessly repeated. Because of the misguided emphasis given in most quarters to a supposed “Israeli – Palestinian conflict” as the root cause of the current Mideast crisis, this redefinition is crucial.
The formation of the PLO in 1964, well before Israel’s territorial conquests of the Six Day War, should be used to show that that body’s intentions have always been the destruction of the “Zionist entity” and not merely the liberation of some “occupied territory.” The terrorism committed by Arafat, Habash, Hawatmeh, Jibril, and their like against civilians – including hijackings, the annihilation of whole families, the point blank, cold-blooded shootings of women and children, and the overall destruction of innocent lives – should be used to deflate any romanticized notions of a Che Guevara-like “war of liberation.” Survivors of terror should be sent to lecture at college campuses and to appear on television programs in order to put, as the Arabs and their supporters have done so well, a face on human suffering while also telling important truths hitherto ignored by the media.
It is important to emphasize that the Arab inhabitants of Israel (including Judea and Samaria) are merely the “avant-garde” of the hostile forces of the sons of Ishmael rather than a group of oppressed natives; they are unequal not because of “apartheid policies” but because they oppose the state’s very existence; thus, they have automatically placed themselves in the position of fifth columnists. Paraphrasing Napoleon, they are “a dagger pointed at the heart of Israel.”
It needs to be stressed that Israel was created not to give equal rights to Arabs or to be a “state of its citizens,” but as the fulfillment of the millennia long aspiration for a restored Jewish commonwealth after centuries of oppression by Christians and Muslims alike.
It is important to show that Israel was created not solely as a solution to a European problem, but also to an Arab one. The historical abuse suffered by Jews at the hands of Arabs and Muslims must be underlined, with the emphasis placed on the Jews’ own liberation from centuries of Islamic tyranny.
