Victory is the Best PR

Recently, commentators have been wondering what Israel could do to improve its image abroad. Israel though should be careful not to allow criticism from the West to constrain their military policies.

Repeatedly, commentators have been wondering what Israel could do to improve its reputation. The recent Goldstone report seems to have made this preoccupation even more urgent. Israel’s supporters don't like to see the country they defend accused of various horrible things, and they are eager to make Israel a nation like any other, in peace not only with its neighbors, but also with the rest of the world.

In order to do that, it has been suggested that Israel take a number of measures in the communications field, such as providing accurate and immediate responses to the various accusations that automatically are thrown every time the IDF is involved in a series of operations. Maybe the whole Jenin libel might have been avoided if the IDF press correspondents had reacted faster? More generally, maybe better communication could make Israel look more like a Western democracy?

That will not work though. It takes more time to react to accusations of massacres than to fabricate them, for the simple reason that it involves checking out their veracity, while making out a story of war crimes takes no time at all. As for the general image of Israeli society, it is hard to see what Israel can do to look more "normal" if it is not yet considered that way. Israeli society is open. Anyone can go to Israel, or meet Israelis abroad, and see by himself that Israel is a perfectly "normal" country, in the Western sense. Anyone can be in contact with people who are serving or have served in the IDF and see by himself that massacres or any sort of war crimes are very unlikely, if only because everybody in Israel would know about it in minutes.

Some other commentators, such as Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld have concluded (in a 2003 editorial no longer available online) that the problem is not Israel's image management but Israel's policies. The occupation of Palestinian territories or the settlements will give Israel a bad name no matter what.  Thus, his argument goes: if Israel wants a better image, it must change its policies.

It is interesting that when Martin Van Creveld made that argument, he was also, and still is, a supporter of two policies which have since been put into practice: the construction of the security barrier between Israel "proper" and the Palestinian territories, and the unilateral withdrawal from those territories. Now, the barrier is here, the withdrawal was completed in Gaza in 2005 and was planned for the West Bank (until the 2006 war made the Israelis give up on that plan, at least for the time being).

Van Creveld thinks that a unilateral withdrawal and complete physical isolation will make Israel safer by eliminating frictions, just as the Berlin Wall did, no matter how different the context. The problem is that Van Creveld assumes, or at least assumed before 2006, that complete isolation was possible. In his 2004 book Defending Israel, where Van Creveld details his view on the matter, the threat to Israel is quickly dismissed.

What Van Creveld did not see was that Israel's enemies do not have to win now, they only have to keep some sort of pressure, and that can be enough to win a propaganda victory and prove the point about Israel's reputation wrong: even if Israel follows Van Creveld's policy recommendations, its reputation will still be awful.

Israel cannot do much about it. They can avoid the worst, that is, being "South-Africanized", i.e. banned from the UN General Assembly and hit by huge economic sanctions. But Israel cannot have the same sort of reputation as Sweden or Spain because they have a war to win. Nor can they be simply ignored as Sri Lanka, a country recently involved in a much bloodier counter-insurrection than Israel but essentially left alone by the UN and Western media, because Israel is simply much closer to the West. Israel is not a member of the UN Security Council, which was very convenient to the UK during the events in Northern Ireland. Finally, part of Israel bashing in the West is due to cowardliness, and Israel cannot do much about it either.

The only thing Israel can do is win. Israel's image tends to get better when Israelis succeed in avoiding contact with their neighbors. Israel's image was particularly bad during the terror campaign that started in 2000 and was essentially stopped by 2003-2004, thanks to the barrier, the targeted assassinations, the 2002 campaign and the other counter-terror measures.

Nearly all of these measures were extremely unpopular in the rest of the world when they were undertaken. The barrier has been painted as an "apartheid wall", the targeted assassinations described as unprovoked murders against "militants" while the 2002 campaign even made the U.S. administration panic and George W. Bush demand an immediate withdrawal. And of course, the Jenin incident was a public relations disaster at the time.

But two goals were achieved: the attacks stopped and Israeli counter-terror operations left the headlines. Before that, when Israeli civilians were slaughtered by a Palestinian suicide-bomber, French public radio essentially condemned the coming Israeli "disproportionate" response in advance, while diplomats urged "the parties" to show restraint. Now that the terror campaign is over, Israel is no longer condemned. Simple as that.

The Goldstone report is a bit of a different matter. It has to be seen as part of the cost of the 2008 Gaza campaign. In military terms, the campaign itself has been successful: the war aims, which were deliberately confined to decreasing the rocket attacks, have been attained.  But the campaign will be a real success if the people in charge in Gaza understand that the IDF might come back at any time.  Yet, the real goal of the Goldstone report is precisely to make such an operation impossible in the future by making it costlier for Israel from a diplomatic point of view.

In that sense, the Goldstone report is important, but Israel does not have to end up looking particularly good, it only has to avoid a huge diplomatic fallout, like economic sanctions, and make it clear that the IDF is still ready for another visit to Gaza, South Lebanon or any place in the West Bank. For now, to judge by the low number of incoming rockets from the Gaza Strip, the message may have been received.

As for the Dubai job, things are even more simple. No one can prove that the Mossad did it, though everyone more or less knows it. So by definition, "lawfare" will not work. Activists or diplomats who condemn any coercive action based on insufficient evidence cannot launch an argument against the Israeli government without any proof. Dubai's chief of police may make as many threatening statements as he wants, but Hamas operatives abroad will not feel any safer as long as no Israeli is indicted for the Dubai operation, and such a development does not seem likely.

So by and large, Israel has been acting wisely in terms of image. Israelis have no interest in being viewed as peaceful. That might not please British academics or Swedish human rights activists, but these are not the people who plant bombs inside Israeli pizzerias. In fact, making it clear that demonstrations in Paris or London do not interfere with Israeli's will to live more safely is in itself a good message to send. "Lawfare" may be a problem, but lawfare is a matter of procedures, not of image.

Anti-Israeli campaigns are usually part of a more general offensive which very much include a military component. The Goldstone procedure is a response to the Gaza campaign, the Jenin campaign was a response to the 2002 West Bank offensive, and so on. Israel is good at winning the military part, and once this part is won, the rest is no longer relevant. In a word, the best communication is victory. That has been known for centuries, so let us not forget it now.