Guest Post by Dr. Michael Harris
It often happens in the middle of an otherwise pleasant day — you’re shopping, or walking across a college campus– and you encounter them. They’re holding signs that claim Israel is an “apartheid state” and charge Israel with committing “genocide” against Palestinians. They’re calling for boycotts against Israeli products, and divestment from companies that do business with Israel.
This is an all-too-familiar sight, and has become more frequent in the past several decades as Israel-bashing extremists have taken their hostility into the public square. Their words don’t represent a simple disagreement with specific actions or policies of the Israeli government. Instead, they’re an open call for the elimination of the one country that shares Western values in a region full of despots and radical Islamists. Simply put, they’re not just promoting a Palestinian state; they’re demanding that it replace the Jewish one. But here’s the problem: you don’t know how to respond – or if you even should – to these Israel haters.
Of course, these encounters happen on social media with far more frequency—and ferocity. It’s a lot easier to rant and hurl insults from a keyboard, especially on some platforms (such as Twitter) that allow anonymity.
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Debating about Israel is like Guerrilla Warfare
These rhetorical battles waged over Israel are like guerrilla warfare. It’s often hard to know if you’re winning. Not only that, many people that you will encounter in this arena are so biased against Israel that earning a “win”, in the sense of changing your opponent’s mind, is almost impossible.
After all, it’s difficult to win a debate with:
— Someone who thinks that an ethnically-based state is a problem if it is Jewish… but not if it is Egyptian, Syrian, Irish, Italian– or Palestinian. Or with someone who claims that he opposes all ethnically-based nation states, but whose political activism against them starts (and ends) with the Jewish one.
— Someone who thinks that a state for Jews is unacceptable because it is based on religion, but that fifty-seven members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, many of which explicitly adopt Sharia law as the basis of their legal system, aren’t problematic.
— Someone who believes that the Palestinian issue is the paramount “human rights” issue in a world where a militant Islamic movement publicized its beheadings and crucifixions of “infidels” and sought to wipe out entire indigenous populations, where China brutally oppresses Tibetans, where children in Africa are forced into armed combat, and where women and girls in many countries are subjected to honor killings and female genital mutilation
— Someone who is relentless in his determination to ignore any facts that don’t fit into the worldview of “Israel= racist colonial oppressor; Palestinians= noble indigenous oppressed people.”
And when you encounter Israel-haters in any of their various guises—whether it is the aging hippie-needing-a-cause or the young far-out-leftist—and you do try to engage them in conversation, it proves to be as effective as enrolling a cat in obedience school.
How do you ‘win?’
So how do you “win?” And why engage in these discussions at all? Because the Israel-haters are not your target audience!
In society, whether you are interacting with folks face to face or in cyberspace, you will encounter three kinds of people:
- Those who completely oppose the existence of Israel as the state of the Jewish people;
- A much larger number who actively support Israel;
- And, far bigger than both groups, the majority who don’t have strong opinions about this issue and usually aren’t paying much attention to it at all, except when it is brought to their attention by a flare-up of violence in the region, an action on the local university campus, or a demonstration in their community.
This last group, not your interlocutor, is the audience that you are trying to reach.
Even if you can’t earn a decisive victory, you don’t want to be afraid to engage and challenge anti-Israel activism. Perhaps you’ll get the haters to think twice, but even if you don’t, you have an opportunity to reach the same audience that they’re trying to recruit.
What you might accomplish is getting a fair-minded person, who is listening to the exchange or following it online, to think more about what you have to say. You might get them to realize that the steady drumbeat of misinformation from the other side might not reflect the reality of a complex ethno-religious conflict that is over a century old. You might even get them to engage in conversation with you, to ask you some genuine questions, and to reconsider some of what they have heard.
The Five Commandments of Successful Advocacy
To best accomplish this, we need to avoid arguing down at the level of some of our opponents. To that end, I offer you The Five Commandments of Successful Advocacy. They are just as relevant online as face-to-face. (Perhaps you were expecting a different, more biblically connected, commandment number? Sorry, I don’t want to suggest that these small kernels of advice were the result of any type of divine revelation.)
Commandment #1: Tell the Truth (Or at least don’t knowingly lie)
It’s important that our side be credible. You won’t always be able to fact-check on the fly, so it’s vital to stick to what you already know is the truth. Of course, this is even more important in any online encounter, where your words can remain visible for an eternity. You don’t want your rhetorical gaffe about Israel to end up like a drunken party photo posted on Facebook. Even editing a blog post or deleting a Tweet is no protection against the infamous “screen shot” that captures what you initially sent into cyberspace. It should also go without saying that we don’t need to resort to “Pallywood” techniques of faked pictures and maliciously edited videos to make our points. And we don’t want to find ourselves in the moral sewer inhabited by those who, during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, posted pictures of the murder scene of the Fogel family—butchered in their home by Palestinian terrorists—claiming them to be Gazan victims of IDF operations.
Unfortunately, internet hoaxes exist on our side as well. One famous example was a purported “Letter to An Anti-Zionist Friend” by Dr. Martin Luther King. It reads like a Dr. King speech—but he never wrote it. Its actual origin is unknown. Even the citation of its purported publication (in a magazine called Saturday Review) was in a volume and page that did not correspond to any actual published issues. To help avoid it spreading further, CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) published a full exposure of this hoax on its website, so that Israel supporters would know the truth and not continue to cite it. I’ve never seen any anti-Israel organization show the integrity of doing the same for the multiplicity of faked pictures and quotes that are constantly being circulated on their side; but as their entire arguments are based on falsifying history and facts, that’s not a surprise.
You can help ensure the veracity of your information by getting it from established, reliable sources—groups such as HonestReporting, StandWithUs, AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee as well as Israeli government bodies such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the IDF. All of them are very active on social media and are happy to have you disseminate their information.
Also, beyond substance, consider style. Nothing undercuts the punch of an online comment like bad speling and gramur, ‘cause if you don’t rite good then your statement looks fulish.
Commandment #2: Avoid Ad Hominem Attacks
The person seeking the moral high ground should also occupy the rhetorical high ground, so never say that the person you’re responding to is an idiot. Even when he–or she–is. These people may be wrong on the facts and their train of thought on this issue may not be running at full speed, but they are often otherwise quite functional and rational. Instead, take a deep breath and simply point out the errors of either facts or logic.
Commandment #3: Don’t Generalize
Avoid overly broad statements such as “all Palestinians are supporters of terrorists.” Do too many of them support radical Islamist terror? Absolutely—even one is too many. But recognize that just as you want the other side to make unforced errors to which you can respond with authority, they want you to do the same. Don’t help them out. You can blame the Palestinian leadership for refusing to negotiate peace with Israel, but you can’t blame every Palestinian-in-the-street for that.
Commandment #4: Don’t Distort
Avoid conflating all anti-Israel statements into the most extreme position (which is, for you newbies, supporting Hamas and its calls for genocide). There are ample ways to counter anti-Israel arguments without accusing every Israel boycotter of secretly holding a “Friends of Hamas” membership card. (Though some of them might.)
Commandment #5: Use Positive Language
When confronting the manifold lies about Israel (“apartheid!” “genocide!” “cultural appropriation!” “bad driving!”) the temptation is overwhelming to directly respond to them (“Israel is not apartheid!”…though you might be on weak ground about the driving). Studies of human thought and emotional response tell us that this can be counterproductive. The more a lie is repeated, the more believable it becomes. If they say “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians” and you say “Israel is not committing genocide!” the words that stick in the listeners mind are the ones that are repeated—“Israel” and “genocide.”
You can refute lies using positive statements about Israel. Instead of repeating the claim about Israel and genocide, you can instead say “That’s a lie. The Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza has more than tripled since 1967.” Now try it for the “apartheid” lie. (I’ll wait.) Does your response sound something like “The truth is that Israeli Arabs are citizens with equal rights and serve as members of Israel’s parliament, Supreme Court, military and foreign service”? Well done! (The Mossad will be crediting your account with 10 Rothschild points.)
Israel-haters often couch their anti- Israel screeds in the language of “human rights.” You should use similarly sympathetic terms that should appeal to your audience. Neil Lazarus, who does advocacy training sessions for many groups including HonestReporting, suggests that whenever possible, include the words “hope,” “peace,” “children,” and “future” in any statement that you make. As in “Israelis want a future of peace for their children, and also for Palestinian children. We hope that the Palestinian leadership will end its 70-year war against Israel and come to the negotiating table.”
A superb example of positive and inspiring language is found in a short video from StandWithUs entitled “If You Will It, It Is No Dream”: “Over 3000 years ago, an indigenous people developed a thriving civilization and culture in their ancestral homeland. Over time they were conquered by a series of aggressive foreign empires. While some stayed in their own communities, most of them gradually scattered across Europe and the Middle East. For 1900 years they lived as a mostly oppressed stateless minority, suffering persecution, expulsions and ultimately genocide. They barely survived but never lost hope of returning to their homeland. Once released from their ghettoes, they started a liberation movement and went home to join those who were already there. And they built one of the most vibrant, diverse, inspiring nations the world has ever seen. That nation is the state of the Jewish people—Israel.”
It’s even better with the visuals and the music—check it out:
If you found this helpful, there’s much more in my book “Winning a Debate with an Israel-Hater”, now in its second edition. You can find it on Amazon both in print and in Kindle format. And you can find me in action on Twitter here .
Dr. Michael Harris was one of the founders of San Francisco Voice for Israel, which is now the Bay Area chapter of StandWithUs. In his spare time, he is a pediatrician in Marin County, California.
