In today’s Jerusalem Post, Ilana Diamond describes the travails of campus hasbara, where Palestinian supporters outnumber Israel’s supporters. She also grapples with the effects of the MSM’s mantra, “If it bleeds, it leads.”
Nor can these relatively few speakers compete with the onslaught of weekly posters put up around campus with pictures of bloodied Palestinian children, body bags, and misquoted statements from Israeli officials seeming to suggest that Palestinians are asking for it. For some reason – perhaps the way the media covers the conflict – many college students seem to be more skeptical of pro-Israel speakers than anti-Israel ones . . . .
It is extremely hard to fight fire with fire and remain respectable. The images the pro-Palestinian groups put onto posters are deplorable. Texans for Israel will try to avoid the pity ploy, but on today’s college campuses it seems that that’s what it takes to gain support for a cause. A group has to be loud, crude, over the top, and gut wrenching for their message to be heard. Simply showing the positive side to a cause no longer captures attention.
Pro-Israel activists can talk up the positives of Israel until we are blue in the face, but until someone sees Israelis as victims, they will just ignore our message.
