Do They Just Get To Make Things Up Now?
Anyone who tuned into Paula Zhan last night got to witness a spectacular demonstration of exactly why Israel is losing the propaganda war. I have three concerns with the interviews she did on the Rantisi assassination:
(1) Asking "does this increase Hamas support" is precisely the wrong question to ask. Hamas already has more than enough support to carry out the murders of Israeli children that it wants to carry out. The question is no longer - and nor has it been for a long time - Hamas support. The question is whether or not the assassination significantly deteriorated Hamas's capabilities. Support for Hamas long ago passed the threshold of "more than adequate." And that support isn't going anywhere - hatred for Jews (not just Israel) has reached endemic proportions in the Muslim world, and the only hope of even tempering that hatred (a hope I believe is futile, but is nonetheless the only one) is through a political solution. Except Israel has no partner with which to create a political solution, so that's not happening any time soon. The question then becomes whether or not kill Rantisi at least slowed Hamas's ability to kill Jewish civilians, since nothing in the next half a decade or so is going to slow their motive for trying to do so. And on that note, even Laura King's otherwise incoherent LA Times write-up ledes with the observation that Hamas's operational capabilities have been damaged, as does Islam Online. This leads to the second point...
(2) Our spokespeople suck. The Israeli government sent Isaac Herzog (Labor's Knesset whip) on the air to show that even the opposition supported the assassination. All good and fine - except for the fact that the man is totally incoherent in English. Just totally incoherent. This isn't a problem of his accent - Bibi has a heavy accent and is an excellent speaker in English, and Barak could also turn it up when he wanted to. This is a problem of sending people on the air who can't formulate their thoughts in English because they just don't have the goods on the language. I watched him for over two minutes try to make the simple distinction between Hamas's support and Hamas's operational capability (the point that I made above).
For some baffling reason, he kept trying to distinguish between long term and short term effects, where short term was equated with a boost in support and long term was equated with a drop in operational capabilities. Those are both true observations - in the short term, Hamas's support will increase and in the long term their operational capabilities will be damaged, but that allows people to conflate Hamas's support with their operational capability, which is, again, the wrong way to frame this discussion. And Herzog knows the difference - you can tell by his frustration in stumbling around the question and by his opaque reference to Hamas's "organizational level." He wants to say "operational capability" but he just doesn't know how.
By phrasing the effects of Rantisi's assassination as "short term = help Hamas, long term = hurt Hamas", it makes it seem like Israel is balancing a short term disadvantage with a long term advantage. But if you reframe the issue solely as Hamas's operational capability because you can't do anything about their public support, then assassinating Rantisi was good both in the long term and in the short term, because it immediately impacted Hamas's infrastructure backbone. Attacking Hamas's operational side is (a) different and (b) more important than addressing their public support. So their boost in support is a short term phenomenon, but that's incidental to the question of whether or not this hit damaged Hamas's ability to kill Israelis.
Herzog is anything but stupid. He's just not a good English speaker. And the Israeli government (which is notorious about putting people in front of the camera who can't communicate) needs to realize that this approach is hurting their cause. Which leads to point 3...
(3) Their spokespeople are much better than ours. When the Palestinians manage to keep Arafat or even Erekat off the camera, they slay the Israelis on the news channels. Just slay them. Last night, they had Diana Buttu on. She's striking, she's soft-spoken, and she's articulate. She did all the work of framing in the first 30 seconds of the interview:
ZAHN: How much do you think this latest assassination has weakened Hamas?
BUTTU: I'm not entirely sure if it weakened Hamas at all... after these type of actions support for Hamas generally increases... what Israel is doing by continuing at assassinating Palestinians is simply shifting things to the right and shifting support to the right as well.
And now, for the rest of the evening, weakening or strengthening Hamas becomes a question of whether it boosted their public support. See above.
Being well-spoken gets you a couple of things. It helps you take control of an interview. It also helps you get away with either making statements that are questionable. Here's some of the rest of the interview in order - I'm going to divide it between statements of questionable veracity and outright lies:
And that's because time and again Palestinians have been demonstrated by Israel that they are somewhat bee be beneath the law had it comes to Israeli politics.
Statement of questionable veracity: as if the Palestinian public, which overwhelmingly supports the murder of Israeli civilians, is concerned about the rule of law.
Let's remember there is no assassination of Israeli leaders.
Outright lie: that there is no assassination of Israeli leaders, which should come as a surprise to the family of assassinated Israeli Cabinet Minister Rehavam Ze'evi.
Let's look at compromise. The Palestinians have already compromised. They've given up 78 percent of their historic home land to Israel.
Statement of questionable veracity: this is an explicit denial of Jews' historic connection to the Land of Israel, which the Palestinian Authority promised to stop doing some time last decade. Of course, they've been systematically destroying the archeological evidence of that connection on the Temple Mount, so I guess denying it on CNN isn't really that severe.
They've said to Israel, you can have it. We simply want to have -- establish a state on the remaining 22 percent that has been occupied since 1967.
Somewhere between a statement of questionable veracity and an outright lie: Last I checked, there was a healthy majority of Palestinians who still deny the legitimacy of the Jewish State. But that's closer to a whooper than a lie. Also, did I miss the memo where either Arafat or a large majority of the Palestinian public gave up on the Right of Return? Because that doesn't sound to me like telling Israel "you can have it."
[Establishing a Palestinian state in the "remaining 22%] is what is required under international law.
Statement of questionable veracity: I'm not sure what international law she's referring to, but UNSC 242 requires Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories and their return to the countries who had them at the time - Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Not that it matters at this point, but those countries weren't exactly in a hurry to establish a Palestinian state when they held them.
But now even that 22 percent Israel is continually eating up by building more and more and more of these illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied Gaza Strip.
Statement of questionable veracity: The only thing that saves this from being an outright lie is that there are settlements being built in the West Bank (illegal or not is an open question). It seems to me (and I'm not a lawyer so take this for what it's worth), that by committing to "withdrawing" from the Gaza Strip, Sharon will no longer be "building settlements" in the Gaza Strip. Again, I'm no lawyer.
These are contrary to international law and are now considered war crimes.
Statement of questionable veracity: again, I'm no lawyer, but Alan Baker is, and he says that not only is Ms. Buttu wrong, but that the Palestinians really shouldn't be preaching to other people about adherence to international law.
So all I'm saying is that people who can speak English well seem to do better on English-channel news stations than people who can't. Also, I'm saying that the Palestinian spokesperson last night was a liar, but that's a consequence of us not being able to defend our side.
(1) Asking "does this increase Hamas support" is precisely the wrong question to ask. Hamas already has more than enough support to carry out the murders of Israeli children that it wants to carry out. The question is no longer - and nor has it been for a long time - Hamas support. The question is whether or not the assassination significantly deteriorated Hamas's capabilities. Support for Hamas long ago passed the threshold of "more than adequate." And that support isn't going anywhere - hatred for Jews (not just Israel) has reached endemic proportions in the Muslim world, and the only hope of even tempering that hatred (a hope I believe is futile, but is nonetheless the only one) is through a political solution. Except Israel has no partner with which to create a political solution, so that's not happening any time soon. The question then becomes whether or not kill Rantisi at least slowed Hamas's ability to kill Jewish civilians, since nothing in the next half a decade or so is going to slow their motive for trying to do so. And on that note, even Laura King's otherwise incoherent LA Times write-up ledes with the observation that Hamas's operational capabilities have been damaged, as does Islam Online. This leads to the second point...
(2) Our spokespeople suck. The Israeli government sent Isaac Herzog (Labor's Knesset whip) on the air to show that even the opposition supported the assassination. All good and fine - except for the fact that the man is totally incoherent in English. Just totally incoherent. This isn't a problem of his accent - Bibi has a heavy accent and is an excellent speaker in English, and Barak could also turn it up when he wanted to. This is a problem of sending people on the air who can't formulate their thoughts in English because they just don't have the goods on the language. I watched him for over two minutes try to make the simple distinction between Hamas's support and Hamas's operational capability (the point that I made above).
For some baffling reason, he kept trying to distinguish between long term and short term effects, where short term was equated with a boost in support and long term was equated with a drop in operational capabilities. Those are both true observations - in the short term, Hamas's support will increase and in the long term their operational capabilities will be damaged, but that allows people to conflate Hamas's support with their operational capability, which is, again, the wrong way to frame this discussion. And Herzog knows the difference - you can tell by his frustration in stumbling around the question and by his opaque reference to Hamas's "organizational level." He wants to say "operational capability" but he just doesn't know how.
By phrasing the effects of Rantisi's assassination as "short term = help Hamas, long term = hurt Hamas", it makes it seem like Israel is balancing a short term disadvantage with a long term advantage. But if you reframe the issue solely as Hamas's operational capability because you can't do anything about their public support, then assassinating Rantisi was good both in the long term and in the short term, because it immediately impacted Hamas's infrastructure backbone. Attacking Hamas's operational side is (a) different and (b) more important than addressing their public support. So their boost in support is a short term phenomenon, but that's incidental to the question of whether or not this hit damaged Hamas's ability to kill Israelis.
Herzog is anything but stupid. He's just not a good English speaker. And the Israeli government (which is notorious about putting people in front of the camera who can't communicate) needs to realize that this approach is hurting their cause. Which leads to point 3...
(3) Their spokespeople are much better than ours. When the Palestinians manage to keep Arafat or even Erekat off the camera, they slay the Israelis on the news channels. Just slay them. Last night, they had Diana Buttu on. She's striking, she's soft-spoken, and she's articulate. She did all the work of framing in the first 30 seconds of the interview:
ZAHN: How much do you think this latest assassination has weakened Hamas?
BUTTU: I'm not entirely sure if it weakened Hamas at all... after these type of actions support for Hamas generally increases... what Israel is doing by continuing at assassinating Palestinians is simply shifting things to the right and shifting support to the right as well.
And now, for the rest of the evening, weakening or strengthening Hamas becomes a question of whether it boosted their public support. See above.
Being well-spoken gets you a couple of things. It helps you take control of an interview. It also helps you get away with either making statements that are questionable. Here's some of the rest of the interview in order - I'm going to divide it between statements of questionable veracity and outright lies:
And that's because time and again Palestinians have been demonstrated by Israel that they are somewhat bee be beneath the law had it comes to Israeli politics.
Statement of questionable veracity: as if the Palestinian public, which overwhelmingly supports the murder of Israeli civilians, is concerned about the rule of law.
Let's remember there is no assassination of Israeli leaders.
Outright lie: that there is no assassination of Israeli leaders, which should come as a surprise to the family of assassinated Israeli Cabinet Minister Rehavam Ze'evi.
Let's look at compromise. The Palestinians have already compromised. They've given up 78 percent of their historic home land to Israel.
Statement of questionable veracity: this is an explicit denial of Jews' historic connection to the Land of Israel, which the Palestinian Authority promised to stop doing some time last decade. Of course, they've been systematically destroying the archeological evidence of that connection on the Temple Mount, so I guess denying it on CNN isn't really that severe.
They've said to Israel, you can have it. We simply want to have -- establish a state on the remaining 22 percent that has been occupied since 1967.
Somewhere between a statement of questionable veracity and an outright lie: Last I checked, there was a healthy majority of Palestinians who still deny the legitimacy of the Jewish State. But that's closer to a whooper than a lie. Also, did I miss the memo where either Arafat or a large majority of the Palestinian public gave up on the Right of Return? Because that doesn't sound to me like telling Israel "you can have it."
[Establishing a Palestinian state in the "remaining 22%] is what is required under international law.
Statement of questionable veracity: I'm not sure what international law she's referring to, but UNSC 242 requires Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories and their return to the countries who had them at the time - Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Not that it matters at this point, but those countries weren't exactly in a hurry to establish a Palestinian state when they held them.
But now even that 22 percent Israel is continually eating up by building more and more and more of these illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied Gaza Strip.
Statement of questionable veracity: The only thing that saves this from being an outright lie is that there are settlements being built in the West Bank (illegal or not is an open question). It seems to me (and I'm not a lawyer so take this for what it's worth), that by committing to "withdrawing" from the Gaza Strip, Sharon will no longer be "building settlements" in the Gaza Strip. Again, I'm no lawyer.
These are contrary to international law and are now considered war crimes.
Statement of questionable veracity: again, I'm no lawyer, but Alan Baker is, and he says that not only is Ms. Buttu wrong, but that the Palestinians really shouldn't be preaching to other people about adherence to international law.
So all I'm saying is that people who can speak English well seem to do better on English-channel news stations than people who can't. Also, I'm saying that the Palestinian spokesperson last night was a liar, but that's a consequence of us not being able to defend our side.
