Stop Arming the Enemy

How the Israeli government is making it easier for Jew-haters to win the narrative war

Before I start criticizing the Israeli government, let’s emphasize a few important points:

• Jihadists are responsible for their evil actions.

• Antizionists and antisemites are responsible for their own bigotry.

• Craven politicians in Western countries are responsible for their hypocrisy, and for selling out the Jews for the sake of their next election.

I make no excuses for these people, and cut them absolutely no slack. They should be held to account for what they do.

And …

• Israel is the only country in the world who has enemies constantly threatening - and trying - to annihilate it.

• Israel is consistently criticized for defending herself and her people from these threats.

• If Israel did not defend herself so effectively there would be no more Israel.

Ok, now that we’ve established those foundational points, let’s focus on how the Israeli government makes it easier for her enemies to fuel the rise in Jew-hatred that endangers all Jews, both in Israel and throughout the world.

There are two ways in which the Israeli government makes it easier for our enemies to spread Jewish hate:

1: Losing Winnable Fights - When Israel acts appropriately but communicates poorly

2: Creating Losable Fights - When the problem isn’t the story — it’s the action

Let’s explore both of these, with a special focus on what Israel, Israelis, and Jews throughout the world, can do.

1: Losing Winnable Fights - When Israel acts appropriately but communicates poorly

Israel’s enemies are constantly plotting to annihilate Israel and kill all Jewish Israelis. This requires constant defense. When Hamas or Hezbollah shoots rockets at Israeli civilians, Israel needs to respond. When a Palestinian suicide bomber blows themself up and kills many Israelis, Israel needs to find those behind this mass murder in order to prevent the next one.

Any country would do this. Every country must do this.

Fortunately, Israel has been very effective at dealing with military threats. Consider how much progress Israel has made in the last 2 ½ years in reducing the danger of the “ring of fire” Iran created around Israel with its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza. This defense has saved millions - yes, millions - of Israeli lives.

But Israel isn’t only fighting military battles. She is fighting parallel narrative battles, and this narrative war is no longer a sideshow. At the same time that Israel has been successful on military battlefields, defending legitimate threats and attacking serious enemies, her performance on narrative battlefields has been a mix of absenteeism and incompetence.

When Israel ignores, or fights poorly, on narrative battlefields, she is offering her adversaries a free pass to invert the narrative and turn Israel’s valiant defense into a story of Israel’s supposed cruel aggression. Israel’s narrative negligence is arming the enemy, making Israelis, and Jews around the world, vulnerable, in many ways.

Here are a few examples of what Israel’s enemies say on narrative battlefields, and options for what Israel could communicate, but doesn’t, on narrative battlefields:

By botching - or ignoring - the fights on narrative battlefields, Israel is essentially arming her enemies, giving them carte blanche to invert narratives and fuel Jewish hate … even when Israel’s actions are defensible and legitimate.

Israel is “Losing Winnable Fights” … where the facts are on Israel’s side but the story isn’t.

Now let’s turn our attention to “Creating Losable Fights,” where Israel’s actions are either unnecessary or inappropriate, providing Israel’s enemies with easy opportunities to fire information ammunition at Jews.

2: Creating Losable Fights - When the problem isn’t the story — it’s the action

Yes, Israel is held to a higher standard.

Yes, Israel has to defend herself constantly, and will inevitably make mistakes.

Yes, Israel is just a country, full of fallible human beings, who say and do things that are indefensible.

We know all that. But every mistake Israel makes, every indefensible action Israel takes, is a gift to her enemies. And because of the different standards by which Israel is judged, her enemies are able to turn these mistakes into damaging wounds that affect Israel and Jews throughout the world.

Israel can’t ignore how her actions are perceived, especially in light of the heightened scrutiny and double standards that pertain solely to Israel. To account for the impact Israel’s actions have on the narrative battlefields, Israel needs to simultaneously consider both military and narrative battles when making policy decisions, even military ones. An example I’ve written about before: There were valid military reasons to halt aid to Gaza, so that Hamas would stop stealing that aid and selling it on the black market to fund its terror machine. But by reacting with a military solution alone, Israel enabled its enemies to paint her as wicked and inhumane. Israel might be in a much better net position today if she had done the opposite and flooded Gaza with a surplus of humanitarian aid and services to ensure people were fed, reduce the price of black market goods, and unseat Hamas’s place in the value chain.

Another example is that Israeli citizens who act as cruel aggressors against Palestinians are not brought to justice with the same force as Palestinians who threaten Israelis. Beyond the clear moral problems with these acts of Jewish terrorism, allowing Jewish settlers to commit acts of terror against Palestinians with impunity hands Israel’s enemies a gift that damages Israel and worldwide Jewry on narrative battlefields.

More: The recent death penalty bill is a cruel, absurd, unnecessary, provocative piece of legislation from Israel’s governing coalition, that is not only immoral and ineffective, but will cause significant damage to Israel’s reputation. This bill mandates death by hanging as the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of deadly terrorist acts in military courts — courts that try only Palestinians, not Jews, who are tried in civilian courts where the law doesn’t apply. This led to headlines such as “Israeli Ministers Wear Noose Pins to Symbolize Support for Killing Palestinians.”

Many Jews are unwilling to acknowledge these and other indefensible acts by Jews and the Israeli government. However, we stay silent at our own peril. If we don’t talk about these acts among ourselves, and do everything we can to prevent them, we can bet that our enemies will use them to inflict grave damage on Israel and Jews throughout the world.

Like any country, Israel is messy. It has out of control politicians who say and do incendiary things. It has citizens who say and do things that are indefensible. And because Israel has to spend so much time defending itself, it is going to make many mistakes … like any country in its position would. So it may not be fair that Israel has to police itself more than other countries. But this is Israel’s reality, which makes it her responsibility and obligation.

So far, Israel is ignoring this reality, which means she is shirking her responsibility and not fulfilling her obligation to keep her citizens and the Jews of the world safe.

This endangers not only Israel and Israelis, but Jews throughout the world.

Government of Israel: Stop arming the enemy!