Relegitimating Israel

By Ted belman

We all know that our opponents are conducting a delegitating and dehumanizing campaign against Israel with the ultamate goal or eraticating her.

Dr Joel Fishman recently published a major study of the phenomenum, The Relegitimization of Israel and the Battle for the Mainstream Consensus, and concluded:

Israel has an important fight on its hands. As Clausewitz admonished, the first obligation of the leader, military or civilian, is to recognize the type of war being fought. In this case, it is a political conflict with religious aspects, of which the war of delegitimization is a part. To reverse this process, a serious campaign of relegitimization is necessary in order to retake lost ground and take new ground.

There is a need to change the world consensus of public opinion, which is a major, decades-long project. A campaign of good news about Israel may be suitable for marketing and branding but does not come to grips with the real problem. Such a campaign has commercial rather than political value. Israel may be the world’s “start-up nation.” It has wonderful beaches and a great night-life in Tel Aviv. It is the home of glamorous super-models and demonstrates a fashionably modern
attitude toward homosexuals. While this is heartwarming, even a torrent of such “good news” will not move elite public opinion, which is comprised of intellectuals, newspaper and TV editors, professors, teachers, clergymen (and women), writers of textbooks, and policy-makers. This group needs to be engaged, challenged, and convinced.

If we carefully examine the examples mentioned earlier of social movements that influenced public attitudes over the long term, it should be possible to develop a program of concrete steps. The delegitimization process manipulates public attitudes over the long term, and to neutralize it will require a major commitment on a much larger scale than ever before. It is possible to build on the work of
several fine NGOs that have accomplished important successes and to learn from the accomplishments of the Chabad movement and of the Birthright project.

It is no longer enough for Israel to proclaim that it seeks peace and defensible borders. Although the subject has been played down, and it is unfashionable to speak in such terms, we are also engaged in a religious war. We must have a message for the world. Our enemies do, and there is no reason to keep silent any longer. Judaism is one of the great religions of the world and has been a civilizing force. We must remind the world, as did Josephus in his time, that Judaism gave mankind the Sabbath; the idea of equality before law (isonomia); human dignity; refined ideas of charity, repentance, and redemption; and the rejection of infanticide and of cruelty to animals.

If Israel intends to regain its legitimacy, it must advance its historical claims aggressively and forcefully. The Jewish State cannot permit others to define its identity or distort its past. It is necessary to discredit the fraudulent claims of the other side and expose its lies. Such an effort should include a long-term campaign of relegitimization. Israel must defend its sovereignty and take its rightful place in the community of nations. These are the responsibilities of nationhood.

Many of us believe the attacks on Israel are inconsequential and are unpleasant only. We cannot ignore the fact that most of the world
Obviously Fishman believes that Israel has been delegitimated and deamonized to our great detriment. Just look at how most nations of the world readily condemn her, boycott her and criminalize her. And we know what results from doing so, namely the holocaust.

Fishman writes:

Prof. Efraim Karsh, in a lecture delivered at the Begin-Sadat Center of Bar-Ilan University (April 22, 2007), stated that Christian sympathy made the Balfour Declaration possible. He explained, “Although there may have been pressing immediate considerations related to the First World War, Christian sympathy for the Jewish people was the real foundation for the Balfour Declaration, which gave
recognition under international law for the project of a Jewish Home. It was more than power politics. There was the commonly held belief in the Jewish tie with Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel].”

Karsh emphasized that “the historic Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel is the real claim to statehood” and asserted that “There is a pressing need to reclaim the historical truth and to rebuild a narrative built on facts, not fiction.”

For the sake of historical perspective, one may recall Ben-Gurion’s first premise, which, on January 7, 1937, he stated to the Peel Commission: “I say on behalf of the Jews that the Bible is our Mandate, the Bible which was written by us, in our own language, in Hebrew, in this very country. That is our Mandate. It was only recognition of this right which was expressed in the Balfour Declaration.”

In short, Christian recognition of a valid historical claim provided the legitimacy for the idea of a Jewish National Home. There are two basic elements in this relationship: first, that the Jewish people have a historic tie with the Land of Israel, which forms the basis for its legitimate claim to statehood, and second, that Christian sympathy for the Jewish people formed the real foundation for the Balfour Declaration. On the one hand, there was a valid historical claim, and
on the other, the support of friendly public opinion among the elite of the leading power of the time, which affirmed it.

Israel’s historic claim was recognized 100 years ago. This claim remains as valid today as it was then.