https://arab.news/6c9nc
For generations, through high-powered and unrivaled public relations spin, Israel has dominated how Americans view the Middle East, skewing the discourse in its own favor at the expense of truth and justice.
While Arabs have largely relied on emotion to respond to Israel’s violations of international law and its immoral, discriminatory politics, Israel and its supporters have built their influence through media industries that mold American public understanding, such as Hollywood movies, the news media and book publishers.
It is not that Israel has done it better or more strategically. It is just that it has invested more time and effort into influencing American perceptions, while the Arab world has done very little.
But now, for the first time since its founding, Israel is facing an existential threat to its unrivaled domination of the American mindset. And let us not forget that the American public has been the foundation upon which Israel has built the myth that it is the victim and that Arabs are the source of injustice.
The reason for the change is Israel’s inhumane and remorseless use of violence against the Palestinians in Gaza, where millions of civilians have been brutalized into starvation and deprivation. Tens of thousands of women, children and elderly people have been murdered, either by snipers or precisely targeted missile strikes.
For the first time since its founding, Israel is facing an existential threat to its unrivaled domination of the American mindset
Ray Hanania
The images of the suffering in Gaza are so overwhelming that they have forced many in the world to compare it to the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust.
Every day, more elected officials in America are questioning Israel’s violence. They understand that what Hamas did on Oct. 7, 2023, was an intolerable act of horrendous and inhumane violence. But Israel’s subsequent brazen and unrestrained cruelty has shocked the world and pushed people to see through its historical lies, one-sided exaggerations and falsehoods about both the origin of the Middle East conflict and the Palestinian people.
In response, Israel is lashing out wildly and incoherently, allowing its most extremist voices to drown out the carefully manipulated and managed PR spin. They are saying that terrorism is an Arab weapon, while Israel’s violence is justified as defense; that Israel killing a Palestinian, even a Palestinian American, is an accident not worthy of justice, while the killing of an Israeli, even in the context of a war, is a criminal act; that the killing of an Israeli Jew is more outrageous and consequential than any massacre of Palestinians; and that any criticism of Israel is motivated by antisemitism.
But all that is changing and Israel’s image is now the weakest it has ever been. An increasingly skeptical American public is reexamining the entire conflict. This is a crack in Israel’s domination of the narrative that could grow beyond its control.
Now is the time for the Arab world to pounce on the pro-Israel propaganda that has enslaved the American mind in ignorance and lies.
The Arab world is at a tipping point in terms of how it can influence the American public’s view of the conflict. It can challenge the generations of lies that have pushed American politicians to abandon morality and the international rule of law for the sake of political benefit and millions of dollars in election campaign donations.
The Arab world is at a tipping point in terms of how it can influence the American public’s view of the conflict
Ray Hanania
Now is the time to end the pro-Israel strategy of pillorying critics of Tel Aviv with the career-killing, defamatory accusation of “antisemitism.”
Americans are starting to question the “truths” they have been told by lobbyists who work for Israel’s interests, not for America’s.
The Arab world should launch a campaign of truth — one that aims to explain the many falsehoods that pro-Israel propaganda has embedded in the American subconscious. It should commission the writing and publishing of a book that challenges everything Americans have been wrongly told about Israel’s actions. It should fund a traveling photography exhibition on Gaza’s suffering to humanize the victims. It should create an online memorial to tell the story of death and destruction of the Palestinian people.
The Arab world needs to launch a campaign of education and understanding to get Israel’s genocide in Gaza into American minds and awaken the American people to the truth.
Now is the time to strike. There may never be a better opportunity to correct one of the world’s greatest injustices and ensure the factual understanding of an enormous historical wrong.
The road to victory in terms of truth and justice has never been through weapons, death and destruction. It has always been a communications war, a public relations battle, and it requires an overwhelming campaign to reeducate those who have been blinded by decades of dishonesty.
It is time to wake up and fight back, not with weapons of destruction but the ordnance of truth, morality and compassion.
- Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter and columnist. He can be reached on his personal website at . X: @RayHanania