Omer Bar @omer_bar - Twitter Profile

Saying "Israel needs better PR" is like saying the Jewish people need better PR. No one says the latter, because it’s absurd to think two millennia of obsessive, shape-shifting hatred can be massaged with slick messaging. Yes, some states have “great PR.” Qatar buys their good PR: paying off journalists and influencers, plastering ads across foreign networks, bribing FIFA, and running one of the world’s largest media organizations. China prevents their bad PR: it censors the internet, arrests critics, intimidates reporters and manipulates the TikTok algorithm do eliminate China criticism, while amplifying Western sins (especially American and Israeli ones). France and Britain pretend their state-owned broadcasters are neutral, but France 24, TV5Monde, and the BBC World Service are lineal descendants of their empires, built to beam Paris and London’s worldview to former colonial subjects. They may criticize their governments, but never in ways that delegitimize the nation itself. And they wouldn’t platform IRA justifications as equal to Downing Street. And that’s not all. The smaller players such as Turkey’s TRT World, Russia’s RT, and Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya each reach hundreds of millions across dozens of countries. What small, ancient minority population do you think they’re focused on? Israel doesn’t buy journalists, it doesn’t muzzle the internet, doesn’t sponsor sports team, and it doesn’t own even a small global broadcast arm. Instead it hosts more foreign correspondents than any almost any other. They are not here to write about archaeology or technology, nor to enjoy the cuisine and culture. They are here as hall monitors of the Jewish state, recording every misstep to show their readers back home that the Jews should no longer be pitied. Put the world’s biggest magnifying glass over any society, stir in enemy states eager to stoke strife, add foreign state-owned media without enough material for their 24/7 news channels and you get a vicious cycle of “negative PR.” Add in the hundreds of millions around the world who think they understand Israel because they watch Al Jazeera or the BBC, hand them anonymous social media accounts, and you could see how one might describe this as an “uphill battle” for a nation of 10M. Thus Israel’s gay rights and pride parades are dismissed as “pinkwashing.” Its tech ingenuity is branded as surveillance and international crime. Its award-winning cuisine is derided as appropriation. Israel's respect for religion and tradition is recast as apartheid. Its culture of national service is condemned as militarism. It’s defense against terror and rocket fire is libeled as “genocide.” And its citizens speaking up in defense of their state are reduced to “hasbara propagandists.” No diverse democracy could withstand that scrutiny, let alone one whose people have long been accused of the worst crimes imaginable (deicide to slavery and from apartheid to genocide) . And no serious country would orient its entire policy or national defense to appease hostile foreign audiences. If you applied the same magnifying glass to the U.S., you’d see a nation of metal detectors in schools, prisons overflowing with minorities, bankruptcies from medical bills, a standard of living that hinges on illegal immigration, sports franchises doubling as universities, and a society obese, over medicated and suffering some form of addiction(real or imaginary). Does that sum up America? That is how selective reporting works. Israel doesn’t have a PR problem. The world has an Israel problem.