MEMO TO: Prime Minister Bibi
FROM: Wordsmith Noam
RE: Crummy Numbers
Mr. Prime Minister,
You’ve seen the lousy numbers that came out recently on American attitudes toward Israel. According to surveys from the Israel Project, only 49% of Americans call themselves pro-Israel, down from 69% last September.
It’s true that you’re not the prime minister of America, but American voters are your second-most-important constituency. You can’t afford to lose the Americans. If Israelis think that something you’re doing is hurting them with the United States, you’re sunk, no matter how strong your coalition is at home.
No doubt you are getting plenty of advice from the pollster/focus group crowd on how to move Israel back up in public esteem. Their ideas are often good but conventional. Sure, it makes sense to stress Israel’s democratic values; historic ties to America; cultural, military and strategic value to the West, etc.
Winning back rank-and-file Americans, though, requires more than repeating the same old talking points about the history of our two countries’ “special relationship.” Most Americans, after all, don’t remember what they ate for lunch on Tuesday, let alone that Israel took out Iraq’s nuclear program back in 1981.
So as you grapple with how to turn things around, here are a few pointers that might be useful:
First: Don’t panic. This isn’t a political campaign where favorability ratings on November 3 can ice an election. National favorability numbers bounce up and down, but your U.N. membership doesn’t rest on it. And even if things are really as bad as the Israel Project polls suggest, they could always be worse: In one 1982 Gallup Poll, you were at 32%, the Arabs at 28%.
Second: When you win, you lose. Everyone thinks that in 1967, plucky little Israel’s favorability ratings went through the roof. Not really: Gallup had you at 38% before the Six Day War, and 56% after it. A good pop, but it settled back to the high 30s, low 40s territory within a couple of years and stayed there during most of the 1970s. You didn’t hit the high-water mark of 68% with Gallup until the 1991 Gulf War, when you took a few Scuds without firing back. The enduring lesson of popularity contests is this: Sometimes winning isn’t worth it. If being the plucky underdog is the price of popularity among Americans, take a pass. They may not love a winner, but you can’t afford to be a loser.
Third: Cool it with the settlement saber-rattling. Your consul general in Boston, Nadav Tamir, was right: Your confrontational stance on settlements isn’t helping Israel’s image in America. Now that you’ve called Tamir back to Israel to answer for his internal memo (which was leaked to Israeli TV), perhaps you should take the opportunity to hear him out. Yes, by sticking out your chin at President Obama’s call for a total freeze, you’ve cemented your right-of-center coalition at home. But you’ve antagonized the people around the president, and you may need them if Hezbollah or Hamas decide to start launching missiles. Plus, all this haggling over settlements irritates Americans. Americans generally think that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Here’s a solution: Send Tamir back to America with a message to Obama offering a six-month hudna on settlements. No more evictions of Arab squatters, no more building permits beyond the Green Line, nothing to get headlines. But after six months, revisit the issue and quietly urge the Obama administration to revert to the Bush-era tolerance of vertical growth within major settlement blocs.
Fourth: Build your base. For too long, Israel has relied mostly on American Jews and Evangelical Christians for support. But the untapped frontier of American public opinion is in its Hispanic communities. Dust off the Ladino, and remind Spanish-speakers everywhere that the Jews have a thousand-year love affair with Spanish culture. Remind American Hispanics where the Israelis stand on antisemites like Castro and Chavez and other commie caudillos. Israelis are dark, multicultural and, as Jackie Mason says, they seem like Puerto Ricans. That happens to be a very good thing these days.
Fifth: Stop worrying about being right all the time. So what if the BBC or Human Rights Watch takes potshots at you? That’s life in the red-hot center of a red-hot region. Get used to it. You can’t win every argument. Just focus on the big stuff: Deal with Iran’s nukes, do your best with the Palestinians and make sure Israel is a place everyone wants to visit. In America, nobody likes a whiner. Fight for what you believe in, and win. It may not make you popular, but it will always net you respect and admiration. That’s what truly counts.
Noam Neusner is the principal of Neusner Communications, LLC. He served as a speech writer and Jewish liaison for President George W. Bush.
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Noam Neusner makes sense.
Neusner writes,"Fight for what you believe in, and win. It may not make you popular, but it will always net you respect and admiration."
But he does so only after admonishing Israel's Prime Minister to forego fighting for his policies that are not in favor with the American administration. Can't have it both ways. The advice about not losing is also contradictory. Bottom line: Any Israeli prime minister is elected to do what's best for the Israeli people. It's bad enough when they spend too much time trying to govern based on local polling. Don't ask the PM to worry about the American beauty contest, too.
Israeli leaders have long erred by being gun-shy around false information. When it's not corrected forcefully and unambiguously, the fiction becomes cannonized into something never helpful.
Americans are not stupid. They realize that Israel shares its value system and supports a symbiosis rare among foreign allies. Concern that its national behavior is moral and just is far more important than pandering to pollsters and pr pros pandering to their own self-interests.
Noam Neusner advocates moral cowardice and capitulation in the face opf immoral demands from this White House. Given the history of north America, Americans and their leaders have a lot of nerve lecturing Israel about settlements. Anyone heard of "Manifest Destiny?" How 'bout the Trail of Tears and the Congressional 1830 Indian Removal Act? Anyone heard of the American-Mexican war and expansionist President James K. Polk? How about Indian fighter and war-hero Andrew Jackson, the idol whose image graces the twenty dollar bill. Ever heard of him Mr. Neusner?
what do `jews` do not espy? A most astounding fact, that`s what! World plutos do not worship any god save wealth-money. plutos, i educe, hate mosheism, islam, and christianity. However, `jewishness`` consists of just 15 mn people and, to make matters worse,it does not represent a nationality nor ethnicity; the label clearly denotes cultishness. There is not much more rich people hate than the three major cults and their demented preachers. but then all `religions` appear in infinity of time as passing fancies. ``jewishness`` may be the first to go? tnx just recall another astounding fact: man had been and is today the meanest and the greatest enemy of man! tnx
Of course Noam is correct, but I will bet dollars to doughnuts that Bibi is not listening.
Being from the NE region of the U.S. seems to make me and object of the Distrust of the present Israeli government. Well folks I do support Israel when it will exist behind the green line. I will support Israel when it no longer builds 'settlements" beyond the green line. I will support Israel when it no longer argues natural growth for continuing to expand settlements that encroach on areas where it harms a real settlement of the problems between Israel and the Israel Arabs. I will support Israel when it stops favoring the ;policies of the ultra orthodox communities and fails to support its entire jewish population and I mean Jewish in the broadest sense of the word. I learned this from an Orthodox friend of mine who stated that the Holocaust was not limited to the Orthodox. Every one who was Jewish no matter how they practiced their faith and many who did not practice it all or had a single grandparent who was Jewish was a target.
Israel is not a democracy in my mind until it stops discriminating all of us in the world who were and are born into jewish families or against those who become converts by any Rabbi be that Rabbi be Orthodox, Conservative or Reform, Then and only then will you have unqualified support.
The writer makes a lot of assumptions about B. Netanyahu. This editorial is arrogant.
Philip A. Robinson - I would be curious to understand what your "unqualified support" of Israel means ("support" that will be given to us after the fulfillment of a long list of conditions). Does support mean that you would be willing to give some time living in our society, contributing of your talents for the common good? Does support mean that you would be willing to shoulder some of the military duties? More likely, unqualified support means that you will be willing to speak some kind words about Israel in conversations with others or in internet talkbacks. All of us will be very excited by that dramatic contribution to our future well-being. By the way, how did Israel discriminate against you, a person who doesn't live in the country? Did you once ask for some government service and were refused? I think that a bit of modesty is in order. Maybe you'll allow people who actually live in Israel to do the complaining.
Many Puerto Ricans are swarthy and that's because they are mixed...they are "semiwhite". Many Puerto Ricans also DO NOT like Zionists because we side with the underdog.