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Israel may be a military giant, but it is a diplomatic minnow. The diplomatic corps representing it is engaged in a seemingly perpetual losing battle. The Hebrew word for “public diplomacy” is hasbara, which can be loosely translated as “explanation.” This gives some idea of the defensive apologetic attitude that characterizes it.
When the United Nations voted on US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, 128 states voted to condemn the decision and only nine supported the measure. The diplomatic bar is so low that one Israeli UNESCO representatives referred to the vote as a “great diplomatic achievement” since there were more abstentions than expected.
The fate of Israeli diplomats is similar to that of a beleaguered goalkeeper in a World Cup qualifying game between, let’s say, Germany and San Marino. No matter how much grace and poise are shown, defeat is certain. The only matter at stake for the wretched soul given the task is the exact differential.
To everyone’s surprise, a gift to Israel’s diplomatic standing recently materialized out of thin air. A video of teenage Palestinian girls interacting with an Israeli soldier went viral. Normally popular videos from the occupied territories show Palestinian civilians harassed at checkpoints or experiencing any number of indignities. This particular clip showed young girls, one of whom was later identified as Ahed Tamimi, slapping and kicking an Israeli officer. The assaulted soldier showed commendable poise and restraint, refusing to react.
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As an extra boon to Israeli “explanation,” several older videos of Tamimi similarly provoking Israeli soldiers were disseminated. The first documented incident of her intentionally provoking Israeli soldiers took place when she was a mere nine-year-old. Clearly, the Tamimi family had been using her as a pawn in the West Bank propaganda wars for some time. Pro-Israeli activists even had a sardonic nickname for her: “Shirley Temper.”
The optics were in Israel’s favor. The minor victory was reminiscent of when San Marino somehow scores that one goal against Germany.
But Israel refused to capitalize on its advantage. The seemingly endless series of wars Israel has experienced and the cold shoulder shown by the international community have engendered a siege mentality there. Believing that the world is dead set against the Jewish state no matter what it does, it prefers physical security over diplomatic advantage.
In a particularly striking manifestation of this condition, several prominent voices in the country sounded concern that the incident would harm Israel’s deterrent capability. Israeli politicians, in an effort to outbid each other, competed over who could overreact most outrageously to Tamimi’s provocation.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett said Tamimi should “finish her life in prison.” Oren Hazan, a provocateur from the back benches of the Likud, said “restraint is a failed and dangerous policy. Next time it must end differently.”
Even those who should know better responded similarly. Veteran journalist Ben Caspit, normally a moderate, wrote: “In the case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras.”
No doubt inspired by the political climate in the country, the Israeli military arrested the young girl. This time a very different clip went viral. Tamimi, her long blond locks flowing defiantly, was dragged out of her home in the middle of the night. Contrary to Caspit’s advice, the arrest took place in full public view, probably in order to satisfy public opinion. The new viral clip restored the international conversation to the standard narrative portraying Israel as a serial violator of human rights.
The move was seemingly designed to remind the world of some of Israel’s moral nadirs. In both Intifadas, Palestinian youth played an important role. Therefore, Israel targeted that demographic. Untold thousands of under-age individuals served time in Israeli prisons. The lives of two generations of Palestinian youth were disrupted through mass incarceration and the closing of schools.
The arrest reinforced the worst perceptions of its policy in the West Bank. Rather than serving as an embarrassment to the Palestinians, Tamimi was now an asset.
A particularly mocking headline that appeared on The Intercept website told the embarrassing story: “Israel tackles existential threat posed by 16-year-old Palestinian girl.” Posters calling to “free Ahed Tamimi” appeared at bus stops across London, and #freeahed trended on Twitter.
The initial confrontation may have failed to provoke the officer, but it succeeded wildly in goading Israeli politicians and public opinion into a self-sabotaging overreaction.
The reality on the ground in the West Bank is too complex to be captured in a viral clip. If there is one thing we can learn from vignettes captured out of context, it is that the conflict is not made up of monolithic “good guys/gals” and “bad guys/gals.” Rather, what we find are flawed individuals operating within a tragic context.
However, reality can be incidental to public perception. The moral framing depends on camera location and hashtag impact. If Israel wants to cease losing the information war, it will have to overcome its insular tendencies and engage openly with the world on its own terms. If it continues to succumb to anger and populism, Israeli diplomacy will continue to impersonate San Marino forever.
Nice try in selective reporting?
The girls were slapping the soilders because those soilders were intruding on palestanian houses. The soilders were there to surpress palestanian protesters who threw stones at jewish settlers that moved into their neghborhood and causing all kinds of trouble over the years, and by trouble I mean harassment, arson, home demolitions, evictions, land take overs, shootings; these jewish soilders were there to guard those settlers and act as enablers. End goal is to slowly eat away at what was once majority palestanian west bank and ensure in any proceeding final peace deal palestanians won’t have a viable statehood.
Funny this writer felt vindicated by the girls slapping the soilder in this video and conveniently failed to mention more facts that would inconvenient his narrative, and the misery those palestanians endured that streches years back which would more explain their actions.
Felt besieged? Well weren’t thinking about being besieged when terror bombed king david hotel (1st act of terror in Middle East after WWII, nice pionnering that before the arabs), and ethnic cleansing the palestanians from 47-48, BEFORE the first Jewish-Arab war in 48.
It appears to me this time these Jews were lead back to Middle East by the devil. How else can you explain the protracted conflict, the hatred and misery built up over the decades, and both sides seems to degenerate further and further into narratives filled with hate, untruths, and self-aggrandizement? Even if Jews manage to cleanse West bank like this I doubt that will be the end of it. Recent one-sidedTrump announcement planted some seeds world wide..even if they don’t immediately sprout from the soil…lets hope there are enough wise people in charge, and with luck, those seeds won’t break ground in obnoxious ways some day near.
Israel’s reaction is understandable.
Making it a case would have give wider exposure, end encouraged other teens to do the same. A disaster in the offing.
" If there is one thing we can learn from vignettes captured out of context, it is that the conflict is not made up of monolithic “good guys/gals” and “bad guys/gals.”
I beg to differ. Israeli armed forces are an occupation force. Every single thing they are doing in the West Bank and Gaza is contrary to International Law and UN Resolutions. There are "monolithic good guys and Bad guys" in Palistine and the Israelis are the bad guys.
Israel is an army of occupation and there fore it is not only a right of Palistinians to resist the occupation, but a duty.
You should research the case more. Those soilders were there to guard the "settlers" in Palestanian west bank – ie colonizing the palestanian neighborhoods those girls lives in. The girls and palestanians were responding to colonial intrusions in their neighborhood over the years.
Imagine they start moving into your neighborhood and make you endure constant harassment and disruptions over the years at the gunpoint of those soilders, and your daughters/sons got fed up and slap them, then I came along and say the soilders actions are "understandable".
Hmm. Two observaions: the curly red-head is the only non-indigenous face I’ve noticed in the pictures I’ve seen, a "Boshnic" settler from the Balkins shomron by the Ottomans ? I wonder if she’s pulled those stunts with Chicago,Baltimore, Boston cops … A "wild ride" to the police station at least?
that is often alluded to and never explained. a little foreign by-blow I suspect.
I dunno — how they appear in others’ eyes has never meant much to the Izzys. Which is a strength. Like the constant questioning of others’ motives.
The angst-y above could just be for goyische consumption.
Ben Eph. is a fool. He knows that a media clique controls Israel’s external image. Everyone knows that Israelis live in a liberal country similar to western democracies. Yet Israel is accused of genocide against Arabs (note Arab population is increasing) apartheid and even cultural appropriation (‘Israeli’ humus.) The UN has determined there is no connection between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Jesus wasn’t Jewish he was a palestinian. Gay pride parades in Tel Aviv is Israelis ‘pink washing.’ And on and on….So Ben Eph thinks Israeli hasbara blew an opportunity?
The foregn soldier of occupation showed ‘restraint’??? After putting Ahed’s cousin into a coma with a point-blank rubber-cased bullet to the head and slapping the girl first, the soldier got off lightly. The fact of the matter is that every government and every court with a remit including Israel’s own High Court of Justice, agrees that the West Bank and Gaza are under belligerent foreign occupation, that the rules of the Fourth Geneva Convention apply, that therefore Israel has a legal claim to 0.0000000% of a single dog turd there. If the French Resistance had the legal and moral right to slit the throats of Nazi goons in Occupied Paris, Palestine’s native sons and daughters have the same legal and moral right to gut IDF thugs like a fish.