Haviv Rettig Gur (Israeli journalist for Times of Israel) left-leaning. Nethanyahu’s government is right /far-right leaning. It’s painfully frustrating and difficult to listen to any Israeli government officials for someone from the left or centre, more so for people from the international community, outside of Israel. I think Israel’s right-leaning Prime Minister and other far-right ministers are mostly pandering to their right wing supporters. The only person I can listen to from this right-leaning government is Eylon Levy, the official spokesman of the Prime Minister’s Office. He just hits the right tone, able to articulate himself properly, political correctness and not too extreme.

https://youtu.be/HgBEFdtyopQ?t=2003 (Nov 1st, 2023, UC Berkeley School of Law).

1. The most important thing to know about Israelis, the deepest ethos that define us as a culture is “not caring what other people think”.

2. The disapora condition of a Jew, is the minority condition, in which you are constantly aware what people think of you. In a place like America, Jews have been accepted profoundly as Americans, hence a lot less so. But in countries like Russia and the rest of the world outside the English speaking world, Jews are always aware of themselves as a minority and always aware of what everyone thinks about them.

3. From 1881 Auto-Emacipation by Leo Pinsker, one of the essential lessons of the Zionist movement that it inculcated and taught in schools and wrote its history of the Jews according to this ethos, is you don’t justify yourself. You don’t explain yourself. You don’t ask for permission to exist because the non-Jew wants you to ask for permission to exist and for you to live there. When you live under Imperial Russia, that is absolutely correct. That was the experience. People who talked about whether Israel has a right to exist. What Zionism taught us was that the non-Jew thinks he has the right to decide whether I have the right to exist. And I should say to him, go f*&# yourself.

4. The state of Israel keeps establishing public diplomacy ministries, and then keeps closing them down. That PR ministry has been established five times. Nobody knows what to do with it. Israelis are terrible at telling their story, because it feels like justification. And to be Israeli is not justify yourself to the world.

5. Everytime the world comes around and say the international community, the UN, public opinion, anywhere on Earth, including the United States who Israelis do care about, turns against Israel, the automatic Israeli answer is, I am not going to justify my existence. If they don’t understand, they don’t understand. And that’s their problem. What’s important isn’t what they think, it’s what I do. This is a deep impulse of Israeli culture.

Get foreigners to do the PR for Israel or people not deeply affected by the ethos. A notable example is Douglas Murray, he went to Israel after Oct 7th, he understands the English speaking audience. He says the right things/words. He appears on TV debates/interviews/talk show etc…, speaking on behalf of Israel, defending Israel. Others I can think of that are good PR for Israel are Mosab Yousef, (son of co-founder of Hamas speaking out against Hamas) https://youtu.be/pjOEJumoABg and Yoseph Haddad (An Arab Israeli Christian pro-Israel activist)

Similarly, Hamas dont talk too often. When Hamas does speak, they often make mistakes/ faux pas at least from the point of an English speaking audience. Ahha gotcha…It’s better for Hamas not to speak, let others speak for them, there are many, they know better which buttons to push to get the English speaking audience to support and sympathize with Gaza.