Last week, Gallup released its annual World Affairs poll showing that sympathy for Israel over the Palestinians is at its lowest level in 25 years. On Thursday, a UN body released a scandalous “report” accusing Israel of “genocidal acts” by destroying women’s healthcare facilities in Gaza and using sexual violence as a war strategy.
The two are not unrelated.
The steady drip-drop of these completely biased reports from UN bodies such as this one – the Human Rights Council’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel – has a cumulative effect on public opinion.
Nary a month goes by without some UN agency or a human rights group like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch issuing a damning report accusing Israel of the most heinous crimes. For the most part, the Israeli public ignores it, chalking it up to the anti-Israel bias of these organizations. But the public in other countries doesn’t.
In Europe, Asia, Africa, and also in the US, if a report – regardless of how libelous it may be or how insignificant the organization – is stamped with the UN’s seal or that of a well-known human rights organization, it carries a veneer of legitimacy. Abroad, these reports are not automatically dismissed – as they are here.
On the contrary, they generate headlines. “UN experts accuse Israel of genocidal acts and sexual violence in Gaza,” was Reuters’ headline on Thursday. AP’s read: “UN report accuses Israel of sexual violence against Palestinians.”
Shaping negative perceptions
Most people will never read the story. But they see the headline, just as they have seen scores like it over the years, and it shapes perceptions – negative ones about Israel, sympathetic ones toward the Palestinians.
There are numerous reasons why Israel’s image in the US is on the decline, and the cumulative impact of these reports is one of them. Only 54% of Americans have a favorable view of Israel, according to this Gallup poll. With a steady diet of reports like these, it is not hard to understand why.
Justifiably, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Foreign Ministry sent out blistering responses to the UN report.
“The anti-Israel circus known as the UN ‘Human Rights Council’ has long been revealed as an antisemitic, rotten, and irrelevant organization that supports terrorism. For good reason, Israel decided to quit it approximately one month ago,” Netanyahu said, adding, “This is not a human rights council; it is a blood rights council.”
And Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein, posting on X/Twitter, called this “one of the worst cases of blood libel the world has ever seen (and the world has seen many)… It is indeed a sick document that only an antisemitic organization such as the UN could produce.”
These types of reactions, including similar responses by opposition members such as National Unity Party spokesman Benny Gantz, are completely justified. The question is, how effective are they?
They often seem targeted more at the Israeli audience – already convinced of the UN’s bias – than at a foreign one.
For instance, while Israelis and many Jews are familiar with the term blood libel, how many people in, say, Idaho know that this refers to the medieval accusation that Jews used the blood of Christian children to bake matzah?This is a classic case of Israelis speaking Israeli to the world, which is on a different bandwidth.
But place that aside for a minute. Even if a PR genius crafted the perfect response, that wouldn’t be enough. The response might make it into the news story, but it won’t be in the headline, and this is what people see. Headlines shape impressions.
Israel needs a different strategic approach. Instead of just reacting to these reports, it must go on the offensive – creating its own headlines, setting the agenda, and countering falsehoods systematically.
For instance, it should take legal action and file formal complaints against UN bodies and NGOs issuing provably false reports. In countries with strong libel laws, it should pursue defamation lawsuits against NGOs and individuals spreading falsehoods.
It should consider establishing a rapid-response media team to fact-check and counter false claims with verified evidence. Instead of merely issuing denials, it should use the tactics of investigative journalism to expose the political agendas, conflicts of interest, biased funding sources, and backgrounds of those behind these reports.
Israel needs to go on the offensive against these types of attacks. It needs to launch proactive initiatives to put the accusers on the defensive. It cannot afford to simply issue reflexive responses – especially when these denials often seem aimed more at the domestic audience or serve narrow political needs rather than shifting international perceptions.
Israel knows how to counterattack libelous reports, like it did with the Goldstone Report that accused it of war crimes following Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. It devoted time, energy, and resources to rebutting that report and had some success – with South African jurist Richard Goldstone later partially retracting some of its conclusions.
It is too easy to shrug off these reports – or the predictable anti-Israel diatribes by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – as mere rubbish. That might be true, but they are not inconsequential. Israelis may dismiss these organizations, but the rest of the world does not. Their reports shape perceptions, and perceptions matter.
More must be done to combat them. More resources and energy need to be devoted to this because a lie in a UN or human rights organization report circulated widely – and not exposed and taken apart piece by piece – gains traction.
If you doubt that, just look at the latest Gallup World Affairs survey.