For pro-Israel advocates, it’s time to be offensive

Victories aren’t usually depressing, but recent headlines about Israel include those such as: “Israel Left Off U.N. List of Parties That Kill, Injure Kids,” “Palestinians Abandon Bid to Ban Israel From FIFA,” and a couple of headlines about failed motions for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on college campuses. Surely all of these “victories” are better than defeats. But still, we can and should do better.

The problem with these victories is that they reflect a deep problem in the strategy of pro-Israel advocates. We tend to play defense far more than offense. Some psychologists might enjoy explaining just why Jews, in general, prefer this approach, but it’s something we must overcome. What’s wrong with this strategy was beautifully laid out in Ze’ev Maghen’s famous piece, “How to Fight Anti-Semitism.” 

“A man calls you a pig,” he writes. “Do you walk around with a sign explaining that, in fact, you are not a pig? Do you hand out leaflets expostulating … upon the manifold differences between you and a pig?”

Of course not. For to do this is already to cede the crucial first move to your enemy. It’s to allow that your pighood is even a legitimate question in the first place.

Playing defense grants the possible legitimacy of the attacks on us. 

It’s time for us to go on offense.

terests in the Middle East focus on its security needs. Those are of course important, but then the overall debate becomes how to balance Palestinians’ right to their homeland with Israel’s security need. But that is already to grant their “right,” which is to concede that Israel is wrong. That in turn fuels the perception that a “just” solution requires the wrong party, Israel, to make immediate concessions. That is to admit the possibility that you may indeed be a pig for resisting this.