The Warped Mirror: Perception and reality

A cynic might say that it was a contest we used to win hands down: most dangerous, most disliked, most dreadful - as long as it was a poll asking people who's the worst of them all, Israel was sure to score first place. One of the most widely reported of those poll results was a European survey back in fall 2003 which ranked Israel as the greatest threat to peace in the world.

Last year, a global BBC poll showed that when asked which countries "have a mainly negative influence in the world", Israel was again ranked first, but the same poll this year ranked Israel "only" second - which means we switched places with Iran: they came in second last year; this year, they snatched the "bad-guys-award" from us...

To be sure, this is no laughing matter. Obviously, one can question what part reality plays when one of the world's smallest countries is seen as the greatest threat to peace in the world, or ranks number one in having a mainly negative influence in the world. But it is after all fashionable to assert that "perception is reality", and the people who see Israel in starkly negative terms are certainly convinced that their assessment is based on reality. And they are right in so far as Israel might well be the most criticized country in the world. The list of criticism leveled against Israel both in the traditional media and in cyberspace is long and includes pretty much every Israeli action that affects the Palestinians: the security fence, the settlements, the roadblocks, raids against terrorists, and even strikes aimed at the rocket-launching crews in Gaza.

One consequence is that increasingly, Israel finds itself in a position where it has to defend its right to defend itself. And it's time to realize that the world's willingness to blame Israel for defending itself has been cleverly exploited by our closest "competitor" for negative ratings: as Yossi Klein Halevi has argued in a recent article, Israel must face the fact that we are already "at war with the Iranian regime, which manipulates proxies along Israel's borders, supplying them with weapons and training, and energizing them with the promise of imminent victory."

What makes this situation all the more worrisome is that even if Iran's proxies Hizbullah and Hamas may not be able to achieve "victory" in military terms with their attacks against Israel, they are assured of a PR-victory whenever Israel defends itself. Since both groups like to operate from civilian areas, any Israeli strike against them risks incurring civilian casualties. As one report put it somewhat sarcastically, the IDF has therefore resorted to "deploying a powerful new secret weapon with its frontline forces in Gaza... Israel is replacing warriors with lawyers." Needless to say that it severely restricts IDF operations when each strike has to be approved by lawyers "monitoring live video feeds from the field and giving the thumbs up or thumbs down to ongoing ops."

The report argues that that the IDF's "attorney brigade" will not shield Israel from international condemnation, and that in "an ugly war against law-mocking terrorists, Israel can't afford to let its own lawyers rob it of legitimate, defensive maneuvering room." Israel's critics would sneer at this argument, dismissing it as sheer hypocrisy in view of the fact that Israel obviously has far superior military power. What is usually ignored is the fact that there are excruciating dilemmas to be faced: the IDF lawyer who calls off a strike against a rocket-launching team in Gaza because the strike would endanger Palestinian civilians may well put Israeli civilians in danger, who will be targeted the next day by the very same rocket-launchers that escaped a strike today.

The hope held out by many is that the creation of a Palestinian state will prove the best way to defeat the Iranian-sponsored jihadists. However, Klein Halevi questions the validity of this view and argues that "a viable Palestinian state living peacefully beside Israel will not be possible without disconnecting Iran from these groups who are attacking Israel on its behalf... Without stopping the momentum of the Iranian-led jihad against Israel, the appeal of Hamas among Palestinians will grow. So long as the international community tries to create a Palestinian state without seriously confronting the jihadists, Iran and its proxies will continue to make peace impossible - not by "derailing" negotiations, but by making those negotiations irrelevant."

The grim picture painted by Klein Halevi also reflects a recent assessment by the Israeli intelligence community that describes 2008 as the "Year of Iran." But whatever the military challenges posed both by Iran's nuclear ambitions and its support for Hizbullah, Hamas and Syria, it would arguably constitute already some sort of victory for Iran if Israel gave up on attempts to confront these challenges also politically. Iran wants the world to view Israel as the mighty military Goliath that mercilessly strikes at the defenseless Palestinian David. It may not have all that much to do with reality, but that hardly matters in a time when many feel that "perception is reality."