Bibi Takes His Case Against a Palestinian State To the Internet

And to the American people, too.

Lee Smith, "Bibi Takes His Case Against a Palestinian State To the Internet," The Weekly Standard

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Excerpt

Last week the prime minister [Netanyahu] 's office posted a two-minute-long video on YouTube in which Netanyahu explained how "the Palestinian leadership... demands a Palestinian state with one precondition: no Jews." Netanyahu continued: "There's a phrase for that," he said. "It's called 'ethnic cleansing.' And this demand is outrageous. It's even more outrageous that the world doesn't find this outrageous," he said. "Some otherwise enlightened countries even promote this outrage."

The State Department was outraged, calling the "terminology" "inappropriate and unhelpful," which is to say the video had this otherwise enlightened White House playing defense. Obama allies in the U.S. press and Netanyahu adversaries in the Israeli media also pounced on the prime minister. ... 

[A] senior official from a D.C.-based Jewish organization wrote me in an email that "the video was probably not aimed at any particular person or initiative at the U.N. The Israelis have been reconsidering how they do public diplomacy, because explaining all the sacrifices they've made for peace hasn't bought them any good will. So now they're shifting to asserting their rights."

Netanyahu's "No Jews" video then is best seen in a larger framework of strategic communications and media outreach. Part of that is about going to the press directly, and some of it means bypassing a typically adversarial media, foreign and domestic, to speak directly to those who constitute Israel's bedrock of support, the American public. ...