The Israeli-Palestinian Battle for People's Minds
What the best practices of "positioning" can teach us about how each group is communicating to a skeptical, media-blitzed world.
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Out of a boatload of branding books available out there, “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” is among the best.
Authors and advertising gurus Al Ries and Jack Trout deal with the problems of communicating to a skeptical, media-blitzed world and describe a revolutionary approach to creating a “position” in a prospective customer’s mind — one that reflects a company’s own strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of its competitors.
As I read the book, I could not help but think about the battle of information (and disinformation) between Israel and the Palestinians — a battle that is being fought across the world and in different languages today, yet dates back to at least the 1960s.
Here are a few examples from the book “Positioning” that explain why so many people fall for psychologically manipulative lies, half-truths and untruths, and such obvious propaganda — throughout the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and during this current Israel-Hamas war.
1. Manipulating What’s Already in People’s Minds
“Positioning is not about creating something new and different. It’s about manipulating what’s already in the prospect’s mind. It’s about bridging the connections that already exist.” — Positioning1
The Palestinians claim that their story is one of a deeply historical and profound connection to the land, of perseverance and faith in never ceasing to let go of this connection. They use buzzwords of the day to embolden this claim and gullible reporters to disseminate it, but the reality is that their society celebrates death — martyrdom and Jewish death — as one of its highest values.
To overshadow this reality, the Palestinians have reconstructed their story many times, including with the help of the Soviets and their communist allies, who in the 1960s encouraged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to abandon his open desire to annihilate the Jews in Israel, in favor of “liberating the Palestinian People” in Israel.
It was a brilliant communications strategy, and the first step in reframing the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews from religious jihad to secular nationalism, in a quest for political self-determination, a posture far less offensive to the West, especially in the wake of overwhelming guilt following the Holocaust.
“The essence of positioning thinking is to accept the perceptions as reality and then restructure those perceptions to create the position you desire,” wrote the authors of Positioning, calling this process “outside-in thinking.”
Thus self-determination, decolonization, liberation, human rights, and ethnic cleansing are all concepts that already exist in liberals’ minds, and the Palestinians just say these things (regardless of historical and present-day facts) to bridge the connections between these concepts and the Palestinian cause.
For example, Gush Etzion is a cluster of Israeli settlements located in the Judaean Mountains, directly south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, in the West Bank. The land there was originally purchased by Yemenite Jews in 1927, and then ethnically cleansed of Jews three times through 1948, only to be reclaimed by Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War. Meanwhile, the Palestinians and their supporters incessantly shout “ethnic cleansing.”
“The meanings are not in the words,” the authors wrote. “They are in the people using the words.”
In another example, Rashida Tlaib (the first Palestinian-American elected to the U.S. Congress and easily its biggest Jew-hater) has worn a shirt that says, “Palestine is a feminist, queer, refugee, racial justice issue” — even though Palestine does not exist, Palestinian culture is inherently misogynistic and homophobic, the last time some Palestinians became refugees was in 1967, and the Palestinians are not a race.
“To find a unique position, you must ignore conventional logic,” the authors wrote. “Don’t fight perceptions with facts. Perceptions will always win.”
2. ‘Semantic Differential’
“Most me-too products fail to achieve reasonable sales goals because the accent is on ‘better’ rather than ‘speed.’ That is, the Number Two company thinks the road to success is to introduce a me-too product, only better.” — Positioning
This is why Israelis and Jews have been unsuccessful, on the whole, at attempting to also use the concepts self-determination, decolonization, liberation, human rights, and ethnic cleansing — even though these concepts are central to the intellectual accuracy of Israeli and Jewish history.
According to the authors of Positioning, “‘Mapping the prospect’s mind’ is normally done with a research technique called ‘semantic differential’” — a measurement scale designed to measure a person’s subjective perception of, and affective reactions to, the properties of concepts, objects, and events by making use of a set of bipolar scales.
Hence one of the reasons why many people believe that Israel and Palestinians are polar opposites, which compels people to think that they must choose one side or the other, or that, say, liberation cannot be true to the Jewish narrative if it is part of the Palestinian one.
At worst, this benefits the Palestinians because they are billed in much of the media and many conversations as the “underdog” and “defenseless.” At best, people are easily confused and do not know what to think, which also works to Israel’s detriment.
“Confusion,” wrote the authors of Positioning, “is the enemy of successful positioning.”
3. Not Bothering With the Facts At All
“It’s a whole lot easier to change the facts to fit your opinions.” — Positioning
It is also a whole lot easier for social media to confirm and reconfirm people’s opinions, thanks to algorithms that create self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating echo chambers.
“The mind, as a defense against the volume of today’s communications, screens and rejects much of the information offered it,” wrote the authors of Positioning. “In general, the mind accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience. Once a mind is made up, it’s almost impossible to change it.”
This might explain at least partially why many so-called “anti-Zionists” regularly shut down conversations because they are overly entrenched in their dogma and disallow their paradigms to be challenged and, God forbid, modified.
“Unsane people make up their minds and then find the facts to ‘verify’ the opinion,” wrote the authors. “Or even more commonly, they accept the opinion of the nearest ‘expert,’ and then they don’t have to bother with the facts at all.”
4. ‘Israel is not for everyone.’
“The biggest single mistake that companies make is trying to appeal to everybody. Rather than asking yourself, ‘Who are we trying to appeal to?’ try asking yourself the opposite question, ‘Who should not use our brand?’” — Positioning
Israel’s current government-driven tagline is “Land of Creation” — a sort of open invitation for everyone.
But perhaps Jews and Israelis would be better off if we were more exclusive: Israel is not for everyone, and especially not for people who are on a spectrum of stupid, ignorant, naive, uneducated, brainwashed, gullible, or just plain antisemitic.
Israelis know that Jew-haters are empowered by Jewish fear and neutralized by Jewish strength. Well before and certainly after the founding of the Jewish state in 1948, Israelis have been the change to this equation. It is time for the rest of us to follow suit.
5. Islam as an ‘Effective Position’
“Isolating a narrow target is usually the first step in finding an effective position.” — Positioning
In Gaza, the West Bank, Iran, and other places, Islam as a political doctrine is often used to cover up mind-boggling corruption. During the Second Intifada (a violent Palestinian uprising against Israel), for example, the immeasurably kleptocratic Palestinian Authority started incorporating Islam into its political rhetoric and adding jihad to its agenda.
As a result, the Authority gained even more support financially and politically within the Arab and Muslim worlds: Money officially donated to the Authority during the Second Intifada jumped 80 percent, from $555 million to more than $1 billion.
All this while the Palestinian Authority refuses to use its considerable international aid (billions of dollars) to relocate more than 100,000 Palestinians from Palestinian-controlled refugee camps to residential locations in the territories, preferring to leave them confined under extremely unpleasant conditions.
This is likely to make many of these Palestinians more religious and more radicalized, thus producing more Islamic-inspired terrorism, more funding for Palestinian factions, and the flywheel both repeats itself and gets exponentially stronger.
6. Keeping It Stupid Simple
“The best approach to take in our over-communicated society is the oversimplified message.” — Positioning
As I mentioned, before this Israel-Hamas war, the country’s tagline was “Land of Creation” — which is too generic in my opinion, and perhaps something that can be said about other countries.
What’s unique (and simple) about Israel is that it is, as one of my Jewish American friends likes to say, the “Land of the Jews.”
If the Israeli government adopted this tagline instead, it would make people across the world ask themselves: What does “Land of the Jews” mean exactly? How does it look and feel like? Which types of people would I encounter there?
Thus, “Land of the Jews” is kind of a curiosity creator that would prompt an exponentially increasing amount of people to want to learn more about and discover Israel, both from afar and in-person — no less the only place in the world where this tagline is true.
Ries, Al and Trout, Jack. “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.” McGraw Hill. 2001.
The Jews have a passionate reverence for Truth and Justice—and the unbreakable bond between them. Two thousand years of Talmudic study and discussion sharpened the minds of educated Jews to unravel knots and get at the underlying truth of complex situations. If the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were discussed in a quiet room before objective observers, the legitimacy of Jewish claims would be apparent to all concerned.
What the Jews have been unprepared for is that the discussion is now dominated by Pro-Palestinian activists with bullhorns shouting slogans at their Israeli opponents and making sure that their voices are drowned out. This is the new normal, and the Israeli counter-attack in the media wars has barely gotten off the ground. Hopefully, someday soon, Mark Regev will start reading "The Future Of Jewish" and pick up a few pointers to share with his team.
“Land of the Jews” An astounding miracle in the desert to see with your own eyes. I fell instantly in love with Israel.