 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Keeping the World Company, and I'm joined by my co-host, Tim Apochella, and our special esteemed guest and historical scholar. That means a scholar who is into history rather than a scholar who is herself historical, okay? That's Jean Rosenfeld. She joins us, too. And we are going to talk about narratives. We can talk about the competing narratives around what is going on in the Middle East, and we're going to examine each one, how they got started, how they are playing out, what effect they're having, and what we can do about them. So Tim, let me start with you. How many narratives are we talking about? Are there two? That would be the easy answer, but possibly more. What do you think? Two would be the easy answer, and I'd like to go with that if I could, but I won't. You also have narratives from the NGOs. They're doing their job out there and reporting what they think are the facts. And so it's not just the media in Israel, in the Gaza area, and West Bank area. So you do have, again, these agencies that are reporting data that is pertaining to their mission, and the media services are picking up on those reports and they're reporting it. I've noticed a shift since we last spoke. I've seen more of a balanced reporting going back to the initial attacks against Israel, and now some of the details of how Israelis were slaughtered, wholesale slaughter. And those reports are very disturbing, and I don't know what prompted the media to shift back to Israel's initial attack by Hamas, but they're doing it at least in the last week. Well, they were seriously criticized for spending 95% of their time on the sad story of the people, the Palestinians in Gaza. And if they were criticized, a couple of them, I wouldn't say apologized, that's their own word. They corrected themselves. But as I told you when you first mentioned this the other day, that once you come up with a bad narrative, it sticks, and it's very hard to change, I mean, see if you agree, to change the narrative. So if they were doing it the wrong way, spreading the wrong message, putting the wrong emphasis on originally, and then they corrected themselves after they were criticized, the damage is already done. Do you agree? I absolutely agree. It's, you know, you talk to any propagandist and they know that whoever gets the first message out and repeats it several times, the retention of that particular story is retained. Yeah. There are some narratives like that the hospital where the parking lot was blown up, and the first thing that happened instantaneously was that Hamas reported that it was the Israeli Air Force. That wasn't true. Some media just never accepted the Israeli proof that it wasn't true, that it was actually an errant rocket from the Jihad. And so the first story stuck. And if you looked across the world today, I suggest that in that sub-narrative, or maybe it's part of, you know, the larger Palestinian narrative, you will find most people accept what Hamas came up with as the story and reject or don't know about the Israeli side of it. Do you agree? Yeah, I do. I'd also like to offer an example of how a narrative sticks. And despite numerous retractions, the original narrative sticks. Remember Pizza Gate in New York City? You ask a lot of mega people, and they swear by the fact that Pizza Gate was a real story. And there was nothing as far as a retraction that appealed to them. So, you know, we do have, you know, responsible newspapers and media outlets that make mistakes. They're honest mistakes. The retraction is printed, but the retraction never has really remembered that often. And so that's part of the dilemma is that the human condition, the human brain, kind of sticks with what it hears first and kind of glosses over any retractions subsequently. Yeah, Jean, to you, on the larger picture here about humanity, you know, that Tim refers to, it seems to me that one station makes a mistake and goes for a certain blood and gore narrative. And then the others follow. So what you find is sort of a bubble of narrative. If the narrative that they copy is wrong, then they're all wrong. Likewise, I think that same phenomenon exists out in the street. If some group, if somebody going to call it influencers, pick up on a narrative and somebody copies them, they're likely to copy what's in that bubble. And then you have 100,000 people in London all on a narrative that could be wrong. Then my view that is wrong. What is this about human nature, about the species that calls for us to copy the first statement, copy the blood and gore approach, copy a narrative that is wrong. I would suggest you're the historian, but it seems to me that this has existed throughout history. Well, you know, I have heard others who are not historians that are more expert than I in psychology and come up with some ideas. First and foremost, your peer group. And you're disposed to listen to your peer group and your general attitude is going to be influenced by them. Mark Sageman has talked about terrorists recruiting among bands of brothers. These are young men who are pretty footloose and are searching for some hero role for themselves. And they tend to band together and think the same way. So they're ripe for recruitment. A second thing we've learned from a scholar named Ramsey McMullen some time ago about conversion. How do you convert somebody? What has happened with Hamas is they had these narratives ready for dissemination, many of them. And also the human rights groups like Amnesty International have already predisposed a lot of people to blame Israel for what's going on with their accusation of apartheid in the world court. So we have a number of things that are going on here, both at the personal level and at the NGO level, as Tim figured out. Jean, I want to ask you about something that was covered in the New York Times a week ago, and that is the change, the shift in liberalism in the world. Liberalism seems to fold around these things. You know, you talk about, for example, just one of many examples, Amnesty. Amnesty International, you know, before, in my view, it was a liberal organization. Now it's buying into a narrative that is not liberal at all. And that's so for a lot of liberal organizations and a lot of people, liberal, formerly people we would consider liberal. And it may be a factor in what's happening in the campuses and streets of the United States. But, you know, what is going on? Do you agree with that shift, the statement of that shift? And what is going on here that Amnesty International would actually side with terrorists? Amnesty International has prepared a number of reports on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Their earlier reports examined the Palestinian Authority and the government in Gaza, which took over from the Palestinian Authority around 2006. And they criticized the leadership of the Palestinians for not providing for their people, for not negotiating for peace, for a number of things. And then all of a sudden, recently, a year or so ago, they came out with a report that was so biased, I couldn't believe it. I mean, it wouldn't, if it were in a paper presented in my class on history, I would give it a failing grade because it's only one side. They used only Palestinian sources. They complained only about the Israeli government jailing people, not the Palestinian Authority, jailing their own people. They complained about Israel affecting the infrastructure of Gaza, did not complain about the fact that the Gaza leadership did not provide enough water and sewage and infrastructure as well. I don't know why they suddenly shifted their perspective, why they did not use their previous research and incorporate that into a more balanced report. You know, today, what's happening, if you look at the general news media, if you go to Al Jazeera, they have printed the Palestinian narrative, one to 10. And no other outlet that I know of has done that simple thing. And if you look at Fox News, it is four square behind the Israeli narrative. So what do you do when you go to the media? Well, you take the extremes and you drop them, you get rid of them. You look at what's in the middle, basically. But people don't know how to do that. The colleges have not really been teaching critical thinking. Too much bias and emotion has crept into the classrooms. One professor was just interviewed, I believe it was for now, and saying she had no idea when these protests broke out after October 6th that these students had so much emotion going. She had no idea. Well, where has she been? You know, if you talk to young people, they're very susceptible to the BDS movement, which has been going on for some time. And as I said before, the principle of Ramsey McMullen, if you have accepted certain things before something is across your threshold and trying to convert you, already accepted part of the message, the BDS message, which has been going on for a number of years, or the AI message that Israel is an apartheid state, then you're more disposed to accept the whole thing. Tim, to you on the timing issue, you know, we spoke a few minutes ago about, for example, the Hamas message gets out instantly as if it were planned, and I personally believe it was planned, and it circumvents the world. It's everywhere in minutes, you know, with social media, electronic communications, and it sticks, OK? So the question is, one is first in time, first to influence the world, that seems clear. But then it seems that, as Jean says, it picks up and it spreads through the bubbles of individuals and their peer groups and so forth. But my question to you is, what happens then? In other words, does it stay forever? Does it diminish over time? Are people capable? Are these groups capable of rethinking it? Or does it just get worse? Well... Oh, go ahead, Jean. I was just going to say one thing, and then I'll pass it to you, Tim. One thing I do want to say, too, is the importance of visuals. We're finding out that some of these photographs of Palestinian children in Gaza, the corpses lying on the ground, people sitting in the midst of rubble and despair, blood all over it. Those are from Syria from years ago. They're picked up and they're circulated by those who have the intention of doing it because they're already bought into the narrative. So you have an army of narrators on both sides who are promoting things by using, by falsifying, by using and abusing the media. I'm going to come back to you on that, but let me go to the question I put to Tim. What's the time factor here? What's the dynamic? I think if a lie has been accepted, it takes a lot of time to dispel that lie or a false narrative, a long time. And in some cases, it never is dispelled. Just look at urban myths. Some of these urban myths we have in this world, in this country, are ridiculous. And we all know they're not true, but yet they exist and they have a life of their own for decades. Just one example. I also want to kind of tag on to our discussion about the narrative. And I'd be interested in to see if Jean kind of agrees with my opinion or not. And that is, for years now, the narrative and the official position by the United States government was supportive of a two-state solution. And then we saw that two-state solution kind of evaporate because Netanyahu wanted to, didn't really support a two-state solution and he started immediately building developments in some of these areas that would be part of the two-state solution. So I think there was a narrative that Israel was not proactive or being aggressive enough for a solution that many countries bought off on, including the United States. And so that narrative isn't helpful as it pertains to this current crisis we're in. Jean, what do you think about that? Yes, Benjamin Netanyahu in the year 2000, when he wasn't prime minister, was between his administrations, went to a meeting of heads of state and military people in Herzliya and said straight out, he thought the biggest problem of the 21st century would be the desire for self-determination. And if you read that, it means Palestinian self-determination. And Gershom Gorenberg, the American journalist who made Aliyah to Israel warned shortly thereafter when he went back into power, when the Netanyahu administration again came on the line around 2009, that he was very, very worried because Netanyahu was gonna let the third temple messianists into his government. And he was not in favor of a two-state solution at all. And I don't think Israelis today agree with him. And I think if anything comes out of this terrible conflict, it will be, again, a real push by other world states to encourage a solution, a final solution to this whole problem politically, which is a two-state solution, at least right now. And you have to understand too that it wasn't just the United States and Israel that were backburning the two-state solution. It was Saudi Arabia and Egypt and the Palestinians felt they had to do something to get it back on the table. This is pretty extreme, but I think they may have achieved that. So, Jean, my question is just real quick is did that history basically create a broad brushstroke over today's reporting of events? Is that a precursor or was that a precursor that tainted objective reporting? In the sense that people were feeling that Israel wasn't serious about a Palestinian agreement. Yes, yes. I do believe that on the left, we talked about the shift, the liberal shift, some liberal shift, not all. I think that may have motivated liberals and organizations like Amnesty International to start listening more to the Palestinian narrative, yes. You know, I saw a video from Prager University and I guess they're on the Zionist side of all this, but what they said, Jean, was that on five and they showed you historically the five occasions, a two-state solution had been proposed to the Palestinians all the way to the early part of the 20th century and forward. They documented or at least they covered in their video what had happened to suggest or propose a two-state solution. And in each case, the Israelis or the Jews, depending on what time you're talking about, agreed. They were happy to do it. And in each case, the Palestinians, whatever you called them at the time, because the name, the nomenclature of Palestinian really only took place recently. I guess it was just before or just after the War of Independence in 47, 48. In each case, the Palestinian group rejected it. And that puts a certain light on this. Now, if you say, well, that's not a completely accurate statement. Okay, but it still hangs out there. For me, if it is an accurate statement, it is really a condemnation of the whole two-state idea because if they tried two states five times before, why in the world would it succeed now? The Palestinian camp narrative on this is, let's kill all the Jews and destroy the state of Israel. And we're not going to negotiate for peace. We're not going to cooperate in any way. We have to get to our mission. And so it really depends on the history, doesn't it? So were there five occasions? Can you talk to us about that? I can't talk to you about each occasion, except Oslo came the closest and then Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by groups that today support the extreme right coalition of Netanyahu's government. And this was a disaster for Israel, I feel. The biggest sticking point in my estimation for a solution on both sides is the settlements. The settlements have been, in essence, occupying land that the Palestinians want for their state. So in each, you have to look at each attempt for a solution to see what was it that, you remember it was Yasser Arafat and the PLO that were basically the ones that had to make the agreement. Were they serious? Probably not, because they not only didn't want settlements, they didn't want that small piece of land either. They wanted more land. And when once Netanyahu was on board, were the Israelis serious? Probably not. What's different about today is that we have a war going on. This is the worst outburst in terms of Israeli casualties and Palestinian casualties in the history of Israel. They've never seen anything like it. And it's threatening to be a wider war. The United States is engaged in a polarized world against Russia and its proxies in Iran and its proxies. So it's a changed situation. The stakes are much higher. And what we're witnessing right now, regardless of where the visuals and the reports are coming from, what we're witnessing right now is heartbreaking. Indeed, but one thing becomes clear is that this was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. This was really special and it really struck their conscience. It was beyond description, beyond imagination, and so their response, not all Israelis feel that way, but enough of them feel that way, if you could say this is Israeli response. And it's more than a response, I think. I think it's motivated by the notion that whatever you do, we give them land, give them all of Gaza, all of Gaza. Give them land on the West Bank, the same thing. They'll be back, not necessarily for more land, but to implement that mission of destroying Israel and killing Jews and not making peace. What is gold in my air said that you can never negotiate for peace with someone who wants to kill you. And it goes further. You can never negotiate with peace with someone who was sworn not to negotiate for peace. So this is really, there's so many narratives and sub-narratives and exaggerations and PR campaigns going on in so many levels. I think just as this is the worst war Israel has seen since the Holocaust and its history, this is the worst propaganda war Israel has ever seen. And at first, let me offer that at first in the first few days, Israel could have taken command of the information, but didn't want to show the pictures of the people who were killed or worse, beheaded, burned alive, what have you. They didn't want to show it because it was distasteful. I mean, there's a certain thing in the Jewish culture that stands against making that public. It's disrespect for the body and the family and so forth. So they didn't show it. At the same time, Hamas is showing pictures of those kids in the streets and Hamas is ready. Hamas has those pictures of Syrian kids from another time, phony photographs from another time. We have seen that before. Remember a scandal about Reuters? This is a couple of wars ago, Reuters was taken in and there was a doll. I don't know if you remember this, there was a doll some kid was hanging onto, some Palestinian kid and Reuters published that. But then when you looked at it carefully, it was the same doll as in another picture and another picture and another picture suggesting that this was all staged. And it was, it was staged. It also is remarkable that these pictures we get from Gaza about all these kids, they flow at us. There are people out there with cameras taking pictures and sending them in and putting them around the world. So we talked about this, we all talked about this before it's the information war. We're dealing with an information war. And at first I think Israel didn't really report on that. Now later, they're reporting more on it and maybe that's maybe Tim that got something to do with the fact that the press is covering it because they're getting the information before they weren't. But Tim, I want to go to another question and this is the secondary thing. So you have all this narrative and misinformation, disinformation that's already sort of fixed in the channels of information around the world. Where does that take this war? Because as we've discussed before, in part, maybe in substantial part, this war is an information war. Hamas is sophisticated and it knows that. Where does that take this war? Well, in my opinion, it could further polarize positions. Netanyahu could just say, I don't care what's being reported anymore, it's all about much of its misinformation. We're gonna do what we're gonna do, damn world opinion. And so it hardens one's line, if you will. And that's not a position you really want to be in when you need allies in the Middle East and you're forcing your allies into a kind of a hardened position. And I think that's what happens is people just give up and say, world opinion be damned, we're moving forward. And in some cases, you could even accelerate or increase the amount of a kinetic war. Yeah, your comments remind me of a story in I guess it was today's times about one of the Arab nations, we called this ambassador to Israel. So they're cutting diplomatic ties and this, I forget, it's a smaller nation, a Bahrain was Bahrain. And they're cutting diplomatic ties and I expect other Arab countries will do the same. And we were, that is Israel was friendly with Bahrain before. There was a light at the end of that tunnel, but now not. And this could have other effects. So in the end, Gene, is Netanyahu gonna prevail if he ignores this world opinion that has been created and that is popping up hither and yon with protests and terminating negotiations with other Arab countries and the like, can he prevail this way? Let's assume he does have a terrific army. Let's assume that the Air Force really can destroy the tunnels. Let's assume that the troops are as strong as we would hope they would be. Can he prevail on the kinetic side and ignore the public relations side? He can prevail on the kinetic side and he can lose on the information warfare side, which may be more serious. You have to win on both. He's gotta win on both battlefields. And the information warfare is something that has a long shelf life. If the UN, for example, which is now saying that Israel may have committed humanitarian crimes in its conduct of the war, if there's enough opinion that Israel needs to be tried for that after the war, it will taint their victory on the kinetic side. Joe Biden is already now calling for not a ceasefire, but a pause. See, Hamas wants a ceasefire. And they're drumming up and ginning up world opinion as much as possible through the visuals for a ceasefire. Now, I'm not saying that it's a bad idea to pause, but it throws a jackhammer into the kinetic war. So you see how the information war can be more important than the kinetic war, can affect the kinetic war, in the meantime, we're losing sight of the fact that there are negotiations going on. And as long as there are negotiations going on with Hamas over the hostages, Israel needs a presence on the battlefield in order to negotiate for strength. So we have to look at three things, negotiation, the kinetic war, and then the information warfare. It's complex, but they all play into one another. And we have to look at what Hamas's preconceived ideas are and what their preconceived objectives are and what they're calling for and how they utilize what influence they have now on people who are convinced to change the equation in terms of a military victory. Well, when Luzo draws, seems that Israel, at least on the public relations side, has been damaged and it's really tragic because we did lose 1,400 people to horrific massacres. And that is no longer the issue. The issue was those children in those graphics in Gaza, even though the Israelis did the knock-knock thing on the buildings and asked them to move south and did all they could to limit the loss of life and so. But they believe that unless they do, this is to me a driving tactical issue. If unless they do something, it will happen again because Hamas, as long as it exists, is sworn to kill Jews, destroy the state of Israel. And if Hamas continues to exist, you can bet your bottom dollar this will happen again. So, I mean, Israel has a problem either way on the public relations side, but also if they capitulate, if they treat Hamas as a legitimate civilized organization, not a terror organization, it'll happen again, which is maybe the worst result of all. So I guess my question, Tim, is as Israel lost on a long-term basis the PR war, look at those college campuses, look at those universities, look at the liberals who have turned against it, look at the United Nations, doesn't do anything anyway, but look at Europe, look at this huge global effect that this PR war has had, is having, will have. Is this a permanent loss of respect for Israel? No, I don't think it's permanent, but it's gonna have an impact for a long time to come. I also, the PR war intertwines with the political war and I'll put this out there and I don't know it's an opinion. I think Netanyahu knows his political days are over. I think because Israel was caught off guard, that lands squarely at his desk. And I think Netanyahu is now thinking about legacy. And what is that legacy? Well, if I'm Netanyahu in my mind, I'm gonna show the, I'm gonna show in Israel history that I did everything I could to cut the head off of Hamas and I'm gonna do so damn PR, making Israel look bad for right now. And I don't know why I think this, but I think this think that Netanyahu likes to be that strong leader, be perceived as tough as Moshe Diane or George Patton or any other strong general. And I think that's the legacy he wants to leave Israelis to remember him by, that he wasn't couldn't capitulate to the terrorist acts of Hamas and he did everything in his power to stop it and cut the head off of Hamas. I don't know if he'll be successful because it's hard to decimate a terrorist organization when they easily infiltrate back into civilian populations. I saved the most difficult question for Eugene. Are you ready? Oh, okay. What, all that considered, what do we do? What do we do now? And I'll start with the campuses and the streets of the United States, which are really screwed up on this issue. What do we do now in terms of world opinion, in terms of relating to countries, allies in Europe and, gee, everywhere? What do we do now to protect and preserve Israel from being destroyed? What do we do now? We listen to the wisest voices in our midst and there are plenty of very wise voices. Gershom Gorinburg has called for Netanyahu to step down. I think there has to be more pressure on Netanyahu to step down. And that may be part, as I've said before, it's a radical idea that it's one that my son who is pro-Palestinian gave me and that could be part of the negotiation. Secondly, we need to have humanitarian causes and dial down the rhetoric and the emotion surrounding the terrible plight of the Ghazan people who are caught in this terrible war. We've never seen visuals and reportage like this before in wars like this. There have been wars like this and we can't avoid quote unquote collateral damage in urban warfare like this. Against an enemy that started the war is trying to create an opinion that it is a victim while it is refusing to negotiate the hostage release and it deliberately wanted to create this chaos. Who is going to confront Hamas and deal with Hamas? Only Israel is doing that. So that's one thing that we have to keep saying again and again. You know, you can wish for a ceasefire, you can wish for a settlement, but you've got to bring Hamas along. Who is going to do that and how are we going to do it? And right now the Israelis are doing it for us at great human cost. But again, they are acting out of a moral tradition of a just war. They're employing the tactics. The tactics aren't going to always work, but whose fault is that? How do you compel Hamas to do the right thing as well? Let's keep our perspective straight here. Let's keep our facts straight. We need to do more for Palestinian people. We need to provide for them and I think Israel is doing more. They're letting more trucks in, they're letting more people out, they're trying to be careful that Hamas doesn't escape to the South as well and create mayhem. But it's an impossible task. This is terrible war. And somehow the United States, the United Nations, the other Arab nations need to step up to the plate, help the Palestinians, maybe through humanitarian causes, maybe by opening up the border more to Egypt, whatever they need to do. But you can't just lay this all on Israel and you can't tell Israel to stop fighting Hamas. I mean, you used the word earlier in the show, conversion. And I suggest that the conversion really needs to apply to the Palestinians because they have had a lifetime of hate and they are committed to killing Jews and destroying Israel. I remember one piece of footage that came out of Gaza and it was a woman who had been raped apparently and maybe tortured and she was in the back of a truck and she was naked. And she was being paraded through the streets of Gaza and the crowds were enormous and the crowds were celebrating all of that. Those crowds were not limited to Hamas. Those were Palestinian crowds. So I think the Palestinians have been affected more than anybody else by this PR campaign and they have been converted to the Hamas point of view and they have to be reconverted which is going to be very, very difficult. I don't think people recognize that. Tim, final thoughts. Final thoughts is, I think Netanyahu is going to do what he's going to do. I think he knows his career is over. And again, as I've already said, he wants a legacy of being the guy that did his best and is utmost to stamp out Hamas. I don't think he'll be successful but that's what he's going to try to do. And I don't see, we see a ceasefire in the immediate future at all. This is all an enormous historical tragedy. Looking at it from the point of view of an historian, you have to compare it with some of the greatest tragedies in human history. But, Jean, what are your final thoughts that you would leave with our audience? I think that the kinetic war is being somewhat moderated by the position of the United States because in a very practical terms, even though Netanyahu is a hardliner and he wants to stamp out Hamas, he's had to listen to the United States. Israel can't win this war without the United States. And they know there's going to be an election pretty soon. So that's one real politic factor here. I think, Tim, there will be a ceasefire sooner than perhaps we think. Being able to sustain this level of emotion, polarization, negative consequence, casualty levels is going to be well-nigh intolerable over the long term. And I think more and more certain Arab states are going to get into the mix in trying to effect this. But again, once again, what the Israelis can do and what the people who recognize that Israel is the only Jewish state in the world and a very necessary state are going to have to do, is they're really going to have to put the pressure on Netanyahu in a way that he's never felt before. Yeah, and a big question there is when now, right now, today, throw them out now. Put that pressure on right away or put it on later at some other demarcation point. I would like to offer my own last thought. It's like they say, are we going to have a World War III? Well, some people think we're already in World War III and that World War III is sort of a subdued version of what you might expect as a kinetic World War III. And in terms of applying that kind of analysis to what's happening in the Middle East, I think the Middle East has been at war since before 1947, and it's still at war. And furthermore, that it will always be at war. The only question is whether it breaks out into this kind of violence. But I think you talk about a war and stopping the war, it'll never stop. It is what it is. That's my closing thought. Anyway, thank you very much, Tim Epichelen and Gene Rosenfeld. Thank you for this interesting and very informative discussion, very thoughtful discussion. Some of these points have been really, really, really worthy. We'll see you next time. Aloha. Thank you.