It has become clear to me in the year since Hamas’ October 7 pogrom that an alarming number of people in my life — and for whom I have deep personal affection — were all right with it and wouldn’t be overly put off if it happened again.
My unease has gotten me thinking about how, throughout a forty-year career in crisis management, I have been approached hundreds of times about how to fight antisemitism and “improve Israel’s image.” None of these efforts got very far due to the flailing, unfocused and delusional objectives of the well-meaning people who knocked on my door. Fundamentally, they fail to understand that the goal of crisis management is to defuse an attack, not improve an image.
To begin to address antisemitism and the hostility toward Israel in which this ancient hatred now manifests, I’d like to sharpen its four types because you can only reach people if you know who your audience is and establish the best achievable outcome.
First there are the Eliminationists, a term coined by historian Daniel Goldhagen. These were the Nazis. They are Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Eliminationists want Jews dead, and they cannot be targeted for persuasion. When it comes to communications, they are a lost cause. They can only be avoided when possible and defeated with force when not.
Second, the Country Club Antisemites. These are mannerly folks who will be friendly with Jews, but would rather you not marry their daughters. The country clubbers aren’t worth the resources because they pose an insult more than they do a threat.
Now there are what I call the Spahn Ranch Antisemites. Spahn Ranch was the Charles Manson family’s base of operations. They were comprised of often cute but unkempt young women with tiny voices who talked a lot about trees. And peace. But when programmed to kill, they had no problem torturing and mutilating innocent human beings, including a nine-months pregnant woman.
Go on Instagram and look at the faces of some of the anti-Israel protestors on college campuses. These are the Spahn Ranchers. See the rage in their eyes, powered by obscenely false notions of what defines genocide and apartheid. Pay close attention to the campus spokespeople for anti-Israel cells, as they often have names like Deborah Goldfarb Horowitz. Iran is many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. They know how to spot a useful idiot. Spahn Ranchers are orthodontist’s sons and daughters — of multiple faiths — from high-prestige suburbs, bitter that they weren’t born AIDS babies in Nigeria.
The Spahn Ranchers cannot be the target audience for efforts to address antisemitism and Israel’s justification because they are not persuadable. After all, the battle is not about data, it’s about the carefully curated identity of a Brentwood or Shaker Heights jihadist. Wearing a keffiyeh to Cousin Amy’s Bat Mitzvah while running plays for Iran— now that’s a unique individual! Except that it’s not. To the extent you can fight the Spahn Ranchers, the methods are to cut their funding, alert the authorities, or make their employers aware of the risk they take by having a ticking bomb in their cubicles.
Finally, there are the real problem children: Utopian Antisemites. These are very nice progressive people who don’t know they’re antisemites. When you ask them “What should Israel have done?” in response to the October 7 massacre the answer is always: “Not this.” Such a strategy wouldn’t get you very far in crisis management, which demands some kind of action, however flawed.
Utopian Antisemites are of many faiths. They have Jewish friends and spouses. Nevertheless, they believe Jews are only of use when soft. Doctors. Comedians. When I raised the possibility of his latent bigotry to a friend, he denied it, adding, “You know Mel Brooks is my hero.” I responded, “Yes, but if he shot an intruder, you’d say it was disproportionate. Or there was a ‘better way’.” An offer of chicken soup perhaps.
The reason the Utopians are antisemites is because they hold Jews to standards they would expect of no other cohort, especially themselves. They believe that Jews could use peaceful means — or sorcery — to resolve the Palestinian conflict, but they choose not to because of their inherent predations. After all, who could possibly be against a cease fire? (Unless it’s not a cease fire at all, but a ploy for jihadists to regroup.) Can’t sorcerers find some land for the Palestinians? You’d think so, but sorcerers gonna sorcer.
The foundation of Utopian Antisemites’ belief system is that they feel — feel — like good people because they hate that innocents are getting killed in war. Feeling is all. In this construct, the weak are virtuous and the strong are evil. Put differently, the ostensibly weak could not be pernicious and the ostensibly strong could not be vulnerable. Four thousand years of hatred, billions of dollars in Islamist funding, and the asymmetrical disparity between 15 million Jews and 2 billion Muslims have ensured that this construct is impenetrable.
No one should get psychic prizes for being horrified by the deaths of innocents because it’s a cheap sentiment. We all abhor these deaths. We’re supposed to. Except for the deaths of Jews who, by definition, cannot be victims. Thus, some of the Believe-All-Women feminists who argue that the Israeli women who were raped to death were just trying to put one over on us.
Of the four types of antisemites cited here, I still hold out some hope for the Utopians. Some.
I believe there is hope because they have the capacity for reflection, driven especially by their shock at being characterized as “haters,” not to mention the prospect of losing a friend. There is some sunlight with this crowd because they are shocked when you distance yourself from them. They are capable of shame — such as when I told my Mel Brooks-worshipping friend that an overwhelming number of Palestinians support Hamas. He had wrongly thought Hamas was a splinter group.
Other Utopian Antisemites were shocked to learn that Israelis were inept at genocide because they could wipe out the Palestinians in ten minutes, but the Palestinian population keeps expanding. Do the Utopians ascribe to genocide the death of 30,000 of the U.S. military’s own troops during WW2? What about the 20,000 French civilians the Allies killed at Normandy?
And what say the Utopians about real genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo, China’s occupation of Tibet, the 1.2 million Muslims interned in China, and the million Muslims killed in Syria and Yemen — that is, besides, “Yeah, those are bad, too.” In their hearts, when pressed, Utopian Antisemites will be forced to confront the uneasy reality of why they only care about Israel.
The objective of crisis management is to stop or mitigate an attack so that the person or organization can survive; a better image is a distant bonus. This is the strategic error decent people make. Not everything is a branding battle that can be perfumed by a marketing guru. Jews are not facing a communications challenge as much as a conflict: Much of the world wants Jews dead and Jews want to live. We’re not hawking cereal here, we’re talking about existing.
Americans especially see everything through the lens of public opinion. Hearts and minds. This is a recent conceit in warfare. Propaganda historically was about rallying your allies and scaring your enemies. Now, Jews may have to consider the possibility that thriving without being adored is the best achievable outcome.
In the meantime, begin looking at antisemitism and Israel’s survival as a crisis management conundrum, not a PR challenge. And if communications are to have any merit at all, aim at the Utopian Antisemites not because they process data well, but because they have souls.
Eric Dezenhall is the author of twelve books and founder and Chairman of Dezenhall Resources, one of the first crisis management firms. His next book Wiseguys and the White House: Gangsters, Presidents and the Deals They Made will be published by HarperCollins in January.
