How Israel is destroying its own reputation

ISRAEL claims of being threatened on all sides fail to acknowledge that co-existence, recognition of rights and dignity must run both ways.

Former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski warned in 2002 that Israel was losing its global standing as Israeli-Palestinian violence escalated during the second Intifada or uprising against Israeli occupation.

At the time, Brzezinski, the former advisor to US Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter, seemed to overstate Israel's reputational problem. Today, his warning rings prophetic.

"I think Israel's international position is very badly damaged. A country that started … as a symbol of recovery of a people who were greatly persecuted now looks like a country that is persecuting people. And that's very bad," Brzezinski said 22 years ago.

"The Israelis are becoming increasingly like the white supremacist South Africans, viewing the Palestinians as a lower form of life, not hesitating to kill a great many of them and justifying this on the grounds that they are being the objects of terrorism.''

Israel's iron-fisted response to Palestinian suicide and other attacks on civilian Israelis during the second Intifada pales compared to its conduct in Gaza in response to Hamas' October 7 assault on Israel that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

So does the cost to Israel's reputation. The international community did not turn on Israel in 2002 as it has today. Nor did public opinion in the West.

At the time, Israel stood accused of excessive use of force to quash the uprising but not of genocide and massive violations of international law. In 2002, Israel was not taken to task in the world's highest courts, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

Daily images of death and destruction

In 2024, Israel has become its own worst enemy.

Its public diplomacy appears unable to compete with the daily images of death and destruction and testimonies of humanitarian personnel and Palestinians emanating from Gaza.

Public statements by Israel's most senior officials, politicians, analysts and pundits that express supremacism put a final nail in Israel's reputational coffin.

From ministers within the Netanyahu government coalition advocating for settler communities to establish themselves in Gaza after the war ends to claiming that starvation of Palestinians in the besieged strip may be "justified and moral".

These claims sit alongside numerous and consistent statements that defend war crimes, including preventing the unfettered flow of humanitarian aid, the disproportionate use of force resulting in high civilian casualties, the targeting of protected sites such as hospitals, schools, and houses of worship, and the abuse of prisoners.

Statements advocating ethnic cleansing by making Gaza inhabitable and a breeding ground for disease, Israel's lack of empathy for the suffering of innocent Palestinians, curtailing of media freedom in Israel, and successful advocacy of limiting freedom of expression elsewhere on Israel and the Palestinians ensure that plenty are available.

What could be perceived as Israel's reputational hara-kiri is likely to complicate, if not undermine, long-standing pillars of Israeli policy.

Crucially, Israel will find it increasingly difficult to sell its longstanding demand that Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims recognise the Jewish state's "right to exist," a concept non-existent in the legalities governing diplomacy and inter-state relations, rather than its existence in line with accepted diplomatic protocol.

Recognition of Israel's right to exist instead of its de jure existence would mean endorsement of the narrative that Jews are the legitimate claimants to historic Palestine, regardless of whether they have not constituted a majority of the territory's population for at least 1,600 years.

Questions of legitimacy

Moreover, Israel's quest rejects the legitimacy of any competing national narratives as part of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with the Palestinian state expressing the national aspirations of a displaced people.

By demanding recognition of Israel's right to exist, Israel requires Palestinians to abandon their claims to the land and in turn, it would legitimise their displacement in the 1948 and 1967 Middle East wars.

The 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) that led to the creation of the internationally recognised Palestine Authority fudged the issue by framing it as Israel's "right to exist in peace and security" rather than its "right to exist" as a matter of principle.

Yet even that could prove a difficult sell in future negotiations without a significant degree of reciprocity.

In any future peace, Palestinians are likely to demand an equal right to "exist in peace and security" with appropriate security guarantees that will have widespread international backing.

With Israel having recovered its surveillance, intelligence, and military superiority in Lebanon with a series of stunning operations that severely damaged Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia, Israel is in no mood to be equitable.

Many Israelis and Jews have bought Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's narrative that Israel, surrounded by forces seeking its destruction, stands alone in a global environment populated by anti-Semites.

It's a worldview that exists in a vacuum. It fails to acknowledge that refusing to grant others the dignity and rights one claims for oneself bears risks.

It blinds one to the fact that overwhelming forces and targeted killings like the recent assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will not shift the paradigm of Middle East politics.

It's a lesson Netanyahu should have drawn from decades of Israeli-targeted assassinations.

Nasrallah joined a long list of leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and an assortment of others, including Iranian nuclear scientists, targeted by Israel. Nasrallah took control of Hezbollah in 1992 after Israel killed his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi.

Their deaths demonstrated Israel's surveillance, intelligence, and military superiority. The killings produced short-term fighters setbacks, domestic political successes for Israeli leaders, and, at times, an enhanced Israeli sense of security but failed to eliminate threats to the Jewish state's national security.

Israel's destruction of its reputational capital will likely make it increasingly difficult to sell internationally as well as domestically targeted assassinations and policies rooted in a belief that force rather than equitable solutions to political problems will guarantee the Jewish state's security.

Coming to grips with that reality would allow Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate a compromise two-state solution to their century-old conflict and allow Israel to rebuild its reputational capital.

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Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.

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