We've all become explainers. Locate content on the web, cut, frame, add headlines and distribute. The official media supports and even urges citizens to engage in this. But advocacy - this is a business for professionals. Amateur advocacy can also be harmful.
A crucial part of advocacy is rhetoric – the tactic of persuasion. Aristotle, addressing the subject, stated that the quality of rhetoric is influenced by three factors: ethos - who the speaker is; Pathos - what kind of emotion the act of persuasion activates, and Logos - what is the nature of logic and truth that the act of persuasion encapsulates within it.
If we need propaganda that tries to persuade the Western world to condemn the October 7 massacre and the abduction of civilians, women and children, the Logos seems to be on our side. Logic says that anyone who desires life must condemn monsters that only want to eradicate life, and that they and their actions must be kept away from the boundaries of the normative. But it seems no coincidence that the Logos appears last in Aristotle's paradigm. This is the element with the least power of influence on the target audience of the persuasion act. In first place, Aristotle placed the ethos - the identity of the speaker. The first lesson in rhetoric teaches that if anyone wants to influence the attitudes of a particular target audience, he must recruit as a speaker a figure with whom that target audience identifies himself. This is exactly where popular Israeli public diplomacy experiences difficulties: most of the celebrities with whom Westerners prefer to identify themselves do not exactly mobilize to condemn the massacre. The recruits, most of whom are Jews or devout Christians like actor John White, do not arouse identification among the secular masses of Europe and America, and are perceived as unobjective or outdated.
A few weeks ago, I received a video clip from one of the WhatsApp groups and was asked to distribute it. The segment included a speech by an Israeli professor at the Faculty of Business Administration in Colombia. The professor, a talented and well-meaning man, spoke out against the university authorities because they allow anti-Semitic trolling on campuses without interference or condemnation. The professor, young and well-dressed, stood and spoke in the center of a circle of American students, apparently Jews. Most of them held candles, a few held the Israeli flag loosely, looking embarrassed to the core of the situation. Some looked deep at their mobile phones during the speech, as if they wished they had disappeared. Why?
It seems to have something to do with the ethos (who the speaker is) and the pathos (what emotions it evokes) of the persuasion act carried out. On the ethos side, the professor had a distinctly Israeli accent that Americans always sounded a bit aggressive. On the side of pathos, the young professor cried out his truth from the blood of his heart, at a high volume and with enthusiasm. In my experience as a PhD and later as a professor in the United States, Americans shy away from raising a voice that expresses negative emotions. In this regard, at least, they are the opposite of Israelis. While in Israel no one pays attention to you until you raise your voice, for Americans, raising your voice proves to your interlocutor that you are not worthy of dialogue, and the average American immediately cuts off contact.
The first lesson in rhetoric teaches that if anyone wants to influence the attitudes of a particular target audience, he must recruit as a speaker a figure with whom that target audience identifies himself. It is precisely here that popular Israeli public relations experiences difficulties
Americans are also very wary of criticism, especially those directed personally. As a doctoral student at an American university, I had to remain silent in classes for an entire year, until I learned how to wrap my criticism in optimism and paragon. It seems that this professor did not study, or forgot out of his extreme excitement, for he shouted his bitter criticism without any sweetening, and also personally accused the president of the university, Prof. Shafik, who was born in Alexandria, Egypt, of sponsoring and encouraging pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the university.
I am far from the only one who knows these things. There are professionals around us who have succeeded in selling the Europeans and Americans many goods and ideas. The problem lies in the recruitment of amateurs for public relations and the call on every Israeli to spread the word abroad. Advocacy in unprofessional hands seems harmful. It should be left to the professionals.
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us