Recently, this pundit posited that the shocking support for Hamas’ barbarous murderers and the Palestinian cause in general after the inhuman atrocities of Oct. 7 is partly attributable to “brand equity”: A reservoir of goodwill the Palestinian movement has built up through a decades-long, unrelenting, ubiquitous, and unashamed global strategic communications and “brand-building” campaign.

But what about the once solid-gold Israeli brand? How has it eroded to the extent that vile sophists get away with averring that in pursuing the long-deserved destruction of their depraved enemies, the “apartheid state” and “colonizer” is committing “genocide?”

Let’s immediately dispatch with the scourge of anti-Semitism, which has existed since the origins of the Chosen People millennia ago and even this communications-obsessed pundit would never stoop to associating with “branding.”

See Part I: ‘Moral Equivalence’ And The Palestinians: A ‘Branding’ Issue?

In addition to that longstanding evil, two factors in particular beyond the Palestinians’ single-minded global communications campaign have dinged Israel’s image.

Factor one: tectonic shifts in American society. Two generations ago when your pundit was a youngster (the son of an Austrian Jewish holocaust refugee ferried to the United Kingdom on the infamous Kindertransport), the United States was dominated by a Judeo-Christian identity and culture.

Seventy-three percent of adults were church members with a natural affinity with and affection for the land of the Sunday School heroes of their youth. Blockbusters like “The Ten Commandments,” “Ben Hur,” and “Exodus” featured you-know-who. Israel was admired for its courageous response to united Arab efforts to wipe it off the map in 1948, 1967, and 1973.

Moreover, though Jews at their height represented only 3.7% of the population, their customs and cuisine were familiar, and accomplished artists, musicians, scientists, diplomats, and other leaders widely respected.

In contrast, in 1960 Muslims accounted for a mere 0.13% of the population, and their culture was largely a curiosity filtered through Hollywood cliches. Palestinians burst on the public consciousness in the most negative manner conceivable: the 1972 Munich massacre and the 1985 hijackings of a TWA flight from Beirut and the Achille Lauro (including the murders of a U.S. serviceman and a wheelchair-bound Jewish-American).

All that has changed. As of 2021, church membership had plummeted to a minority of the population. “Nones” – individuals with no religious affiliation whatsoever – comprise more than a third of Gen Z. It’s unsurprising that young people with no religious connection to Christianity or its roots in Judaism wouldn’t identify with Israel.

Meanwhile, the Islamic population is skyrocketing – with Muslims projected to surpass Jews as the second-largest religious group by 2040 – making their perspectives on events more prevalent, as recent demonstrations indicate.

But second, and galactically more dispositive: Israeli elites have trashed their own brand. Why does Israeli-Palestinian “moral equivalence” resonate so in the West? Because it is practiced within Israel with a vengeance – literally.

In a stunningly prescient September opinion piece, noted U.S.-born Israeli conservative analyst Caroline Glick traced “two revolutions Israel’s leftist elite initiated 30 years ago” – the Oslo and judicial revolutions.

 “Oslo” – referring to the 1990s “peace framework” involving mutual recognition by Israel and the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – was, per Ms. Glick, “predicated on the fraud that the PLO — the archetypical modern terrorist organization … had become a credible, responsible … (and) moral actor.”

Moreover, Oslo’s “deeper assertion” was — and here’s the key – “that Israel is an immoral actor … that the only reason there is a Palestinian conflict with Israel is because Israel controls Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem (and controlled Gaza until 2005).”

Ms. Glick described the “judicial revolution,” also in the 1990s, when former Israeli Supreme Court President Aharon Barak “seiz(ed) the legislative power of the Knesset and the executive powers of the government through judicial fiat.”

She then revealed how, more recently, Israel’s upper crust has, in the name of protecting “democracy,” significantly raised the stakes by fusing these revolutions in a ferocious campaign that has further ravaged the nation’s reputation.

Spurred by woke leaders, domestic and global protests rocked the government this year when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to push through reasonable, people-empowering reforms. (The reforms also amazingly drew harsh criticism from a kibbitzing Joe Biden, a jaw-dropping interference in Israel’s internal affairs.)

Ms. Glick further fingers a cadre around former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Israel’s Barack Obama-lite power-behind-the-out-of-power, whose wealthy cronies have actually hired a high-impact PR firm founded by former Clinton mucky-muck Lanny Davis to wage a scorched-earth assault on the government.

According to Glick, the movement has “organized groups of pilots and commandos from elite IDF special forces units” and “mobilized the far-left physicians’ union, the universities, Israel’s business and banking elite, high-tech investors and workers, and other elite groups to present an image that all right-thinking members of Israel’s ruling class oppose the government and view it as illegitimate.”

A female former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) helicopter pilot, sounding like a Hamas spokesperson, earlier this year on “60 Minutes” outrageously charged that Israeli pilots “shoot bombs and missiles into houses knowing they might be killing children.” The erstwhile head of the Mossad intelligence agency dropped the “apartheid state” slur on his own country.

And most chilling of all, Shikma Bressler, the glamourous global face of the protests, uttered the “magic word,” rejecting judicial reform compromise by insisting, “It’s forbidden to speak to Nazis, Jews or not.”

As Ms. Glick pointed out, again with incredible foresight: “Why quote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, R-N.Y., or Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan when you can quote a former Mossad director or Israeli Barbie? Their actions demoralize and endanger American Jews and Jews throughout the Diaspora,” and “have made participation in public life all but impossible for pro-Israel Jewish students on campuses across America.”

The endangerment from these slanders became all too real in the Oct. 7 horrors – and the increased difficulty of dispatching Hamas given demands that the “genocidal” nation put “humanitarian” concerns above its self-defense.

A final installment will examine what Israel can and must now do to resurrect its “brand” and global standing as it fights for its very existence.

Bob Maistros is a messaging and communications strategist, crisis specialist, and former political speechwriter. He can be reached at bob@rpmexecutive.com.