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These are forces beyond the ability of any spokesman of the IDF to control or, I’d argue, significantly influence. The idea that Israel just needs better PR is adjacent to the argument that what matters is not so much spin but objective Israeli behavior. Here again, one must consider international opinion over the last several decades. Before this current war, Israel had killed fewer Palestinians in a half century of periodic hostilities than the number of civilians the United States and its allies killed during the war on ISIS alone. The number of deaths in the Syrian civil war has of course been several orders of magnitude higher than that. It would be superfluous to continue providing examples of a double standard at work, as anyone with the most basic historical understanding could go on for a very long time listing post-World War II atrocities the U.N. and the global community have all but ignored as they have sanctioned and lectured Israel.
All this leads to the question of what allies of Israel should be doing instead of demanding better public relations.
Well, for a start they can refuse to accept the false premise of moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas, as exemplified in the latest International Criminal Court arrest warrant applications for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas's leader Yahya Sinwar for war crimes.
A nation defending itself and inflicting collateral damage is not the same as a movement with exterminationist goals, which seeks to slaughter innocent people as an end in itself.
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