Dennis Ross, a former special assistant to President Barack Obama, is the counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute.
Articles & Testimony
Changing the minds of anti-Semites is a lost cause, but Israel can win over other critics by committing more effort and ingenuity to the task of saving innocent Palestinian lives.
On the battlefield, Israel is showing signs of success in its war against Hamas. But on the battlefield of public opinion, it is losing. Under pressure from massive street protests, leaders on both sides of the Atlantic have already slid back from the staunch support they promised Israel in the immediate aftermath of the carnage of October 7. In just three weeks, that spirit of solidarity has increasingly given way to calls for a ceasefire. While the desire to speed humanitarian assistance to Palestinians is understandable, a ceasefire would leave Hamas in control of Gaza, certain to rebuild and rearm, readying itself to launch future attacks. How can Israel lose a public relations war against killers who committed the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust? To be sure, much of this reflects the double-standard to which Israel has long been subjected. But that alone does not fully explain why so much of the world turned on the Jewish state...
