Joseph Nye theorized the concept of “soft power,” according to which, in the modern world, military power was not everything, since American power also rested on the attraction exerted worldwide by its cinema, its music, its universities, its technological promises, and its democratic values.
Today, the epicenter of Islamist soft power is Qatar: a tiny yet immensely wealthy country that managed to attract an ethically and ecologically aberrant World Cup; a benevolent yet self-interested sponsor of sports clubs, opinion leaders, news agencies, prestigious Western universities, and politicians—among whom now stands a President of the United States himself.
This country also finances countless grassroots operatives who spread the message of the Muslim Brotherhood on campuses, in mosques, and across social media—of which Hamas is today a prominent representative—and whose imam Yusuf al-Qaradawi, based in Doha until his recent death, was known for his violent antisemitism while being widely presented as an apostle of “living together.”
In the age of social networks, instant information, and post-truth, soft power is above all about controlling the narrative.
The battle Israel is waging against Hamas is extremely difficult. But the war of words that accompanies the war of weapons—the war of soft power—appears to have been lost by Israel.
The most serious verbal defeat concerns the word genocide. When, in December 2023, South Africa brought a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) claiming that Israel was committing genocide, the accusation seemed grotesque. It later emerged, through research institute investigations, that South Africa—then in economic collapse—had received financial assistance prior to filing its complaint, which was allegedly coordinated with Iran and Qatar.
The element of intent, indispensable to the legal definition of genocide, rested only on two or three statements by Israeli officials, including President Isaac Herzog, a moderate hardly suspected of harboring exterminatory intentions—rather banal remarks made under the emotional shock of the atrocities of October 7.
But the ICJ judges, appointed according to international political balances identical to those of the UN, did not want to appear indifferent to the bombing of Gaza’s civilians. They chose not to dismiss the application and postponed their judgment, accompanying their decision with recommendations to Israel so as not to make the accusation more plausible—particularly by allowing food aid to pass through.
This was done. But because the ICJ did not explicitly reject the accusation of genocide, it was able to spread and unjustly cloak itself in the authority of this leading international institution. Those who have been to Rwanda know what genocide is. But accusing Israel of genocide also deprives Jews of the moral standing of having been victims of the Shoah.
Language, wrote Pierre Bourdieu, is a field of struggle in which words carry symbolic capital. Even though nothing—apart from a few particularly stupid and repugnant remarks by a handful of Knesset members from Israel’s governing coalition—supports any genocidal intent, the term has become normalized with regard to Israel. Goebbels said that a lie repeated often enough becomes truth. And yet, it is a particularly shameless lie…
Another major defeat concerns the accusation of starving Gaza’s population. The specter of an imminent famine was raised at the UN from the very first weeks of the war, notably by Secretary-General António Guterres. Any humanitarian organization that attempted to qualify this narrative would have been branded “Zionist,” a dishonorable label that effectively blocks careers at the UN.
Tom Fletcher, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, stated on the BBC that 14,000 babies would die within 48 hours if the UN did not deliver the milk they needed. The report he relied on actually referred to a risk of lethal malnutrition within a year if food conditions continued unchanged. One year is too long; 48 hours leaves a stronger impression.
The same applies to photos circulating as proof of malnutrition in Gaza: a Turkish girl dying of hunger and a severely emaciated Palestinian child suffering from cystic fibrosis. This is probably what, at the time of the al-Dura affair, the inimitable Charles Enderlin called the “truth of context”—in other words, a lie with good intentions…
Narrative manipulation, a key component of soft power, is a formidable weapon of war—one against which Israel, over the past fifty years, has failed to build an effective Iron Dome.
Dr. Richard Prasquier
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