Mitt Romney is bewildered. He can’t figure out why Israel is suddenly getting all this bad PR when all they’re doing is defending themselves from an attack that took place seven months ago.
Social media is partially responsible for the widespread international criticism of Israel’s conduct during its military campaign in Gaza, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has suggested. The top American diplomat made the comment during an exchange with Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) at the McCain Institute’s 2024 Sedona Forum in Sedona, Arizona on Friday.
Romney asked Blinken why “the PR [has] been so awful” for Israel amid the conflict in Gaza. “Why has [Palestinian armed group] Hamas disappeared in terms of public perception? An offer is on the table to have a ceasefire, and yet the world is screaming about Israel,” he said. “Typically, the Israelis are good at PR. What’s happened here?” Romney said.
The Secretary of State recalled that when he started working in Washington in the early 1990s “everyone did the same thing,” which was reading newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and watching national news networks to get information about world events.
But now, in the 2020s, “we are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond” and social media “has dominated the narrative,” he said.
Now, I’m no marketing expert, but it strikes me that the combination of a) mass graves being found in Gaza, b) unprecedented crackdowns on college protesters, and c) passing anti-Constitutional laws to threaten anyone who objects to genocide is not particularly amenable to positive public relations.
When you’ve lost Scott Adams to the point that he is dropping more F-bombs than an Iranian drone strike, it can’t be long before you lose the rest of the Boomers.
UPDATE: The IDF expanded its defensive operations with airstrikes on the city of Rafah tonight.