OPINION

State Department Fumbles Response to Palestinian Violence

Helle Dale • October 19, 2015

For a brief moment the State Department got its reaction right to the Palestinian knife attacks against Israeli citizens last week. A very brief moment. Then it was back to business as usual.

Posting on Oct. 15, the State Department on its official twitter account correctly characterized the attacks, advertising remarks by Secretary of State John Kerry at Indiana University. “Secretary @JohnKerry addresses the tragic, outrageous attacks on civilians in Israel and the West Bank,” the tweet read.

As the new outbreak of Palestinian violence has so far killed seven Israeli civilians and injured many others, calling the knife attacks “tragic and outrageous” is only stating the obvious. And it is the appropriate position for the U.S. government to take when civilians are targeted so brutally.

However, the tweet was almost instantly taken down, and replaced with a more anodyne version, referring simply to “recent attacks.” The nature of twitter being that nothing goes unnoticed, this act of self-censorship was immediately picked up and contested by other twitter users.

State then compounded its misjudgment when spokesman John Kirby told reporters “Individuals on both sides of this divide are—have proven capable of, and in our view, are guilty of acts of terrorism.”

This is moral equivalence at its worst. But it is one with the administration’s Middle East policy and its tendency to blame Israel and trying not to offend the Muslims of the Middle East, going back to President Obama’s first foreign speech in office, given in Cairo in June of 2009.

In the age of social media and instant communication, unfortunately for the State Department, controlling the messaging on their websites has become vastly more difficult. Social media outreach also leaves an electronic trail, which can sometimes be as revealing as it is embarrassing.

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Helle Dale | Contributor

Helle C. Dale is the Heritage Foundation's senior fellow in public diplomacy. Her work focuses on the U.S. government’s institutions and programs for strategic outreach to the public of foreign countries, as well as more traditional diplomacy. Read her research.

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