Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Legitimating Jewish Identity Amidst Chaos: Zionist Public Diplomacy, Rudy Stoler

Exchange: The Journal of Public Diplomacy

How do global contests impact the conduct of public diplomacy? This paper, taking Zionist public diplomacy as a case-study in response to the Israel-as-occupier image, proposes that when critical events shock the Jewish world by striking negatively at the legitimacy of Jewish identity-the right to believe and act as a Jew in a non-Jewish world-they stimulate a public diplomacy backlash. This happened after the Six-Day War of 1967, during the Second Intifada of the early 2000s, and most recently in the lead-up to the unilateral Palestinian statehood bid in 2011. These events provided the motivation for the mutually supportive activities …