There is a reason why Israelis are so breathtakingly inept at furthering their own cause.   It is not only because this war was a frank and literally misguided attempt to redress years of misguidance. Or because the war between the Jews and the Arabs, this war which has raged for more than a hundred years, has robbed both sides of its ability to see the humanity of the other.   It is also because Israelis hate the very idea of public relations. They live in a country which has been under effective world quarantine for nearly all if its history. They live in a society whose trait of unbridled openness has become something of a learning disability. They speak a language which is light years and thousands of literal years away from television English. They are bathed in a culture which insulates itself and armors itself and has had little reason to believe the world will give it a fair shake. They have a shared, largely unspoken truth which is based, in part, on the world's inability to fathom their behavior. And they believe that no matter what they do, much of the world is likely to condemn them. And in this, at least, they have seldom been proven wrong.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1073231.html - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1073231.html

 

I wonder how much of the above could be said about the Palestinians as well?  Maybe Muslims in general?