The slow work of persuasion

After the Islamist terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 against the United States, I felt American. From half a world away, it felt like an assault upon people, values and a way of life I recognised as my own.

After the Islamist terrorist attacks of 7 October 2023 against communities and a music festival in southern Israel, I felt Israeli. I still do.

What I did not foresee was how few across the comfortable, complacent, distracted and historically illiterate West would feel the same.

For Jewish Australians—and non-Jewish Australians such as me who have lived in that magnificent democracy—the response of many fellow Australians has been beyond comprehension. Israel is a vibrant, imperfect and argumentative democracy resisting enemies that openly seek its destruction. Yet much of the moral suspicion is directed not towards those movements, but towards the people defending themselves.

There is no contradiction in a secular, non-Jewish Australian Army veteran standing with Israel and the global Jewish diaspora while caring about innocent life everywhere. Both positions rest upon democratic values, human dignity, individual liberty and the conviction that the Islamist ambition to establish a caliphate is irreconcilable with almost everything we know and value in the West.

We are living through gaslighting and projection of Orwellian proportions.

George Orwell understood that people can be conditioned to accept that two plus two equals five. Repeated often enough, a lie can acquire the appearance of truth. When falsehoods are repeated by academics, journalists, artists and public figures, the effect can be profound.

Good people can be misled. More troublingly, they can become misleaders through misinformation, conformity and intellectual laziness.

This challenge across the West is largely a pathology of comfort. Contrast it with working families I have observed in India, focused on earning a living and educating their children. Much of the nonsense consuming Australia is peddled by people with disposable time, moral certainty and little experience of fashionable ideas colliding with reality.

So what are we to do? First, take a deep breath. Second, exercise judgment.

Do not exhaust yourself trying to reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into. You will probably burn emotional energy and achieve little. Leave aside those who do not want to learn and identify those who remain persuadable: the curious, the uneasy and those sensing that something is badly wrong.

A line commonly attributed to the economist John Maynard Keynes asks: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Our task is to find those capable of doing so.

But facts alone are rarely sufficient. We must also understand human nature.

Courtship offers an imperfect but useful analogy. Come on too strongly, and the person you hope to attract may run for the hills. Patience, credibility, warmth and character are more persuasive. Become worth listening to before expecting to be heard.

The same principle applies when addressing antisemitism, the delegitimisation of Israel and the West’s declining confidence in its own civilisation.

What has not always worked for me is saying: “I know Shlomo and Miriam and their children. They are fine Australians of Jewish heritage who do not deserve criminal abuse.” That was enough for me. It has not been enough for many others.

A more effective appeal may be directed to “Shazza and Dazza”: Aussie mates, please take another look. This is getting out of hand. It will not stop with Jewish Australians. The permission structures we are creating—tolerating intimidation, political violence, historical inversion and racial hatred—will shape the Australia inherited by our children. Unless ordinary Australians unite around shared values and reverse this trend, the consequences will reach far beyond the Jewish community. Your children may be at risk tomorrow, just as Shlomo and Miriam’s are today.

That understanding will not be created through one conversation—or a 45-second TikTok video.

It requires Strategic Influence.

This is personal. Strategic Influence describes the work I have chosen: joining with people of similar values; advocating through social media, articles and public speaking; building relationships; answering genuine questions; and developing analysis into books published by an internationally respected publisher.

This is not propaganda. It is education conducted with purpose, credibility and endurance.

The work can be frightening and lonely for Jewish friends, Christian Zionists and me. We often feel ourselves speaking into a gale.

Yet, paradoxically, this work may become easier as circumstances worsen. Throughout the 1930s, Winston Churchill warned about German rearmament and Hitler. Many preferred not to listen. When the storm broke, events vindicated the judgment they had dismissed.

Australia is also suffering a crisis of judgment. If we believe migration policy can be separated from integration, social cohesion and national security, Britain offers a sobering warning. If we mishandle complex questions involving decorated veterans, historical allegations and institutional accountability, we abandon careful judgment. If we permit adults who willingly entered Islamic State territory—and the children now in their care—to return to Australia, we gamble with public confidence and national security. We do not need to commit national suicide to demonstrate compassion. A simple national-interest test should apply: is allowing these people to return in the common good—yes or no? My answer is no. I feel for the children. But when their interests are weighed against those of decent Australians—including Yazidi refugees offered sanctuary after fleeing Islamic State persecution—the safety and welfare of the majority must prevail. Those we elect have made these decisions in our name. Australia, we have allowed ourselves to drift into a terrible mess.

I believe our generations will soon face a serious test. Jewish Australians are already being tested. Being openly Jewish can now mean being targeted for murder while celebrating Chanukah in Sydney, or seeing a Melbourne synagogue firebombed with worshippers inside. Some are considering leaving because they no longer trust the country they love to protect them.

Yet more than 99.5 per cent of Australians are not Jewish, and many remain unaware of where this points. There are signs of a wider awakening. A recent Roy Morgan poll placing One Nation at 29.5 per cent suggests that millions sense something is decidedly wrong, even where they disagree about the causes or remedies.

A dear Jewish friend in her seventies, a lifelong Labor member and voter, put that political dislocation to me plainly in Melbourne: “Michael, at the next election I will be voting for Pauline and One Nation.”

This is not fundamentally about one party. It is about preserving a way of life: a safe, confident and cohesive Australia capable of distinguishing tolerance from surrender, compassion from recklessness and diversity from fragmentation.

Our choice may be increasingly binary: compete today as though tomorrow depends upon it, or live with the consequences of our complacency and cravenness.

So what do we need to defend? Free-market economics, the rule of law, the protection of minorities and the emancipation of women. These are Jewish values. They are Israeli values. They are also Australian and Western values. These values are at risk, and they must be defended.

A political maxim attributed to former New South Wales premier Jack Lang is apposite: “In the race of life, always back self-interest; at least you know it’s trying.” Strategic Influence must help Australians see that opposing antisemitism, Islamist extremism and the erosion of national confidence is not merely an act of kindness towards Jewish neighbours. It is in their enlightened self-interest. The society that cannot protect Shlomo and Miriam today will not protect Shazza and Dazza’s children tomorrow.

This is not a call to vigilantism. It is a call to citizenship: articulation, education, democratic participation and lawful influence.

The burden is too great for the roughly 0.4 per cent of Australian society that is Jewish—and a handful of non-Jewish allies—to carry alone. We must help orient our fellow Australians to what is happening, why it matters and where the present trajectory leads.

That is why I wrote A Light Still Burns: Israel and the Values Worth Defending. It offers evidence-based observations and historically grounded perspectives intended to unpick the lies told about the Israel Defence Forces, the Jewish state and the civilisation it is defending.

When Our Light Is Tested: The Bondi Massacre and the Choices Ahead explains that Bondi was not an isolated eruption of hatred, but a warning about the Australia we are becoming—and the choices every Australian must now make.

When the next test comes, we must resist the temptation merely to scream louder. We must explain better. We must bring those around us up to speed through a patient, disciplined and educative approach.

Take heart. Influence compounds. One conversation prepares the ground for the next. One article reaches someone we may never meet. One book may provide the words a reader has been searching for. Courage is contagious, but so are clarity, decency and hope.

The task is not to persuade everyone today. It is to prepare enough good people to recognise the truth—and to stand together—when the moment of decision arrives.

Colonel Michael Scott CSC Ret’d is a former Australian army officer and the founder of The 2023 Foundation, an initiative dedicated to combating antisemitism.