Addressing a sympathetic audience: Lessons from Abu Mazen's speech at the United Nations

Many years ago, I lived in the USA when my father served as a messenger in the Rochester New York congregation. As such, I was exposed to many representatives who came from Israel to do 'hasbarah', and unfortunately I must say that even then I was not impressed. Somehow, almost every time when my father allowed me to join the lecture of the minister, the MK or the general, I felt that they came with a prepared speech that they read to every audience.

It didn't matter to them what the position of that audience was, and so they come to an anti-Israeli college and try to convince people to donate to Israel, or arrive To a high school of immigrants from China and Vietnam they are trying to explain to them the subtleties of their proposal to an audience that barely knew where Israel is and with which countries it is in conflict.

Why am I telling this? Because the first rule in speaking in front of an audience is to know the audience and adapt the arguments and style to that audience. As a representative example and some interesting lessons on the subject, let's look at the three speeches from this week at the UN General Assembly: Benjamin Netanyahu's, Barack Obama's, and Mahmoud Abbas's, because each of them spoke in front of an audience whose position was very different, and therefore each dealt differently with the challenge. In this article we will see how Abu Mazen tried to take a sympathetic-but-passive audience and make them rise to action (hint: he remained with support only), in the next article we will understand how Bibi dealt with a hostile audience, and in the last article we will see who won.

Let's start with Abu Mazen's speech - for him, the speech was the most significant, with the strongest lever of power, but it is also a very dangerous exercise. He is trying to bend Israel and the Americans' hand without breaking it (For the full text of the speech).

How to adapt yourself to a supportive audience

Abu Mazen reaches a particularly sympathetic audience. Sometimes speakers don't know in advance what the audience's attitude will be towards them, and then they should learn to get to know the audience The body language of a fan crowd. But since the general assembly has been for decades the home ground of the Palestinians (a fact that Netanyahu ably emphasized in his speech) and his speech was interrupted numerous times by applause and even whistles of support. At the same time, his goal was not to convince the members of the General Assembly who support him with a huge majority, but to push into action the 15 member states of the Security Council whose position is more reserved, and for that he wanted to exert public, media and political pressure.

Another limitation of Abu Mazen is that he is not a particularly talented orator. He was never able to enthuse crowds like Arafat or radiate the quality of a star like Netanyahu. When he's at his best, he manages to look like a lovable uncle. So how did Abu Mazen approach his speech?

Let's start with the theory: apparently, giving a speech in front of a supportive audience is the easiest challenge, since here there is no need to confront and there is no need to convince (for example, in our volunteer lecturers project we always recommend starting In a lecture at nursing homes, because they are a particularly supportive audience...). In practice, most of the speakers will try to explain to the audience how right they are and to excite them, but they had the conviction in advance, and the enthusiasm passes in a short time. Therefore, a persuasive speech to a sympathetic audience is a waste of opportunity, and a sympathetic audience is an opportunity that should not be wasted. Instead, the right strategy in front of a supportive audience is called a call to action, and includes an effort to turn support into action. As I explained before A call to action is always the right way to end a speech, but in the case of a speech in front of a supportive audience, it should be planned from the beginning of the speech and have an extensive period of time.

How did he do it?

Abu Mazen devoted about ten minutes to the call to action, almost a quarter of his speech. After he closed some necessary corners - how poor the Palestinians are, why they have a right to a state, how pointless negotiations with Israel are - he did a very good job of rousing the audience.

Preliminary stage: pathos

1. He began with a series of rhetorical questions: Will Israel be allowed to act against international law? Have we not suffered enough? Are we an unnecessary and disenfranchised people?
2. After that he turned to the religious emotion - his turn from the Holy Land, the birthplace of the Christian Jesus, etc.
3. Finally, a series of 'requests' that were actually rhetorical questions in disguise - to allow mothers not to fear soldiers harming their children, to allow students to go to schools without humiliation at the checkpoint, etc.

At each of these stages he received applause and he used it to gain approval from the audience to proceed to the next stage. This is a very difficult tool for the speakers to obtain and Abu Mazen was not able to get the best out of it, he was not able to get them to commit to action but only to express support.

Step Two: Warning

Abu Mazen then presented the alternative - loss of hope is the cause of extremism and violence. Ostensibly a request from the UN not to disappoint the Palestinians, but in reality a threat disguised as violence.

Third step: the application

Finally, Abu Mazen reached his point: an appeal he submitted to the Secretary General for the recognition of a Palestinian state. This is his demand and his call to action, and here it also becomes clear who he is actually addressing - he is using the backing of all the member states that support him to pressure the Secretary General not to postpone and text the treatment. He waves the application form and the audience rises to its feet in applause. There is no doubt that this is the most dramatic moment that Abu Mazen was able to produce.

Strategically, Abu Mazen is not actually targeting Israel or the US - because he knows that they will not change their position, but he is using the support of the assembly to cause the issue to come up for immediate treatment, and in addition, he is trying to get the delegations of the vacillating members of the Security Council to change their position.

For the following articles: 

• Bibi Netanyahu and how to deal with a hostile crowd
• Which speech was better - who won the debate

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