Fair is fair. When it comes to publicity, to verbiage, to shaping world opinion, to swaying college campuses, to harvesting votes at the United Nations, Iran, the Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis run rings around the Israelis in particular and the Jews in general.

This is a puzzle. The Jews are the “People of the Book,” a phrase that connotes learning, intelligence, creativity. Relative to their numbers, they are wildly overrepresented in literature, fiction, film, theater, philosophy — every craft devoted to persuading an audience. By every measure of talent and training, this is a contest they ought to win walking away. Instead, in the war of words that surrounds the shooting war, they are being routed.