Israel is desperately losing the PR war. Here are 10 ways to change that.
Even if the Jewish state has already dug itself too deep a hole during this war, it can at least start improving in these areas to prepare for the inevitability of future conflicts.
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This is a guest essay written by Nachum Kaplan of Moral Clarity.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.
It is no secret that Israel needs to do much better in the public relations war that it is fighting concurrently with its war against Hamas in Gaza, because the Jewish state is losing in the international court of opinion.
Hamas, an evil Islamist terror group, has an outstanding PR machine that has corrupted and co-opted much of the international media and world leaders to do its bidding. Israel’s efforts have been ham-fisted.
We media strategists are like poker players: We must play the hand that we have been dealt. Despite being the victim of a savage attack, and holding what would be the high ground in any morally sane universe, Israel started with five structural disadvantages, including:
1) Numerical Disadvantage
With almost two billion Muslims worldwide and 49 Muslim-majority countries, plus sympathetic Western states, Israel has struggled to be heard over a cacophony of hostile voices.
2) Cultural Obstacles
In communications theory, we sometimes use a tool called a power-distance framework to measure cultural traits to communicate more effectively. The pertinent traits are how direct or indirect and hierarchical (formal or informal) a culture is.
Anglo-Saxon English-speaking cultures, for example, are more direct and informal than continental Europeans, which partly explains why the British do not see themselves as European.
Israelis are the world’s most direct and non-hierarchical people. Other Middle Eastern cultures are indirect and hierarchical. Israelis prefer action to talk, which is not the best foundation for effective communication.
3) Antisemitism
Israel faces a huge amount of antisemitism disguised as anti-Israel sentiment in the news media. The likes of The Guardian and the BBC are unlikely ever to write favorably about Israel.
In 2021, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which tracks antisemitism globally, ranked the BBC as the world’s third-most antisemitic organization, behind only Iran and Hamas.
4) Commitment to Facts
As a democracy accountable to its citizens, Israel must take allegations against it seriously and respond honestly (as it has done with the tragic accidental targeting of a World Central Kitchen convoy).
This makes Israel slow. By the time it investigates and responds to an allegation, such as the Al-Ahli Hospital blast, the news cycle has moved on to other accusations and fabrications.
5) A Long War
I am sure that the Israel Defense Forces has prosecuted the war the way it has for good reasons. In terms of PR, though, a shorter, more aggressive war would have been better. Criticism would have been intense, but short-lived, and during a time when world opinion was more sympathetic following the October 7th attacks.
This is the challenging backdrop against which Israel’s communicators had to develop a PR and communications strategy.
Now, here are 10 ways that Israel can do better:
1) Clear Messaging
Israel has had too many ministers saying different things. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stayed on message, but the more Right-wing members of his government have willfully wandered off script for domestic political gains.
This is more than the old joke of two Jews, three opinions. It is symptomatic of the government’s dysfunction.
One example is with regard to Israel potentially occupying Gaza. While Israel’s official position is that it does not want to occupy Gaza, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu have been calling for just that. They have also called for Palestinians in Gaza to be able to leave, stoking fears that Israel is trying to displace them. They do not speak for the government, but what a global audience sees is Israeli ministers talking about occupying Gaza.
Another example is the inconsistencies of making a distinction between Hamas and ordinary Palestinians. Israel’s government has said that its issue is with Hamas and not the Palestinian people. Officials have also said that Palestinians in Gaza are so radicalized that they are basically Hamas. This makes it look like Israel is changing its position depending on what is expedient.
What position Israel takes here is less important than its need for consistency.
2) Outlining a Vision
Israel has stated its military goals but failed to lay out a vision. This is more than having “a plan for the day after”. It needs to articulate a positive vision that destroying Hamas and its military capabilities will help realize.
“Show, don’t tell” is a cornerstone of storytelling in communications and news writing. Israel has described the horrors of October 7th in gruesome detail, but it has shown video only to select audiences, mainly foreign journalists, and diplomats.
It might have been more effective, and affecting, to release this footage publicly to show what evil it is fighting. Visuals go viral more readily than talking heads describing atrocities.
3) Identifying Its Audience
It is not always clear what audience the Israeli government is trying to reach. Is it talking to terrorists? Enemy states and militias? A domestic or international audience?
Each requires different messaging. Israel has directed communication at the media, diplomats, and the United Nations, all of which are hostile. Israel needs to include ordinary people as a target audience, without distortions from biased mainstream news media.
Foreign governments have responded to loud pro-Palestinian voices in their electorates, many of them young people. Israel needs to reach these people directly.
4) Adopting Better Slogans
“Bring the hostages home” is a poor rallying cry. The IDF and Israel’s negotiators are working to do just that. Something that puts the onus on Hamas would be better, such as “Let our people go!” or “Release our people!”
5) Talking More About Jihadism
Israel does refer to Hamas-ISIS, but the belief that Hamas is a Palestinian nationalist movement fighting for a state is widespread. Israel needs to drum home that Hamas is a Caliphate-seeking death cult, which is a direct danger to the West.
6) Having More Spokespeople
Israel’s English-language spokespeople have been exceptional. Avi Hyman, Tan Heinrich, and Eylon Levy (now gone) are the ones I have seen. They have stayed on message, been highly articulate, had the right energy, and not been ruffled by aggressive interviewers asking unlettered questions.
However, there have been too few of them.
7) Focus on Military Achievements
Israel needs to boast about its military success, specifically the nitty-gritty of how it has avoided a high civilian death toll. The world lambasts Israel for civilian deaths, but the IDF has achieved the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio in history.
No amount of slander can change this fact. This will be the benchmark against which all future urban wars will be judged. Mass starvation allegations are being leveled at Israel precisely because it has done so well in avoiding civilian casualties. It has forced Hamas to change its propaganda.
8) Personalizing It
People respond to human stories. The media is covering the Palestinian side as a humanitarian story and the Israeli side as a policy story. Stories of evacuees, family members of the slain, survivors, Arab Israelis, and people hiding in bomb shelters are starting to be told, but they need to be done so in their own voices.
9) Feeding the Illusion
The 24-hour news cycle depends on creating the illusion that what is happening now is the most important thing in the world. Israel needs to exploit this. It must state continuously that this war is about more than defeating Hamas; it is a fight for Israel’s and the Jewish People’s existence.
It is the year 5784 in the Hebrew calendar; an entire civilization is at stake.
10) Long-Term Outreach
This war has shown that the broader sentiment towards Israel determines how favorable coverage is more than anything else. A generational change in global attitudes towards Israel is underway.
Israel needs to embark on a campaign to educate and shift young people’s perceptions towards it. This needs to be continuous, get into universities, and use modern media methods and formats that resonate with young people.
Winning the war on the battlefield is the most important thing, even as politicians will never miss a chance to grab a headline, and reporters will never miss a chance to write one.
The diplomatic pressure on Israel might feel like the most important thing to journalists, but that is because they are not in the firing line and have not had their families murdered and abducted.
The war will end, and then there will be fewer things for Israel’s enemies to tell lies about. Meanwhile, the media has the attention span of a gnat. It will move on to the next crisis.
However, Israel does need to improve its PR game greatly, to be ready for that.
All Israel has to do is issue the following official statement:
REMEMBER THE 38 WORDS: The Jews are the indigenous inhabitants of Israel, ethnically cleansed by the colonial powers of Imperial Rome and Imperial Arabia. They have their country back, Baruch Hashem, and never again will they be driven off their ancestral land.
No PR will speak to these groups: In Muslim countries there is a religious fanaticism that is beyond reason-in the name of Allah, they lie, they murder, they commit martyrdom. That’s a big group. An other group, are those who know the truth, but they are deep down so antiSemitic that it blinds them. Another group are the Jews who in the name of some corrupted sense of Justice are siding up with the enemy. They are the most despicable. They are the wicked children at the Seder table.