From the Liveblog of
Sunday, June 23, 2024
With no chief and most staff gone, Israel’s Public Diplomacy Directorate falling apart, TV report claims
Israel’s Public Diplomacy Directorate, which is run out of the Prime Minister’s Office, is falling apart, with nobody in charge and most of its staff having left in recent months, some of them because they’ve not been paid, Channel 12 news reports.
Moshik Aviv, the head of the directorate whose resignation was reported in early May, has not been replaced, the TV report says, alleging that Sara Netanyahu is “solely responsible” for the failure to bring in a successor.
An ex-senior staffer in the directorate, speaking anonymously, says that “super talented people were recruited” to the directorate immediately after October 7, but that most have departed, partly because of disputes over work conditions and, for some, months of delays in pay. “Some people have not been paid to this day.”
The report says that Avi Hyman, an English-language spokesman, left this week, apparently because of a dispute over employment conditions, and that Tal Heinrich, a spokeswoman who has given hundreds of interviews, especially to US media, has not appeared in the past two weeks, also apparently because of issues regarding her work conditions.
“Over 20 people have left along the way,” the ex-staffer tells Channel 12. “A group of the most talented people in the country in the field are no longer there… Today there’s nobody apart from two or three PMO people and a couple of volunteers who believe they’ll be paid in the end.”
The report adds that a private company that built a studio for the directorate is out of pocket to the tune of about $1 million and that a supplier of key data is also awaiting payments.
The ex-staffer likens the situation to the army coming under fire on the ground in Gaza and the state deciding that the air force won’t provide cover: “Not only are we not going on the offensive [in public diplomacy],” he says. “We’re not even defending.”
“The international media airs only one side [of the war narrative], the Palestinian side, that hates Israel,” says the ex-staffer. “That’s all that’s heard, and that’s the basis on which the world has to make up its mind” about what is going on.
The TV report reiterates claims that Sara Netanyahu pushed for the ouster of highly regarded former spokesman Eylon Levy more than two months ago, and says she has been similarly interventionist in preventing the recruitment of a successor to Moshik Aviv at the head of the directorate.
The prime minister’s wife regards the public diplomacy directorate “not as a vital tool for Israeli foreign policy but as an internal body for her public relations benefit,” the TV report quotes a senior source in the directorate saying, “and has not found someone sufficiently loyal to that approach.”
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In response to the report, the directorate says it is functioning as usual, and that most payment and other issues have been resolved and the others will be soon.
The Prime Minister’s Office says that the prime minister is currently interviewing candidates for a new head of the directorate, and denies that Sara Netanyahu has any involvement in the issue.
