Michael Oren aims to fight boycotts with the help of poets and writers
In terms of public diplomacy, says PM’s new special envoy, often ‘we’ve been working backwards: We tell people to defend Israel without actually telling them what they should be defending’
Raphael Ahren is a former diplomatic correspondent at The Times of Israel.

Israel should take a good hard look at how it allocates its foreign policy budgets, incoming Deputy Minister Michael Oren said, suggesting that Jerusalem’s traditional focus on Western Europe comes at the expense of developing ties with African and Latin American countries.
“Only four percent — get this: only four percent — of our Foreign Ministry’s budget goes to Africa. Only 14 percent goes to Latin America. I’d like to take a close look at our global priorities,” Oren told The Times of Israel this week.
On the other hand, a whopping 33 percent of the ministry’s budget is spent on Western Europe, added Oren. “If were to double that sum, how much change in Europe’s policy can we expect in response to that? And the answer to that would be not very much. Maybe not at all. But if we were to double the four percent that we invest in Africa to eight percent, I think we’d see a very substantive movement indeed.”
There are 54 countries in Africa and 19 countries in Latin America, added Oren, who in his new job will assist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in further developing ties with these continents. Jerusalem’s goal is not only to get more countries to support Israel in international fora such as the United Nations, but also to boost trade and cooperation in the fields of security, tourism, water technologies and so on.
Last month, the US-born historian-cum-diplomat-cum-politician was named a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office dealing with foreign policy and public diplomacy — a position Oren called his “dream job.” Formally the freshman lawmaker for the centrist Kulanu party was tapped to be a “special envoy for the prime minister,” though his exact job description remains somewhat unclear.
“As a member of Kulanu, which is a socioeconomic party, I am very keen in looking at the nexus between foreign relations and trade. And not just from the aspect of BDS,” he said, referring to the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. “BDS is important, you can’t overlook it. But there is a tremendous amount of opportunities out there.”
‘It’s the best of times and the worst of times for Israel’
Just a few decades ago, peace with Jordan and Egypt was unthinkable; Israel had no diplomatic ties with China, the Soviet bloc and most African countries, and a “toxic” relationship with India, Oren recalled. “Today we have excellent relations with India and excellent relations with China. That’s more than half of humanity right there.”
Israel’s ties with Arab world have also never been better, said Oren, who served as Israel’s ambassador to the US from 2009 to 2013. And while this relationship remains mostly clandestine, Jerusalem can expect from the Arab world implicit backing, for instance for its right to self-defense. “And we’ve gotten that right,” he said. “The Saudis were very quite cooperative during our recent conflicts with Hezbollah and Hamas.”
On the other hand, Israel has to grapple with several very serious challenges, Oren posited. “It’s the best of times and the worst of times for Israel.”
For one, Iran and the Islamic State terror group pose genuine security threats to Israel. And then there are also countries and organizations in the world seeking to delegitimize Israel and to deny it the right to defend itself and to exist as a sovereign Jewish state, Oren added.
“There are terrorists groups like Hamas and Hezbollah that know they can’t destroy us by military means but they can create a situation where our hands will be legally tied while they shoot rockets at us. That’s the goal of their campaigns — not to destroy us; they are out to get us to respond in such a way that the world will condemn us. It’s a very clever military tactic serving a diplomatic and legal strategy.”
BDS and Islamic State actually have something in common, Oren asserted. Both are physical organizations that can be fought in a straightforward manner. But behind these groups stands a powerful idea that is much harder to combat. “Any idea you have to fight with a better idea,” he said, and Israel has yet to find the right recipe for that battle.
“Not only have we not been fighting the idea. We’re not even in that war yet,” he said.
Israel has improved its presence on Western campuses; the Strategic Affairs Ministry, tasked with combating BDS, has a handsome budget of NIS 120 million and a talented staff, the new deputy minister said. “But they are focusing on BDS, the organization. My issue is: what is the State of Israel doing about BDS, the idea? And here we have a real problem.”
Israel’s enemies have a few buzzwords with which they operate: Israel is an apartheid state, it’s a colonialist regime that’s oppressing defenseless Palestinians, and so on.
‘One of our big failings in the field of hasbara is that we have been fighting feelings with facts. And when a fact comes up against a feeling, the feeling almost always wins’
Israel has been falling behind in the battle for the hearts and minds of the public because it did not succeed in creating a positive narrative, Oren argued. “In many ways we’ve been working backwards. We have these wonderful organizations like StandWithUs, the Israel Project, certainly AIPAC. They do outstanding work. And we have [Strategic Affairs Minister] Gilad Erdan’s team. But we tell people to defend Israel without actually telling them what they should be defending.”
How Israel should be presented to the world today is a question Oren says he has been looking into for several months now. At first he approached public relations experts but then he realized this is the wrong approach to hasbara, or pro-Israel advocacy. “The people I should be going to are poets and writers. One of our big failings in the field of hasbara is that we have been fighting feelings with facts. And when a fact comes up against a feeling, the feeling almost always wins.”
Israel — one of the most emotive stories in history — should evoke feelings, Oren concluded. Good hasbara takes the Jewish state’s story and touches people with it.”
How can that be done? “That’s precisely what I am working on,” he said.