Public Diplomacy Directorate said crumbling after departure of chief and most staff
Ex-staffer says many hired after Oct. 7 have left due to work conditions, delays in pay; PM’s wife reportedly intervening in selection process to ensure loyalist tapped for job
The 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 have not been paid, Israeli television reported Sunday.
Moshik Aviv, the head of the directorate whose resignation was reported in early May, has not been replaced, Channel 12 news said, alleging that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s s wife, Sara Netanyahu, was “solely responsible” for the failure to bring in a successor.
An ex-senior staffer in the directorate, who spoke anonymously, said “super talented people were recruited” to the directorate immediately after the Hamas-led October 7 attack, but that most have since departed, partly because of disputes over employment conditions and, for some, months of delays in pay. “Some people have not been paid to this day,” the former staffer said.
The report noted that Avi Hyman, an English-language spokesman, left in the past week and said Tal Heinrich, a spokeswoman who has been frequently interviewed, especially by American media, has not appeared in the past two weeks, apparently because of issues regarding her employment conditions.
“Over 20 people have left along the way,” the ex-staffer told the network. “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 people [from] the Prime Minister’s Office and a couple of volunteers who believe they’ll be paid in the end.”
The report added that a private company that built a studio for the directorate was out of pocket to the tune of about $1 million and that a supplier of key data was also awaiting payments.
The ex-staffer likened 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],” the staffer said, “we’re not even defending.”
“The international media airs only one side [of the war narrative], the Palestinian side, that hates Israel,” continued the ex-staffer. “That’s all that’s heard, and that’s the basis on which the world has to make up its mind.”
The TV report reiterated claims that Sara Netanyahu pushed for the ouster of highly regarded former spokesman Eylon Levy in recent months and said she has similarly intervened to prevent the recruitment of a successor to Aviv as 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 quoted a senior source in the directorate as saying, “and has not found someone sufficiently loyal to that approach.”
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In response to the report, the directorate said it is functioning as usual, asserting that most compensation and other issues have been resolved and others will be soon.
The Prime Minister’s Office said that the prime minister is currently interviewing candidates for a new head of the directorate, and denied that Sara Netanyahu has any involvement in the issue.
Israel’s public diplomacy apparatus has faced troubles since the very beginning of the war, when -public diplomacy minister Galit Distel Atbaryan quit her job five days after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air, and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
