Will newly beefed-up PR budget bolster Israel’s dire standing in court of world opinion?
Foreign Ministry budgets over NIS 500 million to improve country’s image in ongoing, multi-front war, but the national advocacy effort is disjointed, leaderless, and way too slow
On October 17, the Israel Defense Forces simultaneously notched one of its greatest military achievements in Gaza — and one of its most glaring media failures. After a yearlong search, the IDF finally killed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Hamas terror group and the mastermind of the October 7 massacre.
The IDF triumphantly released a drone video of Sinwar’s final broadcast act here on Earth. In it, Sinwar is seen sitting on a chair on the second floor of a shattered house in Gaza, covered in dust. His right arm is injured and bloody. The drone approaches, and Sinwar throws a stick in its direction.
“Justice has been served,” the Foreign Ministry boasted. In the Israeli press, the video was celebrated as a victory image — the Hamas terror chief responsible for the previous October’s slaughter in southern Israel, now cornered and alone, flailing out pathetically as the IDF methodically prepared to carry out the strike that would kill him.
However, for Hamas supporters, it was seen as something else — a leader fighting to the very last.
“If someone familiar with the Arab world had been consulted, it would have been clear that publishing the video was a mistake,” said Eylon Levy, a PR expert and former government spokesperson who rose to prominence in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre. “It reinforces the image of brave Palestinian resistance fighters against evil Israelis. I believe that this has done us a lot of harm internationally.”
“Many decision-makers lack the insight that the media is a real battlefield,” Levy continued. “Israelis are dying right now because they have too little ammunition.”
This is footage from an IDF drone moments before arch terrorist Yahya Sinwar was eliminated.
Justice has been served. pic.twitter.com/k5vSJfxdxp
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) October 17, 2024
In other words, because Israel has not been able to maintain support abroad, the IDF is having trouble properly supplying its troops in the field. Since Israel’s war against Hamas began, several countries have suspended weapons exports to Israel, including Italy and Canada. The US, Israel’s closest major ally, also held up a shipment.
International support for Israel has declined dramatically. In Germany, Israel’s closest ally in Europe in terms of material support, more than 60 percent of the population opposes Israel’s operations in Gaza, according to a June survey, while shortly after October 7, more than 60% had supported Israel’s actions. In the US, a YouGov poll showed that the number of Israel sympathizers, which had reached its peak at 48% a week after October 7, had fallen to 33% by July.
Several countries have broken off or downgraded diplomatic relations. European countries have recognized a Palestinian state, and the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in November for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
In short, since the Hamas invasion — a devastating, unprovoked attack by a globally designated terrorist organization, overwhelmingly targeting civilians inside sovereign Israeli territory — Israel’s diplomatic standing and global support have plummeted.
This points to a failure in strategic communications efforts. Israel enjoys a wealth of information and images but somehow struggles to send a unified, effective message to the world. And when it does get a message out, it is often behind the news cycle, which repeatedly relies on unverified material from Gaza.
The Times of Israel spoke with experts from media, politics, diplomacy and the military, as well as with spokespeople themselves about what has gone so wrong. Several reasons emerged to explain why Israel’s public diplomacy is not achieving the desired results.
Amid the critique, experts also point toward what can be done to fix the failings.
The money is here; the details, not so much
In November, incoming Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced that his ministry would receive an additional NIS 545 million ($146 million) to improve Israel’s public diplomacy abroad.
Speaking in her Knesset office, Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel insisted to The Times of Israel that she couldn’t go into any depth on her plans for the budget for another few weeks. “I can’t present any solutions yet because we’re still working on them,” Haskel said.
Sa’ar had previously said — rather generally — that the money would be used for, among other things, “focused activities at US universities to change their attitudes toward Israel and its policies, while also working with the Jewish community in the US, without affecting the activities of the Diaspora Affairs Ministry.”
His comments point to one of the problematic issues — the multitude of agencies that spend time and resources on the same task. Asked how the Foreign Ministry’s hasbara (propaganda) efforts would differ from those of other ministries, Haskel’s nonspecific response was: “I have already met with several Israeli hasbara experts. These discussions have been both insightful and productive… It is my hope that these insights will support [Sa’ar] in shaping and strengthening the upcoming ministerial plan for the office’s hasbara strategy. “
No battle plan yet, then, but assurances that details will come.
A bright spot, usually
There is a prominent, well-resourced, experienced public diplomacy machine in Israel – the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. Its officers and soldiers have been at the forefront of the effort since October 7.
In the early weeks, the IDF had only 10 soldiers per shift available for the flood of inquiries, said an IDF official. However, the military quickly set up a team of spokespeople for key languages, including English, French and German.
Never before has Israel issued as many press cards to foreign correspondents as in the year since the Hamas massacre on October 7, according to the Government Press Office. More than 2,000 journalists were registered in the initial months of the war, with many others arriving in Israel without registration.
According to several current and former spokespeople, the flow of information within the IDF worked well. Jonathan Conricus, former military spokesperson for international media who returned as a reservist during the war, said that after battlefield incidents, an up-to-date, dynamic document was created and sent to spokespeople. When major events occurred, there were rapid meetings to prepare for interviews.
According to the IDF official, in the leadup to the Gaza ground operation, there was a focus on taking journalists to the devastated border-area kibbutzim to give them a better sense of the atrocities Hamas committed there. They were also taken to the base where Israel was going through the long and painful process of identifying hundreds of bodies.
Ten days into the war, the Spokesperson’s Unit faced a key challenge, when images of hostages were suddenly replaced by a number: 500.
This was the ostensible number of Palestinians, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, who had allegedly been killed in an Israeli strike at Gaza City’s Al-Ahli Hospital. The Hamas administration in Gaza quickly released its figure and its claim of Israeli responsibility, which rapidly spread worldwide.
The IDF conducted an investigation before IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari declared three hours later that Israel was not responsible. He later held an English-language press conference with evidence to support the Israeli account. Days later, The New York Times admitted that it had relied too heavily on Hamas’s claims in its coverage of the explosion.
Still, the fact that the explosion was caused by a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket from inside Gaza, launched by the terror group at Israel, did not reach as many people as the initial misreporting and was by no means universally accepted.
“That’s the challenge: As long as I don’t have any facts as a spokesperson, I can only say, ‘We are looking into it,’ said Arye Shalicar, an Israeli-German author who has repeatedly served as a reservist for the Spokesperson’s Unit, including for German media.
“When the front page is misinformation one day and the correction is on the third page at the bottom right in small print three days later, it hardly reaches enough people.”
The anonymous IDF official argued that the army’s spokespeople have been particularly successful in getting journalists to replace “Gaza’s Health Ministry” with “Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry.”
When the front page is misinformation one day and the correction is on the third page at the bottom right in small print three days later, it hardly reaches enough people.
Still, despite the now well-oiled IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, many international journalists are skeptical about information from the Israeli military.
Speaking to The Times of Israel, European journalists said that they are fundamentally cautious about information from Israel’s military because it is a warring party. A British and a German reporter — both of whom asked to remain anonymous — agreed that the mistrust is further increased by the limited access to Gaza. “If we are not allowed in there,” said the German reporter, “I have to assume that the army has something to hide. And then I have to doubt statements about the humanitarian situation accordingly.”
Deputy minister Haskel rejected the criticism: “All journalists are suspicious of Israel. Many of them report on complete lies that they have received from Hamas.”
Haskel supports the official Israeli line that journalists should not enter Gaza without the accompaniment of the IDF. Journalists dying in Gaza would be blamed on Israel, she noted. Furthermore, the last thing a military force wants, as it fights an enemy that blends in with civilians and aid groups, is to have another group of noncombatants moving around and making it even harder to determine who is an enemy fighter and who is protected by the laws of war, say spokespeople.
Israel’s army has repeatedly offered embedded tours for journalists, both to Gaza and to Lebanon – though the focus is on the Israeli press.
According to the IDF, there have been around 30 tours to the Gaza Strip and five tours to Lebanon for foreign journalists, while for Israelis, there were 130 tours to Gaza and 40 to Lebanon.
Conricus believes that the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit and other government spokespeople don’t appreciate the importance of international media.
“One of the biggest problems I found very frustrating when I was the IDF’s international spokesperson was the constant struggle for resources between Israeli and foreign media,” Conricus said. “The priority was often given to Israeli media.”
The German reporter criticized Gaza tours themselves as “incredibly unproductive,” providing “nothing we could have used to build a well-founded article later.”
Another suggestion from Conricus: “There should be more accompanying officers who could answer questions from journalists: personnel who are briefed on the content, but also have sufficient English skills.”
In conversations with The Times of Israel, other soldiers from the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit had complaints about the way their unit was managed. One IDF combat photographer said that a key SD card with important footage from Lebanon that he submitted to his commanders was placed into the unit’s archives and now cannot be located.
“The problem is that there is a lot of information in the Israeli defense apparatus,” said Conricus, “but there is no systematic approach to ensuring that the right information needed for media purposes is actually used.”
And he wants to see five percent of intelligence resources earmarked for producing information for public diplomacy purposes. “So far, this has too often depended on the goodwill of certain officers.”
Foreign diplomats
The group that, alongside journalists, has the greatest influence on Israel’s image abroad is foreign diplomats in Israel, whose reports shape how Israel is perceived in their countries and, especially, by their governments.
However, Israel’s Foreign Ministry does not hold regular briefings for ambassadors, according to foreign envoys. If an ambassador wants an appointment to be informed about specific courses of action, it must be requested.
Ambassadors mostly obtain information through their own staff in the country and through media reports, which means that Israel is missing opportunities to get its own positions out. For example, there is uncertainty about what exactly will happen now that the Knesset voted to drastically limit the activities of the UN’s Palestinian refugee welfare organization, UNRWA, which is putting Western countries on alert, according to foreign diplomatic circles in Israel.
Haskel said that she has been in contact with foreign ambassadors. She explained that information provided by Israel was slower than figures from Hamas because the Israelis carefully checked facts. Nevertheless, she said, the ministry is trying to improve the speed and flow of information.
For those foreign ambassadors and journalists, Eylon Levy stood out as an eloquent and accessible source. He held daily briefings attended by international journalists and was followed closely by diplomats.
Quickly and informally appointed as government spokesperson days after October 7, he gave, by his own estimate, almost 270 TV, radio and podcast interviews, 70 briefings and 50 press conferences until his dismissal in March.
“I never had a contract as a government spokesperson and never met the prime minister,” he told The Times of Israel. “And I would be lying if I said that the Prime Minister’s Office paid everyone for their working hours.”
Levy was hired after giving media interviews on his own initiative after the war began, becoming a spokesperson for the PMO — after having protested against Netanyahu’s planned judicial reform before the war.
Levy’s team initially consisted of volunteers who helped him prepare the self-initiated briefings for journalists. “If you really see public relations as the war-winning tool it is, you need full-time employees,” said Levy.
He now runs an initiative he founded himself, the Citizen Spokespersons’ Office. It is financed by an initial budget from the Diaspora Ministry and donations. “We are trying to fill some of the void left by the state and get airtime,” said Levy.
In his time as a spokesperson, he and his team of volunteers were usually chasing information. “There was a very general message sheet in the Prime Minister’s Office, but none that was specifically adapted to the events of the day or the news cycle.”
“There was no infrastructure to cut reels, to build a social media presence.”
That impediment was part of a broader inability of Israel’s civilian bodies to respond in real time to stories — often misreported — coming out of Gaza.
Levy was a bright spot for Israel’s wartime hasbara but was fired after less than half a year.
According to reports, his dismissal came after the British Foreign Office complained about a tweet in which he responded to comments made by then-British foreign secretary David Cameron about aid to Gaza.
But he told The Times of Israel he doesn’t think that’s the full story. Many believe that Sara Netanyahu pushed for his dismissal because Levy had taken part in protests against the judicial overhaul months before the war.
Both Levy and Conricus said that the focus is currently too much on military spokespeople, which is not good for Israel’s image. “People in military uniform have to explain military actions — not the big questions about why a nation is at war or why UNRWA should be banned,” said Levy.
We cannot expect the media to present more pro-Israeli information than we provide
He even sees some regression. At the beginning of the war, the IDF had a page that recorded the number of terrorists killed and the number of rockets fired. This has since been taken offline.
Meanwhile, Hamas continues to regularly publish figures. “We cannot expect the media to present more pro-Israeli information than we provide,” said Levy.
An orchestra without a conductor
Israel’s communication bodies now have a lacuna that Levy filled for a time — there is no prominent figure known to the international media.
Israeli communications expert Matthew Krieger — who helped develop campaigns for the families of hostages — said to The Times of Israel that “the success of campaigns depends heavily on a central figure present in the international press.”
He cited Benjamin Netanyahu as an example. During the 2006 Lebanon War, the prime minister appeared regularly in foreign media. “Netanyahu should know from his own experience how important such figures are for the press. Now, by not properly empowering spokespeople to effectively tell Israel’s story to the world, he is preventing exactly that.”
The post of head of public diplomacy in the Prime Minister’s Office has been vacant for more than half a year now, after having been staffed twice for brief periods. The position is supposed to coordinate spokespeople in the IDF, the police, the intelligence services and other agencies — and to make sure Israel is getting its story out to news outlets while the world is still paying attention.
In 2021 and 2022, Elad Tene held this position. He described to the Times of Israel how he coordinated the messages of myriad offices. “As soon as I got into the job, I was warned that during the time of Ramadan, a message would be spread to make Israel a target: that Israel does not let Muslims on the Temple Mount to pray.”
Tene said he and his team requested and published videos from the security cameras on the Temple Mount that showed exactly the opposite.
“The various institutions are like an orchestra,” he said. “If there is no conductor, we cannot convey a common message.”
The Foreign Ministry is set to present its new public diplomacy plans in the coming weeks, and it will then become clear whether Israel’s spokespeople are speaking in greater unison and within the news cycle. To date, there seem to have been plenty of instruments in Israel, but not enough orchestration.
