Charlie Kirk told Netanyahu how to win the ‘Information War’

On May 2, 2025, before his death,  Charlie Kirk wrote a letter to PM Netanyahu, in which he said that he was a staunch supporter of Israel, but that he was “defending Israel in public more than your own government”. He also pointed out that support for Israel, even among Republicans, has gone down by 14 points, according to a June poll by Quinnipiac University. The drop has been sharper among younger conservatives. As Kirk said, “Israel is getting CRUSHED on social media and you are losing younger generations of Americans, even among MAGA conservatives”. To remedy this, Kirk suggested a “communications intervention” and suggested several potential solutions, including a “a rapid response team to push back on criticism”, a team of “pro-Israel experts who can rapidly fact check misinformation”, an “Israel Truth Network” website to debunk “negative Israel questions” and marketing Israel as if it was “a political candidate” in the U.S.

Kirk’s approach is not unlike one suggested by Israel’s MISGAV, an Israeli Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy. The Institute noted that effective public diplomacy is essential for Israel at all times, but was even more important in wartime, where there are many, to put it mildly, distorted images and interpretations made by media of Israel’s actions. The problem is that Israel doesn’t have a fully staffed team of professionals in communications, public relations, marketing, intelligence and other relevant areas,  to respond to wartime, or peace time, criticism. Israel’s Public Diplomacy Directorate (PDD) doesn’t have the necessary personnel or budget to respond, and was totally unprepared for the Gaza crisis. The PDD improvised hasty solutions that didn’t help Israel respond effectively, as we are all aware. Why, for example, did Israel not respond to the Gaza invasion sooner with images, social media outrage, and/or video of the October 7th massacre, when it was obtained from Hamas?? Because it was unprepared to do so. The PDD has finally launched a website titled the “October 7 Hamas Massacre” with a reported 43 million hits. There have also been digital platforms produced with video that supports Israel’s world message in some 200 online advertising campaigns. But online messaging must be intensified and more focused on Gen Z and Millennials, the generations that Israel is losing to claims of “apartheid” and “genocide”.

Here are some of Israel’s problems with it’s current public diplomacy. Incredibly , the address for handling print and online written media questions remains unclear. Spokespeople for Israel aren’t given detailed information to answer journalists questions. They also are not trained to pitch stories to the media that Israel might want widely known. Press briefings were only in English, initially, and it took time to have them in Arabic. The briefings by the IDF were mostly by white men in full dress IDF uniforms. This contributed to beliefs, especially on American campus’, that Israel was a racist and colonial state. Many of the people in the IDF’s Spokesperson Unit (ISU) were reservists, who went back to their peacetime jobs, and their families, and left the ISU after their IDF responsibilities were done, leaving the ISU deprived of trained personnel.

Obviously, all the above shortcomings ought to be addressed by the Israeli government, including a large enough budget to mount a public relations counter-attack. Addresses for print and online questions ought to be clear. Spokespeople must be given detailed, researched information to give to journalists. More languages than English or Arabic must be used to disseminate information. Spokespeople for the government ought to be a more diverse group. Why not have Jewish women, Ethiopian or Sephardi spokespeople, or representatives of the Druze and Arab Christians, also talking to the world?? Permanent spokespeople, who now how best to weaponize talking points, would be better than hasty fill-ins. Fact checkers, researchers and intelligence officers must be hired to respond quickly to accusations of wrongdoing, which have proliferated non-stop online and on TV stations. Public relations people are needed to deal with reporters in the field and with social media reporters.  Naturally, while good PR is not a magic pill that will solve Israel’s image problems, bad PR is an unforced error that ought to be eliminated. Finally, and I have posted on this before, foreign media ought to be allowed to be embedded with IDF troops in Gaza and in other hotspots. That would lead to more accurate portrayals of IDF operations. At present, Israel excludes all foreign media from embedding with the IDF. This has lead to foreign media using anti-semitic Hamas supporters, or hostile civilians in Gaza, to report on what is going on in Gaza. No wonder why Israel gets shafted in the reporting.

After October 7th, Israel faced a seven front war. Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran. Israel won on those fronts. But the losing front was the eighth front, the war of international, and U.S., public opinion.  There is hope that this front, also, can be won, eventually. As my Rabbi has told me, “You can’t be a Jew without hope”. If the Israeli government puts more attention, and more money, into dealing with public opinion, there is the possibility that Israel will also win the eighth front.