Publicize Public Relations
Israel is a world leader in medical research, scientific discovery, and water conservation, but trails in public relations of foreign policy. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was a recent speaker at the Hayom Summit in New York, organized by an Israeli newspaper to discuss American and Israeli issues. She mentioned that when she served in the Senate she told Israeli representatives that they had the worst public relations. When she taught a course at Columbia University after October 7, she observed that the students, including Jewish students were lacking in knowledge of the facts and history of the Middle East issues.
Clinton said that communication is not a political issue, but a generational one. She cited the new mayor of New York, Mamdani as successful in reaching young voters on social media, not necessarily agreeing with his policy. Israel needs to reach out to young people and college students. A considerable number of people who were knowledgeable and inspired by Israel after the Six-Day War, are now over age 60, far outnumbered by the following generations.
It is difficult to determine the main cause of this imbalance in public perception. Some try to explain away that Israel has no time to focus on public relations when they face war on multiple fronts and have many enemies in the world. Israel has their supporters in social media like, Douglas Murray, Patricia Heaton, and Erin Molan, but I don’t know how effective they are especially with a younger audience.
A consistency in communicating policy would be helpful. At the start of the war, Eylon Levy became a spokesperson for the Israeli government and was very clear in his response to Hamas propaganda. Unfortunately, he was fired over a political matter but still speaks out for Israel independently. Another very articulate spokesperson for the IDF, Jonathan Conricus retired from the army but still speaks out as a private citizen with a private public relations practice and appears in many interviews. There is no shortage of Hamas supporters and fact deniers.
The government has recently updated their foreign policy communication system in response to all of the propaganda. Shortly before his death, Charlie Kirk sent a letter to the prime minister that Israel is losing the information war among young Americans. The prime minister’s office with the help of media staff has been working on increasing information about the war and related topics available on YouTube, Tik Tok, and other social media outlets while utilizing multiple languages. The program is helping October 7 survivors and families and others directly connected to the war to tell their own stories, finding their own voice on social media. Israel also has a team that monitors trends in social media in order to be proactive. Now there is also just one spokesperson for the government to the foreign press giving updates..
Shortly after October 7, I attended a Zoom conference on writing about Israel on social media to get their message out. It was helpful and informative, but I’m sure the new methods that are being put in place are more advanced and professional and hopefully more effective. Israel discovers solutions to complex world problems in science and nature and figured out how to make the desert bloom. It should be much easier to communicate who they are to the rest of the world.
