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Eddie Hammerman

The Secret to Winning the PR War

Eylon Levy is taken aback during a Sky news interview in November 2023 (X screenshot)
Eylon Levy is taken aback during a Sky news interview in November 2023 (X screenshot)

In the paralysing and bewildering week after Oct 7, I got a call from a leading British-Jewish institution. The super smart head of comms explained that the Press Association wanted to interview a Jewish family. He said there was a real need to explain how British Jews are connected to Israel because it was clear that British media and people as a whole didn’t understand what a massacre three thousand miles away had anything to do with Jews here and perhaps we could explain.

Credit: Press Association

Ronit was adamant that she didn’t want to do the interview but she very reluctantly agreed. We spoke from the heart and they took moody photos of us looking and feeling devastated in front of the Shabbat candles, which in our house, has now been coined the Holocaust photo. It did a job but we don’t like it much. You can probably see why. Nine months later, I now realize what this moment meant. Back to this later.  

I can’t tell you how many times I have been in conversations which included an attack on Israel’s gawdamn awful PR. The ‘Better Hasbara’ theory is the idea that if only we explained ourselves more and better, the world would think of us differently. As a PR and brand expert, this frustrates me. It’s true, Israel’s PR has traditionally been purely reactive and limited to wartime, as well as pretty crappy or non-existent overall, but for me, this is not the core issue.

Credit: IMDB

Before we unpack it (like in every podcast these days), it’s worth noting that Israel is often accused of taking the Millwall FC worldview of ‘No one likes us, we don’t care’. Their actual view is ‘No one likes us, we do care a hell of a lot, but don’t have the time or resources to fight the world and will do brilliant things anyway as what  choice do we have, and maybe they’ll finally come around… and if they don’t, f*ck’em’. Granted, this is a far less catchy chant on the terraces but a more accurate description of how Israel understands how the dice are loaded. This is never better characterized by Abba Eban’s timeless observation: “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring the earth was flat and Israel had flattened it, it would pass by 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.”

Israel’s recognition of its limitations means it has never invested in a global PR strategy. Whereas raving antisemites and those hell-bent on Israel’s destruction have invested billions of pounds and thousands of man-hours over generations to achieve their poisonous, death-cultish aims of creating a narrative to destroy the legitimacy of one Jewish state, we had broken English speakers with long awkward Israeli ‘errrrr ‘ow you say’ pauses. Meanwhile, stalwart, unflappable Israeli government spokesperson, Mark Regev and a brilliantly eloquent, eyebrow arching former Israeli spokesperson, Eylon Levy are dragged into a he-said-she-said on international news. It’s not that the international spokesperson role isn’t essential, it’s just that we’ve lost the war for Israel’s very existence before they even take to the airwaves.

Israel is right in one way. PR is merely a tactical response. But if the audience isn’t convinced or worse, forms the opposite view then the tactics aren’t working and therefore, we need a strategy and it involves us in the diaspora.

Glastonbury 2024. Credit: Ynet

I openly admit to not having all the answers. I am struggling, like you, not to scream into the abyss of social media, becoming highly triggered at Palestinian flags during the Sugar Babes performance at Glastonbury and more times that I care to admit have found myself in tears on the Thameslink after social media doom-scrolling, forcing me to question whether I should have brought children into this world. This also occasionally happens when they leave unwashed plates in the sink, but that’s another story. 

Through desperation and an almost 25 years of experience working with global brands, I am  piecing together ideas from the ether (namely an unhealthy consumption of a veritable smorgasbord of Israel podcasts) and some marketing basics to suggest a fix for a global brand. After all Israel is an internationally recognisable institution which is being trashed across much of the world. For companies struggling to get their message across, a public hammering affects the share price. For a country surrounded on all sides by enemies wanting it gone, losing the war narrative results in allies go-slowing ammunition, voting against Israel and some people questioning Israel’s very right to exist at all. It also affects our security in the diaspora. So the reputation stakes cannot be any higher. 

Credit: Simon Sinek.Ted.com

The Answer: Start with Why. 

The inspirational speaker and author, Simon Sinek famously said in his best selling book ‘Start With Why’, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it”. It’s clear, the world doesn’t understand WHY Israel exists. 

Years ago I thought highlighting what Israel does would work as I assumed the world knew why Israel did it. Showing the best of what Israel is through emotive storytelling would surely help stem the tide of anti Zionism, right? Here’s what we did and I bloody loved it. Spoiler alert it didn’t work.  

Claire Lomas supported by spectators during her 2012 Virgin London Marathon walk. Credit: Wikipedia

With the drive, creativity and tenacity of Alan Aziz spearheading this approach at the Zionist Federation UK, I worked with Alan to train up activists on how to call in radio shows and we secured shedloads of national and sometimes international broadcast, online and print coverage with positive Israel stories including celebrating the newly crowned Israeli Mr Gay International, Nathan Shaked. Alan did brilliant things like bringing  together the paraplegic Israeli inventor of the Re:Walk bionic suit with Claire Lomas who had been paralysed from the chest down in a riding accident. Claire then walked the Great North Run; the largest half-marathon in the world in the Israeli invented kit. We secured massive pick up. Surely the world will love Israel now, right? In the moment it was undoubtedly a good thing. But did it change the perception of brand Israel? 

It. Did. Not. 

We often try to justify Israel’s existence to the world by bragging about the 135 companies listed on the NASDAQ, the fourth most companies after the United States, Canada, and China and even the potential of a record breaking $23bn sale of Wiz to Google. We bang on about how we invent world changing tech and are the first to send disaster relief crews to earthquake zones, yet we are accused. And still, we double down on how many Nobel prizes we have per capita and are hated even more. 

The problem: We are trying to justify our existence with what we do instead of explaining why we do it. 

Whilst certainly incredible and should be celebrated as a phase two of our strategy, the ‘Start up Nation’ argument is no justification for the State of Israel and only leads to whataboutery, the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue. For example… ‘but what about the Palestinians?’ Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s books, including “The Genius of Israel”, do not work as a rebuttal and should not be used as one. 

Illustration from the book ‘Tiny Dynamo,’ which promotes innovations to emerge from Israel. (photo credit: Courtesy Megan Flood)

It might give us a much needed “dose of optimism and inspiration in what is otherwise a very dark period”, but for these ideas to hit hard, the foundations of why have to be laid first. It seems that we have been so preoccupied in trying to keep our kids Jewish through cultural and religious education with a sprinkling of a sleep deprived Israel Tour thrown in, we have forgotten to tell our core Jewish story to our children which includes Israel at its heart. 

In a tacit admission that Jews and the wider world do not have the faintest idea of who we are, Dan Senor in his ‘Call me Back’ podcast, asks former Prime Minister Bennett to deliver a 4 minute glorious, bed-time monologue explaining why Jews aren’t colonialists!  He needed to spell it out. 

People rally on the campus of Columbia University which is occupied by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters in New York on April 22, 2024. (Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP)

To try to explain this whopping knowledge gap, journalist, Haviv Rettig Gur recalls on the new podcast ‘Wondering Jews” how he was on a speaking tour on US Campuses and a young Jewish student came up to him to explain how hurt he it he felt by the anti-Israel protests on campus. Gur replied that this is sad but not on par with the Israeli kids in Gaza so “buck up”. 

The student admitted not knowing how to respond whereby Gur became cross and said to him; “What do you mean you don’t know the answer to Zionism is colonialism? Are you serious? 95% of Israeli Jews came as refugees with nowhere else to go. You know another such colonialism? We come from 60 countries. There’s no mother country we are coming from. You know a colonialism with no mother country? There’s an ancient tradition of belonging to the land. Every synagogue in the world faces it and has done so for 2,000 years. There’s no colonialism with any of the features of Zionism. So, other than showing up in a place, what are we talking about? You really don’t know why Zionism and colonialism aren’t the same thing? And then he looks at me and he says, “holy sh*t, now I’m invincible. I’m invincible. 

“And I was shocked, I was shocked, because the things I said to him were the most basic, foundational, simple facts of our history. He didn’t know them. And when he did know them, everything was solved in 45 seconds. If we tell our kids their story, they’re invincible.” 

Elstree and Borehamwood, Herts, UK. Israel Vigil: June 2024

At our weekly Israel vigil in Elstree and Borehamwood, Bristol student activist, Ilan explained how he had to educate himself to be able to counter the lies on campus. This is from someone who has been in the Jewish education system all his life and we had let him go ill-equipped to face the mob. 

Talking of superheroes, journalist and author, Yossi Klein Halevi on the Jewish leading light of our times and warm hug of podcast, ‘For Heaven’s Sake’ with Doniel Hartman, provides the magic sauce; 

“The Jewish story, the Zionist story is surreal. There’s nothing like this in history. The story of a people that loses its ancient homeland and refuses to relinquish its connection and centralises the memory of its loss into its religious life and carries this for 2,000 years of exile. And not only that, but even more absurdly, imagines that one day this totally powerless people that’s dispersed all over the world is somehow going to be gathered up and returned to its ancient land.  We need to own, yes, we need to own the strangeness of this story”. Our WHY?

So how does this fundamental storytelling work? As Sinek explains, the why is how you win hearts as well as minds. The what (inventing instant messenger, the USB flash drive, the Epilady, Waze, Mobileye, pillcam, desalination, drones, sliced bread, the wheel, air etc) is connected to the more rational part of the brain whilst the why (our 3700 year story) makes one feel something. 

It’s for this reason our why needs to be woven into the very fabric of every Jewish communications touchpoint, everywhere, forever. From Jewish schools to youth groups, from interfaith to every time a non-Jewish class of primary school kids comes into a shul all the way through to speaking with government, it’s time to tell our story once again through an integrated global communications strategy with why at its core.  

Start with why and we have a chance of changing the narrative, not for this war but for the next, or perhaps the one after. 

It is down to us, here, not only in Israel. It’s time to stop whining about Israel’s hasbara as it’s our job to change the narrative. If we do, perhaps we won’t need another heart-breaking Press Association interview to explain what should be a blindingly obvious connection to Israel, and in time, maybe people will once again understand us once again. 

Or at the very least we will own our own story. 

Until then, good luck to Eylon and Mark on the unforgiving front line.  

 

About the Author
Eddie Hammerman is a global brand & PR expert and a grassroots Jewish and Israel activist. He co-founded the Jewish Organ Donation Association (JODA UK) and following Oct 7, he co-founded the weekly Elstree and Borehamwood (Herts, UK) Israel vigils in support of Israel and to call for the immediate release of our hostages. Eddie is UK born, married to an Israeli with three children who sometimes listen to him.
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