"Let the general in," she says with a smile.
The IDF Spokesman's foreign press liaison unit in Jerusalem.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski
The Armored Corps brigade commander is tall and broad-shouldered, radiating experience and machismo with a trim gray beard covering a strong jaw. He's the third general to come to this office this week seeking guidance.
The woman sitting behind the desk is several years his junior and a few ranks below him, too - yet when the brigade commander sits down, it is Avital Leibovich who is giving the orders. Fox News wants an interview with a senior officer who can explain what happened in the alleyways of Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, and it is Leibovich 's job to make sure the journalists hear what the IDF Spokesperson wants them to hear.
"Every question they ask you, answer with an example from the field. Describe what you have seen with your own eyes, what you and your soldiers have experienced. Be as descriptive as possible," she says.
"It bothers me that they're talking about soldiers abusing Palestinians [during the operation], wrecking homes and whatnot," the general says. "For every ugly story like that, I can give two stories that are the total opposite. I'm talking about reservists sending letters of apology to the families whose homes they commandeered, sending them money and leaving them food, that sort of thing."
Leibovich looks the commander in the eye.
"That's exactly what they need to hear," she says.
And now he's ready to go.
This is today's IDF: coordinated, rehearsed, media savvy. Perhaps even more significantly, it is an army in which its spokespersons play a larger role than ever before - for better and for worse.
THE MEDIUM is the message, as communications theorist Marshall McLuhan famously said. Just in case, though, the IDF Spokesperson's Office now controls both. The foreign press liaison unit, as the face and voice of Israel's army to the entire world, is the gateway through which information flows (or, often, does not flow), and it has transformed from something of an afterthought into a major part of the military's arsenal. As wars are increasingly fought on the virtual battlegrounds of television and the Internet, the soldiers of the IDF Spokesperson's foreign press liaison unit are a new breed of pressed-uniform commandos.
Leibovich's highly motivated crew includes recent immigrants like Lee Hiromoto, a 26-year-old Yale graduate from Hawaii, Harvard graduate Arie Hasit, 25, and Aliza Landes, 26, a McGill grad.
"The North American desk must be one of the best educated units in the IDF," Landes says only half-jokingly.
It was Landes and Hiromoto who came up with the idea, a day into the fighting of Operation Cast Lead at the end of December, to launch a YouTube channel with material from the IDF Spokesperson's Office. It quickly became the most viewed channel in the world.
Here, initiative is the name of the game. Another recent immigrant on Leibovich's staff of 20, Devora, called one of the top military journalists in her native Belgium and offered to introduce him to Belgian Jews serving in combat units. He's due here soon to produce a lengthy feature for television that will be distributed across Europe.
"We're proactive. We no longer wait for someone to come to us with a request; we are now the initiators. We suggest stories to journalists, instead of the other way around," says Leibovich, who has just been promoted to lieutenant-colonel.
"Since each area has its own unique characteristics and its specific areas of interest, we provide each 'audience' with what it needs," she adds. "We tailor information and stories for North America, for Europe, for Russian-language media, for Arabic media and for Latin America and the Far East."
Whereas interaction with the Spokesperson's Office once meant long delays and garbled armyspeak, there is now a greater focus on productivity and efficiency, of providing what journalists need.
"I send out SMS messages to 400 reporters each day," Leibovich says. "If someone wants to know how many Kassams fell in 2008, they can call me and get an answer within five minutes."
And if the phone is busy, journalists can simply pop in. After several years based in Tel Aviv, the foreign press liaison unit returned to Jerusalem a few months ago - setting up shop in the Jerusalem Capital Studios building that houses the offices of some of the most important foreign media companies.
"The fact that we're here at JCS is significant," Leibovich says. "As soon as something happens, we can respond and brief them immediately. So they don't have to start running around, calling up people in Gaza, asking, 'What's going on? What are you hearing? What can you report?' We tell them, 'We're attacking here and here, because Hamas did this and this.' They get all the information they need from us. So there's much less spin."
"The IDF is very adept at ensuring that its message gets out there, and gets out there quickly - and I don't say that as a smart-ass remark," says ABC Australia correspondent Ben Knight.
"During the war, it didn't take much effort to get people into the office at short notice and hear their side of things. We never wanted for comment from the IDF, and we never had to wait too long. So they are obviously very well aware of the importance of doing it and very well practiced at getting their point of view out there. The Australian army does things quite differently, I can tell you that."
WHERE THE unit once was distant, today it seeks out contact with foreign correspondents.
"I have learned that if you don't take a journalist out to see things with his own eyes, you just won't get through to him," Leibovich says. "But once you do...!"
One example of the positive effects of taking journalists into the field has been in coverage of the West Bank security barrier. In its early days, inefficiency at the roadblocks and transfer points meant lengthy waits, exposed to the weather, for Palestinians. More recently, improvements in procedures and infrastructure have significantly eased the situation, and showing that to the world helps reduce pressure on Israel.
