People sympathetic to Israel appreciate the precision bombing and the messages sent by the IDF to the Gazans to evacuate the area ahead of a bombing raid. The number of collateral casualties, each one tragic, was relatively low, considering the number of bombed civilian structures used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to shield their military.
Israeli analyses of the war should include why Israel failed to prevent the revival of an international public opinion, that solely blames Israel for the Palestinian predicament.
During the First Intifada, in 1988, I worked at the public affairs bureau of the Jewish communities in Holland. Almost every day the media aired Israeli soldiers fighting Palestinian youth throwing rocks and using slingshots. Sympathy for Israel hit an all-time low. While visiting the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit in Israel I talked about how TV footage transmitted the narrative of Israel using excessive force. It confused the officers. In their view, when then-defense minister Yitzhak Rabin urged his soldiers to break the bones of the insurgents, it should be understood as: “Stop them hard, but don’t shoot them.” For the outside world, Rabin had incited to acts of barbarism. Soon the TV showed Israeli soldiers hitting a Palestinian lying on the ground with a stone.
The odds are anyway against Israel in the war of images. Being no match for the IDF, the Palestinians have demonstrated time and again their genius in attacking Israel while simultaneously generating the maximum PR-profit from being the weaker party. Add to that Israeli politicians’ and media’s frequent boasting about the strength of the IDF. These may reassure the people of Israel, impress the world, but in tandem they elevate the Palestinians who dare fight this powerful army to the status of resistance heroes.
Victims equals heroes versus a mighty oppressor is the hard core of the Palestinian-Israeli narrative in international opinion.
What does the IDF website tell us? Not a story. Footage of precision bombing, explanatory texts and scorecards that show, for example on May 16, that 3,100 rockets were fired from Gaza, of which 1,210 were intercepted by the Iron Dome system. No explanation.
You don’t waste very expensive defensive missiles. On the same page is a list of the hours at which sirens sounded in towns and kibbutzim. Who needs that? What the public should know is: a missile was downed because it was aimed at a specific area, where so and so many people live. Possibly, such information is illustrated with footage of the interception, of the area where it could have landed, etc. This approach needs volunteers who film and soundtrack their emotions, and transmit data. Footage and data need thorough censuring to prevent providing information to the enemy, which he could use to pinpoint targets in Israel. That should be doable within reasonably short time using algorithms and techniques, at which the IDF excels. Immediacy is the key to PR.
This applies to information about the enemy. Show the launching sites of missiles fired from Gaza. Try to film and describe the sites, before eventually bombing them. The same goes for those responsible for the launching of missiles to Israel. Mention them by name, tell the world who you are after. Include their role in Hamas dictatorial rule, what sort of places they hide in. Put together biographies to build the narrative and add graphic material during the fight. If they are criminals, show them to the world. “Wanted for shooting missiles indiscriminately at civilians!”
The IDF isn’t and shouldn’t be a PR-agency, but it is the best equipped and most trustworthy institute to furnish the data. The IDF website can be the source of reliable, vivid and immediate information for journalists, governments and the public. Based on the IDF’s data, others in Israel should pursue more aggressive PR-policies using all sorts of platforms.
Israel’s PR-failure in this war is a wake-up call. Even if the PR fight is always uphill, Israel can score more points than it did this time.