The Associated Press Tower in Gaza in May 2021. The Shati refugee camp in Gaza in July 2014. The Mavi Marmara Flotilla in May 2010. The Muhammad al-Durrah incident in September 2000. And now the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza in October 2023.
These hasbara (public diplomacy) nightmares all have in common that Israel was immediately blamed by the international media; and when the facts came out that cleared Israel, the damage to the Jewish state had already been done.
So has the IDF learned its lessons from past mistakes? And is the army handling public relations to the world better in Operation Swords of Iron than it has in the past?
To answer these questions, let’s go back to the AP Tower incident in Operation Guardian of the Walls. The IDF provided advanced notice about the forthcoming strike to everyone in the building, including the Associated Press and Al Jazeera bureaus, so that they could evacuate safely. This warning also enabled the building’s collapse to be filmed from every angle and brought on condemnation from around the world.
“The building contained civilian media offices, which the Hamas terror organization hides behind and uses as human shields,” was all the IDF said at the time. “The Hamas terror organization deliberately places military targets at the heart of densely populated civilian areas in the Gaza Strip.”
Those involved in PR begged the IDF to immediately reveal the truth: It was the cyber tower of Hamas – a legitimate military target – and it was being used to jam the Iron Dome missile defense system. But the IDF chief of staff and spokesman forbade their international communications department from using the words “Iron Dome” for five critical days, and by the time they permitted a proper explanation, no one was listening anymore.
“It was the biggest s*** show I’ve ever seen,” a former IDF spokesman said.
The same problem nearly happened again in the August 2022 operation Breaking Dawn, when children were killed in Jabalya in Gaza. When OC Southern Command Eliezer Toledano told the Security Cabinet that he had proof that Israel was not at fault for their deaths, National Public Diplomacy Directorate head Lior Haiat asked to reveal it to the world. Toledano responded that it would take time to investigate and that he did not want to harm the IDF’s operations. The information was only released because ministers sided with Haiat, who prevented another PR disaster.
Nowadays, it is the IDF itself that is constantly considering the impact of the media battlefield on the military battlefield. More than all of his predecessors, IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari realizes the importance of international media and the necessity to allocate time and resources to provide them with relevant information.
“They understand that we have to earn and actively sustain international legitimacy,” a former IDF spokesman said.
“The IDF is putting out a large amount of information to explain our case to the world, while exposing the other side’s lack of morals and use of human shields. That is a fundamental change.”
IN A briefing long before Hamas attacked Israel, Hagari said the IDF’s new policy was to act fast to tell the world its side with simple messaging.
Hagari and Lt.-Col. Richard Hecht, head of the IDF’s international communications department, have been doing that effectively, with regular English briefings, soundbites, interviews, and press releases with maps and videos. In one clip he released, Hagari spoke about nine-month-old Kfir Bibas, the youngest Gaza captive, and compared him to his own child.
IDF spokespeople still need to improve its public relations game
But the spokesmen still have a long way to go. It would have been helpful if they could have given the foreign press quicker proof that Israel did not bomb the Al-Ahli Hospital on October 17. They worked fast to get the IDF commanders to understand the severity of the situation.
IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy and Air Force Commander Tomer Bar went into the smallest details to prove that the IDF was not responsible and signed off on Spokesman Jonathan Conricus’s telling CNN and then the rest of the world within four hours. By then, nearly every international media outlet falsely accused Israel of killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians.
Yes, Israel suffered tremendous damage to its image from the incorrect reports.
But the high-profile incident also severely harmed trust in the media, who were caught reporting lies they received from a terrorist organization as gospel.
“It could have been done a bit faster, but it’s still night and day from how it used to be,” a former IDF spokesman said. “The international media are more careful now not to rely on Hamas sources after we held them accountable.”
Another decision that has gone well is to maximize the impact of a 40-minute video of Hamas atrocities by showing it in private screenings to journalists, influencers, diplomats, and politicians rather than releasing it to the public. Reporters were immediately brought to kibbutzim in the Gaza periphery to see the massacre site.
The IDF even launched its first podcast, hosted by IDF Spokeswoman Libby Weiss, a Northwestern University graduate.
There have been mixed results from the decision to not let reporters into Gaza unaccompanied. It prevented harm to journalists but also made the world reliant on Gazans with cellphones.
In recent days, the IDF embedded journalists from CNN, Fox News, NBC, BBC, AP, Reuters, The New York Times, Times of London, Newsmax, and Bild.
Fareed Zakaria complained on CNN that he had to “submit all materials and footage to the army for review before publication, but NBC’s Raf Sanchez said more honestly that he needed to show the IDF raw footage, not the final story.
THE DATA and visual information provided by the IDF still fall short. There have been too many black-and-white mushrooms of the IDF blowing stuff up instead of providing quality visuals of terror tunnels and dead terrorists from combat cameras. Hamas and Hezbollah by contrast keep good strong cameras near their terrorists to amplify their achievements. This remains a strategic weakness that must be corrected.
Not enough is being done to stop misinformation; and besides the hospital, the IDF was slow to respond to false charges of bombing the Gaza humanitarian corridor and holding up aid coming via Egypt.
More outreach can be done to anchors reporting from the US, who as media watchdog HonestReporting pointed out, have been more critical of Israel than reporters who parachuted in.
The IDF could also do more to diversify its spokespeople. While Conricus, Hecht, Peter Lerner, Doron Spielman – and Daniel Hagari, whose English isn’t perfect – have been delivering talking points well under fire, they are all straight, Ashkenazi, men, and Weiss is the only woman speaking to English media outlets.
In other languages, the IDF has been blessed to have more diverse spokespersons, such as Persian Arye Sharuz Shalicar in German and Farsi; and deputy Arabic Spokeswoman Major Ella Wawia, a courageous Arab woman from Kalansawa.
The IDF should showcase more Arab, Druze, Bedouin, women, and LGBTQ combat soldiers internationally to humanize Israel’s army.
More can be done to illustrate the high moral standard of the IDF. The Christian Evangelical media, which reaches a key audience, deserves more outreach.
Of course, the army has not been helped by backbench minister Amichai Eliyahu talking about nuking Gaza or MK Galit Distel-Atbrayan suggesting erasing it from the face of the Earth.
During Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s speech on Friday, her words were constantly tickered by Iranian Press-TV as if she mattered.
There are enough hasbara nightmares without them coming from our own politicians. ■
The writer is the executive director and executive editor of HonestReporting. He served in the IDF spokesman’s unit and was chief political correspondent and analyst of The Jerusalem Post for 24 years.