“I provided comments to the 9th channel of Israeli TV today, while also listening to the program for a bit beforehand. The host asked a political expert the following question: “Why are we losing the information war? Don’t we have the means and money to conduct an information campaign, to persuade people, and to tell the truth about what’s happening?”
The political expert responded roughly as follows: “We’re doing everything right; the truth is on our side. It’s their fault for not liking us, and they dislike us so much that they’re incredibly foolish, and there’s nothing you can do with them.” And then there was a five-minute discussion about how foolish they are and how much the truth is on our side.
This is what rejuvenating socialism does to people. Imagine for a moment that the CEO of a company calls in the marketing director and asks, “Why aren’t people buying our product – we know it’s good, and they’re buying inferior, unsafe, and ugly alternatives instead?””
And the marketing director replies, “Yes, people are complete fools. We have an excellent product, but nobody understands it, so we don’t care about them.”
Normal, right?
Israel is hopelessly losing the information war. Partially, this is due to the fact that a large part of the Arab community was initially against Israel, and partially because Israel falls under the category of “developed, strong, white state,” which is inherently wrong in the context of modern leftist trends. But both of these could be overcome if not for two BUTs:
(1) Israeli propaganda pretends to be American, copying the instructive tone, assertiveness, dryness, and snobbery. But in addition to propaganda, America has two dozen aircraft carriers, thousands of nuclear warheads, two oceans on either side separating it from potential enemies, and an economy that even the leaders of terrorist groups are tightly linked to. America doesn’t need PR; it has everything mentioned above. America has it, and Israel has none of it.
(2) Israel does absolutely nothing to embed its ideas into the public consciousness. All Israeli propaganda is aimed at those who already support it. It’s all based on the idea that if I present you with logical arguments, you’ll believe me. This is nonsense; people believe what they want, not logical arguments.
Propaganda should seek and find what the masses want to believe and what will be advantageous for Israel. Propaganda should (a) be massive, like creating brand awareness, (b) come from sources the masses trust, and (c) confirm human fears, preferences, desires, opinions – and build its ideas on them.
Israel needs to accept the fact that propaganda is expensive. Someone recently wrote that Israel doesn’t create an equivalent of Al-Jazeera because it would be unprofitable. Of course, it would be unprofitable! The profit from it is different.
Huge efforts must be made to create an army of influencers. Pro-terrorist forces have been concerned about this for a long time – they sponsor universities, media, celebrities, buy scientific research, and bribe officials of international organizations. We need to learn to do the same thing – only more effectively because we won’t have enough money.
Israel does absolutely nothing to create a simple narrative for the masses. Terrorists have such a simple narrative – it carefully conceals everything they don’t want to talk about, it’s as simple as a children’s picture book and is presented on every corner. Nobody knows about the leaders of the Palestinians being fascists and collaborating with Hitler, about the riots in Palestine, about the hijackings of planes and bus bombings with children, about the leaders of today’s Palestinians being billionaires trading in weapons, drugs, and the lives of their citizens, about what they teach in their schools – because Israel doesn’t tell its own story.
Nobody knows about Resolution 242, about the condition that the Palestinians fail to fulfill in terms of ending armed attacks, about how Palestine is supplied, about the treatment of Palestinians in Israeli hospitals – and so on. The simple idea that Israel cannot leave the West Bank without security guarantees doesn’t reach the end consumer.
Israel doesn’t respond to accusations of killing innocent Palestinians in Gaza today at all. All the world’s military forces except Israel today, during combat, use the simplest narrative: we’re liberating civilians from (Nazis, terrorists, dictators, Martians – take your pick). And only Israel continues to confuse the war with terrorists and the war with Gaza, ignoring the issue of civilians in its propaganda. In practice, protecting the civilians of Gaza is the military’s top priority!
Israel should be demonstrating how much it loves the ordinary residents of Gaza 24/7 on all channels, how it protects them, saves them, provides humanitarian aid, and gets them out of harm’s way. Official letters to the UN demanding help in protecting the civilians of Gaza, complaints about Egypt obstructing this, videos of interviews with Arabs from Gaza cursing Hamas and thanking the liberators should be flowing like a river. The war should officially be fought to liberate the residents of Gaza from terrorists! Where is all this?
Israel cannot win a real war, no matter how many battles it wins, without winning the information war. This requires money and professionals – not elected officials or their friends/lovers. Information warfare today is no less complex than hot warfare, it’s no less expensive, and it requires professionals. It’s time for the country to start thinking about this.
