Jamal Kheiry’s Weblog

Disclaimer: It’s a dicey proposition for me to draft a public relations blog on the war in Gaza, because I am not an objective observer; nonetheless, I present my thoughts on the image- and reputation-management implications of this horrific situation and leave it to the reader’s judgement whether my bias shows through.

Throughout this conflict, Israel has let its media-savvy show. Their spokespeople are relentless and disciplined when it comes to repeating their key messages, and their audience-targeting is absolutely perfect. They have used a combination of carrot and stick – proactively showing reporters the damage by Hamas rocket fire, while actively preventing reporters from entering Gaza, where the death and suffering of Palestinians dwarfs anything the PR flacks can display in Sderot or Ashkelon.

This is from a NY Times reporter’s blog:

for an 11th day of Israel’s war in Gaza, the several hundred journalists here to cover it wait in clusters away from direct contact with any fighting or Palestinian suffering but with full access to Israeli political and military commentators eager to show them around southern Israel, where Hamas rockets have been terrorizing civilians. A slew of private groups financed mostly by Americans are helping guide the press around Israel.

Like all wars, this one is partly about public relations. But unlike any war in Israel’s history, in this one, the government is seeking to control entirely the message and narrative for reasons both of politics and military strategy. [emphasis added]

In terms of messaging, Israel sticks to those that give it the broadest possible latitude for action in the densely-populated Gaza Strip: 1) This war is a defensive action that is not targeting Gaza civilians, 2) Its real target is Hamas, which is a terrorist organization lobbing rockets at Israeli civilians, 3) Hamas hides fighters and weapons amongst Palestinian civilians.

Whether the spokesperson is from the military or the civilian government, they do not stray from the approved line, and it is repeated on media outlets all over the world, hour after hour. Regardless of the credibility you attach to the messages, the simple fact is that by repeating them under all circumstances, they work… but only with the target audiences.

There are huge swathes of the world – comprising the vast majority of it, in fact – that opposes Israel’s assault for various reasons. Public opinion around the globe is decidedly against the war and regards the civilian deaths as deplorable and avoidable. But Israel isn’t wasting resources trying to convince the world that it holds the moral high ground; its messaging targets only those audiences that matter, and those that want to believe them: the United States and Israel’s citizens.

This illustrates a key consideration in public relations: some audiences will never believe you, and you should therefore not bother trying to convince them of anything. Ignore them. Say things they would regard as pure fabrication; from a strategic standpoint, they simply don’t matter. In the U.S. and Israel, however, the three key messages are believed by many, are high-impact, and result in strategic gains: financial and political support for Israel.

One of the key factors contributing to this credulity in the U.S. is the vast difference in coverage of the war by U.S. news outlets compared to foreign ones. From the beginning of the assault, foreign news organizations have tended to focus on the human suffering in Gaza, with painful images of the Palestinian injured and dead. American news coverage, by contrast, did not show as many civilian casualties until days into the conflict. And, interestingly, the Israeli line is evident even when civilian casualties are being depicted. On this CNN slide show, for example, babies and other civilians injured and killed by Israeli bombs are shown under the headline, “Israeli forces target Hamas sites in Gaza” [emphasis added].

The Israeli PR machine, I must note, is not successful in the absence of supporting facts; it is undeniably true that Hamas continues to fire rockets into civilian populations of Israel, regarding all Israeli citizens as legitimate military targets. This, of course, is a notion completely at odds with reality. From a PR standpoint, one can point to decades of injustice and oppression under Israeli occupation as reason for the ongoing rocket attacks by Hamas, but relatively few are convinced that this means all Israeli civilians are legitimate targets. What about peace activists in Israel who deplore their government’s actions against Palestinians and actively advocate for Arabs’ rights? What about Orthodox Jews who believe the state of Israel shouldn’t even exist as a political entity? How can they be regarded as military targets?

As long as Hamas continues to fire rockets at Israel, thereby creating randomly-selected Israeli victims, they will be giving Israel all the rhetorical ammo it needs to continue the assault and further brutalize Palestinian civilians under the umbrella of “a defensive action.”