Israel’s PR: Time for a Change

Operation Guardian of the Walls once again generated significant criticism of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, on the one hand, and frustration with the presumed inability of Israel to explain and justify what it has been doing, on the other hand. Supporters of Israel are now calling to improve the public relations of the Jewish state. However, if Israel uses the same old methods that have failed repeatedly it will be a big mistake. Israel needs to fundamentally change how it uses public relations to educate the world.

Unfortunately, the reason Israel’s PR keeps failing is quite simple. As is the case with every country when attacked, Israel has the unequivocal right to fully defend itself against its enemy. The problem is that both Hamas or Hezbollah have been known to viciously and without morality operate from among civilians. No one watching the conflict unfold on television cares about the fact that Israel, bound by moral and ethical norms, goes out of its way to target militants only. The scenes of crumbling houses speak louder than any learned explanation. To compound this problem, social media then moves in to add its anti-Israel and antisemitic poison to the conversation.

The way to roll back this tsunami is not by playing the victimization game, where each side claims it has suffered more. Rather, if Israel wants to change the tide it must embark on a totally new path. It must set its sights on changing the dominant media portrayal of itself as a country that consistently causes problems in the region. Instead, Israel must be seen as a country that is committed to providing solutions to global problems.

But first, let’s take a closer look at how the world views Israel’s brand today. The U.S. News & World Report Survey of Best Countries of the World gathers data from a survey of 20,000 people across the globe. It presents a list of nine attribute—adventure, citizenship, cultural influence, heritage, entrepreneurship, movers, open for business, power and quality of life—to participants who assess how closely they associate an attribute with a nation. In 2016, Israel ranked 25 out of 60, a fair place in the center.

In 2021 Israel moved to number 30 out of 78, below Greece, Russia, the UAE and China, still a decent ranking except for an alarming trend: In the same five years, Israel dropped in all attributes except Power. In the attributes with which Israel prefers to be associated–Cultural Influence and Adventure–the results were particularly disappointing (39 and 64 out of 78, respectively). And even in the criterion of openness for business, which the Start-up Nation brand was supposed to deliver, Israel proved to be one of the worst countries in the world (65 out of 78, similar to Turkey and Kazakhstan).

In deciding which new story Israel should be telling the world, a story that the world will buy, we must consider the following questions: What does the world need most? And how can Israel contribute to fulfilling these needs?

Answering the first question is quite simple. The United Nations has defined 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), “A blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all by 2030,” among them No Poverty, Zero Hunger, Good Health and Well-Being, Clean Water and Sanitation and more. These are extremely ambitious goals that have become even more difficult to accomplish since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is exactly where Israel has a golden opportunity to rebrand itself as a Land of Sustainability, capable of addressing the SDGs and leading the world in providing innovative solutions. Israel, with its advanced technologies and proven record of assisting countries in need, should step in easily to this new branding. And Millennials and Zoomers, who care about these issues more than their predecessors, will surely appreciate it.

Israel, with its advanced technologies and proven record of assisting countries in need, should step in easily to this new branding.

An easy place to start is providing relevant deliverables to the Palestinian people, not Hamas, in Gaza.

Addressing the ongoing consequences of the pandemic in the region is one way to meet immediate needs as well as one of the broad concerns (Good Health and Well-Being) of the United Nations’ initiative. Israel should immediately assist with the vaccination of all the people of Gaza and work with the Palestinian Authority to ensure that Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza have access to vaccinations.

Once pressing health and pandemic needs have been met, Israel should design a proposal similar to the Marshall Plan—a blueprint created by the United States in 1947 to help re-build a war-torn Europe— that would improve the deteriorating living conditions of Gazans while ensuring that Hamas cannot use the aid to re-arm itself.

Additional SDGs that can be addressed by Israel involve clean water and clean and affordable energy. Israel can provide unique technical know-how with those items, and since Gaza’s coastal aquifer will soon run dry, Israel should start working on solving that issue as well, given that one way or another it will also become Israel’s problem.

These are not small undertakings, but in order to counter the dominant media narrative of Israel as oppressor, it’s imperative that the country commit to them.

Israel will undoubtedly have to defend itself against more terrorist attacks in the future, but once it is recognized primarily for its contributions to humanity as opposed to its military prowess, images of destruction from Gaza will be seen as an uneasy necessity rather than proof of Israel’s excessive use of power.

Finally, since support of the United States for Israel is critical, it must pay attention not only to the perspectives of American Jews, but also to those of liberal non-Jewish Americans, whose impressions of Israel will play an increasing role in shaping the way it is seen across the world..

The Israeli government, instead of pouring good money after bad money, should invest heavily in this new strategy. Surely there are many supporters of Israel, who have long been yearning for a change in Israel’s PR operations, who would be willing to support that initiative.

Uri Dromi was the spokesman of the Rabin and Peres governments. Chuck Lichtman, the author of “The Last Inauguration” and “The Sword of David,” is a lawyer living in Florida.