The hashtag #standwithIsrael was used around 300 thousand times, compared to almost 8 million for #freepalestine. On Facebook, Israel is present in just over 400 thousand posts compared to the 11 million in which the Palestine is read. Similar situation on TikTok.
Several times during these three months of war, it has been said that Israel was falling into the trap set by Hamas. A terrorist movement such as the one that has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007 acts by nature within the perimeter of illegality, resorting to any means useful to achieve its goal. Instead, more is demanded of a democratic state. The hope is that it will present itself as trustworthy in behavior and communication, report verified news, and eschew sensationalism to emphasize an event that is already dramatic and tragic in itself. On this front and into the trap Israel’s communication strategy has fallen, especially on social media. With the effect of magnifying what was already a foreseeable risk on the eve of the Gaza war: in the world the Palestinian cause is more heartfelt than Israeli outrage.
Shortly after the explosion near the al-Shifa hospital in the northern part of the Strip, the X (Twitter) account of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office had published a post, later deleted within minutes. It read, “This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” Many considered the phrase a kind of admission of guilt, all the more so following its deletion. Yet, as would later be shown, Israel was not responsible. The rocket was Hamas’s and, as at other times since the beginning of the war, had fallen inside the enclave due to a malfunction.
The case can be used to explain how ineffective the Israeli communication strategy is. At this juncture, the error is perhaps the result of superficiality or lack of communication. Little changes. Everything that is published is analyzed in detail, especially in times of war. Nowadays in order to win it, it is not enough to triumph on the battlefield, but one must succeed in the field of information(infowar) as well. And there Israel is losing.
Just as Volodymyr Zelensky needed to show the effects of the Russian invasion in order to prevent the veracity of the massacres from being questioned, Netanyahu also had to organize meetings with the press to show that what happened in the kibbutzim was not fiction, unfortunately. Within a week of the attack, the Foreign Ministry had sponsored dozens of ads on all channels, seen by 4 million users. The purpose was to raise awareness of the incident, although some were visible only to an adult audience given the brutality. They succeeded, despite or because of that very atrocity. “This is the hardest photo we have ever published. As we write, we are shaking,” was the ministry’s comment attached to an image of a dead child.
However, after three months of the offensive and some 24,000 dead (Hamas figures), dismay over the most brutal attack in history on the territory of the Jewish state has turned to outrage over its military campaign.
“Indiscriminate bombings,” in Joe Biden’s words; men and children stripped naked and handcuffed; women blindfolded; IDF soldiers claiming abuse of Palestinian civilians, hoisting flags on Palestinian territory, praying in Hebrew inside mosques, remaining impassive in the face of settler-imposed expropriations in the West Bank; unconfirmed reports of the beheading of some 40 infants; Arab calendars passed off as terrorist names. This is compounded by verbal violence from the most extremist government figures. All of this undermines Israel’s credibility. It goes without saying that a snapshot or a film conveys more emotion than a press conference listing achievements. That is why the everyday life Gaza is going through, as told by the few journalists there, shakes consciences and arouses a counter-reaction that is difficult for Israel to stem, despite the fact that the drama it has suffered is also shared by the very people who would like the bombing to end.
Seeing is believing: the hashtag #standwithIsrael has been taken up about 300 thousand times, compared to nearly 8 million for #freepalestine. On Facebook, the former is featured in just over 400 thousand posts compared to the 11 million where the Palestinian one is read. Same situation on TikTok, first accused of trying to influence Western thinking and then exonerated by the Washington Post investigation, in which it spoke of a social spread of pro-Palestinian content more pronounced than pro-Israel content.
“It’s a bit like the law of reciprocity,” explains Giuseppe Dentice, head of the MENA desk at the Center for International Studies. There is one aspect that Hamas did not take into account in its attack: the fact that Israeli society would have compacted in the face of such a fury against Jews, when in fact the last Netanyahu government had strongly polarized it with its policies. Therefore, in this story “there are multiple situations that overlap, which is a bit of a mirror of what is happening in Israel,” Dentice continues. “If everything is justified as a response to what happened, then the Israelis also put atrocities on the plate, taking into account the losses attributable to this logic.”
If, therefore, a war is won even with the right use of social media, “Israel is not achieving its goal because the absence of a long-term vision affects how communication seeks to alter the balance in terms of public opinion.” It is a bit of a dog biting its own tail: without a clearly specified ultimate goal, the narrative risks becoming schizophrenic. A postwar plan is precisely what Biden is trying to ask Bibi for but for now it is slow in coming, with the far right wanting to close the books on Gaza first. “On the one hand, Israel has to show the world its strength, because the attack showed a weakness it cannot afford, emphasizing what happened. At the same time, there is an almost amateurish underestimation in understanding what the dissemination of those images or the use of certain terms entails. This splitting of personality risks becoming a boomerang.
“The bottom line is that changing the narrative is virtually impossible for Israel without reformulating its military campaign. “Israel is fighting in a situation where anyone can spread an image. To communicate differently, you would have to have an idea of what you want to do next,” notes Matteo Colombo, Middle East analyst at the Dutch think tank Clingendael. “You are fighting Hamas, but this war is having effects on civilians. It’s hard to communicate differently if you do it this way. The point is that it is hard for Israel to justify its offensive. If it were doing targeted attacks against terrorists, like the one in Beirut, the narrative would come easier. But the moment you respond to a terrorist attack with conventional warfare, it becomes more complex.
“Eradicating terrorism is a noble goal, but what Israel is being blamed for is equating civilians and militiamen. “Even at the beginning of the offensive, in terms of propaganda Israel could do more, such as offering to let Gazawisinto its hospitals,” Colombo continues. “Now it could make an effort to create conditions in favor of the Palestinian people or propose an alternative to those that emerged for the future, but for now these are elements absent from the debate.” And thus also in institutional communication.
Finding a way out at the moment appears far from easy. On the eve of the start of the trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which must assess whether genocide is taking place in Gaza, Netanyahu assured for the first time that Israel intends only to pursue the elimination of Hamas and not to displace the Palestinian population or reoccupy the Strip indefinitely.
But not everyone believes him-on the contrary, they believe that the longer this conflict lasts, the more Bibi will see the specter of judgment on his performance recede. Even if this increases the risk of disconnecting Israel from the rest of the world. The only way to convince international opinion to turn the page, Colombo concludes, is for “when it all ends this to be presented as Netanyahu’s war, admitting mistakes and laying the blame on him.”
Several times during these three months of war, it has been said that Israel was falling into the trap set by Hamas. A terrorist movement such as the one that has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007 acts by nature within the perimeter of illegality, resorting to any means useful to achieve its goal. Instead, more is demanded of a democratic state. The hope is that it will present itself as trustworthy in behavior and communication, report verified news, and eschew sensationalism to emphasize an event that is already dramatic and tragic in itself. On this front and into the trap Israel’s communication strategy has fallen, especially on social media. With the effect of magnifying what was already a foreseeable risk on the eve of the Gaza war: in the world the Palestinian cause is more heartfelt than Israeli outrage.
Shortly after the explosion near the al-Shifa hospital in the northern part of the Strip, the X (Twitter) account of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office had published a post, later deleted within minutes. It read, “This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” Many considered the phrase a kind of admission of guilt, all the more so following its deletion. Yet, as would later be shown, Israel was not responsible. The rocket was Hamas’s and, as at other times since the beginning of the war, had fallen inside the enclave due to a malfunction.
