Much of the news in Israel this week focused on the political ramifications of a bill intended to facilitate drafting additional yeshiva students now that the IDF has a manpower shortage.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also made news when speaking about a different draft. When he briefed a closed-door meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Channel 12 reported that he was asked whether public diplomacy efforts in the United States were hindered by a lack of funding.
“It is not only a matter of money,” he told the MKs, according to the report. “It is because there simply are no people. You are surrounded by people who do not know how to string one word to another [in English]. We need to find people who can.”
The Prime Minister’s Office released a statement afterward clarifying that he told MKs that he “appreciates the work of his staff and the National Public Diplomacy Directorate that operates under his direction.”
But Netanyahu did not deny his call for more English speakers to enter the fray and join the fight for Israel on the media battlefield. Regardless of what you think of Netanyahu and his handling of the current war, that call should be magnified.
There are actually tens of thousands of native English speakers in Israel, including most of the readers of this newspaper. Allocating significant funding to recruit them could provide a huge boost to Israeli public diplomacy at a crucial time.
There are also plenty who would be willing to volunteer and do it for free, such as students, retirees, and other patriots. American Jews who want to help from home could also be officially integrated into the effort.
A formidable army of English speakers who can string together plenty of words could be drafted. Among them could be future stars in Israeli public diplomacy.
Government spokesman Eylon Levy was relatively unknown before he volunteered himself for the public diplomacy effort immediately after the Oct. 7 massacre. He has been suspended for questionable reasons, but the next hasbara hero could soon be raising eyebrows.
SPECIAL EFFORT could be made to recruit diverse spokespeople, including more women, Sephardim, Ethiopian immigrants, Arabs, Druze, and members of the LGBTQ community.
There is considerable risk involved. Novices are more prone to make mistakes than veteran spokespeople. But practice makes perfect.
Levy began daily media briefings with questions, which at their peak were broadcast live by top international news networks. Without him, the quality of both the media outlets that attend the briefings and the questions asked have gone down, perhaps because his replacements lack his gravitas.
But it could also just be the result of waning international interest in the war. Tuesday’s briefing this week was even canceled.
This is the time to bolster the current staff of government spokespeople, as the war has gotten more challenging to explain. At any point, Hezbollah could begin a full-fledged attack from Lebanon, and Israel must prepare itself.
It cannot be forgotten that after Netanyahu returned to power and was sworn in at the end of December 2022, he did not get around to hiring spokespeople for the foreign press until after the massacre more than nine months later.
Government spokespeople should be given the tools to get out in front of stories and be proactive, not just reactive, which Levy did successfully with his efforts against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Questions asked by the journalists on Zoom should only be able to be seen by the host of the press conference, not by everyone tuned in – a lesson that should have been learned a long time ago, more than four years after the outbreak of the COVID pandemic and the dominance of videoconferencing.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I have known Levy for many years in his roles at IBA English News, i24, and as the spokesman for President Isaac Herzog, and I deeply respect him. I was disappointed to see him suspended from his role as government spokesman, by which he brought public diplomacy to the forefront of the war.
It does not matter to me if he was suspended for overstepping his bounds in criticizing British Foreign Secretary David Cameron on social media, for becoming too much of an Israeli celebrity, or for upsetting Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, by participating in demonstrations against her husband before he took the job.
What I care about is the government making more of an effort and investing more on public diplomacy because winning on the media battlefield is the key to winning on the military battlefield.
What Israel needs right now is someone who not only strings together words in English but understands the mindset. Someone who is perpetually online and aware of the anti-Israel narrative. But also someone with the gravitas to get the right information out to deal with things before they become a big deal.
Someone who is filming at the border and showing trucks going through.
Someone who understands why these things may present logistic and op-sec issues but still fights for a way to get to “Yes, we can work around this and release something.”
Since Oct. 7, English speakers around the world have volunteered to join the war effort on social media, devoting considerable time, neglecting family, and losing friends. They have done it in a personal capacity and by sending incorrect reports about Israel to media watchdogs like HonestReporting. But they can be drafted to join the official government efforts on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, TikTok, and X.
With a social media all-star team, the worst anti-Israel activists can be fought more effectively. This week, investigative reporting by HonestReporting and other non-governmental organizations helped persuade Meta to remove pro-Hamas influencer Jackson Hinkle and his dangerous disinformation from Instagram and Facebook. There are plenty more who have crossed red lines and should be targeted and removed.
American and Canadian citizens in Israel have also died disproportionately in this war, according to the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, which keeps a list of individuals from English-speaking countries who have died in service or as victims of terror called the AACI Remembers project.
English speakers who move here and their children tend to be idealists ready to make sacrifices for their people. The motivation to be drafted is there – much more than with haredim to join the IDF.
It may not be mandated by the Supreme Court, but this draft is no less important than that other one in the news.
The writer is the executive director and executive editor of the pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting. He served as chief political correspondent and analyst of The Jerusalem Post for 24 years.