In an important article in the current issue of Azure, Noah Pollak describes
The incompetence continues today even in the face of daily rocket attacks on
For over a year, the IDF has been conducting air strikes in Gaza that are intended to thwart Kassam rocket fire into Israel, and because Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists intentionally operate among civilians, these strikes invariably kill bystanders and create damaging news stories.
It would be extraordinarily easy for the prime minister, for example, to hold a press conference in Sderot in front of a school destroyed by Palestinian rocket fire and explain to the cameras that while Israel is striking Hamas in order to protect the lives of Israeli children, Hamas is sending its children on suicide missions to operate those very same rocket launchers.
Every time thereafter that
Israel strikes at terrorists in Gaza, Israeli spokespeople could hammer home the damning fact that Hamas uses children in terrorist attacks. Repeated often and forcefully enough, the average Westerner may not be inspired to like Israel, but at least he will come to understand the nature of its struggle — and the macabre reality of Palestinian “resistance.”
Israel’s repeated failures to defend itself effectively in the media (and in some cases even to put up a defense) is a strategic failure of the first order, for reasons that Pollak summarizes as follows:
In our age of global communication and the disproportionate influence of easily manipulable photographs and video, a new theater of war has been created, one in which the battle is not fought over territory or against armies and terrorists. The battle is over images, narratives, and beliefs, and the tactics and strategies required to fight it bear little resemblance to conventional war.
The stakes for Israel are far greater than the repercussions of one particular crisis; what hangs in the balance is Israel’s strategic position among democratic nations; its ability to sustain its own sense of moral clarity and national confidence against its enemies; the perseverance of Zionism as the animating ethos of the Jewish state; and the fulfillment of the central aspiration of creating a country in which Jews no longer feel intimidated by their assailants.
Continue reading the article here. Last year, Pollak had another perceptive article on Israeli media efforts, summarized here. Both are worth reading in their entirety.
The current issue of Azure also includes articles by Moshe Yaalon and Michael Totten, among others.
Olmert’s few visits to Sderot have been characterized either by no publicity (when he snuck in unannounced last year) or with publicity released by the Government Press Office that illustrates the problem Pollak identifies, as in this picture from the May visit of Olmert inspecting rocket damage:
Olmert and Peretz examine rocket damages (Photo: Amos Ben Gershom, GPO)