The missing front: How Netanyahu is bungling the war for legitimacy - The Jewish Chronicle

Last Sunday morning, reports began to circulate from Gaza of yet another alleged Israeli massacre. The Hamas-run Health Ministry claimed 31 civilians had been gunned down a day earlier by IDF troops near an aid distribution centre in the southern Gaza Strip at a facility managed by the newly formed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Within hours, the narrative took hold and headlines across the globe depicted Israel as the aggressor, killing innocent and desperate civilians who only wanted something to eat. Inside Israel, there was silence. Not a word from the Foreign Ministry. Not a statement from the IDF spokesperson. The only person who tried to push back was former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who released a private video, though even he didn’t have all the facts.

It took nearly 12 hours before the IDF issued an official statement. At 6pm it declared the reports “false”, insisting that “findings from an initial inquiry indicate that the IDF did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site”. In other words: Israel didn’t shoot, and it didn’t kill.

Most glaring was the vacuum that preceded it. The IDF spokesperson fundamentally misunderstood his role. Allowing 12 hours to pass without a response, while the global narrative was already set, is not a public relations misstep – it is a dereliction of duty. In military terms, it’s akin to abandoning a post.

This isn’t the first time. In 2010, after the deadly raid on the Mavi Marmara, Israel was accused of killing peace activists. It took the military more than a day to release footage proving the soldiers had been ambushed and attacked.

The same happened in 2006 in Kfar Kana, Lebanon, when dozens died in an Israeli airstrike on a building from which Hezbollah had launched rockets. Again, it took 12 hours for the IDF to release evidence supporting its version of events.

These aren’t isolated cases. They reflect a systemic Israeli failure to understand the modern battlefield. Wars today are not fought only with tanks and fighter jets. They are waged on TikTok, BBC and on the pages of The Guardian. And while Israel’s generals still think in military terms, its enemies long ago mastered the propaganda war.

At the heart of the failure lies a broken structure: the National Public Diplomacy Directorate. This is the body, housed in the Prime Minister’s Office, that’s meant to steer Israel’s messaging in times of crisis. Whether it’s responding to a tragic incident at an aid centre or coordinating the response to Greta Thunberg’s publicity-seeking voyage to Gaza, this is the entity meant to set the messaging and ensure it is spoken in one voice.

Except the directorate hasn’t had a director for more than a year. So, when the next crisis comes – as it inevitably will – there is no one at the helm and no coordinated response.

This vacuum does not stay empty. It is quickly filled by Israeli politicians such as Likud MK Moshe Saada who said that he has “no problem that kids in Gaza will die”. Moshe Feiglin, a former Knesset member, went further, saying, “All of the babies in Gaza are the enemy.”

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (who together with Itamar Ben-Gvir will be sanctioned by the UK, the Foreign Office confirmed Tuesday) said that Israel is “destroying everything that is left in Gaza”.

And let’s not forget Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, who during the beginning of the war suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.

These statements cause Israel immense damage. They spread around the world and in the absence of something else, they become Israel’s message. And yes, much of the Western media is deeply biased and some flirts openly with antisemitism. But that does not absolve Israel of responsibility. If the state truly cared about international legitimacy it needs to take some critical steps.

That means putting professionals in the right roles. It means appointing a director to the National Public Diplomacy Directorate. It means ensuring the IDF spokesperson is a trained media professional, not a career field officer with no experience navigating the international press. It means building a communications apparatus as robust and disciplined as an F35 squadron.

Because just as Israel cannot afford to go to war without a chief of staff, it cannot afford to fight without a head of public diplomacy.

The war is being fought on three fronts: the battlefield, the home front, and the media front. Lose one, and you begin to lose them all. And this government has abandoned the media front in what can only be described as gross negligence. What we need to keep in mind is that even the best messaging cannot fix bad policy. That is the deeper crisis. Israel continues to fight in Gaza without articulating what the endgame is. What does victory look like? Why does the operation continue? What justifies the cost?

There are answers: 55 hostages remain in Hamas captivity and Hamas still has fighters and weapons. But unless the government says clearly and coherently what it is seeking in Gaza, the world will assume there is no reason for this war and will report on it in that way. Legitimacy is not a given. It needs to be earned and right now, for Israel it is gone.

Yaakov Katz is an American-born Israeli journalist, the author of four books on the Israel military, and the former Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Post

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