It looks like the Israelis have finally figured out that they’ve lost the media war for decades. They’re working to change the information battlefield.
A year after the Kafr Kana bombing during the Second Lebanon War and the IDF’s failure to speedily produce video footage justifying its attack, the IDF Spokesman’s Office has implemented a number of lessons aimed at preventing future operational failures from having detrimental diplomatic consequences.
[…] The Kafr Kana bombing has not been forgotten by the IDF and serves today as a key case study for the IDF Spokesman’s Office during training for field commanders on the importance of correctly utilizing the media.
According to a number of senior IDF officers interviewed by The Jerusalem Post, the failure to quickly release the rocket-fire footage was due to a misconception and under-awareness by the Israel Air Force of the event’s far-reaching consequences.
According to a high-ranking military source, shortly after the bombing an IAF general dismissed a number of requests by IDF Spokeswoman Brig.-Gen. Miri Regev to receive the footage, claiming that it was classified and could not be released to the public.
Yes, that’s the bad news. Now the good news:
Since the war, the IDF Spokesman’s Office under Regev has worked hard at training field commanders to better interact with the media. Last week, she laid the cornerstone for a military media school next to the National Defense College at Glilot that will provide compulsory classes on the media to high-ranking officers.
“The most important lesson learned from the Kafr Kana incident was that there needs to be better awareness throughout the IDF about the importance of cooperating with the Spokesman’s Office and to keep it in the operational loop,” a senior IDF officer said Sunday.
The lack of media awareness was not limited to IDF officers but was also seen in government officials, including a senior politician, involved in the decision-making process throughout the war, who said there was no point in releasing the footage earlier in the day since, according to him, the networks would broadcast it.
To improve this, the IDF Spokesman’s Office provides regular lectures teaching field commanders the importance of releasing footage and information about operations as quickly as possible. In addition, the IDF has recently made technological upgrades to some of its systems that allow for quicker collection, retrieval and release of media-worthy material.
The IDF Spokesman’s Office has also been working to train its reserve officers, particularly those from the Foreign Press Section, to better recognize events that could have diplomatic consequences and to more assertively state their case before field commanders.
File this under: About frakkin’ time. Years ago, the Israeli ambassador to Washington spoke at my synagogue. Afterwards, one of the congregants and I were discussing with the ambassador Israel’s negative image in the media. We tried to explain to him that Israel was getting hammered by the Palestinian representatives. He kept telling us, over and over again, that Americans supported Israel. Not the point, we told him, and tried to explain that you can’t keep getting hammered in the world media without seeing your image suffer. He absolutely refused to hear us, and we left feeling very frustrated. That was Israeli policy—and still is, in far too many quarters—toward the Palestinian media blitz that’s had decades to dig itself in. I can’t find the article, but I do recall reading that Arafat sent his media people to top PR classes and learned from the Soviets how to get his message across.
It’s about damned time that Israel finally started facing its crappy relations with the media and began fighting back with the same tools. If there’s video footage available, the networks will use it. That Qana video would have gone a long way towards proving that Hezbollah lied about stationing missiles in civilian areas. They should make these tapes available on YouTube, as well. Viral marketing isn’t only for commercial products.
Israel needs to get her side of the story out on a regular basis, and stop letting the terrorists frame the narrative. Hezbollah did that par excellence last summer.
Do you really think our antisemitic media would have allowed that footage to be seen anywhere but in Hezbollah strategy sessions focusing on better ways to conceal the locations of their rocket teams? Israel has learned the hard way that the media is on the Palestinians’ side, acting not only as carriers for genocidal propaganda but as spotters, forwarding telemetry data back to Hamas and Hezbollah rocket squadrons to help improve their aim.
The media lets out only what they want to let out. They’ve gone all in against Israel, and they’re doing everything in their power to see it destroyed, in the hope they will be forgiven for allowing the “mistake” of Israel’s existence to take place.
Of course, they know they will also have to undo the “mistake” of the US’s, Australia’s, Canada’s, and maybe even Britain’s existences too, but that’s a price they’re willing to make everyone else pay.
I think Meryl’s point is that the decades long Arab media blitz is the cause of much of that anti-Israel bias, which is morphing into antisemitism as the Leftists become more committed to that ideology. The trend must be combatted. With YouTube and many other new mews sources available now the old MSM monopoly is broken. Islamists take advantage of this, why should Israel not do so too?
Israel and the Bush Administratiion are alike in this. They believe the justice of their causes will show itself and people will support them for that reason. It doesn’t work that way. The most just cause in the world (and what could be more just than Jews defending themselves against genocide?) will fail to the most evil cause if the latter can make itself out to be more just and more successful to observers. It may be all lies, but if they are plausible and unrefuted lies they will win the information battle.
Remember, there’s a sucker born every minute. That’s how Chavez got into office in Venezuela, that’s how Ortega got elected in Nicaragua recently, that’s how Arafat became a “stateman”, and many other examples of the scum rising to the top. Tha Islamists, the Arabs, the Leftists are counting on snowing the suckers; they are political P. T. Barnums.
“With YouTube and many other new mews sources available now the old MSM monopoly is broken.”
If only this were true! But while the internet reaches millions, the MSM can still reach billions. The monopoly hasn’t been broken, but it has been shaken up enough for our would-be overlords to notice, and they’re rapidly rallying their forces to suppress the free flow of information, as usual, “for the common good.”
The vast amount of information on the internet is both its strength and its weakness; anyone can find the truth with enough digging, but it’s much easier to find only what information fits one’s preconceptions, and care nothing whether it’s true or not. This aspect of human nature is where the media’s power comes from, and the loss of their power to suppress information is likely to last only until they find a way to channel it into a fear of the internet itself.
Then the media will ask us to give up our freedoms, and we will be too scared of the “hackers on steroids” to refuse.