Summary
The discussion argues that “awareness” has become an overused term in Israel without a shared definition, strategy, or operational framework. While many actors contribute to public diplomacy and information efforts, these fragmented initiatives cannot replace a coordinated national doctrine. Modern conflicts increasingly revolve around shaping how reality is interpreted rather than simply controlling facts, with adversaries integrating cyber, media, and psychological operations into unified systems. The proposed solution is a professional and accountable national cognitive framework that distinguishes between disinformation, cognitive warfare, and hybrid warfare while preserving democratic legitimacy.
Key Takeaways
- Israel lacks a coherent national doctrine for “awareness” and cognitive warfare, despite widespread discussion and decentralized activity across government, media, and civil society.
- Modern adversaries operate through integrated systems that combine cyber activity, media influence, diplomacy, economic leverage, and psychological pressure to shape perception and erode trust.
- Effective cognitive strategy requires more than public diplomacy or fact-checking. It demands institutional coordination, audience trust, differentiated capabilities, and a democratic framework focused on foreign influence rather than domestic propaganda.
This article was originally published in Maariv on May 19, 2026.
Today, everyone in Israel is talking about awareness. In television studios, the military, politics, the Foreign Ministry, social media, and panel discussions. It has become the word that explains everything, and therefore almost explains nothing.
One person means public diplomacy. Another means national resilience. A third means deterrence. A fourth means an English-language video. A fifth means operations against the enemy. A sixth means narrative. Everyone uses the same word, but they do not mean the same thing. This is not a linguistic confusion. It is a strategic problem.
Israel talks extensively about awareness, but the state has not turned this discourse into a coherent doctrine, let alone into an integral part of its national security concept. There is no agreed definition, no clear division of responsibility, no shared professional language, and no architecture connecting all those already operating in this arena.
Since October 7, public diplomacy command centers, volunteers, influencers, spokespersons, Foreign Ministry initiatives, and Jewish communities around the world have mobilized. There is strength, commitment, and civic Zionism in this effort. But a multiplicity of voices is not a substitute for doctrine. All of these efforts matter, but they cannot replace authority, policy, coordination, and measurement. This is not criticism of those who rushed to help. On the contrary. It is criticism of a state that left too many voids for the public to fill.
State and regional actors are already operating differently. They do not think in terms of campaigns. They think in terms of systems. Russia is not merely trying to convince the world that its version is true. It seeks to erode trust in truth itself, in institutions, in the media, and in the very ability to know what is real. Sometimes it is enough for the public to conclude: everyone is lying.
China does not need to be an enemy of Israel in order to shape how Israel is perceived. In today’s world, it is no longer necessary to control every message. It is enough to influence the distribution environment: platforms, algorithms, academia, information infrastructure, and economic ties.
Iran is the clearest example of an adversary operating through multiple arms simultaneously: cyber warfare, leaks, threats, proxies, media, and online campaigns. From its perspective, this is a single integrated system designed to weaken Israel not only through military force, but also by undermining trust, cohesion, legitimacy, and freedom of action.
Qatar presents a different kind of challenge. It is not a classic enemy, and precisely for that reason its influence is more complex. It mediates, funds, hosts, invests, and speaks the language of partnership. Its influence operates through academia, media, diplomatic ties, and financial power.
Each of these actors operates differently, yet all understand one fundamental principle: the struggle is not only over facts. It is over the way facts are received. Not only what happened, but who is perceived as credible, who defines the context, who shapes the narrative, and who causes the world to interpret reality through their lens.
This is where precision matters. The problem is not only disinformation: a fake image, an edited video, fabricated data, or an impersonated account. Those require verification and rapid debunking. Cognitive warfare goes deeper. It targets the way audiences process information, build trust, interpret reality, and decide how to act.
That is why debunking alone is not enough. A fact can be corrected while the interpretive framework is still lost. When a serious accusation against Israel is published on a major international platform, Israel is not dealing only with a fact that must be verified. It is confronting a framework that has already cast it in the role of the accused. This was the lesson of the New York Times op-ed that accused Israel of a pattern of sexual violence against Palestinians, an accusation Israel strongly rejected while the newspaper stood by its publication.
Hamas understood this well on October 7, 2023. The violence, the documentation, the dissemination, the pressure on the hostages’ families, the international media arena, and the psychological warfare were not separate fronts. They were all part of the same operation. This is where awareness is no longer merely accompanying the action. It becomes part of the action itself.
Yet in response, Israel still returns too quickly to the familiar term: public diplomacy. Here lies one of the central failures. In Israel, there is a tendency to confuse media skill with cognitive expertise. Almost anyone who can craft a message, appear on television, run a social media account, or manage a campaign is immediately labeled an expert. But awareness is not only about what is said. It is about who says it, to whom, at what moment, from what foundation of trust, and within what framework of meaning.
Israel does not need another body declaring that it manages public diplomacy. It needs a national awareness doctrine.
First, Israel must stop thinking about awareness as the stage that comes after the action. In the current struggle, it is an operational capability in its own right. Sometimes it accompanies a military or diplomatic move. Sometimes it shapes it. And sometimes it is the move itself: changing the way an audience interprets an event, eroding an adversary’s trust, strengthening a partner’s confidence, or creating public pressure that shifts decision-makers.
Second, Israel must distinguish between the arenas. Combating disinformation, cognitive warfare, and hybrid warfare are not the same thing. The first concerns correcting facts. The second concerns how the public thinks, believes, fears, and makes decisions. The third combines awareness with cyber operations, money, academia, platforms, proxies, and diplomatic pressure. When everything is labeled public diplomacy, the state loses precision.
Third, Israel must build cognitive capabilities, not merely communication capabilities. Such capabilities know when to debunk, when to inoculate in advance, when to construct a competing narrative, and when to choose a spokesperson whom the audience genuinely trusts.
Fourth, Israel must build a national architecture with a clear democratic boundary: a permanent, professional, interagency, and accountable body that integrates policy, security, diplomacy, law, civil society, the Jewish diaspora, and technology. Its purpose should be to confront foreign influence, adversaries, and hostile actors, not to manage Israeli public opinion on behalf of a government, party, or leader. The moment such a framework is perceived as domestic propaganda, it will lose the one asset without which awareness cannot exist: credibility.
Israel knows how to fight and improvise. But in the cognitive domain, improvisation is not a substitute for doctrine. The next struggle will not only concern what Israel says. It will concern its ability to shape the very framework through which reality is interpreted.
Those who fail to understand that awareness can itself be the operation will continue to treat it as public diplomacy. And a state that treats awareness as public diplomacy will discover that others are already treating it as a battlefield.
