- Israel has extensive intelligence, information, and documentation it could use to confront the international battle over narratives and public perception. Yet it still operates primarily on the defensive.
- Senior political and security officials are calling for a national strategic influence and communications system that would consolidate existing capabilities and shift Israel from a reactive posture to a proactive one.
The controversy surrounding the film “NAZA” is not the problem. It is a symptom. The real problem is that Israel repeatedly enters the international battle over narratives after the battle has already begun and the narrative has already been established.
The release of the film and the international controversy surrounding it should serve Israel not merely as grounds for a forceful response to its creators, but above all as a wake-up call, senior Israeli political officials say.
The film won the Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and makes serious allegations against the IDF, based in part on anonymous testimonies from individuals presented as Israeli soldiers and intelligence personnel.
The IDF rejected the allegations, arguing that it could not verify the identities of some interviewees and that the film contains claims that contradict operational and legal realities.
But senior officials say the real problem is far bigger than a single film.
For years, Israel has repeatedly found itself responding only after a narrative has already taken hold internationally.
Hostile actors define the story, international media outlets adopt it, international organizations respond to it, and only then does Israel attempt to explain, deny, and present the facts from its own perspective.
“This is not an adequate way for a country engaged in an ongoing international campaign to operate,” a senior Israeli political official said.
The battle over public perception is no longer a marginal public diplomacy issue. Senior security officials say it has become a strategic front with direct implications for Israel’s national security, its international standing, and its freedom of action.
Public opinion worldwide influences governments, parliaments, judicial systems, and international organizations. Israel therefore cannot afford to address this arena only when a film, report, or campaign is published against it.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir appears to have recognized the scale of the problem after the film’s release. During a discussion within the IDF, he called for a broad national and international effort in strategic communications, in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the National Public Diplomacy Directorate, and other bodies, and ordered the establishment of a multidisciplinary team to examine possible courses of action.
But Israel needs more than an ad hoc team established in response to a film or a single media event.
According to senior political officials, it needs a permanent, professional and coordinated national strategic influence system that operates continuously, proactively, and offensively, rather than only during times of crisis.
Such a system, they say, should effectively serve as Israel’s national command center for the international battle over narratives and public perception – not another public diplomacy body waiting for the next crisis, but a system that can identify emerging threats to Israel’s international standing, set strategy, mobilize the relevant agencies, and initiate targeted influence and communications campaigns around the world.
Israel does not merely need to explain itself better. It needs to learn how to shape the agenda.
Such a system should coordinate the strategic communications and public diplomacy capabilities that already exist within the state, including the National Public Diplomacy Directorate in the Prime Minister’s Office, the Foreign Ministry, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, COGAT, the Shin Bet spokesperson’s office, and the relevant legal authorities.
The goal would not be to abolish these bodies’ professional independence or merge them into a single organization. Rather, the objective would be to create a national coordinating body that sets strategy, identifies emerging threats to Israel’s international standing, establishes priorities, and ensures that all relevant agencies operate under a common strategic framework.
It would be a body capable of mobilizing all of the country’s existing capabilities before the other side’s narrative becomes established and embedded in international public perception.
According to political officials, the head of the new national strategic influence and communications system should have extensive experience in public policy, public diplomacy, international media, and strategic influence. Not necessarily a politician, and not necessarily a military officer or diplomat. The position would require someone who can connect different worlds: intelligence, law, diplomacy, media, social networks, and policy.
Alongside the head of the system, a senior steering committee should include representatives from the defense establishment, the Foreign Ministry, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Justice Ministry, and professionals specializing in media and digital communications.
The committee would establish Israel’s strategic lines in the international arena and ensure that its messages do not change from one government agency to another or from one crisis to the next.
The Shin Bet’s communications division should also be part of this system. The Shin Bet possesses extensive intelligence concerning Hamas, terrorist infrastructure, the prevention of attacks, and the activities of actors involved in the campaign against Israel. Some of this information is not systematically or rapidly translated into material that can be used in the international arena.
The intention is not to turn the Shin Bet into a public diplomacy organization. Its role must remain intelligence gathering and counterterrorism. But there should be a permanent mechanism capable of determining, subject to intelligence-security restrictions, what information can be released, when it should be released and in which arena, and how to transform it into credible, documented, multilingual material.
The same applies to the IDF. The international campaign surrounding allegations concerning Israeli policy and IDF operations cannot rest primarily on the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.
The IDF should provide the facts, data, documentation, and operational information that can legally and safely be made public. The state, however, should lead the diplomatic, legal, and public diplomacy campaign vis-à-vis governments, international organizations, media outlets, and legal bodies abroad.
This is a fundamental distinction. The IDF is not the state. The state must defend the IDF in the international arena by using all the tools at its disposal.
Israel also faces another problem: the gap between the enormous amount of material it possesses and its ability to use it effectively.
Israel holds vast quantities of intelligence, documentation, video footage, testimony, and other material relating to the October 7 attack and Hamas activities. Israel has also presented evidence and intelligence regarding Hamas’s use of civilian environments and civilian infrastructure for terrorist purposes. The IDF itself has stated that Hamas systematically operates from within civilian areas and embeds terrorist infrastructure among the civilian population.
The magnitude of this gap became particularly clear after October 7. On the one hand, Israel accumulated an enormous body of intelligence and documentation concerning the terrorist attack and Hamas activities. On the other hand, Israel continues to struggle to transform this material into a systematic, accessible, and effective international campaign.
Simply possessing the material is not enough. Israel must know how to tell the story, present the facts in different languages, tailor them to different audiences, and bring them, at the right time and in the most effective manner, to the arenas where the debate is taking place.
The message intended for the U.S. administration is not necessarily the same message intended for students at a university in London. The message aimed at a French journalist is not necessarily the message intended for an Arab audience.
A national strategic influence and communications system must know how to segment audiences and develop the appropriate language, spokespeople, and materials for each.
The campaign also cannot be conducted in English alone. Israel must operate systematically in Arabic, European languages, and other languages, using speakers and media professionals who understand local cultures and political discourse, rather than relying solely on mechanical translations of Israeli messages.
The international arena consists of far more than governments. It includes media organizations, social networks, universities, human rights organizations, parliaments, influencers, cultural figures, lawyers, and broad segments of the public who are not necessarily familiar with the realities of the Middle East.
When Israel is not present there proactively, others fill the vacuum.
Senior Israeli security officials have also identified in recent years the activities of foreign states and actors in the international influence campaign against Israel, foremost among them Qatar, which they say invests enormous resources in this effort and uses financial resources, media platforms, and international relationships to promote messages hostile to Israel.
Qatar is an example of how a state can use money, media, international connections and institutions of influence to shape narratives around the world. According to these officials, Israel needs to map the networks, organizations and messages operating against it and understand how they spread internationally, rather than limiting itself to responding to each incident.
This campaign cannot be conducted solely on the defensive, political officials say. Israel must shift from a policy of reaction to one of initiative and proactive strategic influence.
Instead of waiting for the next film, the next report or the next campaign, Israel should identify in advance the issues on which an attack is likely to emerge, prepare the factual and legal infrastructure, and act before the opposing narrative becomes established and embedded in international public perception.
The legal sphere also requires a different approach. Israel needs to strengthen its independent review and investigative mechanisms whenever there is a credible suspicion of a violation of the law. The IDF itself states that it investigates concrete allegations of wrongdoing and, when appropriate, initiates legal proceedings against those involved.
An effective and transparent Israeli law-enforcement system is not only a legal necessity. It is also an important component of the international campaign. When Israel investigates concrete allegations itself, publishes the findings when possible and prosecutes violations when they are established, it strengthens the argument that Israel is a state with independent law-enforcement mechanisms, rather than a state that refuses to investigate the conduct of its own forces.
But Israel’s strategic influence campaign also begins at home.
Senior security officials say ministers and members of the Knesset must understand that every public statement they make can become, within minutes, raw material for an international campaign against Israel.
An Israeli minister must understand that words spoken in Israel in the morning can appear in the headline of a European newspaper by the afternoon and become part of diplomatic or legal material directed against Israel by evening.
Harsh statements about destroying the Gaza Strip or harming civilians do not remain confined to Israel’s domestic political arena. They are translated, disseminated, quoted and presented to the world as official positions of the State of Israel.
A national strategic influence and communications system must therefore also include message discipline at the political level. This does not mean preventing political disagreement or restricting freedom of speech. It means recognizing that the government operates simultaneously in two arenas, the domestic arena and the international arena, and that ministers’ statements have direct implications for Israel’s struggle over international legitimacy.
The “NAZA” affair should therefore become much more than another confrontation between the Israeli government and the creators of a film. It should become a turning point in Israeli strategic thinking and lead to a serious process of learning and institutional reform.
Israel has invested enormous resources for decades in defense, intelligence, technology, and military capabilities. But in the international battle over public perception, it still operates largely through a collection of separate bodies, each doing its own job, without a central mechanism to connect the full picture.
“This is exactly what needs to change,” a senior political official says.
According to the official, Israel does not need a “propaganda ministry.” It needs a professional national strategic influence and communications system that can connect intelligence, facts, law, diplomacy, media, and digital communications.
A system that operates below the intelligence radar, before a threat to Israel’s international standing becomes an international crisis, and that can rapidly mobilize all the tools available to the state.
In modern warfare, it is not enough to win on the battlefield. One must also know who is telling the world what happened there.
Israel has spent decades building military and intelligence power. It is time to build its strategic influence capabilities with the same seriousness, a senior political official says.
If Israel continues to enter the international arena only after the story has been established and embedded in public perception, it will keep chasing events rather than shaping them.
If it builds a professional, coordinated, and proactive national strategic influence and communications system, it can at least ensure that, in this crucial battle, it does not surrender the battlefield before the fight has even begun.
