Israel Is Losing the PR War; We Need to Spend Money to Get Our Message Out There
It’s a painful and difficult time for Israel. It’s a difficult time for Jews worldwide.
Less than 20 days into this war, Israel and the American Jewish community have no PR or digital plan. We are in a public relations war, digitally, online, and offline. One of the many reasons that Israel is losing the PR war is that not one single donor, not one single organization, has put serious money into advertising or digital PR for Israel.
It’s good that organizations are raising money — but they need to be spending a lot more of it on PR.
Many American Jews are sharing irrelevant messages. Well meaning WhatsApp groups chatter endlessly about what to do — and meanwhile there is zero budget for celebrities, zero budget for digital, zero budget for ads. Not one single American Jewish organization spends a major amount of money on Israel PR, celebrities, digital, or ads. It’s very sad and frustrating.
Does anyone know the name of this war? Do we even know what it’s called? This needs to be the Am Israel Chai War — the Jewish people live war. And the world’s best pro-Israel advertising and PR people should be naming it.
Last week, Israel decided to shut down the Ministry of Information during the war because the minister leading it had a small staff and said she was not supported, and that it was duplicative of other efforts. This is mind-boggling. Israel should have a huge ministry working on this issue.
Hamas is winning the PR war — they are holding 200 innocent people captive, including dozens of women and children they dragged out of their homes after slaughtering people on video, and the world is filled with people celebrating their activities. There are marches in the streets worldwide celebrating child killers, rapists, and mass murder. This is what we deal with.
This is a self-inflicted wound — many ministers are to blame, but so too are the American Jewish organizations who don’t understand Israel and don’t direct money to huge PR campaigns.
There’s many well-meaning PR and advertising people doing great work in Israel, in America, and worldwide. But there’s not a proper budget or organization for Israel, as there should be. The Jewish State can’t win the PR war if it doesn’t have the resources to fight it.
Ronn Torossian is an Israeli-American Public Relations executive. He lives in between New York City and Tel Aviv.
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