Managing the Israeli Identity through Digital Diplomacy

Global media journal, 2011

The interplay between use of force in conflicts and involved parties’ rhetorical efforts to determine related international discourse has long been subject of research and debate. However, how and why states adopt digital media in conflict, as well as how the emerging opportunity for “Digital Diplomacy” influences their actual communication warrants further consideration. This question raised in public, media and academia during Israel’s eight-day operation “Pillar of Defense” in Gaza in November 2012, when the military confrontation between Israel and Hamas was mirrored in a clash on social media as additional battlefield. The presented analysis of Israel’s online performance bases on Ben Mor’s self-presentation framework (2007, 2012), which explains constraints for structure and substance of communication by which states seek to build, maintain or defend their image in home and foreign audiences. Relevant Israeli Twitter feeds are analyzed and results flanked by semi-structured in...

The Internet has been a counter-public space for Palestinian liberation politics for over a decade, and digital technologies have become an increasingly important tool for solidarity groups across the world. However, the Israeli state and Zionist supporters worldwide are harnessing the same technologies and platforms to mobilize technology primarily to increase pro-Israel sentiments. The aims of this article are to examine hasbara [Israeli public diplomacy] through an exploration of similar diplomacy programmes; to illustrate how social media have affected the basic algorithms of hasbara; and to probe the assertions of hasbara in the light of pro-Palestinian solidarity. Through a study of public diplomacy, this article critically analyzes hasbara as a site of contestation and a method that is hampered by contradictions. On the one hand, there has been a massive growth in hasbara in recent years—indicated by the increase in funding for it and by its professionalized and centralized character; and on the other hand, hasbara has attracted sharp critiques in Israel for its reputed failures. To understand this contradiction, hasbara must be placed within the context of Israel’s settler-colonialism, which sets the state apart from other ‘post-conflict’ states. This article reviews the methods utilized in hasbara, as well as their readjustment in the context of recent wars. Events in 2014 illustrate that hasbara actually destabilizes Israel’s diplomacy. Online journalism and the suppression of solidarity for Palestine together stimulate more criticism and, in turn, help to shift public opinion. Paradoxically, therefore, adjustments (‘hasbara 2.0’) have underlined the image of Israel as a colonial power engaged in violent occupation. KEY WORDS: BDS; Gaza; Internet; Israel; Palestinian Liberation; Propaganda; Public diplomacy; Zionism

Due to advances in technology, foreign countries and their diplomats have resorted to social media to reach a wider and more global audience. Israel, like many others, has taken advantage of the digital world to improve its image in the Middle East. In fact, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs started a special department for digital diplomacy, which manages dozens of digital pages in multiple languages. This paper investigates the strategies that Israel has employed in its digital diplomacy in recent years to improve its image with its Arab neighbors by analyzing approximately 600 posts published on the Israeli Facebook page "Israel Speaks Arabic." Results of the analysis reveal that the page employs many propaganda strategies to attract Arabs and earn their recognition and acceptance of Israel, such as positing digital publications in frameworks related to conflict, responsibility, and morality in a way that shows Israel as a rational, democratic, peace-loving state that cooperates with its Arab neighbors. "Israel Speaks Arabic" also employs persuasive means that address passion and desires using religion and the humanization of the occupation and its army. Other strategies include the manipulation of terminology, repetition, the amplification of events, and the employment of eminent Arabic voices against the Palestinians that serve Israel's narrative at the expense of the Palestinian one. The article rests on framing theory.

مجلة جامعة فلسطين التقنية للأبحاث

To alter reality and achieve legitimacy while preserving itself as an occupying power, Israel uses Digital Diplomacy (DD) to foster Normalization. This study examines unusual patterns of message tailoring using Propaganda as a Reflexive Control to affect Arabs' perception and manipulate their decision-making algorithms towards Normalization. A quantitative content analysis of Cohen’s Twitter page is conducted to examine how political messages are created, supported, and contested using Reflexive Control (RC) processes and the use of its 4E Funnels to gauge the scope and intensity of Cohen’s page disinformation campaign. Between August 15 and September 15, 2020, a month before the signing of the Abraham Agreement, 2598 Reflexive Control techniques tailored into 883 tweets and retweets, were scraped and analyzed. The results show that Cohen's page uses all RC techniques and the 4E Funnels intensively and simultaneously: “Affecting the Adversary's Decision-Making (70.2%); ...

The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 2019

The proliferation of social media has had a profound impact on the practice of diplomacy ; diplomats can bypass the press and communicate their messages directly to on-line audiences. Subsequently, ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs) are now mediatised; they produce media content, circulate content through social media and adopt media logics in their daily operations. Through a case study of the Israeli MFA during the 2014 Gaza War, this article explores the mediatisation of MFAs. It does so by analysing how the Israeli MFA crafted frames through which online audiences could understand the war and demonstrates that these frames evolved as the conflict unfolded. It then draws attention to the important way in which MFAs are now media actors through a statistical analysis, which demonstrates that the use of images in tweets increased engagement with the Israeli MFA's frames. Finally, the article illustrates how these frames were used to legitimize Israel's actions, and delegitimise those of Hamas.

Journal of Al-Tamaddun, 2023

Due to advances in technology, foreign countries and their diplomats have resorted to social media to reach a wider and more global audience. Israel, like many others, has taken advantage of the digital world to improve its image in the Middle East. In fact, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs started a special department for digital diplomacy, which manages dozens of digital pages in multiple languages. This paper investigates the strategies that Israel has employed in its digital diplomacy in recent years to improve its image with its Arab neighbors by analyzing approximately 600 posts published on the Israeli Facebook page “Israel Speaks Arabic.” Results of the analysis reveal that the page employs many propaganda strategies to attract Arabs and earn their recognition and acceptance of Israel, such as positing digital publications in frameworks related to conflict, responsibility, and morality in a way that shows Israel as a rational, democratic, peace-loving state that coope...

After the latest events, the relations between Turkey and Israel have been minimized and diplomatically drawn back to second circuit clerkship level. There have been problems in the political context and with governmental influence anti-Semitism is considered to be increasing among Turkish society. New media, where hate speeches find expression, is one of the most important fields. After ‘Mavi Marmara Incidents’ Israel decided to express themselves to Turkish people with new media through ‘Israilblogu.com and as a popular social media site Facebook with the page called ‘Israel is in Turkey’ founded in 2010 by embassies of Israel in Turkey. One of the features of new media is creating an interactive communication platform. For this reason, this research is a content analysis of the blog and the Facebook page in the context of interactivity with Turkish people as the target audience. In recent times, information about countries were reported by national news agencies but now Israel’s expression found a new channel, which is expressing themselves to a young generation who uses internet more often compared to the older generations. This lowers the expectations from the narrow minded old generation.

The goal of this research is to examine how the Palestinian identity has been articulated by many of the Palestinians and other Arabs on the social media outlets, such as Facebook (FB) and YouTube (YT). It also studies the opportunities created by the social media to liberate the examination and discussions of this identity, especially, concerning who is entitled to undertake this task. The paper includes an analysis of the messages and videos that were posted, shared, and downloaded on both Facebook and YouTube during the War on Gaza throughout December 2009 and January 2010. In conducting this study, it was necessary to be registered with many of the Facebook groups and observe many of the videos on YouTube.

E-International Relations, 2021

Direct communication with social media followers is a relatively new tool for the state to narrate and characterize each use of force. For the purposes of international relations scholarship, the posts provide rich data to uncover the symbolic "mechanics" of how a state sold a violent national security strategy in general and how Israel sold Operation Protective Edge (OPE) to its Anglophone followers in particular. To accomplish this constructivist IR research agenda, in this article, I rely on sociological methods of interpretation. In particular, I analyze English-language social media discourse produced and shared by Israel Defense Forces, the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel, and the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs just before and during the 2014 operation.

This textual analysis of Palestinian blog posts interrogates the expression of Palestinian identity online during and after the failure of the peace talks led by US Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013 and 2014. Results indicate an unyielding reinforcement of resistance narratives alongside a youthful reinvention of collective identity as the decades-long dream for an independent state fades. It also ponders how the online performance of identity allows the speakers to make the personal political as well as public for their audience and for one another.