(brisbanetimes).THE Israeli Prime Minister's closest adviser and key strategist, Ron Dermer, has admitted that Israel faces a serious public relations problem and needs aggressively to tackle negative perceptions around the world.
In his first media interview since Benjamin Netanyahu took office in March, Mr Dermer, director of policy planning and communications for the Government, told the Herald it was time Israel switched its PR strategy from defence to offence.
"We have to break out of the straitjacket," he said. "We have to defend our own right to defend ourselves. It's not for other people to do it for us."
In a stinging critique of the way foreign media and other organisations report on Israel, he nonetheless acknowledged that successive Israeli governments were also to blame for presenting a narrow argument.
"It is not enough for Israel to say that it wants peace," he said. "You must also say that you are not a thief. We did not steal another people's land. That is the core of this conflict."
Eytan Gilboa of Bar-Ilan University, Israel's leading public diplomacy expert, said Israel would have to spend 10 times its current PR budget to change international perceptions.
"We need to be spending $US100 million [$125 million] a year on information campaigns abroad - primarily in Arab countries and then in Europe, where there is a complete lack of knowledge of what Israel is and what Israel does," he said.
Professor Gilboa said the power to persuade and shape understanding, what he calls soft power, is a concept that Israeli governments have never properly understood.
"In terms of power, a properly organised information campaign can be worth several brigades."
He said modern media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube also have to become part of a properly organised public diplomacy arsenal.
