Minister says Israel working on a digital battleground entity with Hamas - interview

While Israel has been grappling with advocating its story and claims worldwide, and the Israeli Foreign Ministry (MFA) doesn't have enough funds, one Israeli ministry decided to take this mandate upon itself even though that isn’t its purpose. After the first week of Operation Swords of Iron and a short stint as an officer in an IDF reserve unit, Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli understood he needed to act.

After the former Public Diplomacy Minister Galit Distal-Atbaryan announced that she was resigning and that the invented ministry would be closed, she added that she wished Chikli luck in advocating for Israel - though there was no government decision stating that he would be getting her budget of NIS millions. 

Since his ministry was already combating the boycotts of Israel abroad and he was already in touch with major Jewish organizations and communities - this ministry was able to quickly act. They established a war room and began creating videos, held briefings with international media, and even began funding hasbara organizations, as well as Israel’s top advertising agencies that have been creating the highest level of content possible.

“We decided to join forces with the National Public Diplomacy Directorate, which is part of the Prime Minister’s Office, led by Moshe [Moshik] Aviv,” Chilki explained to The Jerusalem Post during an interview earlier this week. “Together, and with our funding, we were able to create videos with over 200 million views during the first few weeks of the operation. These videos were instrumental in mobilizing support and resources for the families of the victims and kidnapped individuals.”

In addition, Chikli shared, “We coordinated psychological trauma support, accommodation arrangements, and connections with embassies at the highest levels, both locally and internationally.” One of the most influential projects was and still is the many delegations of family members of those kidnapped, that the Diaspora Affairs Ministry has been sending to capitals of western countries worldwide.

“Our delegations were dispatched to various capitals, including London, Rome, Brussels, Atlanta, Chicago, Mexico City, and even to CNN headquarters, to engage with political leaders and with the Jewish community in Atlanta.  Notably, London swiftly passed legislation against hate crimes a day after our delegation's visit,” he added.

Lack of public diplomacy

As reported earlier this week, Israel's Foreign Ministry shut down its hasbara efforts due to a lack of budget, Deputy Director-General of the Public Diplomacy Department Emanuel Nachshon told the Knesset's Hasbara Committee.

According to Nachshon, the Foreign Ministry's hasbara budget only equals 10% of what Israel invests in tourism, and the ministry ran out of funds for its Spanish hasbara this week. The ministry has already shut down its hasbara efforts in Persian and Russian for the same reason.

The Foreign Ministry denied that the Foreign Ministry had run out of its hasbara budget, saying that on Tuesday, the two had agreed on a further NIS 100 million for that purpose.

The physical war on Hamas has also been active online, with a number of reports in the international media about attacks by anti-Israel bots. Chikli wouldn’t mention the countries that were involved in these attacks, though he did cite that there were major forces in a number of countries funding and activating online anti-Israel content. “The cyber threat posed an immense challenge, with adversaries utilizing server farms and bots.”

A New York Times article suggested a few weeks ago that Iran, Russia, and to a lesser extent, China, have utilized state-run media outlets and prominent social media platforms to lend support to Hamas and undermine Israel. 

“We formed partnerships with tech companies and developed unique solutions to counter these threats,” Chikli revealed. “A collective effort was underway to build an organization dedicated to safeguarding Israel's interests in the long term. This entailed collaboration among tech industry experts, transcending government security constraints.”

“We are in touch with a number of groups of high-tech companies or individuals; unique responses have emerged, and these days, the very essence is being forged to meet this challenge.” He disclosed “We are creating an organization that will serve Israel in the long run, with people from all tech companies engaged in something beyond the government's security apparatus; they are all working together in an extraordinary collective effort.”

Chikli added “We've crafted a beehive, and everyone has been collaborating there, in the same space, giving life to this endeavor,” of which he would not elaborate further. He was only willing to hint that he sees this new cyber initiative as the “Bletchley Park of this war,” he said of the British Bletchley Park, a crucial center for Allied code-breaking in World War II, housing codebreakers like Alan Turing. “It serves as the digital battleground, far from the public eye,” he concluded.

Chikli continued speaking about the positive influence of pro-Israel social media influencers. “There is an extensive range of civil initiatives in the realm of explanation, whether they are influential figures with significant backgrounds like Yosef Haddad [Arab-Israeli pro-Israel social media sensation] and others. There are even new social media influencers born out of this crisis.”

Chikli mentioned the recent announcement of his ministry, of investment of NIS 10 million in the hasbara initiative, while those who will qualify will need to match the funds allocated by the government. The ministry launched an additional funding process with additional funds.

“Millions of shekels will be invested in these endeavors to sustain our efforts, as this is a protracted struggle and an ongoing campaign,” he said. As mentioned, Israeli advertising agencies have been creating viral videos since the massacre occurred, voluntarily, but Chikli now has decided to invest in them, so they can continue creating high-quality pro-Israel content.  

“Advertising agencies, particularly those like Gitam BBDO and the Adler Chomski Group, were pivotal players in producing original content for the hasbara efforts. They redirected their resources to support the national campaign around the world, without any logos. We recognized the importance of supporting these initiatives as they generated compelling content,” Chikli said. 

The NIS hundreds-of-millions of the Diaspora Affairs Ministry has been dedicated to two main areas since the war broke out: Advocacy and combating antisemitism. “We redirected resources to enhance the resilience of civil society, emphasizing mental resilience in Jewish communities,” the minister explained. “We established an agency focused on building strength and motivation, allocating a significant budget to this endeavor.

Our strength was closely tied to our self-confidence. In confronting the international propaganda system, we remained unyielding, maximizing support in public diplomacy while minimizing the impact of operational activities on our image.

The ministry has also cooperated in collaboration with the Government Press Office in operating a media center in the southern and now evacuated city, where foreign journalists could get information, as well as briefings from Israeli officials. “This media center is located 100 meters from the front line during the first few weeks of the war. Within a few days, the media center became the base for all international journalists in the south. About 200 people visited the center in the first weeks of the war.”

Chikli related to the recent surge in antisemitic violence around the world. “The world has not experienced such a wave of antisemitism since the 1930s,” he said. “We have just commemorated the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht [Crystal Night pogrom], which was the last time people marked the businesses of Jews and then shattered the glass of their storefronts.” 

“The challenge is enormous and an emergency situation for Jewish communities around the world. Whether it attacks in the metros and subway stations, as well as academic campuses. Public community institutions, and Jewish communities living in interface with Muslim populations,” Chikli said. 

He highlighted three ways his ministry has been assisting Jewish communities with the rise of threats: “There has been an attempt to use technological tools to detect threats to harm Jewish populations,” he said. An additional initiative is “a heat map of antisemitism,” where all incidents are tracked.

Also, as reported last week by the Post, Chikli provided a detailed account to international ministers of close to 10 countries, such as Canada’s Defense Minister Bill Blair and Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, calling for action against civil groups with ties to Hamas. In addition to the letter, sent mainly to interior ministers around the world, a specific report outlined unsettling behaviors by pro-Hamas figures in their respective countries.

Before the outbreak of the war, Chikli was one of the more vocal supporters of the judicial reforms, as well as making a number of statements against American officials. He told Tom Nides, former US ambassador to Israel to “mind his own business,” after what the minister saw as interference in the Israeli democratic system. Asked if he sees the way he and his colleagues acted before the war as something that he sees differently, Chikli said he was actually involved in finding a middle-ground solution to the judicial reform at the President’s residence.

“I also lowered my profile on social media,” he explained. “I totally understand how the intensity of the disputes and crossing boundaries negatively affected how we appear externally. And there's absolutely no connection between Hamas’s motivation to kill Jews, they were planning this attack way beforehand.”

As for US President Joe Biden, Chikli chose his words cautiously. “His speech at the beginning of the war was exceptional and surprising because It was exceptional in its intensity, and it's clear that the story is much bigger than Hamas vs. Israel… The challenge in the broader context is to preserve Israel's sovereignty and ensure that it leads the war effort while taking into account the considerations of friendly countries without making headlines.”

In his role as Social Equality Minister, Chikli has been in touch with heads of Arab municipalities across the country, in order to invest in the advocacy towards them - since they are all exposed to anti-Israel media from Arab countries. 

“The Social Equality Ministry, in conjunction with Arab authorities, played a crucial role in preventing events similar to the Guardians of the Walls conflict,” he said of the operation that took place a few years back, where Arab-Israelis caused violence across the country. “For instance, the dissemination of fictitious information, such as fake news reports about roadblocks in Arab cities. These types of reports were aimed at stoking tensions.

"It became imperative to systematically debunk these falsehoods. In addition, there were unfounded rumors linking Bedouin communities to the conflict, and it was through collaboration with the most reputable security agencies that we identified and addressed the source of these false claims, resulting in a formal apology.”

Chikli shared that he and his staff soon realized the profound impact on Bedouin communities, especially the tragic loss of children in deadly clashes within the Negev region. “Seven Bedouins were kidnapped, and more than 20 casualties, including a Golani unit IDF combat soldier,” he said. 

“My primary responsibility as a minister, along with my advisors, was to extend condolences and support to bereaved families [in Bedouin communities]. We established continuous connections with all the affected families, achieving a remarkable 95% rate of offering condolences within the scattered Bedouin settlements.”

The ministry also established a situation room for the Arab sector in Israel, 

In the Arab sector, the war room (or situation room) in the city of Kafr Qasim, where the government maintained continuous communication with local authorities with a majority of Arab inhabitants. “During the hospital crisis, which began with a failed launch of Hamas on October 17th at 7:00 AM, it was crucial to managing the situation in these authorities,” Chikli explained of the initial report that the IDF bombed a hospital in Gaza, that turned out to actually be a failed launch of their own side.

“The hospital incident marked a historic first in the Arab world and among Arab Israelis, and the tensions ran high. Delicately conveying information that contradicted what was seen on television, particularly on Arab networks like Al Jazeera, was essential. Our task was to ensure that both local and national leadership [of Arab communities] received accurate information regarding the number of casualties and the circumstances surrounding the events.”

Interestingly, the ministry has also launched a campaign calling for solidarity within Israeli society in Arabic, titled “Together, we will win this war.”