Not rocket science: Israel needs clear political messaging regarding war in Gaza - opinion

Having spent 30 years navigating the nexus between politics and public policy, there have been a few lessons learned – probably none more important than: “It isn’t rocket science.”

Folks tend to over-complicate things.

One of my mentors, Lee Atwater – arguably the foremost American political strategist of the latter 20th century – taught one basic rule: command focus. Keep your messaging believable and focused on what’s important and keep what you’re doing centered on what needs to be done.

I don’t pretend to have any knowledge of decision-making within the Israeli government but I can say that their messaging – the public face they put on their actions – is utterly unfocused, and dangerously so.

When I returned from a month in Israel this past May, I was surprised by the extent to which American public opinion was shifting away from Israel.

A Gallup poll from November 2023 showed 50% of the American public supporting Israeli military actions in Gaza. By March 2024, support had slipped to only 36%, with a clear majority of 55% disapproving.

YouGov polling tells a similar story. In the aftermath of the Hamas attack, only 12% of Americans sympathized with the Palestinians, while 41% sympathized with Israel. By May of this year, sympathy for Israel had dropped to 36%, while sympathy for the Palestinian cause had climbed to 19%.

European opinion reveals an even more dramatic change. In Spain, Britain, and Italy, YouGov polling shows there is now more sympathy for Hamas than Israel; in France, Denmark, and Sweden, Israel holds less than a 10% advantage.

With no hyperbole intended, Israel’s growing isolation is as much a factor of horrendous messaging as it is of latent antisemitism and anti-Zionist views. Hamas – and, by proxy, Iran – is winning the propaganda war, hands down.

Conveying messages to the public

POLITICAL MESSAGING is how policy goals are conveyed to the public. When effective, it builds support and gives the policy legitimacy. When ineffective, it undermines public support and destroys legitimacy. This is true regardless of whether the target audience is domestic or foreign.

Messaging must be focused and repeated, and must have face-validity; it must be consistent with what we know about the world. The enemy of effective messaging is nuance. Nuance is important in policy implementation, but it undermines impactful messaging.

After I returned from Israel, I asked friends – Jews and non-Jews – a simple question: What was Israel’s goal in Gaza?

The most common immediate response was silence. Almost no one had a quick answer. Once a reply was finally offered, the most common was “destroying Hamas.”

The pause in responding is a sign of unclear, unfocused messaging. Folks didn’t know what Israel’s goal was because Israel’s political leaders have not clearly and repeatedly told the world what it was.

The default response of “destroying Hamas” is a sign of what messaging there is lacking: face-validity. You can destroy Hamas’s ability to threaten Israel, but you cannot destroy Hamas. To the Palestinians, Hamas is a legitimate liberation movement; felled leaders will be replaced and depleted ranks will be reconstituted.

This difference between destroying Hamas and destroying its ability to threaten Israeli civilians is critical. Destroying Hamas invokes endless images of bombed cities and tens of thousands killed. Destroying Hamas’s ability to harm Israeli citizens is a legitimate exercise in self-defense.

TO MUCH OF the outside world, nothing has been more pressing than a ceasefire. Unfortunately, Israel has never been clear on its conditions for such a resolution. Yes, hostages must be returned. Yes, Hamas must be destroyed. Yes, Israel must be secure. All or some of the above are possible prerequisites but there has never been a clear and consistent demand articulated.

At the end of October, The Jerusalem Post noted that IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Yoav Gallant, the defense minister fired by Prime Minister Netanyahu last Tuesday, were urging the government to negotiate a ceasefire and get the hostages back. A few days earlier, the Post reported that Gallant had chastised the government for having no clear goals in Gaza.

While there is a lot of politics involved in this dispute, Gallant’s and Halevi’s key points hold.

It didn’t need to be this way. From a messaging perspective (and I believe from a policy perspective) a ceasefire should have been tied to the hostages and the hostages alone. Not some of the hostages, not in exchange for Palestinian prisoners – those are nuances to be addressed in implementation – but every hostage. Every time there was a demand for a ceasefire, the only response should have been, “When we get our hostages back.”

This politically more effective response would not have curtailed necessary military action. Hamas was nowhere near ready to release hostages, let alone all the hostages with nothing but a ceasefire in return. But it would have put Israel on the higher moral ground and maybe even hastened more hostages coming home.

The next issue, of course, will be withdrawal. When will Israel leave Gaza? When will Israel leave Lebanon?

I read the Israeli press every day and I have no idea what Israel’s answer would be. But the answer is simple: When Israeli citizens are safe in their homes.

What does that mean? What conditions need to be met? Those are the nuances of policy implementation. But the core answer should be repeated again and again: “When our citizens are safe in their homes.”

It isn’t rocket science.

The writer, an American political and public affairs consultant for 30 years, was political director at the Republican National Committee in 1992 and had previously taught political science at colleges in New York and Ohio.