On the evening of the third day of the "Dawn" operation, reports began to appear on Palestinian social media pages about a fatal attack on the Jabaliya refugee camp. Soon the reports were accompanied by gruesome photos, including the bodies of five small children who had been killed in the camp.
"We immediately understood that there was an emergency here with the potential to become an informational disaster, which would have an impact on the course of the campaign and a political impact," says Lior Hayit, head of the national information system, "we performed a very quick 'closing of circles' with the IDF spokesperson, with the Shin Bet and with officials in the Southern Command to understand exactly what happened, and we created a message that consisted of two parts: clarifying the fact that Israel is not to blame for the incident, and presenting evidence that the Islamic Jihad is to blame."
For Hait, who until recently served as the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was appointed only about a month and a half ago as the head of the information system, this was his first baptism of fire in his new position.
In an interview with "Israel this week" he tells how during the short and successful operation the battle for information was conducted, which in many respects is just as important as the military battles on the ground.
"Within a very short time from the beginning of the incident in Jabaliya, we had enough information to issue a statement that says unequivocally that the IDF did not attack in the area at that time, adding that it was a failed launch by the Islamic Jihad.
The tension in such events is always between the necessity to react at record speed and the need to be accurate and not to issue wrong information."
We also appeal to the public in Gaza
"Prime Minister Yair Lapid decided that this was an event that justified the removal of a minister from the cabinet meeting that was going on at the time - the trooper troops - so that he could stand in front of the cameras and convey this message to the world. We immediately organized a conference call with the participation of a trooper, officials from the Southern Command and myself, and we formulated the message precisely, including to the media We sent the message to all the journalists and all our representations in the world and almost immediately we recognized the change in the narrative.
"After the incident in Jabaliya, in which we were able to determine very quickly and clearly that it was not an IDF shot, there were other incidents on Sunday, in which the initial information from the field was less clear and it was more difficult to identify with certainty a failed launch.
However, the fact that the day before we worked quickly and well established the perception in the media and in public opinion that the Islamic Jihad was shooting at Palestinian citizens, and caused that, unlike similar cases in the past, this time there was no rush to press charges and blame Israel before the facts became clear.
Through the IDF spokesperson and under his leadership, we made the fact that jihad harms Palestinian citizens one of our main messages, and we intensively distributed videos and infographics of failed launches."
The incident in Jabaliya is another example of the importance of the national information system, which was established in 2007 as one of the lessons learned from the Second Lebanon War.
Its purpose is to coordinate between all of Israel's official and unofficial information sources - from the Foreign Ministry and the IDF spokesperson, through ministers and other officials, to public opinion shapers on social networks - and to quickly create a record of a uniform, coherent and reliable message, which will bring to light the state's narrative in the discourse the media and the public. "For years this array did not get the place it deserved.
I found great employees there.
My predecessor in the position, Elad Tana, did a very good job at the beginning of the 'resuscitation' of this body, and I intend to continue in the same direction."
What does the work of the information headquarters actually look like during a military operation like "Dawn"?
"We gathered for 'situation overview' meetings on Zoom together with representatives of the official information bodies such as the IDF spokesperson, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, etc., each of whom gave an up-to-date picture of what was happening in their place.
These meetings resulted in a unified message sheet for all Israel's information representatives: ministers, CEOs of government ministries, ambassadors abroad and, of course, spokespeople.
"In an event like 'Dawn', the IDF spokesperson has a particularly central role for us - he is the factor that feeds us and all the other factors with information from the field.
In addition to that, we constantly received information from our missions abroad and the media, and we built a situational picture with it regarding how much the event is on the agenda in the world.
"I worked individually, one on one, with the spokesman for the IDF, the spokesman for the Shin Bet, the head of the Public Diplomacy Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (who also serves as the spokesman for the ministry) and the spokesperson for the Coordinator of Operations in the Territories (Matfash), who was a very significant body in this event, because that part of the contact with the Egyptian mediators went through him, and also that we were constantly on the pulse regarding the humanitarian situation in Gaza in everything related to food, fuel, electricity, and the like.
On top of that, we closed the Kerem Shalom crossing and stopped exports from Gaza, and agricultural goods destined mainly for Judea and Samaria were stuck in the Gaza Strip.
Through the Palestinian Authority, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the IDF spokesman in Arabic, we conveyed to the public in Gaza the message that the Islamic Jihad is also responsible for this economic damage."
We are also now in an election campaign, and there were several cases, including during the operation, in which the materials you produced were used politically - for example, a photo of Lapid with commanders in the Southern Command that was taken by a photographer of the government press office, and was promoted sponsored by Yesh Atid on social media."
How do you, as a state body that is closely subordinated to a political rank, deal with this?
"My role is from the state, and I focus solely on the message that the state needs to transmit to the outside and to its citizens. We are not the only state body that is subject to elected officials and makes this separation. There are very clear definitions regarding what the national information system can do and what the political spokeswoman in the Prime Minister's Office is supposed to do The government. The materials we produce are public by nature and as such are accessible to everyone, so of course we have no control over the use we make of them after we release them. Photos of the prime minister and the defense minister during an operation are part of the messages of reassurance and deterrence."
How intense is the relationship between you and Prime Minister Lapid, who appointed you, on a day-to-day level, and how much do you get to advise him, perhaps also on issues not directly related to advocacy
? , to which I was invited since I had just returned from the mission in Spain.
When he arrived at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I met with him as usual, a few days after he took office, to present our spokespeople's work.
"The work between the spokeswomen of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the spokeswomen of the minister's office is joint, intense and very close, and there is a clear division between the professional field that is the responsibility of the ministry and the political field that is the responsibility of the bureau. Between these two areas there is an overlapping area where we work in coordination and cooperation. The work with the bureau The foreign minister has been in a very high synergy throughout the last year.
"About a month and a half ago, when Lapid was appointed to the position, he asked me to join him in the position of head of the national information system.
I learned very early in my life that you don't say 'no' to a prime minister.
It's a huge challenge and a huge professional opportunity for me: all my professional life at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs I thought my dream job was to be the ministry's spokesperson, and then I discovered that my dream has another floor."
Unlike previous events of this magnitude, Hayat explains, this time the international media did not express much interest in what was happening in Gaza, according to him for a variety of reasons: "First, the operation started at the end of the week, we are in August, it was relatively short and with few civilian casualties, and there are currently other burning issues on the global agenda. In addition, Islamic Jihad is not an organization that arouses sympathy in global public opinion - even its name identifies it more with global terrorism than with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since global coverage was at a fairly low volume compared to previous operations, we pursued a policy media designed to maintain this situation and not to increase the international media's preoccupation with the issue.
"Immediately the day after the cease-fire, our effort shifted from the emphasis we placed on the precise military activity of the IDF, which was intended to prevent harm to civilians, to preparing the psychological ground and preparing the legitimacy for the possibility of another round.
It is a constant process that we carry out through monitoring of the global media and intensive briefings.
We sent our representatives around the world, mainly through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to be interviewed and frame a narrative that makes it clear that the end of the operation does not end the threat posed to Israel from Gaza."
America is not lost
Hayat, 48 years old, served in his first position in the diplomatic world as spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Argentina for five years, after which he returned to Israel as deputy spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
When he went abroad again, he served as spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Spain, and then headed the Central America and Caribbean department at the ministry's headquarters in Jerusalem. Before being appointed spokesman for the ministry, he served as the consul general of Israel in Miami - one of the largest centers of the Jewish and Israeli community in the United States.
As someone who served in the US, do you feel that support for Israel is still a bipartisan consensus, or are we losing the Democratic Party and the younger generation of Americans?
"According to the data we have, most Americans - by a large majority - support Israel.
Even among the Democrats there is a majority of more than 50 percent who support Israel, but it is true that we have problems with certain age groups and certain groups within the US. However, it is something that is completely treatable and we do it all the time. One of the great tests of support In Israel and in the US, recently there was a vote in Congress on renewing the inventory of Iron Dome missiles, in the amount of one billion dollars, after the Wall Guardian operation.
At the moment of truth, more than 94 percent of the legislators voted in favor of this move.
These are crazy percentages.
"The American public for the most part sees Israel as a valuable partner and as a company that is on the side of the USA, certainly much more so than on the other side of the conflict.
That doesn't mean we don't have a lot of work there.
Not all of the USA is Florida or the 'Bible Belt' (areas very sympathetic to Israel), but in the polls we conduct we see that almost 70 percent of Americans support Israel, a very stable support, over the years.
We also see in these polls, over decades, that the age group of 18 to 30 is problematic for us and has less support for Israel, but the general rate of support remains more or less stable because as Americans get older, their tendency to support Israel increases."
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