Tamir Morag
Israel Today, Aug. 12, 2022
“Through the IDF spokesperson and under his leadership, we made the fact that the PIJ harms Palestinian citizens one of our main messages, and we thoroughly distributed videos and infographics of failed launches.”
On the evening of the third day of Operation Breaking Dawn, an extensive Israeli counterterrorism campaign against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, reports of a fatal attack on the refugee camp of Jabalia began to appear on Palestinian social media, soon followed by gruesome pictures of the incident, including those of the bodies of five children allegedly killed in the camp.
“We immediately understood that there was an emergency here that could potentially become a public diplomacy disaster, which would have an impact on the course of the operation and a political impact,” said Lior Haiat, head of the National Public Diplomacy Directorate at the Prime Minister Office.
“We quickly contacted IDF Spokesperson [Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis], the Shin Bet security agency, and Southern Command officials to understand exactly what happened [in the camp], and created a message that consisted of two parts: clarifying the fact that Israel was not responsible for the incident, and presenting evidence that the Islamic Jihad was to blame.”
For Haiat, who had just recently been appointed to his role after being the Foreign Ministry spokesman, this was the first major public diplomacy emergency to resolve.
In an interview with Israel Hayom, he described that while the IDF was fighting terrorism in Gaza, his directorate was fighting disinformation, a battle no less crucial.
