Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has inaugurated a “media war room” at the Foreign Ministry to monitor and respond to anti-Israel activity on internet platforms, his office announced Tuesday.
The war room, staffed by diplomats and students specializing in international communications, observes around 250 news channels and some 10,000 Israel-related news items daily, “identifies false or biased reports…and acts swiftly by deploying Israeli and pro-Israel spokespersons to debunk accusations and present Israel’s narrative,” the Foreign Ministry said.
During its trial period in recent weeks, the program “was the first to detect..and act against” a BBC documentary about Palestinian children that was found to have been narrated by the son of a high-ranking official in the Hamas terror group’s government in the Gaza Strip, according the Foreign Ministry.
The ministry explained that “following intelligence from the war room, Israel’s embassy in London engaged with the BBC, leading an investigative journalist to expose the documentary participants’ ties to Hamas.”
The investigative journalist in question, David Collier, told The Times of Israel last week that he found out that Abdullah, the narrator and main subject of the BBC documentary, was the son of a deputy minister in Hamas’s government within five hours of its broadcast.
The BBC has since removed the film from its program, issued an apology, and is now under criminal investigation for allegedly transferring funds to Hamas as part of the documentary’s production.
This screenshot from the trailer for ‘Gaza: How to Survive A War Zone’ shows narrator Abdullah Al-Yazouri, whose father is a Hamas deputy minister. (YouTube screenshot used in accordance with article 27a of the Copyright Law)
To further strengthen Israel in the “fight for international public opinion,” Sa’ar or a senior Foreign Ministry official will hold weekly press conferences at the ministry with top global media outlets, said the Foreign Ministry.
The ministry has also established “a network of pro-Israel influencers and spokespersons” to advocate for Israel on social media and other online platforms and plans to launch “additional projects” in “the near future” to fight media bias against Israel.
Public opinion about Israel in the United States and elsewhere around the world has been intensely battered as a result of the war in Gaza that was started by Hamas’s massive cross-border October 7, 2023, attack on Israel in which thousands of terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages.
The resulting war — aimed at toppling Hamas, which rules Gaza, and securing the release of the hostages — has left the Strip in ruins.
The new initiatives follow an announcement made after Sa’ar assumed his position last November that the Foreign Ministry would receive a budgetary increase of NIS 545 million ($146 million) for efforts to improve Israel’s public diplomacy abroad.
Sa’ar said at the time that the campaign will be managed in cooperation with the US Jewish community, and will not infringe on the activities of the Diaspora Ministry.
Times of Israel staff and agencies contributed to this report.
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