WHO IS STARVING FOR THE TRUTH?
Israel should remind supporters and allies that we are fighting for survival against enemies whose motto is “victory or martyrdom”
It’s hard to protest your innocence when you act guilty.
That’s Israel’s dilemma. It half-heartedly denies accusations from a coordinated international campaign that Israel is starving Gazans instead of forcefully refuting these claims, many of which are based on staged scenes, AI-generated images, or unrelated file photos. Then, Israel rewards Hamas’s intransigence by declaring a unilateral ceasefire for ten hours a day to allow in humanitarian aid. Meanwhile, the terrorist group still holds 20 Jewish hostages, who are subject to deprivation far worse than what any Gazan is experiencing.
The Israeli government was also slow on the uptake in responding to false narratives that accused Jewish residents, whom the media call “settlers,” of setting a nonexistent fire at a West Bank church, or that exaggerated claims of deliberate destruction at a Catholic church in Gaza. In both cases, Israel’s failure to provide real-time crisis communication and its weeklong delay in releasing the results of police and IDF investigations caused even loyal American supporters like US ambassador Mike Huckabee and Senator Lindsey Graham (R–SC) to lose their cool, threatening Israel with repercussions unless it swiftly charged the perpetrators.
Huckabee and Graham should have known better than to jump the gun and accuse Israel without evidence, relying solely on Arab media propaganda, which many left-wing Israeli outlets eagerly endorse because it fits their agenda too. That said, Israel must take the initiative and urgently establish a professional, experienced, well-staffed, and well-funded crisis management team to strengthen its PR efforts and legitimize its fight against enemies sworn to our destruction, who have no justification for their cause, lack morality, and for whom the truth is of no importance.
Israel’s government allocated about NIS 545 million ($163 million) in 2025 to expand its hasbarah efforts. Many media outlets touted this expenditure as 20 times the usual amount Israel spends on PR. Pathetic as the previous budgets were, even NIS 545 million shekels constitutes less than one-tenth of one percent of the state’s NIS 547 billion budget ($164 billion). And more than halfway into 2025, much of that extra funding remains only a budget line item and hasn’t been put to use.
Additionally, Israel’s hasbarah suffers because three governmental agencies share the responsibilities — the National Public Diplomacy Directorate attached to the Prime Minister’s Office, and the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora Affairs — with little coordination between them. The IDF and Israel Police have their own spokespeople, who are responsive to the media but work at their own pace.
[…omission]
There are good reasons for delayed responses during investigations, but Israel faces a well-funded enemy that takes advantage of its perceived missteps to incite violence with catchphrases like “Globalize the Intifada,” which threatens innocent Jews worldwide. We need to devise convincing comebacks to defuse such situations and buy time.
Let’s review the church incidents. The Church of St. George in the West Bank village of Taybeh is an archaeological site containing the ruins of a 1,500-year-old Byzantine church. It’s not a functioning house of worship like St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with 2,400 people attending 10:15 a.m. Sunday mass.
It hasn’t rained in Israel since April, and brush fires are common in Israel’s arid desert climate.
Yet that didn’t stop Jerusalem church officials, including Latin Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, a recent papal candidate, and over 20 diplomats, from accusing “radical Israelis” from nearby “settlements” of arson. Major media outlets blasted the story to a global audience. Ambassador Huckabee visited the site, calling it an “act of terror” deserving of “harsh consequences.”
It’s unclear what Huckabee was shown that made him react, but the whole story was fake news.
A reporter from the Israeli English-language media outlet TPS visited the site and found no signs of fire. The Taybeh municipality released a video showing Jewish youths trying to extinguish a brush fire near the site. Huckabee clarified he hadn’t blamed anyone for the fire, but his initial statement caused more stir than his correction.
The Yamar Unit of the Israeli police took a week to conclude that the brush fire left the church undamaged. Their delay is understandable since arson is hard to prove. Arsonists are rarely caught red-handed, and police need time to seek clues from charred remains.
Regarding the IDF mortar strike at Gaza City’s Holy Family Church, which resulted in the deaths of three and injured others, even President Trump called Prime Minister Netanyahu to pressure him into apologizing.
Pope Leo XIV called for “an immediate halt to the barbarity of war,” with the Vatican News reporting that the pope stressed that the attack “is just one of the continuous military attacks against the civilian population and places of worship in Gaza.”
The pope also couldn’t seem to wait a week for the IDF report that found “the church was accidentally hit due to an unintentional deviation of munitions.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs laconically noted that Israel never intentionally targets religious sites.
The pope spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu, after which the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) pleaded innocent and acted guilty, praising Pope Leo XIV for his “words of comfort.” It’s hard to fathom how the PMO considered the pope’s call for an end to the “barbarity of war” as words of comfort while omitting any similar call for the release of the hostages.
Joel Leyden, president of Leyden Communications Israel, a crisis communications specialist and a former spokesperson for the IDF and Foreign Ministry, summarized the recent events in an op-ed for the Jerusalem Post.
“Let’s be clear: mistakes in war are tragic,” Leyden wrote. “They deserve investigation, accountability, and transparency. But mistakes in messaging are equally deadly in a conflict where international legitimacy is under constant siege. Today, there is not a single senior IDF officer with seasoned crisis communications or international PR agency experience embedded in real-time operations.”
Knowing an investigation takes days, why can’t Israel be proactive? Our enemies won’t hold back, but allies will. Israel should communicate what it is investigating; that it will share its results when conclusive, and will take corrective actions.
It should also remind supporters and allies that we are fighting for survival against enemies whose motto is “victory or martyrdom.” If America still upholds the values instilled by the Founding Fathers, the elected officials representing them 250 years later should exercise patience. They can afford to hold their fire until the truth comes to light.
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