The challenges facing Israeli public diplomacy are growing in recent years in light of the well-oiled international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
Israel's detractors are pushing ahead with their efforts to remove Israel from the international arena. One such effort, to kick Israel out of FIFA, the world's governing soccer body, has failed. Faced with these boycotts, Israel is forced to provide evidence it is a liberal democracy that strictly adheres to the values of human dignity and liberty.
It seems one story might have turned the tables for Israel from a public diplomacy perspective – the treatment of the victims of the Syrian civil war. Since the bloody war broke out in 2011, over 5,000 Syrians – children, adults and soldiers - have received medical treatment in Israel. As soon as the Israel Defense Forces authorized the entry of wounded Syrians into Israeli territory in 2013, four medical institutions in Israel's north enlisted to treat the victims of this brutal war. Individuals and organizations inside Israel have stepped up and assisted citizens of an enemy state by providing medicine and medical devices, some of them lifesaving, emergency equipment, food, and training for Syrian doctors, who are forced to treat patients under impossible conditions, in Russian hospitals.
It is doubtful Israel has learned to leverage our humanitarian efforts in our public diplomacy efforts. Israeli leaders may mention the assistance to Syrians in interviews with the media, but they are cautious in their statements, fearing the future of those Syrians returning home following their hospitalization in Israel.
The public diplomacy toolbox also includes 13 volunteer organizations that operate in Israel on a regular basis and are prepared to carry out rescue missions, evacuate casualties and provide humanitarian assistance to almost everywhere in the world. The IDF's Search and Rescue Unit, along with Israeli nongovernmental organizations and even a few Israeli individuals have provided humanitarian assistance to thousands of people in Cambodia, Mexico, Turkey, Kosovo, Ethiopia, El Salvador, India, Peru, Indonesia, Romania, Macedonia, Haiti, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Nepal, Kenya and the United States since 1983.
The Foreign Ministry explains Israel's positions to governments, organizations and citizens around the world, and operates about 350 different digital channels in 50 languages, and can count 63,000 followers from Arab countries. In 2017, the Strategic Affairs Ministry was granted 46.5 million shekels ($13 million) with the aim of improving its function in light of the threat BDS presents.
Despite all this, a formula has not yet been found to stop the failures the likes of which we have recently seen with the Europeans' interpretation of the terrorist events on Israel's border with the Gaza Strip. The public diplomacy campaign requires creativity and ingenuity. The state must establish a well-coordinated network of skilled Israel advocates and media figures, both Israelis and Diaspora Jews, to operate all over the world, in finance, academia and society in general to thwart the attempts to delegitimize and slander Israel around the world. Alongside these professionals, Israel must incentivize Israeli businesspeople who travel to foreign countries for their work to take an active part in Israeli advocacy efforts.
The "startup nation" has the tools and the technology necessary to move heaven and earth to win the sympathy of the enlightened world. Israel's advocacy network must operate in a manner similar to that of the global BDS movement: without borders and without limits. Our survival depends on it.
