Israel has proved its ability to fight military wars but has struggled to win the battle for international public opinion, Mike Evans, founder of Friends of Zion, said at the Jerusalem Post’s Diplomatic Conference on Thursday, calling for greater efforts to communicate Israel’s case to global audiences.
Evans highlighted a positive development in this arena, a 24-hour broadcast held in partnership with Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, which he said attracted more than 100 million social media posts and reached 176 countries – including 18,00 Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Three global television networks broadcast the event live for 24 hours, alongside 11 other networks.
“This is a new war,” Evans said. “Israel is brilliant at fighting wars, but not so brilliant at fighting media wars.”
Evans also criticized the premise of exchanging land for peace, recounting an encounter he had in Beirut with a man who introduced himself as the “architect” of land for peace. The man – a CIA asset who protected US diplomats overseas from being attacked – described land for peace as “I protect America. I give you peace, and you give us land – Israel’s land,” Evans recounted.
This same man, Evans said, later became the architect of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. “Mossad was trying to kill him. The CIA was protecting him. This is the kind of world we live in today.”
The media battle is inseparable from the question of how the international community understands Israel and Jewish history, Evans argued.
“Six million Jews…died because of the media and the lies that were pumped into the churches of Germany,” he said. “To the point they put swastikas on their altars and united with the Nazi Party, and when the cries came from the trains, they turned their music up louder.”
Evans closed with a powerful line. “So, the Jerusalem Post, the battle you’re fighting…it’s a battle for the soul of the nation, because demons don’t clear customs, and you can’t kill one with a bullet.”
Written in collaboration with Friends of Zion