Former IDF spokeswoman urges more emotional, diverse approach to Israel's public diplomacy

A former IDF spokeswoman says Israel's battle for international public opinion has become as important as the fighting on the ground, arguing that the country's public diplomacy needs to better reflect the diversity of Israeli society

Rachel Lester, who served as a reservist in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack, told Ynet News on Sunday that after six months of reserve duty, she believes the digital front has become a central arena of the war.

“The online battlefield is so important, just as important as the war on the ground,” she said, arguing that Israel's public diplomacy (hasbara in Hebrew) suffers from a lack of diverse voices.

“There’s so many people that live in Israel who are Arab, who are black, who are young and those people aren’t represented in the typical hasbara ecosystem,” she said, adding that the existing system is unable to present Israel “in a much more diverse, accurate light.”

Lester also argued that Israel faces a significant challenge in countering the impact of images emerging from Gaza on social media.

“The biggest challenge that we face is that you really can't fight photos of dead children,” Lester said. “When Hamas fights, they do everything they can in order to maximize the number of photos of dead children in Gaza that go viral on social media. There's no way, just by human nature, to convince somebody who's in America that the side that caused the dead children is the right side.”

Another problem, she noted, is that Hamas and its supporters appeal to raw emotion, while Israel is guided by the presentation of facts in its digital war effort.

“We're fighting emotions with facts and logic,” Lester said. “What Israel needs to be able to do is to fight with more emotions,” she said. “When Israelis went on the news to talk about October 7, to talk about the hostages, most Israelis were very calm, collected, serious, very tough,” she said. “Most people from Gaza who went on the news were crying.”

In an interview with The Jerusalem Report in May, Lester recalled urging the IDF early in the war to release compilation videos documenting the Hamas attacks, arguing that the international community needed to see what had occurred. One of the videos received nearly 10 million views.

“I felt like I did my job of showing the world what was going on,” she said. However, she noted that IDF leaders initially limited the release of graphic footage out of concern for its impact on Israeli audiences.

“Every day is a constant battle of just what false narrative is out there today and how can we prove them wrong,” Lester said.

Lester argued that many hostile responses to pro-Israel content on social media are generated by bots, creating a misleading impression that global public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to Israel.

Lester said she is often asked why Israel's public relations efforts appear to be ineffective.

“I think that it's just kind of a misunderstanding of the situation,” she said. “People don't understand the limitations that are placed on these official government bodies and don't understand how hard regular soldiers and people are working to fight the social media battle.”

Lester's new book, "Digital Warrior," recounts her experiences serving as an IDF spokeswoman following the Oct. 7 attacks and is due to be released soon.