Israel is losing 'information war' after two years of conflict, says former gov't spokesperson Eylon Levy

Eylon Levy, the popular former Israeli government spokesperson, told the Jerusalem Report that Israel’s efforts to communicate its perspective internationally have fallen short after two years of fighting in Gaza and the broader Middle East.

British-born Levy who became a recognizable media personality at the beginning of the Oct. 7, 2023, war currently leads Spokesoffice, a civil society organization that focuses on advocacy for Israel and the Jewish people. While critical of Israel’s inefficient PR, Levy believes that the deck is stacked against the Jewish state. 

“The odds are absolutely stacked against us because of the demographics of the world, because of long-term ideological trends on the Left and the Right, and because of the way social media algorithms function,” Levy assessed.

Some pundits have noted that many people worldwide are inclined to believe the anti-Israel propaganda spread by the terrorist organization Hamas. Levy believes antisemitism plays a big part in the disinformation war being waged against the Jewish state and the Jewish people. 

“One of the problems we have encountered in this war is that many people genuinely want to believe the worst about Jews and Israel. Therefore, the battle is often not a debate between well-intentioned sides. Some have a very clear goal of painting Israel as being worse than Nazi Germany, to legitimize its eventual destruction,” Levy said. 

However, he is nevertheless critical of Israel’s insufficient and underfunded PR efforts in the international arena. 

“This has to be treated as an information war and as a threat to our national security, but Israel has never defined the battle for global public opinion as a matter of national security,” he argued. 

“Historically, this front has been underfunded and sabotaged at every opportunity – and that is before we get on to a total lack of message discipline within the Israeli government and to politicians making statements, geared toward their base, that end up doing tremendous damage to us internationally,” Levy said, likely referring to controversial statements made during the war by Israeli right-wing ministers Itama Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. 

Levy believes that much of the international community does not understand the underlying Jihadi genocidal ideology against the Jewish people in Israel. 

“They do not understand that October 7 was a premeditated act of war by a jihadist terrorist army that had an open policy of sacrificing its own civilians on the battlefield, or that October 7 was genocide in its own right, and that it was the opening shot of a regional war that was intended to suck Iran’s proxies into a war of annihilation,” he explained. 

In an interview in 2024, Levy stressed that the Jewish state is facing the complex challenge of fighting for its existence while simultaneously being subjected to relentless anti-Israel propaganda lies. 

“Israel is fighting for its life now against Iran and its proxy armies on seven different fronts. Not only that, but a wave of misinformation and vicious propaganda against Israel,” Levy said.

Despite his criticism of Israeli PR, he is cautiously optimistic about Israel's public diplomacy standing.

“Now I think Israel is actually in the strongest public diplomacy position it’s been in for two years because Israel’s message is that we are demanding the full implementation of the American peace plan that the whole world has signed off on,” Levy said. 

He also stressed that increased importance of social media and alternative media outlets. 

“We know that there are so many news channels where people are talking about Israel, often without an Israeli perspective, and we’re trying to go out there and conquer the screen time of the Jewish people to make sure that the lies against us don’t go unchallenged,” Levy explained. 

“And with that, social media is crucial as well because there is a large following of people who look to me as one of their sources of information on how to fight back,” he added.

AI has also emerged as an increasingly important dimension of the war in the Middle East. A new report warns that terrorists weaponize AI to disseminate antisemitic propaganda and recruit new operatives.