No more hasbara: Israel needs a national influence apparatus

Almog Beysberg argues that Israel's response to the 'Naz'ah' film must shift from traditional public diplomacy to a national communication and influence apparatus, managed by the Mossad and directly subordinate to the Prime Minister. According to him, Israel faces a planned, multi-year campaign to undermine its legitimacy, and the Foreign Ministry lacks the tools to deal with this cognitive threat. The author calls for intelligence, research, technology, and offensive action to neutralize the threat.

In his article, Almog Beysberg argues that Israel's response to the 'Naz'ah' film cannot be limited to a press release, an English-language video, or a delegation of influencers. According to him, the film is merely a symptom of a planned, sophisticated, and multi-year campaign aimed at undermining Israel's legitimacy, entrenching false consciousness, and turning the Jewish state from a victim of terrorism into a defendant. The author calls for the establishment of a national communication and influence apparatus to be managed by the Mossad and directly subordinate to the Prime Minister, not by the Foreign Ministry. He explains that the Foreign Ministry is a diplomatic, state, and transparent body that knows how to explain and represent, but the tools at its disposal are not suited to the nature of the threat. Beysberg describes an intense battlefield, rife with enemy forces, money, organizations, influence networks, and orchestrated cognitive operations. He argues that Israeli governments repeatedly fail by treating the result instead of exposing and thwarting the mechanism that created it, and by responding to the headline instead of acting against the network that spawned it. The proposed apparatus should integrate intelligence, research, technology, law, diplomacy, culture, content, and influence activities, and identify hostile systems at their inception. The author concludes that Israel is in an inferior position, and the enemy operates systematically while Israel responds with campaigns, calling for intelligence, cunning, audacity, and thinking outside the media-advertising box.