WhatsappThe most glaring mistake has been the exchange of substance for optics.
I have reached a point in my career where I care far less about saying what people want to hear and far more about stating what is true. After 15-plus years working in public diplomacy and journalism, patterns become impossible to ignore. One of the most persistent and damaging is the belief that superficial “positive messaging” can substitute for serious engagement with the profound moral, political and historical questions surrounding Israel.
For years, Israel’s defenders have leaned heavily on what I call the “cherry tomatoes” approach, highlighting innovation, food, beaches, diversity and feel-good stories as a way to counter hostility. These campaigns are not inherently wrong. After Oct. 7, I had hoped that some had woken up, but it only seems to have deteriorated since then.
These efforts are profoundly insufficient. They do not address the real concerns of well-intentioned people grappling with difficult questions about war, power, history, ethics and national identity. Pretending that they do is not just naive. It is negligent.
This failure exists on two distinct levels: civil society and government, each operating under different rules and constraints. Despite those differences, both have fallen into the same trap. Civil organizations often chase visibility and donor-friendly optics, needing to “prove” they did something to impatient donors. The Israeli government defaults to whatever can provide the metrics that help politicians execute their next campaign to get re-elected, rather than developing a long-term strategy of relationship-building and transparency with allies and skeptics alike. The result in both cases is a preference for the short-term appearance of “success” and impact over actual substance and credibility.
I do not believe in activism that tries to make everything light, fun or entertaining. I understand why this approach appeals to audiences that are disengaged from politics. But diplomacy exists precisely because some issues are complex, uncomfortable and morally demanding.
TikTok trends, lifestyle influencers and celebrity endorsements were never meant to replace serious engagement, nor should we be encouraging that. It isn’t conducive to a healthy, educated and critical-thinking society. While solidarity is welcome wherever it comes from, elevating content that is intellectually empty and disappears from public consciousness within days is not a long-term strategy, especially not for a country fighting multiple wars for its survival under unparalleled international scrutiny.
Israel is not merely another nation managing a branding problem. It is the world’s only Jewish state—burdened with a historical, moral and symbolic weight unlike any other. To treat its public diplomacy as if it were just another consumer marketing campaign is to misunderstand the battlefield entirely. The obsession with influencers without a coherent strategic framework reflects a deeper failure to grasp how opinion is actually formed and sustained.
To be clear, outreach to influencers is not inherently wrong. Exposure matters. Relationships matter. The problem arises when influencer engagement is reduced to flying people to Israel, placing them on curated tours and expecting a flood of positive posts in return. At that point, the effort begins to resemble the very behavior Israel rightly condemns elsewhere. Whether or not money changes hands, the optics are indistinguishable from Qatar paying Western voices to produce content that evaporates within 48 hours. Worse still, participants are accused of being paid propagandists regardless of the truth, undermining both their credibility and Israel’s.
The most glaring mistake has been the exchange of substance for optics. Organizations recycle the same strategies, convinced that they are innovating because they assemble coalitions of tokenized minorities to signal moral legitimacy. But legitimacy cannot be performed. At the end of the day, either arguments withstand academic and intellectual scrutiny, or they do not. No amount of curated diversity can compensate for the absence of serious reasoning. Awareness is not understanding, and virality is not persuasion.
The consequences are visible everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent producing content overwhelmingly consumed by people who already support Israel, primarily within the Jewish community itself. This is not outreach; it is an echo chamber.
Meanwhile, the difficult work of engaging skeptics, critics and undecided audiences is neglected, often because it doesn’t yield demonstrable short-term results, which politicians need to campaign on for re-election or that Jewish nonprofits need for donors. This is a losing strategy.
This is especially evident in the media. Where is the long-term cultivation of relationships with journalists? Where is the sustained engagement with reporters who are skeptical but fair—grounded in transparency, access and actual answers? Where is the effort to equip journalists or podcasters with context, rather than slogans? Too often, press engagement is reduced to damage control, while influencers are encouraged to generate “positive” content that avoids controversy altogether, or worse, that attempts to replace robust journalism with influencers.
What is needed instead is a long-term strategy of education. Not indoctrination but education. People must be given tools to think for themselves, ask difficult questions and understand the world around them. That includes understanding the very real and well-documented subversion campaigns spearheaded by regimes like Qatar and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which invest heavily in academic capture, media influence and narrative warfare. These efforts succeed not because they are entertaining, but because they are systematic, patient and use Western values of free speech as a weapon against itself.
The prioritization of entertainers and entertainment content is a losing strategy not only for Israel and for combating antisemitism, but for the pursuit of truth itself. Social media has a role, but it cannot replace a disciplined policy of transparency, seriousness and intellectual confidence.
If Israel’s defenders continue mistaking visibility for influence and popularity for persuasion, they will continue to fail. Public diplomacy is not about being liked. It is about being understood. Understanding requires knowledge—the knowledge needed to engage critics, to abandon shallow strategies and to treat audiences as thinking adults capable of grappling with reality.
