Since the outbreak of the conflict in Gaza, Hamas, alongside its global network of supporters, has waged not only a physical war but a relentless information campaign to delegitimize Israel and paint it as a cruel oppressor starving civilians. What some dismiss as militant propaganda is actually a coordinated assault on the global conscience, and Israel must recognize it as a strategic threat.
Israel has focused heavily on correcting misinformation, but in today’s digital ecosystem, countering false narratives is no longer enough.
In a world where anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiments are deeply entrenched, fact corrections and rational debate struggle to break through. Globalized echo chambers rarely respond to reason or truth. This is the same lesson that Taiwan has internalized, facing massive daily cyberattacks and influence operations orchestrated primarily by China. Taiwan doesn’t rely on fact-checking alone. Instead, it has built a bold, government-coordinated rapid response architecture: when suspected misinformation or malicious disinformation arises, a trusted official immediately issues a counter-message within minutes or hours, disrupting the false narrative and reframing the public’s attention.
Israel urgently needs to adopt a similar playbook. Leveraging private-sector tech talent to detect and disrupt bot networks, AI-fabricated videos purportedly from Gaza, and old footage from past conflicts recycled to portray suffering—as Israel already does—should be the first layer. But the key missing layer is an always-on, cross-ministerial rapid response system: as soon as malicious disinformation appears, officials must unleash counter-content—photos, video, posts through high-authority voices, reframing the narrative within no more than two hours.
This shift signals a departure from traditional ineffective public diplomacy (hasbara), which treats audiences as rational receivers of facts. Instead, it positions Israel to proactively shape, from a defensive perspective, the information environment, much like Taiwan’s Digital Ministry, established in late 2022, which coordinates government, academia, and civil society to detect, label, and dilute Chinese information warfare. Taiwan’s model respects democratic norms and freedom of speech, yet aims to neutralize manipulative influence before it can metastasize socially or psychologically.
In Israel’s case, this means:
- Enshrining a centralized authority with a legal mandate to monitor platforms and escalate suspected falsehoods.
- Formal protocols for collaboration across, for instance, security, foreign affairs, health, and tech ministries.
- Pre-approved spokespeople (security officials, former IDF commanders, respected academics, influencers) ready to respond quickly to spearhead narrative pushback.
- Partnerships with tech firms to feed real-time alerts, monitor social media sentiment, and track networks of fake accounts.
Israel cannot afford to treat the “campaign of false starvation” as just another academic debate on international law. For audiences who have absorbed decades of anti-Israeli tropes, empathy cannot be engineered—attention can. Taiwan’s routine of injecting authoritative, emotionally resonant narratives sharply undercuts disinformation before it sticks. Despite the differences, for example, such as the threat, Israel must adopt the same rigor.
Israel's unique strength
What Israel has is a unique strength: Israeli tech ecosystems are deeply versed in cybersecurity, misinformation detection, and AI. Public diplomacy has been a blunt instrument for years, but now it needs a sharp edge. Let’s harness Israeli innovation and public-private agility to stamp out false narratives swiftly, not patiently.
If Israel fails to act strategically and rapidly, the global narrative space will continue to tilt toward false equivalence: Hamas’ orchestrated cruelty versus Israeli defense. But strategic narrative intervention at scale can reclaim that space, demonstrating Israel’s capability not just in battlefield defense, but in digital truth sovereignty.
The world deserves rigorous fact-based debate—but only after misinformation has been neutralized. Israel’s credibility and moral standing depend on its willingness to dominate the narrative battlefield in real time, and Taiwan has shown that democracy need not be passive when minds and hearts hang in the balance.