IDF is undermining trust with media and it will hurt Israel – comment

Let me say this upfront: the IDF has carried out impressive operations in recent years, using subterfuge and deception to spare Israeli lives, to win tactical battles, and to avoid larger escalations.

The military deserves credit for its creativity and improvisation, but sometimes what it does needs to be looked at through a wider prism – that there is also a price to be paid, and that price is the media’s trust in the military.

Under Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi and the two IDF spokespersons he has worked with – Ronen Manelis and Hidai Zilberman – the army has fundamentally undermined the media’s trust in the IDF by weaponizing the Spokesperson’s Unit.

So while today’s tactical success seems impressive in the moment, what about tomorrow? What happens when the military will need the media to believe what it says when the IDF launches another maneuver, or there is an operational mishap that needs clarification? The media won’t believe a word.

The background: in September 2019, Hezbollah was threatening to strike Israel in retaliation for an alleged Israeli drone attack in Lebanon a week earlier. What the IDF did was notable and impressive: it cleared the border of troops and then parked an empty jeep near Moshav Avivim. Hezbollah took the bait and fired an anti-tank missile at the jeep.

What the IDF did next was even more remarkable: soldiers were loaded onto stretchers, and a helicopter medevac landed at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa where it unloaded the wounded, whose bloody gashes were wrapped in bandages.

Only no one was wounded. The soldiers were fake, as were the blood and bandages. By the time this became known, Nasrallah already felt that his act of revenge had been successful and that there was no need for more attacks.

It was a brilliant move, one that spared wider escalation. But it also undermined the media’s trust in the IDF, particularly the Spokesperson’s Unit. In the hour or two between the attack on the jeep and when the staged event became public, officers in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit either didn’t answer their phones, or refused to comment on what was really happening.

Was the deception brilliant? Yes. Did it come at a price? Yes.

Now connect the dots to what happened over the weekend: on Thursday night just after midnight, the IDF tweeted in English that “IDF air and ground troops are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip.”

In subsequent phone calls, one of the IDF spokesmen apparently told foreign reporters that troops had crossed the border into Gaza. This was immediately reported widely in outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

The problem was that troops had not crossed the border. They remained in Israel. Then moments after the reports came out, dozens of Israeli aircraft bombed the Hamas “Metro,” an underground network of tunnels that Hamas had diligently built since the Gaza War in 2014.

The foreign media in Israel felt like it had been duped, that the IDF had intentionally misled it to fool Hamas into thinking that a ground invasion had begun, so its forces would enter the tunnels.

IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Hidai Zilberman sent a letter to the Foreign Press Association on Saturday rejecting the claims, but in conversations with foreign journalists, they don’t believe him. They feel like they were intentionally manipulated by the IDF for tactical military gain. And they might be right.

Hours later on Saturday, the Air Force bombed a tower in Gaza that is home to the offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera. The IDF claimed that the building was being used by Hamas intelligence, but by Sunday evening had refused to publicize any evidence.

Coming so close on the heels of the alleged manipulation, the attack was enough for President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to weigh in. Both issued statements calling on Israel to protect, and not attack, journalists. While the story did not make headlines in Israel, it became the focus of the conflict around the world.

Did anyone in the IDF think about the ramifications of attacking media offices so soon after being accused of deceiving the media? Did anyone there bother to consider how this would look in the eyes of the world?

I doubt it. I doubt that Zilberman or anyone else in the army gave a second thought to what bringing down the 12-story al-Jalaa building in Gaza City would do, how it would be perceived. Was the target so critical, a ticking bomb, that it needed to be bombed on Saturday? Could it not have waited a day or two? Someone needs to explain what is happening here.

Unfortunately, no one is – and this is not the first time the IDF has failed to anticipate what its actions would look like internationally.

Too many times, in too many wars, the IDF has failed to release videos that back up claims, or ignores media requests for explanation despite international criticism. And this, despite the IDF Spokesperson’s Office being the biggest PR agency in Israel, with a budget of tens of millions of shekels and over 500 soldiers and officers employed.

They can do better. Except they rarely do.

And this is where we get to the issue of trust.

There are three reasons why trust is important. The first is for Israel itself. This is a democracy, and the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit is a state-run institution. It cannot lie or deceive journalists. If its entire credibility is based on truth, then its credibility is undermined when it is believed to be manipulating the media.

The second is because there will soon come a time when the IDF will ask journalists to believe them on a particular issue. Something major will happen somewhere, and the IDF will investigate and explain what happened. If the media doesn’t believe them now, they won’t believe them then.

Third, Israel is facing a potential war crimes investigation in The Hague, which could lead to indictments in the International Criminal Court. One of the ways Israel fights back is to explain that the IDF investigates itself, and that the judiciary in Israel is independent as well.

But if the military is caught deceiving the media, why would the ICC believe that it’s not being deceived as well?