Explaining War

Sam Ser , THE JERUSALEM POST May. 21, 2009

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1242212431717&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
"Let the general in," she says with a smile.

The Armored Corps brigade commander is tall and broad-shouldered, radiating
experience and machismo with a trim gray beard covering a strong jaw. He's
the third general to come to this office this week seeking guidance.

The woman sitting behind the desk is several years his junior and a few
ranks below him, too - yet when the brigade commander sits down, it is
Avital Leibovich who is giving the orders. Fox News wants an interview with
a senior officer who can explain what happened in the alleyways of Gaza
during Operation Cast Lead, and it is Leibovich 's job to make sure the
journalists hear what the IDF Spokesperson wants them to hear.

"Every question they ask you, answer with an example from the field.
Describe what you have seen with your own eyes, what you and your soldiers
have experienced. Be as descriptive as possible," she says.

"It bothers me that they're talking about soldiers abusing Palestinians
[during the operation], wrecking homes and whatnot," the general says. "For
every ugly story like that, I can give two stories that are the total
opposite. I'm talking about reservists sending letters of apology to the
families whose homes they commandeered, sending them money and leaving them
food, that sort of thing."

Leibovich looks the commander in the eye.

"That's exactly what they need to hear," she says.

And now he's ready to go.

This is today's IDF: coordinated, rehearsed, media savvy. Perhaps even more
significantly, it is an army in which its spokespersons play a larger role
than ever before - for better and for worse.

THE MEDIUM is the message, as communications theorist Marshall McLuhan
famously said. Just in case, though, the IDF Spokesperson's Office now
controls both. The foreign press liaison unit, as the face and voice of
Israel's army to the entire world, is the gateway through which information
flows (or, often, does not flow), and it has transformed from something of
an afterthought into a major part of the military's arsenal. As wars are
increasingly fought on the virtual battlegrounds of television and the
Internet, the soldiers of the IDF Spokesperson's foreign press liaison unit
are a new breed of pressed-uniform commandos.

Leibovich's highly motivated crew includes recent immigrants like Lee
Hiromoto, a 26-year-old Yale graduate from Hawaii, Harvard graduate Arie
Hasit, 25, and Aliza Landes, 26, a McGill grad.

"The North American desk must be one of the best educated units in the IDF,"
Landes says only half-jokingly.

It was Landes and Hiromoto who came up with the idea, a day into the
fighting of Operation Cast Lead at the end of December, to launch a YouTube
channel with material from the IDF Spokesperson's Office. It quickly became
the most viewed channel in the world.

Here, initiative is the name of the game. Another recent immigrant on
Leibovich's staff of 20, Devora, called one of the top military journalists
in her native Belgium and offered to introduce him to Belgian Jews serving
in combat units. He's due here soon to produce a lengthy feature for
television that will be distributed across Europe.

"We're proactive. We no longer wait for someone to come to us with a
request; we are now the initiators. We suggest stories to journalists,
instead of the other way around," says Leibovich, who has just been promoted
to lieutenant-colonel.

"Since each area has its own unique characteristics and its specific areas
of interest, we provide each 'audience' with what it needs," she adds. "We
tailor information and stories for North America, for Europe, for
Russian-language media, for Arabic media and for Latin America and the Far
East."

Whereas interaction with the Spokesperson's Office once meant long delays
and garbled armyspeak, there is now a greater focus on productivity and
efficiency, of providing what journalists need.

"I send out SMS messages to 400 reporters each day," Leibovich says. "If
someone wants to know how many Kassams fell in 2008, they can call me and
get an answer within five minutes."

And if the phone is busy, journalists can simply pop in. After several years
based in Tel Aviv, the foreign press liaison unit returned to Jerusalem a
few months ago - setting up shop in the Jerusalem Capital Studios building
that houses the offices of some of the most important foreign media
companies.

"The fact that we're here at JCS is significant," Leibovich says. "As soon
as something happens, we can respond and brief them immediately. So they
don't have to start running around, calling up people in Gaza, asking,
'What's going on? What are you hearing? What can you report?' We tell them,
'We're attacking here and here, because Hamas did this and this.' They get
all the information they need from us. So there's much less spin."

"The IDF is very adept at ensuring that its message gets out there, and gets
out there quickly - and I don't say that as a smart-ass remark," says ABC
Australia correspondent Ben Knight.

"During the war, it didn't take much effort to get people into the office at
short notice and hear their side of things. We never wanted for comment from
the IDF, and we never had to wait too long. So they are obviously very well
aware of the importance of doing it and very well practiced at getting their
point of view out there. The Australian army does things quite differently,
I can tell you that."

WHERE THE unit once was distant, today it seeks out contact with foreign
correspondents.

"I have learned that if you don't take a journalist out to see things with
his own eyes, you just won't get through to him," Leibovich says. "But once
you do...!"

One example of the positive effects of taking journalists into the field has
been in coverage of the West Bank security barrier. In its early days,
inefficiency at the roadblocks and transfer points meant lengthy waits,
exposed to the weather, for Palestinians. More recently, improvements in
procedures and infrastructure have significantly eased the situation, and
showing that to the world helps reduce pressure on Israel.

"Back in 2003, all you saw were stories about the unbearable wait at
roadblocks and all that. But things are so much better now, so much more
efficient," she says. "I take journalists out there all the time to inspect
roadblocks. I tell them, 'However long you want to wait here, I'll wait with
you.' So they stay there for two and three hours, and they can't believe
what they see - that it only takes a few seconds to check a car and let it
through. One Scandinavian group waited hours in the sun, turning red,
expecting to see trouble that never came."

(Some journalists respond, however, that while the army insists on showing
them these improvements, it is loath to let journalists review the multitude
of roadblocks and barriers throughout the West Bank that restrict the
movement of Palestinians.)

And, whereas visiting journalists may have once been treated with at least a
little disdain, the IDF now sees them as vehicles for getting its message
abroad.

"We're dealing, in many cases, with foreign correspondents who are flying in
from Washington, or from Zimbabwe, or from Finland. They've had so little
time to digest what's happening here - they've heard a little, they've read
a little - so that any chance we have to show them what is really going on,
and help them put it in context, we have to take it."

Leibovich has plenty of stories to offer: articles on technological advances
in the army, which portray the IDF as a professional organization; on krav
maga; on the ongoing development of the Merkava IV tank; on the increase in
women serving in combat roles; on new immigrants in uniform, etc. - any
chance to present the IDF as something other than just a fighting machine.

"We believe that the IDF has nothing to hide," Leibovich says. "I'm not
taking journalists on secret missions or anything like that, but I have no
reason to hide a squadron of fighter jets. So, just the other day I brought
the staff of 30 media outlets to an air force base to see the technology
used in our F-15Is, our attack helicopters and more."

The army has invested in improving the quality of photos it sends out, and
it sends out many more of them now than before. During the Gaza war, it made
colorful, readable maps available to its reservists who escorted foreign
journalists, so they could appreciate the seriousness of the rocket threat
to the Western Negev. And every morning, Leibovich sends out a report on the
amount of humanitarian aid the army allows into Gaza.

In the information war, then, the IDF is convinced it is holding its own.

"We showed Palestinians setting up rocket launchers next to schools, or
using civilian buildings as weapons storage facilities," Leibovich says.
"What did the other side show, except for people with their faces covered,
making statements?"

The unit doesn't take its work for granted, though, monitoring the foreign
press to measure the tone of coverage on the IDF and to see whether the
army's perspective is reflected in that coverage. Soldiers even scan blogs,
Twitter and all manner of new media to gauge the effectiveness of their
work.

"I want to know whether our message got through," Leibovich says. "If we're
trying to get across that we're not targeting innocent civilians, for
example, I want to see that that message comes through in the media."

During the war, Leibovich enlisted the help of those outside the
Spokesperson's Office who could make Israel's case credibly.

"It's very important for us to have commanders tell the stories of what they
experienced personally," she says. "Also, we had briefings almost every day,
with an artillery expert, or an expert on weapons and international law. It
wasn't me speaking, it was outside experts. After that, when you read the
wires, you read the quotes of those experts."

Despite the experts, and the photos, and the SMS messages and maps, however,
there were still plenty of media outlets that chose not to present those
materials.

"You know," Leibovich says with a sigh, "sometimes there are correspondents
here who 'get it' and file fair stories, but their editors back home change
the stories. I can only send out the information, I can't make them use it.
But I'm not going to just throw up my hands and give up. We're not
defeatists."

NO, THERE are no defeatists in Leibovich's office. But, for all the
improvements in the functioning of the IDF Spokesperson's Office, there
remain certain elements that are self-defeating.

Take IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Avi Benayahu, for example. At a toast with
foreign journalists shortly before Pessah, celebrating the liaison unit's
move to the JCS building, Benayahu gave a speech that was more a lecture on
the evils of Hamas than a welcome speech to professional journalists. He
talked at the journalists, not to them, and his tone suggested he sees
himself not as the "national explainer" that the popular former IDF
spokesperson Nachman Shai was, but as the army's chief propagandist.

The journalists largely ignored Benayahu anyway, instead sharing with each
other their frustrations about his unit's apologetics, denials and
stonewalling on sensitive issues.

It was just one sign of how, despite doing many other things right, the army
still doesn't completely "get it," either.

While the world saw images of deprivation in Gaza, Benayahu and others
insisted that there was no humanitarian crisis there.

"Of course there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza!" Leibovich says,
incredulously. "Look, there's a difference between having only pita to eat
but at least having something to eat, and having nothing at all. Now, lots
of trucks are going into Gaza every day - every day - with humanitarian
aid."

For European viewers sympathetic to the Palestinians, though, answering the
cry, "It's terrible there!" with the angry retort, "No, it's not terrible,
it's only very bad" does not help Israel's case.

What would help is more photos of terrorists operating in civilian areas -
photos that the IDF had in spades both before and during Operation Cast
Lead, but failed to release in time.

"I can tell you that our response time this time around, in comparison to
the Second Lebanon War, was vastly improved," Leibovich counters. "During
the Gaza war, we distributed video four times a day."

As the death toll in Gaza climbed, and Palestinians claimed most of the dead
had been innocent civilians, the IDF countered that the vast majority had
been involved in the fighting or members of armed groups. Yet, even when it
later produced a report claiming the final death toll was lower than the
Palestinian figure by several hundred, it refused to release the names on
its list so journalists could investigate the differences between Israel's
claims and the Palestinians'.

The army's response was essentially that identifying bodies was not its job.
Its insistence on refuting Palestinian claims, but not substantiating its
own, turned the death toll issue into a he said-she said argument that,
ultimately, Israel lost.

Leibovich's response - "the asymmetrical warfare that Hamas wages is not
limited to the streets of Gaza. It extends to the press as well. In the end,
the Palestinian narrative comes from unreliable sources" - typifies a
"they're wrong, and that's the end of it" approach that makes many
correspondents bristle.

Leibovich said further that "the asymmetrical warfare that Hamas wages is
not limited to the streets of Gaza. It extends to the press as well. In the
end, the Palestinian narrative comes from unreliable sources."

Furthermore, "our list of names went through a very lengthy verification
process that included extensive intelligence gathering," she explains. "We
won't release the names because we do not wish to harm our intelligence
sources."

Be that as it may, without the names, no journalist could take the IDF's
numbers at face value - although that's exactly what the army expected of
them.

Of course, foreign journalists could have investigated on their own, had
they been allowed into Gaza. But they weren't. Despite the painful lessons
from the false reports of a "massacre" in Jenin in 2002, Israel did not
allow foreign journalists into the Gaza Strip during the fighting.

The ban was part of a general restriction on information that came in
response to the army's much more open approach during the Second Lebanon War
in 2006, and it damaged Israel in two ways: It deeply frustrated many
foreign correspondents who might have been made to see the war from Israel's
perspective, and it left the reporting to Palestinian and Arab media
stationed in Gaza. This, in turn, allowed those reporters to allege various
Israeli war crimes that no Western media could later disprove.

As one correspondent, speaking to The Jerusalem Post, notes, "When the IDF
keeps quiet, it gives the other side an advantage."

CLEARLY, NOT all foreign journalists share the enthusiasm of ABC's Knight.
The IDF Spokesperson's Office, says the anonymous correspondent, "is
terrible about getting us information."

"Oh, sure," he says, "they'll call us up and offer us the chance to talk
with the first female officer in the canine unit or something like that. But
when it comes to the army's use of white phosphorous or war crimes
[allegations] - nothing."

Investigating claims, and sharing the results of those investigations openly
and quickly, is another sore spot.

"I don't say that the IDF is all pure and white, that we never do things
that aren't right. But when something happens, we admit it. We learn from
it, and we make sure things get better," Leibovich says.

"Well," answers a correspondent, "it's a problem that they're the ones
investigating themselves. It seems like they never find themselves guilty of
anything."

That perception may be inaccurate - but since perception is reality, the IDF
needs to combat it better.

The controversy over war crimes allegations leveled at the IDF from within
its own ranks illustrates the point. A few weeks after the fighting, two
veterans of the conflict told others gathered at the Rabin Pre-Military
Academy that their comrades had shot and killed unarmed women inside Gaza.
It took the army several days to investigate the claims - and while they
were ultimately exposed as false in an internal IDF investigation, they did
tremendous damage in that time to the IDF's mantra that it is the most moral
army in the world.

Another complaint, says a journalist, is that access to senior officers is
often highly restricted, "and when we can meet with them, they either don't
say anything of substance because the lawyer sitting next to them tells them
not to, or they tell us things that become worthless as soon as they forbid
us from revealing their identity."

Another correspondent complains that the IDF is "very amateurish about
important things," such as providing findings of official investigations but
forbidding all reference to them as such. "They just don't seem to know
about, or care about, our rules of attribution."

Additionally, both note with frustration, stories about which they have
inquired without receiving a response often turn up in the Hebrew press -
and then, when they call for a comment on the Israeli reports, the IDF
refuses to even acknowledge that the story has already been published.

"We understand that the army has to limit information based on security
concerns," says the first correspondent. "But so much of this has nothing to
do with security. Too often, they're hostile to us, or they act like they
just don't care about us."

"Ultimately," Leibovich answers, "the IDF is my client, not the media."

That, of course, is absolutely true. The IDF Spokesperson's Office is tasked
with furthering the interests of the army, and those interests are bound to
conflict with the interests of journalists sometimes.

"We have to explain why we're right, why we're fighting," Leibovich says
with genuine conviction. "And we have to contend with the image of the
Palestinian underdog versus us as the larger, stronger force. It isn't easy,
but we're doing our best. And I promise, we'll continue to get better."