public diplomacy
As tensions between Israel and Hamas continue to escalate in the Gaza Strip, another battle is raging on social media for the support of American and global audiences.
As The Jerusalem Post reports, the effort to make Israel’s case is being spearheaded by 400 college students posting comments, memes, video clips, images and explanatory graphics on Facebook and Twitter from dozens of computers in a “Hasbara war room” at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv.
The paper derided Julie Bishop as a "complete fool" using a term that defies neat translation but could be construed even more harshly. The personal attack raised eyebrows in the diplomatic corps in Australia and abroad, where Ms Bishop is widely considered to be the most competent Australian foreign affairs minister since Gareth Evans.
As of yet, no Israelis have been killed during the latest Gaza offensive. 174-0 is a tough ratio to explain. Especially for an operation that Israel claims is being taken in self-defense against terrorists in Gaza. But the Israeli Prime Minister’s office may have found an answer to this minor public-diplomacy challenge: Tinder, a popular online smartphone dating/hookup app.
Someone once told me that in Gaza “things are never so bad that they can’t get worse.” Those words came back when I read that the Israeli prime minister has told his military “to take the gloves off” to stop the rocket fire from Gaza.
The current UNO publication, Numero 17, La Nueva Diplomacia, features articles focusing on new diplomacy and international relations, and includes a piece by CPD Director, Jay Wang titled Nation Branding Revisited. Other articles cover topics ranging from Soft Power and Digital Diplomacy to Economic Diplomacy and the role of non-state actors in diplomatic relations.
The Prime Minister’s Office and Foreign Ministry have been hard at work spreading Israel’s message in Operation Protective Edge for the last week in an effort that is mostly paying off, experts on public diplomacy in and out of the government said Sunday. “We see [public diplomacy] as a war front like any other,” Foreign Ministry Deputy Director-General for Communications and Public Diplomacy Arthur Koll explained.
The Korea Culture and Diplomatic Mission (KCDM), a group established to help Koreans build awareness of global cultures, said that it will host the three-day Youth Ambassador Academy at the International Youth Center in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, Aug. 4.