Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon hosted a one-day seminar Tuesday with top public diplomacy organizations and implored them to continue working hand in hand with the government in fighting for Israel. He mentioned the first time that the Foreign Ministry turned to a private blog -- the immensely popular Instapundit -- as a milestone in the history of the ministry's approach to public diplomacy, and noted that the most effective disseminators of pro-Israel information are non-Jews.
The new war front, said Ayalon, is one of political and legal warfare.
“We have to understand that we are... facing a very very dedicated enemy who is also very sophisticated, who is also now using technology, Internet, Facebook and many many other things; using NGOs in a very very sophisticated way and [employing] a large, large network.”
“Once we identify that there is a dedicated campaign against us by a whole network then we can group or regroup and counter it. To counter it, to fight delegitimization, we also need to have a network [of our own].”
The seminar was co-hosted by the Foreign Ministry's Department of Media and Public Diplomacy, and titled "Israel's Upcoming Public Diplomacy Challenges"