IDF Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee revealed today (Tuesday) at a meeting of the Foreign Policy and Public Diplomacy subcommittee of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, that an awareness video published in Arabic influenced Hamas terrorists who were holding hostages in Gaza.
He said, "One of the tools we used was the combination of religious motifs and Islamic motifs. This is one of the out-of-the-box things; I recommend exploring it further."
Adraee recounted that in response to a Hamas propaganda video which employed concepts from Jewish law, Israel chose to present a moral religious position from within the world of Islam, "In one of the videos that Hamas's venomous propaganda system released, they spoke about the redemption of captives as reflected in the Jewish halachic debate."
He said, "In a very sensitive discourse we decided to respond in a video on how Islam instructs captors to behave toward hostages. It had specific recipients", he said.
He added that he recently met two of the released hostages, and they told him about the video: "I met two of the hostages last week, and they voluntarily told me about this specific film that reached that specific place and how it influenced."
One of them even said that the terrorist told him, "Adraee speaks Arabic better than we do."
As a reminder, about a month ago Adraee announced his retirement from the IDF. He is expected to conclude his role in the coming months, after about 20 years of service, during which he became one of the leading figures in the IDF's public diplomacy effort toward the Arab world.