Partial transcripts of presentations are from a PDF file at the main Herzliyah Conference site.

Opening remarks - Prof. Richard Landes, Head of the Media Working Group for the 7th Annual Herzliya Conference:

How as a medievalist, did I become a host of a conference entitled "Media as Theatre of War"?

The Al Dura affair certainly had an effect on this. This was operating as a blood libel in EU and Arab war, and this affair unfortunately was not a lone event. There are staged scenes - One after another and another. Staged scenes shot of hurt Palestinians. With journalists working for legitimate news outlets replying, "Oh yeah, they do that all the time."

Its not that I am naïve, or unaware that there was media manipulation going on in Palestinian circles, but I had no idea how profoundly irresponsible our media was for not covering in it. I tried to expose it to NBC, CBS, ABC, and EU channels, and I met with either utter indifference or no response at all. "I don't know how much appetite there is for this at our network" - ABC .

At WGBH I heard something along the lines of "we couldn't do just a "Pallywood" expo, we would have to have something on Israel as well in order for the report to be balanced." Mainstream media seems to have acquired serious of habits that include deeply compromising of fundamental ethics of journalism. Nobody is holding these Palestinian journalists accountable. That's when I began to realize just how serious the problem was. Mainstream media should not allow fakes and staged scenes, and rather than filtering this out they were actually amplifying them.

This is not only serious for Israel but for the world as well. In early 2000 nobody could predict writing the EU off in 2006 to Muslims. Nobody could predict Israel to be in serious danger. We need to get beyond right and left wing, because we are facing a very serious problem.

After shopping this story and getting nowhere, I put it on the Internet, and it was picked up by writers of blogs. In 2005 I found Pajamas Media, and here I was within an intelligent community, highly active/intense and unlike academia and Jewish circles; this was the first place that I was not embarrassed to be a Zionist. When I realized that we had this intellectual community that was separate from academia and regular media, I realized that we had a main vessel to tap. [My emphasis - JSW]

The conference today has two points:
1. Use of media to combat Palestinian media. Show that the Palestinians themselves are actually hurting the most in the end from this coverage.
2. Galvanize a different response on the part of the Israelis. It is terribly important to rethink Israel's Hazbara, both officially and unofficially.

Opening remarks - Prof. Uzi Arad, Head and Founder, Institute for Policy and Strategy, IDC Herzliya, and Chairman of the Herzliya Conference Series on the Balance of Israel's National Security.

This conference is affiliated with the Herzliya Conference in that it seeks to produce a working paper ­ to be submitted at the Herzliya Conference in January ­ on the topic of the importance for devising a coherent strategy for Israel in the information campaign.

Israel is losing the information campaign because it fails to see the full picture of today's reality: It fails to recognize the influential players in this arena, such as the Arab political clout, finance and influence in the media as well as in corridors of power. It further fails to recognize the large scale and effectiveness of the NGO phenomenon, in which dozens of organizations allegedly function as watch dogs, but in reality promote an anti- Israeli agenda, seen at its worst at the "Anti-Racism Summit" at Durban in the 2001.

We see that the climate is changing. It can safely be stated that Gulf States know how to buy media. All their activity is leading into something that is more powerful, than what we are doing. Sometimes I have an image of us shooting at air, and we are not reaching the targets that they are reaching.

I want to mention the battle theater, the minute you have identified the theatre, you can come to the strategy. Startcom, a project taking place under the auspices of the Institute for Policy and Strategy, proposes that Israel's strategy should be one of Offensive not Defensive; go to the rival's court, and identify the weak points of the adversaries.

We are lagging not because of lack of tech. We saw it in last Lebanese war. We started in supremacy; within hours we lost points and continued to lose them day by day. This war has shown that we have serious issues controlling and simply dealing with the media. Militarily speaking we are fine, but Israel has one area that it has abandoned completely, or it has chosen to remain ensconced in the middle ages regarding, and that is the arena of information warfare. We are simply not aware of the new tools in modern information warfare. If the name of the game is visions that incriminate the enemy then we have to engage in it. We must pay; we need to incriminate the enemy with visions.

Is Israel prepared? Maybe a little, but not enough. My approach, is based on the hope that it is possible to begin to make an integration of everything that has been learned individually. This is a task that must spread through all arms of government, media, and needs to be navigated by all kinds of people, government, academia, etc. If NGOs are helping our adversaries, we don't condemn them; we get our own to fight the enemies' NGOs. We must identify their weaknesses, and before events occur we must initiate; we must be on the offensive; show the enemies' actions before the attack.

Israel's failure to see the media issue as a battleground has resulted in a severe lack of strategy to fight this battle. I suggest that Israel must take the initiative in this campaign: initiate and not only respond; attack the enemy's action and positions and not only be on the defensive. An approach which believes that displaying young girls in bikinis would be an effective counter-measure to the anti-Israel campaign is misguided, if not pathetic. Offense is the best strategy for one with limited resources: If one initiates, one can determine the time, the place and the nature of his attack. This is the strategy that I call upon, and I would like to ask that the contributions of the deliberations here take this line and maybe add to it so that we may reach this target.

Leah Soibel, Senior Researcher, The Israel Project

There exists a mutual relationship between the media and Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah and Nasrallah used the media to personify him as an icon that brings together Sunnis and Shiites. At the outset of the recent Lebanese war, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were critical of Hezbollah's actions, but public opinion on the open on streets was supportive, and as a result Arab leaders were forced to change their opinions. After war people were less jubilant, because of the destruction to Lebanon.

In the early days of war Nasrallah spoke to Israel directly. (Hezbollah monitors Israel like no other terrorist organization; they knew about Israel's recent mass rapist). Hezbollah circulated Nasrallah's speeches; you can find them everywhere and in many languages. Hezbollah used the media to project and legitimize itself as a resistance group. It was mentioned in the mainstream media that while some consider Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, others define a terrorist organization more along the lines of Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah is a simply a resistance organization not a terrorist one.

The media used Nasrallah, to state that the Arab and Lebanese press is not censored like that of Israel's. They said Israel's information can't get us; they are letting you listen to us. We have no censorship like Israel, we are not afraid to show casualty numbers. They claimed that Hezbollah never once asked another Arab leader for help. "If you want to give it fine, if not no big deal."

Statistics for Hezbollah's website dramatically increased during war. Nasrallah claimed that, "this is not Hezbollah war, this is a Lebanese resistance". He linked Palestinian issues to Lebanese issues, and distanced himself from Iran and Syria. They popularized Nasrallah to such a degree that they reconstructed their image entirely and that of the organization so that after the war, Hezbollah actually looked better. "We don't want to kill anyone, we want to come back and live in the region peacefully. We want to create Islamist state in Lebanon." The Hezbollah flag was up before the Lebanese flag after the war, what are the implications of this?

Hayim Azses, Educational Director, Sephardic Educational Center:

I would like to speak about another kind of propaganda more sophisticated and effective targeted towards intelligentsia of Palestine, Lebanon, The European Union, the USA, and the world: Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera is only 10 years old. It was founded by the Amir of Qatar. At its onset it was supposed to be a modest production, but then 150 journalists were fired by the BBC (for 18 months the BBC engaged in Arab programming, financed by the Saudi Arabian government, but when the Saudi's discovered that the BBC was trying to be objective they stopped financing the program), and these trained journalists and technicians were without work. Needless to say they were quickly employed by Al Jazeera. And what was in the beginning a station only watched by Arab gulf countries, began to plant reporters all over the world, well equipped, English speaking journalists.

One of the methods used by the broadcast station is bombardment...every hour repeated clips are shown. Many quick image disturbing clips are shown over and over and over. One short message at the end of each broadcast is the emblem of the channel, Al jezeera as pure out of ocean. The news is played every ½ hour unless there is a long documentary. And the news comes from everywhere, made possible by reporters stationed all over the world.

"We did the change in Arab war." The station began to collect money for other organizations to help victims of the Lebanese war and Nasrallah, and Al Jazzera began to support moderate Arab leaders to cut their relations with Israel. During the war the station showed long reports from the battlefield. On a daily basis they produce programming similar to talk shows like crossfire. The station does People on the street interviews, and people call in from anywhere in the world. None of these people are censored or cut. They showed victims quite a lot during the war on Lebanese side and on the Israeli side they showed think tanks. They showed these clips hour after hour after hour. Every few hours they would show Nasrallah speaking; only an Al Jazezera reporter could find him. When negotiations of hostages were discussed, they would interview someone who would say that Israel must let the Arab prisoners out first.

To Summarize: When in 1 day 35 people killed in terrorist act in Iraq, and there were no casualties in war in Lebanon...20 min was given to war and 30 seconds was given to Iraq. This channel played a very dangerous role in war, and now that they have an English channel, they are Israel's biggest problem and enemy. Today the only solution is creation of a similar channel!

Dr. Michael Widlanski, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Reporting from Inside the Arab World. We all know that reporting from inside the Arab world is interesting and dangerous, but what is not usually understood is the fact that the more interesting your journalistic work, the more dangerous it is. There are a number of reasons for this situation, and there are a number of ways to deal with the situation.

First of all, the reporter must remember that he or she has much in common with authoritarian leaders in the Arab world: the primary directive is staying alive. If you are not alive, you are no good to yourself, your journalistic enterprise or the people paying you to do the job. Second, the key to staying alive is to understand--deeply and instinctively--the cultural and political environment. This means that you do not eat pizza in the middle of the street during Ramadan, or even smoke your cigar in public, because that is also breaking the fast. It means you do not wear Star of David or crucifix prominently when you do your man-in-the-street interviews. In fact, there are precious few man in the street interviews--and even fewer woman-in-the-street interviews. And you must be careful where you point your camera. Just because you are in a closed or semi-closed society does not mean that there is no information, but you have to be discreet about how and where you poke your nose. You may find out about assassination plots or attempted assaults on government leaders, but trying to confirm the story or even to publish the story may turn you into the latest item in the bulletin of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Many people turn their nose at the prospect, but the authoritarian or totalitarian government may be a good source of information, even when it is trying not to be. This is because such governments care about public opinion and try to influence it. In other words, they do not respect public opinion, but they fear it and try to mold it.

When you listen in on their dialogue with their own audiences, you learn a lot more than when you just read their English-language statements for Western diplomats or Western journalists. Don't go to cocktail parties: go eat falafel with Ahmad instead. You may get diarrhea, but you'll also get more food for thought. Pay attention to the way regimes and organizations talk to their audiences, their core followers, the second-tier supporters, possible future supporters, and even to opponents and enemies. When you learn their methods, you can sometimes decipher their madness. One should pay attention to their ideology and their survival agenda: both are important. Pay attention to hidden messages, to semiotic red flags, to symbolic messages. Don't ignore rhetoric and ideology. They are important.

Remember pragmatism begins with a "P"--AND THERE IS NO P IN ARABIC. The three or four principle ideologies are wattaniyya--state nationalism, qawmiyya--Pan-Arab nationalism, Pan Islam and unvarnished tribalism, which exists strongly in all phases of life but is rarely acknowledged. As I said, don't ignore rhetoric and ideology, but remember that policy can sometimes be the exact opposite of what the public ideology or rhetoric is. For example, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has for years supported a Palestinian state, but privately, they detest the idea. The Saudis stand for Islamic solidarity, but they pray five times a day that Israel will kill Nasrallah and destroy Iran's nuclear program.