Partial transcripts of presentations are from a PDF file at the main Herzliyah Conference site. I have few of these and no audio or video from these panels. I will post my presentation from the blogger panel at some point.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Nachman Shai, Director, UJC Israel, Former IDF Spokesperson

Kfar Qana 1996-2006: Two incidents, same place, more or less same kind of event. A huge number of civilians killed. Two cases in which the word massacre could be repeated. I would like to ask this panel some questions and to ask each of you what was the impact, importance, and public diplomacy of the second incident at Qana.
1. Did we learn anything?
2. Did you see any difference between the 1st and 2nd; and how did Israel handled itself?

Dr. Raanan Gissin, Strategic Consultant and former advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

What were the outcomes? We have a real problem of not having a communications strategy. What
happened is:
#1 Everything came to a standstill, we had made progress militarily, and then we lost it.
#2 We started the war with the best conditions ever, international support, media support......in one week all this changed. Israel lost all the credit that it had in the beginning and went from victim to aggressor. Because we do not have a strategy, the first thing that Israel does is apologize.Why?
Media theatre is part of the war, and we don't know how to do this. We need sometimes to shoot with the camera before the missile. Why can't we initiate a crime scene scenario ourselves? Books on the subject of have been written, but nothing has ever implemented. Cameras need to shoot before, and then shoot the guns. Let world absorb it. We need to have cameras to document the actions of our adversaries the way that they document us.

Mark Regev, Spokesperson, Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Summarization of day and time: United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice was meeting with
Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tzipi Livni, and the French American initiative regarding a ceasefire to the Israeli/Lebanese war was to become UN resolution 1701. Soon the story broke, and there was a real political problem. Suddenly the whole argument "ceasefire now" meant that we were playing defense against that deal. "Why can't we stop the killing?"

Qana gave a present to Arabs to try to get out of 1701. The fact is that we didn't lose it on that day. So when did we lose the political battle? We started out well because Hezbollah is known as terrorist organization, not a Palestinian boy with a rock. In the end we did get our act together on getting the pictures of fire from Qana towards Israel, so it was easier for Israel to fight back.

Jonathan Davis, IDF Spokesperson's Unit (res.), VP for External Relations, IDC Herzliya

What Israel has now is a tactical rather than strategic response for the media war. There were in the recent war 1000 foreign journalists, and we were supposed to service all of these individuals. Individuals with cameras, blackberries, phones, pdas, etc. This is a new generation of journalists.

How quick have we been to be proactive? The examples from field are frustrating, and what we are facing is a Macro problem. Someone hasn't decided that the IDF spokesmen should be riding 1 st class. The IDF spokespeople need to be treated better, right now they are treated like dogs. 100s of journalists who would have liked to be embedded with Israeli soldiers (the US has done this in Iraq), but weren't. And these soldiers that saw things that should have been seen by the general public, and they could have been if there had been members of the press with them, but there weren't, so these images were lost.

Journalists MUST go in with troops. Lots of journalists. Furthermore, why can't the combat units have someone solely dedicated to media? A solider can have a small camera, or knowledge of what to look for, for media purposes so they know what images to capture.

Reuven Koret, Publisher, Israel Insider

I want to focus on Qana. The fact that it was the ten year anniversary from the first incident made this year's even more poignant. But the number of casualties was greatly exaggerated and things were staged. There was a well founded feeling that there was an attempt to create this catastrophe; there was too much Hollywood involved, it was too perfect. 10 years too coincidental. Hezbollywood in Qana

How did Hezbollah put on its show? The same dead children were used over and over, with no respect for bodies; they just wanted the media to see horror. In actuality no one was really injured by a bombed fallen building, but rather by the severe dust covering. A Hezbollah operative was producing the event basically for the media, and all of this was dismissed by mainstream media. A dead boy was removed from ambulance to get a better shot.

This incident was at least recognized but barely. The Associated Press that covered this story was deeply embarrassed at using staged photographs.
· Were many of the scenes during the rescue/recovery effort staged? Yes.
· Were journalists aware of the staging and complicit in it? Yes.
· Did the media accept the images, despite grounds for suspicion? Yes.
· Has there since been a cover-up by the agencies and other media? Yes.
· Who cares? After all, as Shane Richmond of The Daily Telegraph implied, the greater truth was being served. "Is the child dead?" he asked. "Was the child killed by Israeli bombs?" Thus, did he say: "If so, does the picture illustrate the story?" If the picture does not alter the truth of the story, we're not being disingenuous. And the truth of the story is this: Israeli bombs killed several civilians in Qana, many of whom were children."
· That is the nearest to an admission we have that it is acceptable to stage photographs. But that is the reality we have to deal with.
· We also have to deal with morgue trucks that drive around with bodies to use for press purposes, and people being planted in buildings that Hezbollah knew would be bombed.

The Good News :
· The enemy is more sophisticated, but so are we: editorially, visually, technologically
· There is an army of online volunteers and experts ready to respond like "minutemen"
· The on-scene MSM can be enlisted as allies, if they get good facts and good shots
· We know the enemy game: "Pallywood" and "Hezbollywood." Now we must win it.

Stephanie Gutmann, The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy

I didn't know how to approach this subject. There are so many reasons that Israel has issues in the media world. One of Israel's main problems is that it is simply just covered too much. With so much coverage you are bound to have bad press...with the sheer volume of coverage. There are 75% more stories on a daily basis in English on Israel than on any other area in the world. There is far more violence in the Sudan, why is there not more coverage of the events occurring in this area?

There is no real concrete reason why we should have so much coverage in Israel. The most banal evil is that is just easy to come to Isreal. This is the place where every journalists to comes to get his or her spurs. It is easy, comfortable, but there is a lot to shoot and many issues. You have all amenities .... War, but nice hotels etc. Almost everyone in Israel speaks English, there are all the amenities common to Western countries, Drive 20-30 min for war, and you have a Storyline that is eternally popular. This is why they come here, now what do we do about it?

Dr. Reuven Paz, Senior Fellow, GLORIA

My speech focuses mainly on a certain part of the Islamic world and movements. Jihadist groups are only Sunni; all are violent and deal with intensive terrorism. There are two other groups not part of global jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah. 1st to start with well planned and org internet use. They make the best use of internet so far, in case of Hamas and Hezballah we are talking about groups that enjoy freedom of activity in their environs, they have newspapers, publishing houses, etc. even under Israel they enjoy some of these freedoms.

When we talk about Sunni groups they are persecuted and oppressed everywhere. We are talking about groups that do not have any means of open communications. No radio, TV or publishing houses - therefore the internet is their golden oppurtunity to express themselves. They improve themselves from week to week. They turned the internet into the "open university for jihad studies" - we are talking about groups whose main audience is the younger generations of Arab and Muslim world.

1st target is indoctrination of younger generation. The fact that their main audience is Muslim world means that the internet is reliable! In past 2-3 years are monitoring on a daily basis as a very important source of information. Talking about Al Qaeda as a symbol of jihadi terror phenomenon, originated only from within Arab world. Almost only language of these webs are in Arabic. Arabic is language of jihadi internet without exception. Only a few months ago did a site come in English...to target western Islamists, 2nd 3rd generation and converts. Targeting converts and they succeed, ex: the Belgian convert woman carried out suicide bombing in Iraq. Creation of growing community of jihadi advocates of internet who are looking at messages of jihadi websites as only interpretation of Islam and very much influenced by all the internet scholars.