More than eight months into the war Israel is still struggling on the global public diplomacy front although more and more initiatives are successfully seeping into international consciousness. One such initiative is the Slingshot advocacy project, which targets anti-Semitic or pro-Palestinian audiences, such as students and lecturers at Columbia University, workers at UN Headquarters and the International Court of Justice in The Hague, surfers on Iranian websites and Arab TV channel websites – and presents them with pro-Israeli campaigns.
Slingshot’s tools locate potential target audiences and adjusts messages precisely suited to them. The tool was originally designed for commercial advertising purposes, and at the start of the war it was adapted to show the horrors of October 7th.
Since the venture was launched at the start of the war, NIS 500 million has been invested in the initiative. A significant part of the sum comes from customers who purchase advertising space on relevant websites. In addition, the project has been supported and adopted by the Ministry of Diaspora, which in recent months has transferred funds to it, both for advertising the campaign and for supporting content creators who produce promotional materials.
Since the campaign was launched, it has recorded 70 million views on the world’s largest websites from the BBC and CNN, through to Al Jazeera, where photos of the kidnapped members of the Bibas family were published, as well as an ad explaining that 500,000 Israelis are refugees – behavior targeting has found that even people who see Hamas as a legitimate body, do connect to the issue of refugees. On Saudi state TV channel Al-Arabiya website, a photo of hostages and Hamas terrorists was published, with the caption “About 20 armed male monsters attacking five helpless girls.”
“Accurate public diplomacy versus lies
Slingshot founder and CEO Hadar Ashuach said, “The project is designed to solve the main problem in Israeli public diplomacy abroad. It is all done through social networks and depends on an algorithm that prioritizes the huge amounts of likes and views of pro-Palestinians around the world.
“The campaign is our way in which the few can beat the many, when the main problem is not that the whole world hates us but that many do not know the Israeli side of the story. Other problems are general and unfocused target audiences, an algorithm that prefers violence and emotion over the truth and even inappropriate messages to those target audiences.
“Through the technology we use, it is possible to produce high-quality and accurate public diplomacy in the face of the spread of lies and hatred against Israel.”
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on June 26, 2024.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.
