TikTok – a trial for Israel’s PR message

When rockets fall and armies clash, the battlefield isn’t just physical. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, social media has emerged as a frontline all on its own.

For Ambassador David Saranga, a veteran diplomat and Israel’s leading voice on digital strategy, platforms like Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram are as consequential as traditional media in shaping how the world understands the war.

“Twitter is the place where the political narrative is shaped,” Saranga told a Limmud Johannesburg audience on Sunday, 17 August. “For us at the foreign ministry, Twitter is an important component of our public diplomacy work.”

He said Israel’s first foray into digital diplomacy came during the 2008 Gaza war, when Saranga, then stationed in New York, organised the world’s first press conference on Twitter.

“It was something new back then. Only people who were technologically savvy were on Twitter,” he said. The combination of a war and a new digital platform caught the media’s attention. Even American news programme host Rachel Maddow marvelled at the experiment, saying, “The Israeli government is trying to explain a conflict that newspapers struggle to explain in 2 000 words in 140 characters at a time.”

That moment established social media as a diplomatic tool, Saranga said. Over the years, Israel’s presence has expanded to more than 800 official accounts in seven languages. These channels, Saranga said, reach “10 million followers and about 200 million impressions a month”.

Yet, he admitted, “It’s not enough.”

The Hamas-led attacks on Israelis on 7 October 2023 thrust Israel into both a military and narrative crisis. Saranga described three urgent priorities for Israel’s digital campaign: “First, to tell the story of the massacre. Second, to push for international legitimacy for Israel’s activity. And third, to bring the story of the hostages.”

Social media became central in amplifying these messages, he said. An example is a tweet by Israel’s official account shared by acclaimed Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, which gained more than 50 million impressions. This mattered, Saranga said, because, “We live in a kind of an echo chamber because of algorithms. People mostly see content they agree with. But when someone like Rowling shares our post, it reaches audiences far beyond our usual followers.”

Despite that, Israel still faces profound challenges online. The most pressing, Saranga argues, is scale: “Think about the fact that two billion Muslims are tweeting, posting, and sharing content, while the Jewish world numbers only 16 million. Numbers are crucial.”

He also pointed to pre-7 October digital groundwork done by adversaries. “The demonstrations against Israel started on the very day of the massacre, even before one Israeli soldier entered Gaza. Someone prepared the ground.” According to Saranga, hundreds of millions of dollars, particularly from Qatar and Iran, went into seeding anti-Israel narratives in global activist spaces – from Black Lives Matter to environmental and LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning) groups.

If Twitter is where politics plays out, he said, TikTok is where the youth consume their news, and for Israel, it’s the hardest battlefield. “When we as officials post something on TikTok, it’s perceived as propaganda,” Saranga said. “But when someone who has nothing to do with politics posts about Gaza, it’s perceived as authentic.”

The challenge is compounded by TikTok’s opaque system. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, which rely on algorithms, Saranga said TikTok had admitted to Israeli officials that there is “no algorithm” in the traditional sense, content visibility depends on internal decisions. “In other words, TikTok has become a tool in the hands of others to influence the narrative,” he said. He cited cases where hostage families were denied advertising access on TikTok, even as anti-Israel content spread widely.

Another war is being fought against misinformation. “Hamas doesn’t have a problem with lying,” Saranga said. By contrast, Israel’s diplomats are constrained. “We check everything three times before publishing. Sometimes it takes us an hour or two. But by then, the fake news has already gone viral.”

Saranga pointed to a recent Time magazine cover on the Gaza famine later shown to rely on a fabricated image. “It’s too late. The narrative was already shaped,” he lamented.

Before the age of Twitter and TikTok, Israeli diplomats had one primary task, he said, to speak to elites: presidents, ministers, academics, and journalists. Now, “With 500 diplomats worldwide, we can’t bring our message to billions. Social media gives us that tool, but we can’t do it alone.”

Diaspora communities often fill the gap, though sometimes reluctantly. A local university student challenged Saranga, saying, “The lack of media presence that Israel has creates large amounts of antisemitism for diaspora communities because we then are forced to be the voice of Israel.”

Saranga acknowledged the strain. “You’re right. The ministry you mentioned that once trained you no longer exists. We need to work more closely with Jewish communities and influencers. We will do more.”

At its heart, Saranga said he viewed 7 October as a turning point not just militarily, but digitally. “The surprise wasn’t only on the military level,” he said. “It was also on the public diplomacy level. Our enemies prepared the ground. They succeeded in seeding their ideas among different groups, and the rest is history.”

The world, he argued, is now divided in starker terms. “You are either with us or with Hamas. That doesn’t mean you must support every Israeli policy. But you cannot identify with Hamas after 7 October and still claim to stand for Western values.”

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been one of bullets, borders, and bloodshed. But as Saranga’s reflections make clear, it’s now equally fought in the feeds of billions. Israel’s efforts to project its narrative online are sophisticated yet strained, innovative yet outnumbered.

And as he warns, the stakes go beyond Israel. “TikTok has become a tool in undermining Western democracies.” In today’s wars, he warns, who wins the battle of narratives may shape who wins the battle on the ground.