Pretty Urgent ‼️

Gilad Erdan — Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, who just launched a new right-wing party — told the Jerusalem Post that Israel needs a full “army” of public diplomacy people, run by someone with the authority of a military chief of staff. He says the government walked away from one of its most important fights: the battle over Israel’s story and image. Right now, in his view, there are only a couple of small agencies with a few people and almost no money. The result, he argues, is that Israel is losing support from American Democrats and from younger Republicans — leaders at Turning Point USA told him directly that Israel is losing the young Republican generation. He also pointed to a funding gap, saying he was shocked when he got to the UN and found a public diplomacy budget that began at $10,000 for activities in New York. Israel has an embassy and eight consulates in the US, but he says they don’t have the resources to do the job — and he compares that to Qatar, which spends heavily on soft diplomacy despite an economy roughly a third the size of Israel’s. What Gilad plans to do • Says he has a full plan for how Israel should present itself and go on the offensive rather than always playing defense • Build a real, properly funded public diplomacy operation instead of scattered small offices • Put one senior person in charge of it all, the way the army has one commander • Publicly call out Qatar and others he sees as working against Israel • Borrow tactics from anti-Israel campus groups, which he says he studied closely • Spend seriously on this — his point being that if Qatar can do it with a smaller economy, Israel can do it better