Israel Tries Arabic Outreach, Gets Mixed Response Military deploys social media to spread anti-Iran message Link copied… By Rory Jones in Tel Aviv and Nazih Osseiran in Beirut
https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-tries-arabic-outreach-gets-mixed-response-1517054401
As Saudi Arabia and Iran spar for influence across the Middle East, Israel is using the Arabic language to seek common ground with Tehran’s enemies and sway its sympathizers.
The efforts have been met at times with hostility and ridicule—in part because Maj. Avichay Adraee, the Israeli army spokesman leading the outreach, doesn’t shy away from provocation.
Maj. Adraee’s recent output includes a Facebook post of image of Iran’s flag superimposed over the Gaza Strip and a Twitter video simulating an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, home of the Iran-backed group Hezbollah.
Text messaging
A tweet from the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman Maj. Avichay Adraee accuses Iran for dragging down Gaza, including the message that Iran “will not care about the peoples it attempts to exert its influence over.”
With 1.2 million followers on his Arabic Facebook page and more than 181,000 on Twitter, Maj. Adraee is the face of the Israeli messaging campaign. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued videos with Arabic subtitles denouncing Iran, and the foreign ministry routinely posts rosy images of Israeli-Arab coexistence for its own million-plus Arabic-language Facebook followers.
For Israel, which doesn’t have diplomatic relations with most of its neighbors, social media has become a way to engage with Arabs and reinforce a growing alignment with Sunni Muslim Arab states.
The most influential of those states is Saudi Arabia. In a sign of that emphasis, the Israeli military chose a newspaper owned by a Saudi publisher when it offered the first Arab-media interview with its chief of staff in more than 10 years.
Iran is the “biggest threat to the region,” chief-of-staff Lt. Gen Gadi Eisenkot told the publication, Elaph, which is based in London, in November. “In this matter, there is complete agreement between us and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
An official at Iran’s United Nations mission didn’t respond to a request for comment on Israel’s media outreach.
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