Psychological Warfare in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

R. Schleifer

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137467027
• eBook ISBN: 9781137467034
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The first study to examine psychological warfare in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, this book presents a rational analysis of the Arab and Israeli struggles to gain the world's sympathy and support, tracing these struggles from the British Mandate to the more recent HAMAS abduction of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.

CHAPTER 1

Psychological Warfare Theory

Since biblical times, psychological warfare has been a nonviolent weapon used to achieve military goals.1 Psychological warfare, or psywar, has been employed with varying degrees of success in hostilities, ranging from total war to low-intensity conflicts (LICs), and ideological and organizational struggles. Its implications on political life have been especially felt since the latter half of the twentieth century. Given the media’s dominating influence, psywar’s role in policy-shaping is expected to increase in both war- and peacetime.

Psychological warfare is based on the idea that enemy troops do not have to be killed or wounded; instead, they can be influenced not to pull (or to hesitate in pulling) the trigger, even convinced to abandon the battlefield, or their leaders can be persuaded not to send them into the combat zone in the first place. In the broadest sense psychological warfare encompasses all nonviolent activity that aims at realizing the state’s goals. While regular military operations can have indirect psychological implications, such as the London Blitz in World War II, Intifada’s psychological warfare, for instance, stresses nonviolence.

Psywar is a strategic weapon, or force multiplier. The side that applies it wisely gains a distinct advantage over the enemy. Psywar augments the fighting effort, and its benefits far outweigh the costs. Its outlay is much lower than that of violent combat activity, and it assumes the moral high road by avoiding human loss and material destruction and helping the parties end the carnage as quickly as possible. Put simply, psywar saves lives and resources. But it demands continuous, expert application alongside diplomatic activity. This is true for conventional wars as well as the LICs that Israel has faced in the last two decades. Civilian populations on both sides play a critical role as target audiences. Psywar’s aims include boosting home front morale, galvanizing the nation’s support in a conflict, and undermining enemy home front resistance and convincing it to end the hostilities.

The American communications theorist Harold Lasswell devised a ­concise formula for the media process: Who’s sending the message? What is being said? What channel is being used? And, how effective is its influence? This formula is most useful for analyzing psychological warfare. The topics in this book are arranged according to psywar messages and themes, the party deploying psywar, and, of course, psywar’s degree of ­influence (success).

Psychological warfare’s importance is apparent at every stage of the ­conflict, and this reality has not changed in the last hundred years. For instance, even before hostilities erupt, psywar is used to convince the home audience of the need to go to war. When the enemy is far from the homeland, a different approach is taken as citizens demand to know why valuable resources are being spent in a distant campaign and why citizens are being asked to sacrifice their lives when the enemy is not physically endangering them.

In wartime, psywar has three main target audiences: the home audience, the enemy audience, and the neutral audience. The home audience has to be convinced of the war’s justification; the enemy army has to be convinced that its chances of winning are zero, while the enemy’s citizens have to be brought to realize the war’s futility; and the neutral audience has to be co-opted as its support can be of crucial importance. Psywar units continue operating even after the war is over; their main task at this point is to counter the local population’s natural hostility toward an occupation force. The message to be conveyed is that the foreign troops are in their ­territory only on a temporary basis and have no intention of harming them.

Basic Terms in Psychological Warfare

In the West, psychological warfare is linked to controversial issues such as propaganda, brainwashing, and demagogy, all of which tend to evoke strong antagonism. These concepts clash with the value systems of a democratic government, values that can be traced back to the French Revolution. Mass persuasion, for example, generally arouses mixed feelings in Western countries (including Israel). There are different expressions for “psychological warfare”: psywar, propaganda, public relations, public diplomacy, hasbara (Hebrew), political warfare, and psychological operations (psyops).

Evolution of Terms in the Twentieth Century

The word “propaganda” was coined in the seventeenth century from the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for Propagation of the Faith), the Catholic Church’s worldwide organization whose goal was to bring new believers into the fold. In South America, for example, the organization was responsible for proselytizing millions of native people, and, in this part of the world, propaganda still means “publicity” without a negative connotation.2

Great Britain entered World War I with an extremely limited propaganda machine. Prime Minister Herbert Asquith set up a mechanism known as the British War Propaganda Bureau whose goals were to win ­public support for the war, undermine the enemy’s morale, and convince the neutral states—especially the United States—to enter the war on Britain’s side. Asquith appointed a close associate, Foreign Minister Charles Masterman, an accomplished official, to head the bureau. Masterman believed that such a mechanism should operate far from the public eye and therefore set up the bureau in an unassuming office building known as Wellington House, a name that has since become synonymous with Britain’s central propaganda machine.

After a change of government during the war, the British propaganda bodies reorganized, and novelist John Buchan was appointed head of the organization. His tasks included tracking enemy propaganda and producing films and newsreels. Another change soon followed—Lloyd George, the new prime minister, established the Ministry of War Information and appointed Harold Beaverbrook, a British newspaper tycoon, as director of the new ministry. Lord Northcliffe, another press baron and owner of the prestigious Times, headed the Department of Enemy Propaganda Affairs and served as Beaverbrook’s subordinate (although the two men preferred to conceal the exact nature of the hierarchy).3 In this way the British prime minister gained the support of the press, as well as a vast reservoir of creative thinking, foreign policy expertise, and the means to convey messages rapidly.

Twenty years later, with the rise of Joseph Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda machine, the term “propaganda” took on a categorically negative connotation that continues till today. The British realized the crucial role that information played in attaining victory. Therefore, at the outbreak of World War II, they set up an effective mechanism but were careful to eschew the term “propaganda,” preferring “political warfare” instead. During preparations for the invasion of Normandy (June 1943–June 1944), the Americans and British established a joint command and coined a new term: “psychological warfare.” This term is still used when referring to activities that promote military interests in wartime.4

During World War II, the differences between the democratic and totalitarian regimes’ application of psywar were readily apparent. In democratic regimes, founded on freedom of ideas and choice, citizens opposed centralized thought control and looked upon government attempts to influence their thinking as unethical. People in totalitarian regimes, in contrast, viewed propaganda as an inseparable part of government organization, where it was applied extensively for domestic and foreign needs.

With the advent of the Cold War, the United States had to face the ­problem of employing propaganda against the Soviet Union and Communist Bloc. Since the West associated “propaganda” with totalitarian regimes, the term had to be avoided at all costs, even if its advantages in the superpower struggle were unarguable. The semantic solution was to find a term with a positive connotation—such as “diplomacy”—while the organizational solution was to transfer the propaganda machinery to the area of clandestine activities. It was duly put under the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) established in 1947 directly responsible to the president. In the same year, President Truman approved the creation of a new body—the United States Information Agency (USIA)—whose goal was to spread information overseas. This name was chosen in order to emphasize that, unlike the Soviet Union, the United States did not engage in “propaganda” but in conveying “information” to the target audience.

At the same time, the term “psychological warfare” began to go out of use. During the Korean War of the early 1950s, it referred to conventional military activity. Toward the end of the war, the US Army looked for a new term, one without a negative connotation, and decided that battlefield ­propaganda would henceforth be called “psychological operations” or “psyops.” The army apparently believed that the word “operations” brought to mind a series of brief, local actions. The term “perception management” was considered but was dropped. Thus, the term “psychological operations” or “psyops” remained in use while the army continued to look for a better one. This is how applied anthropological skills are used to constantly update doctrines and manuals so as to communicate better with non-Western audiences (“human terrain” in army jargon). Interestingly, the latest development in US military doctrine reflects the ever-existing democracy’s ambiguous attitude toward propaganda. The current usage dictated by the Pentagon is MISO (Military Information Support Operations).5 Officers in the field have expressed their displeasure with this vague terminology that leaves them unsure of which supports which. The term, they say, should have remained on Japanese restaurant menus.

Terms in Israel and the Arab Countries

In the years following Israel’s independence, a debate raged over the official names of the nation’s propaganda bodies. Aversion toward the appellation “propaganda” was strong because of the new state’s democratic principles and the Jewish peoples’ still-fresh memory of the Nazi use of the term. Nevertheless, given the vital role of information dissemination in foreign policy, the state agencies that engaged in “propaganda” fought bitter turf wars over authority and resources.6 Finally a compromise was reached: the state would engage in public information and the secret agencies would deal with the clandestine areas of psyops (similar to the United States after World War II). Psychological warfare in military affairs was transferred to a small unit in Military Intelligence; the Mossad (Israel’s equivalent of the CIA) was given charge of special tasks and the covert areas of information spreading; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) was given responsibility for propaganda (hasbara in Hebrew)7 in foreign countries and international organizations; the Jewish Agency dealt with hasbara in the Jewish world; and a new body, the Hasbara Administration (later, Merkaz Ha-hasbara), was charged with propaganda dissemination among Israel’s citizens.8 The name of this last body—the Hasbara Administration—reflects the stormy evolution of the term. Toward the end of the War of Independence, internal memos of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) still employed the term ta’amula (propaganda), as in “propaganda for the recruit,” but, by early 1949, hasbara appeared as an alternative.

Interestingly, no term comparable to hasbara exists in other languages. Israel felt that the best way to enhance its image in the international arena was to “explain” its unique situation: rising from the ashes of the Holocaust, catapulted headlong into a bitter political and military struggle against Britain’s Mandatory Regime, and then fighting for its life, or rather, birth, in a war of independence with the Arabs. In effect, Israel forced the term hasbara on the Jewish world and on everyone it came into diplomatic contact with. The MFA’s information desk was named the Hasbara Department—a title that was kept until the 1987 Intifada. Since then it has undergone several organizational reshufflings, and today hasbara is a full-fledged directorate within the ministry and renamed Public Diplomacy. The World Zionist Organization, too, had a division called the Hasbara Department, but this was disbanded after a decade. Hasbara became a basic term in the Zionist lexicon, along with other terms such as shaliach (envoy) and aliya (immigration).

The Arab military lexicon contains a number of terms related to information. Wizrat al-A’lam refers to the Ministry of Information. In many Arab countries this ministry is part of the state machinery. The term harb al-nafsia is used in Arab armies to refer to psychological warfare. In the 1960s, the Palestinians embarked upon a methodical study of wars of ­liberation in countries such as Algeria, Vietnam, and Cuba, with the intention of applying some of the lessons to their own struggle. They termed this style of fighting harb al-asabat (guerrilla warfare). Even at an early ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Psychological Warfare Theory
• 2 Principles of Psychological Warfare Management
• 3 Psychological Warfare against the British in Prestate Israel (the Yishuv)
• 4 Psychological Warfare in the Arab-Israeli Wars (1948–1982)
• 5 The War between Israel and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon (1985–2000)
• 6 The Arab-Israeli Conflict and the First Intifada (1948–1989)
• 7 Applying Psywar Themes in the Intifada
• 8 The Palestinian Information Mechanism
• 9 The Israeli Information Mechanism
• 10 Planning Psywar, Defining its Goals
• 11 The Second Intifada (2000–2005)
• 12 The Psyop War
• 13 Psychological Warfare in Operation “Cast Lead”
• 14 The Mavi Marmara Affair
• Conclusions
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index