Ministry of Public Diplomacy (Israel)

The name has covered several administrative arrangements rather than a single uninterrupted institution. The Ministry of Information and Diaspora Affairs operated in 2009–2013; an INSS account treats public diplomacy as reestablished within the Ministry of Strategic Affairs in 2015; and a separate independent ministry operated in 2023.[1][3]

These bodies coexisted with or transferred duties to the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, and the National Public Diplomacy Directorate in the Prime Minister's Office. The sources therefore do not establish one continuous organization with a stable English name and unchanged authority.[6][2]

Israel's institutional arrangements for public diplomacy have roots dating to the late 1960s. Israel Galili served as information minister in 1967–1969, before a formal ministry was established.[3] A dedicated Ministry of Information was established in 1974, built on the Directorate of Information Services and headed first by Shimon Peres and then by Aharon Yariv.[3] The ministry was dismantled roughly a year after its founding, with its units returning to their original ministries; the collapse was attributed to unclear responsibilities, bureaucratic and inter-ministerial competition, and related disputes.[3]

Following a State Comptroller's report, the government decided in July 2007 to establish the National Public Diplomacy Directorate within the Prime Minister's Office, with the stated purpose of coordinating Israel's public-diplomacy bodies and presenting a credible, uniform, and consistent message.[3] The bodies involved included the Prime Minister's Office, the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Information and Strategic Affairs, the Ministry of Intelligence, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, and the Home Front Command.[3]

A Ministry of Information and Diaspora Affairs was reestablished in 2009, when Yuli Edelstein was appointed to head it following the elections that brought Netanyahu's 32nd Government to power.[3][7] Its responsibilities included maintaining ties between Israel and the Diaspora, combating antisemitism, and carrying out public-diplomacy projects intended to improve Israel's image abroad.[8] The National Information Center, the Government Advertising Agency, and the Government Press Office were placed under the ministry, alongside areas covering society and diaspora affairs.[3]

During this period the ministry sent trained public-diplomacy delegations to 81 university campuses in the United States and Canada.[3] Another outreach effort was the Foreign Ministry's "Presenting Israel" project, which sought to recruit Israeli citizens and diaspora Jews as private representatives of the country, coordinate their activity through a dedicated website, and supply information, guidance, and training.[1] The project's website attracted more than three million visitors between February 2010 and July 2012, and more than 100,000 instruction pamphlets were distributed to Israelis at Ben-Gurion Airport.[1] Its effect on Israel's international standing was considered difficult to measure.[1]

Edelstein's title appears in different forms. The 32nd-government list uses "Minister of Information and Diaspora Affairs," while a Federal Register notice uses "Minister of Public Diplomacy and the Diaspora."[7][9] A June 2013 Congressional Research Service report uses "Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs."[10] The available sources do not establish whether the differences reflect a formal title change or translation and wording variation.

After the 32nd Government gave way to the 33rd, reports dated June and November 2013 listed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as holding the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs portfolio.[10][11] A July 2014 report did likewise.[12] The 33rd Government was sworn in on March 18, 2013, following elections on January 22, while Edelstein was elected Speaker of the 19th Knesset on March 18.[10][13]

INSS treats the public-diplomacy ministry as having closed in 2013 and reemerged in 2015 as part of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which was then assigned to lead public-diplomacy efforts within Israel.[1] A separate institutional account says the 2009 ministry was abolished after the 2013 election and merged with the National Public Diplomacy Directorate, while parts of its public-diplomacy work, staff positions, and project funding were transferred to the minister responsible for strategic affairs in 2015.[2] These accounts reflect the ambiguity surrounding the institution's continuity and naming.

The formal division of responsibilities adopted in 2012 had assigned foreign government activity to the Foreign Ministry and domestic activity to the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, but a 2015 State Comptroller report found that this division had not been implemented in practice.[1] In 2015, Israel's Political-Security Cabinet assigned the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy responsibility for guiding, coordinating, and integrating government-ministry and civil-society activity against the boycott movement and attempts to delegitimize Israel.[14] In 2009, Prime Minister Netanyahu had described the Ministry of Strategic Affairs as playing "a central role in coordinating the government efforts to fight the attempt to damage Israel's legitimacy."[1] Gilad Erdan was appointed in 2015 to the combined portfolio of Minister of Public Security, Strategic Affairs, and Public Diplomacy, serving as the government's point man on efforts to counter delegitimization, including the BDS movement.[15]

The ministry's work during this period fell into four main areas: linking civil-society activists working against contemporary antisemitism worldwide; providing financial support to network members; conducting research and leveraging reports based on global data; and monitoring the funding sources of anti-Israeli entities, a task described as requiring state-level technology and resources.[14] In 2020, the ministry concentrated particularly on anti-Israel activity in digital and social-media spaces.[14]

The Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy founded the Global Community for Israel (GC4I), a network of civil-society organizations and pro-Israel activists worldwide, and created more specialized networks in legal and digital fields.[14] The digital network included social-media influencers, online-media managers, and activists, who were supplied with materials and information as needed.[14] An attempt to create a parallel network of pro-Israel academics did not come to fruition.[14]

Government Resolution 136, issued on July 19, 2021, ordered the closure of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy and the transfer of its activities to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[14] The Foreign Affairs Ministry subsequently established a Division for Combating the Delegitimization of Israel in January 2022, drawing on the infrastructure, personnel, and experience of the closed ministry.[14]

Israel established an independent Public Diplomacy Ministry at the beginning of 2023, with Galit Distel Atbaryan appointed as its head.[4] It was described as the first such stand-alone ministry since 1975.[4] Distel Atbaryan was reported to be the first woman and fourth lawmaker to head an independent public-diplomacy ministry.[16] Previous holders of the public-diplomacy portfolio when it was housed within the Foreign Ministry included Aharon Yariv, Shimon Peres, and Yisrael Galili.[16]

In January 2023, the government approved NIS 19.2 million to implement the appointments of Distel Atbaryan as public diplomacy minister and May Golan as a minister in the Prime Minister's Office, rather than as an operating allocation exclusively for the new ministry.[17] The sum comprised NIS 10.8 million from the Prime Minister's Office operating budget and NIS 8.4 million from the Israel Tax Authority's salary budget.[17] A government decision described the ministry's purpose as presenting Israel and events in the country to international audiences reliably and dealing with false information. It also provided that the ministry should not detract from other ministries' powers and should act in consultation with relevant government bodies.[2]

At the time of Distel Atbaryan's appointment, public-diplomacy responsibilities remained spread across several bodies, including the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, and the National Public Diplomacy Directorate in the Prime Minister's Office.[6] About 20 Foreign Ministry employees—previously transferred from the Strategic Affairs Ministry—were expected to move to the Diaspora Affairs Ministry, which was to receive responsibility for combating delegitimization, BDS, and antisemitism.[6] The new ministry's own powers and areas of responsibility had not yet been formally detailed.[17]

Distel Atbaryan outlined plans to connect roughly 2,000 civil public-diplomacy groups in Israel and abroad, develop a uniform language for public diplomacy, and recruit participants from national service and schools.[16] She proposed building a social-media headquarters involving TikTok and Instagram users in Israel and other countries, and described hasbara as "first and foremost — a battle against ignorance."[16] These were stated plans rather than documented achievements.

The ministry's operation during 2023 was hampered by structural and legal ambiguities from the outset. Distel Atbaryan stated that public-diplomacy powers remained with the National Public Diplomacy Directorate in the Prime Minister's Office and that, without formally defined powers, the ministry's legal counsel could not approve its activities.[18] The first budget installment was expected only on June 1, and professional staff estimated that full staffing would take approximately a year; early activity consisted largely of English-language posts and videos produced using the spokesperson's cellphone.[18]

A proposed public-information campaign about Israel's judicial overhaul became a significant legal and political dispute. The Prime Minister's Office legal adviser concluded that the ministry's founding decision had not specified its functions or powers. The adviser also warned that a campaign promoting legislation that was still advancing and subject to intense political dispute might not satisfy requirements that government publicity remain neutral and avoid political or personal promotion.[19] Netanyahu was reported to have authorized the ministry to promote the judicial overhaul to audiences in Israel and abroad, and the ministry faced criticism both for that reported role and for statements made by the minister.[20]

After Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the head of the National Public Diplomacy Directorate assigned responsibility for coordinating wartime public diplomacy internationally to the Diaspora Affairs Ministry, working alongside the Foreign Ministry.[21] On October 12, Distel Atbaryan announced her resignation, stating that her ministry had been stripped of its original authority and had become redundant.[21] She said that the Diaspora Affairs Ministry had greater resources and a larger budget, described the arrangement as a duplication of powers, and urged Netanyahu to transfer her ministry's budget to help residents of southern Israel.[22]

On October 22, 2023, the government approved the abolition of the ministry.[5] Its NIS 23.8 million in budgeted funds was redirected to the Tekuma Directorate, which was tasked with rehabilitating communities near the Gaza border affected by the October 7 attack.[4][5] The ministry's allocation of 29 full-time positions was also transferred to the Tekuma Directorate; at the time of the decision, the ministry had zero employees.[5]

The ministry's history illustrates the recurring difficulty of centralizing Israeli public diplomacy across government. Successive governments created coordinating bodies or shifted lead responsibility between ministries, yet the sources continued to describe overlapping mandates, weak coordination, and formal divisions that were not fully implemented.[1][3]

Its programs also demonstrate a recurring reliance on nongovernment participants alongside formal state communication. The "Presenting Israel" project recruited private representatives, while GC4I connected civil-society organizations, digital-media figures, and pro-Israel activists worldwide.[1][14]

Throughout its various incarnations, the ministry's institutional role was persistently contested. Public diplomacy was divided between ministries with overlapping mandates, and a formal division of duties adopted in 2012 was reported by the State Comptroller in 2015 as not having been implemented.[1] The sources also use inconsistent names and institutional lineages for the 1974 ministry, the 2009 Information and Diaspora portfolio, the public-diplomacy functions housed within Strategic Affairs from 2015, and the independent ministry established in 2023.[3][4]

The 2023 iteration drew particular controversy. Some reporting characterized it as having been created principally to provide Distel Atbaryan with a ministerial post—a political characterization rather than an uncontested account of the government's motive.[23] The proposed use of the ministry to promote the judicial overhaul drew objections from legal advisers on grounds of neutrality and restrictions on politically promotional government publicity.[19] Distel Atbaryan's account that her office had been sidelined, denied meaningful powers, and rendered redundant by overlapping assignments remains her stated assessment; the reassignment of international public-diplomacy coordination was made by the head of the National Public Diplomacy Directorate.[21]