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Israel has embraced new media as a vital tool in the latest Gaza conflict. 

This is part of an active PR strategy it has been formulating since early 2008 according to Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, discussing whether the British media is anti-Israeli on the Media Talk podcast. 

Freedland pinpoints the formation of the National Information Directorate as a key turning point in how this conflict is perceived. The new Directorate was formed after an inquiry into why the media didn’t fully report Israel’s actions in Lebanon in 2006. Israel felt the world perceived it as Goliath against David. 

As Aviv Shir-on, foreign ministry deputy director-general for public affairs is reported as saying: “In the war of the pictures we lose, so you need to correct or balance it in other ways. Support doesn’t mean the world is standing behind us, but it does mean people understanding what we are doing and why.” 

In his interview, Freedland points out that about six months ago the Directorate started to court the publications like the Guardian and the BBC. The reason he believes was not only because of their important role in the UK but their websites, by definition are international publications which are widely read and respected in influential countries such as United States. This is also the case in Israel itself where, as Freedland says, the influential daily newspaper Haaretz  is seen as a foreign publication due to its high readership levels in the United States.  

Israel’s approach appears to have had some success. Justification was given for Israel’s actions in many news reports and particularly on the BBC, where it cited recent Hamas attacks on Israel. This had been absent from the reporting in the Lebanon war in 2006 in which the Israelis felt portrayed as an unprovoked aggressor. Major Avital Leibovich, spokesperson for the Israeli military, has said: “Quiet a few outlets are very favourable to Israel, namely by showing [it] suffering….I am sure it is a result of the co-ordination.” 

It is not just newspaper websites that have been the subject of the Directorate’s attention. In recent months they have been targeting not only Jewish communities and friendship leagues but bloggers and backers using online networks. Since the conflict has started it has even started a YouTube  channel. 

Regardless of the legitimacy of Israel’s military action, it has seen new media as a way of fighting back in the propaganda war.  

Welcome to the world of digital communications.

Talk about a rock and a hard place.

US President elect, Barack Obama, has finally spoken out about the crisis in Gaza, saying: “The loss of civilian life in Gaza and in Israel is a source of deep concern for me.” But, for some, his comments are too little and too late.

The Guardian’s Simon Tisdall - not one for rash pronouncements - had already questioned the Obama’s ”keep shtum” strategy, suggesting that his silence may give the impression he either “shares [George] Bush’s bias [in favour of Israel] or simply does not care.” This image, surely, would be unthinkable for the man voted in on a platform of “change” and of reaching out to a world divided by US foreign policy. And how would Obama’s delayed response play in the Arab world? 

Middle East-based English language news source, Al Jazeera, was on Obama’s case before the close of 2008, quoting Mark Perry, Washington Director of the Conflicts Forum group with the damning: “Silence sounds like complicity”.

According not only to protocol but, apparently, also to the US constitutution, there is ”only one president at at time”, so hampering anything Obama may actually want to say on the Gaza situation.

Problem is, those looking for the soon-to-be leader of the free world to take action - or at least take a stance - are not interested in presidential protocol.

Saying something or saying nothing: before he has the elected authority to do anything about it, neither is a palatable option for Obama on an issue as complex as Israel and the Palestinians.

But from his 20 January inauguration, his credibility and fulfilling of the promise he presented at election time will hang on talking and acting clearly and quickly.