Too many times in the past decade, the state of Israel has demonstrated weakness opposite the Palestinians in the public diplomacy war for hearts and minds, because it did not prepare appropriately for an era in which wars are also waged in the public diplomacy arena.

This is the conclusion that Knesset member Nachman Shai (Labor party) presents in his new book, Media War Reaching for Hearts and Minds [in Hebrew]. His book deals with the centrality and importance of the public diplomacy war that is being waged between the terrorist organizations and guerrilla groups, and democratic countries. Shai reviews the key events in which the public diplomacy war between Israel and the Palestinians was manifested, including the affair involving the child Muhammed al-Dura, the Marmara flotilla raid and more.

Shai’s experience in the interfaces between army, media and diplomacy is the result of 40 years of dealing with these spheres. Shai served as military journalist, media advisor, spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Washington, commander of the Israel Army Radio station and IDF spokesman in the First Gulf War. (It was in that war that he earned the nickname of the “National Calmer,” by virtue of the serene tone he adopted in calming the Israelis who sat up close to their radios in sealed rooms.) In recent years, Shai served as Knesset member for the Kadima party, and afterward he moved to the Labor party.

Shai’s new book is based on his doctoral thesis, which earned him the 2012 Tshetshik Prize for Security Studies, from the Institute for National Security Studies.