Message Not Sent

Is Eylon Levy a cautionary tale of a spokesman exceeding his mandate, or a parable for the crippling failings of Israel’s PR machine?
Photos: Ariel Ohana, AP Images, Flash 90
Last November, Eylon Levy became famous for his eyebrows. The London-born media professional was serving as a volunteer wartime spokesman for Israel as the November hostage deal was unfolding, when a British interviewer asked a jaw-dropping question.
“I was speaking to a hostage negotiator this morning,” the Sky News anchor said, “who made the comparison between the 50 hostages that Hamas has promised to release and the 150 prisoners that Israel has promised to release. And he asked whether Israel doesn’t think that Palestinians lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives?”
It was a shocking question — both fatuous and bigoted. As the presenter got to the end of her challenge, the split screen showed that it had shaken Levy’s calm demeanor. His eyebrows began to arch, his eyes opened wide as he stared back at the camera and there was a stunned pause, before he fired back.
“That is an astonishing accusation,” he said. “If we could release one prisoner for every one hostage, we would obviously do that. These are people with blood on their hands. It’s outrageous to suggest that the fact that we’re willing to release many prisoners to get our children back means that we don’t care about Palestinian lives. Really, it’s a disgusting accusation.”
Within hours, the exchange and particularly the raised eyebrows had gone wild online, and Eylon Levy became a celebrity in the pro-Israel world.
This anecdote from the prehistoric era at the war’s beginning, when Israel still got a hearing of sorts in media outlets, is instructive in terms of what came next. Because within months, he was gone. The official story was that Levy had made a comment offending the British government. However, according to Levy, the real reason lay more with local power dynamics — i.e., displeasure from within Bibi’s inner circle — than any supposed bilateral grievance. Perhaps another way of putting that is that Eylon Levy became the story, not the spokesman. Colleagues seem to think so.
“Eylon comes with a very interesting package,” says Peter Lerner, an English-speaking spokesperson for the IDF. “He is both social media savvy and has a very sharp tongue. I think that’s why he rallied Jews around the world and also Israeli society. But part of his downfall came because he became the story rather than communicating Israel’s story.”
Whatever the immediate trigger, Levy’s tale of short-lived PR superstardom could serve as a parable for Israel’s wider hasbarah PR efforts. Here was a media champion who is quick-witted, charismatic, and — as the eyebrow meme proved — perfectly suited for the online era. Why had politics led to his ouster? Levy’s story also raises the opposite possibility: Given the tidal wave of anti-Israel hatred washing through the online and media worlds, one more or less talented spokesman may make no difference anyway.
Free from the role that made him a celebrity, Levy feels more comfortable critiquing Israeli communication strategies. He condemns what he sees as “improvisation” in one of the country’s most sensitive areas, where he thinks that professional spokespeople can still make a difference to all but anti-Israel radicals, and says that Israel is at least partly responsible for its current straits due to the tremendous communications blunders it has made since October 7.
And back in the private sector, where he was until the Hamas attack plucked him from obscurity, Levy admits: “I would return to my post in a heartbeat.”
Oops! We could not locate your form.