Israel’s soft power catastrophe after October 7: A pro-Israel indictment

On October 7, 2023, Israel endured a massacre of civilians so grotesque that it should have shocked the world into clarity. Jews were slaughtered in their homes, women were raped, families incinerated, children kidnapped.

By any moral standard, Israel should have owned the global narrative as the victim of barbarism. Instead, sympathy evaporated within days, replaced by images of Gaza rubble, UN condemnations, and a surge of anti-Israel sentiment across campuses and capitals.

This is not because Israel’s case is weak — it is because Israel is catastrophically inept at soft power, while its enemies and even neutral states like Qatar master it.

The War Since October 7: Hard Power Without Narrative Power

Militarily, Israel has done what states are supposed to do: defend its people and dismantle Hamas’s terror infrastructure. 

But on the battlefield of global opinion, Israel has been routed. Hamas operates with one goal: to weaponize Palestinian suffering for the camera. 

Every bombed building becomes propaganda, every funeral becomes theater. 

Israel, meanwhile, releases sterile press briefings, as though citing Article 51 of the UN Charter will compete with a viral TikTok.

The result: October 7 is already fading from global consciousness, while Gaza’s images are seared into it. Israel may win militarily, but it is losing the emotional war — the war that shapes alliances, campus movements, and public opinion in democratic societies.

Qatar: The Masterclass in Soft Power

If Israel is a case study in soft power failure, Qatar is its opposite. 

Qatar is a tiny desert monarchy with no democratic credentials, rampant labor abuse, and close ties to Hamas. 

Yet it has managed to position itself as a respected global player. How? By investing ruthlessly in soft power.

Qatar hosts Al Jazeera, which has become one of the most influential media outlets shaping narratives about the Middle East — often hostile to Israel. 

Qatar bought international legitimacy through sportswashing, pouring billions into the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Whatever its flaws, the world watched, admired the spectacle, and associated Qatar with modernity, culture, and global relevance.

Qatar bankrolls universities, think tanks, and Western cultural institutions. It cultivates an image of diplomacy by mediating conflicts, even as it harbors Hamas leaders in luxury hotels. 

The contrast is stunning: a monarchy that funds terrorism also funds art museums and sports tournaments, and the world forgives the first because it swoons over the second.

Israel, by contrast, is a real democracy, an innovator in medicine and technology, a country that rescues civilians from war zones, a refuge for persecuted Jews. And yet — in the global imagination — it is reduced to barbed wire, soldiers, and checkpoints.

The UN Arena: Missing Every Opportunity

Nowhere is this contrast sharper than at the United Nations. Qatar struts as a “neutral mediator,” hosting talks and branding itself as indispensable. 

Israel, meanwhile, is condemned repeatedly, its ambassadors trapped in the role of defensive litigants. When Hamas atrocities are ignored, Israel should be turning the spotlight onto the UN’s hypocrisy. 

Instead, it delivers long speeches about international law that nobody listens to, while the Palestinian representatives dramatize keys to lost homes and the language of resistance.

Again, Israel looks like Goliath, Hamas like David. Qatar, meanwhile, looks like Solomon — the wise mediator — despite the fact that it actively bankrolls the violence Israel is fighting.

October 7: The Wasted Narrative Opportunity

The greatest indictment of Israel’s soft power failure is its inability to keep October 7 at the center of the story. For one week, the world saw Jews as victims of genocidal terror. 

But Israel hesitated to show the raw footage, fearing it was “too graphic.” It filtered and sanitized its own trauma while Hamas broadcast suffering unfiltered. In the age of viral imagery, restraint is suicide.

Instead of flooding the world with the testimonies of survivors, the stories of kidnapped children, and the footage of atrocity, Israel defaulted to sterile IDF maps and grainy slides. It allowed Hamas — and Qatar’s media empire — to dictate the emotional narrative.

Israel the Giant, Qatar the Illusionist

The tragedy is not that Israel lacks substance. It is that it cannot translate substance into story. Israel is a nation of democracy, science, resilience, and survival. 

Qatar is a monarchy that plays both arsonist and firefighter. Yet in the global imagination, Qatar comes out as a cultural broker and peacemaker, while Israel is cast as the villain.

October 7 should have been Israel’s 9/11 — a defining moment to cement its moral legitimacy. Instead, Israel squandered the chance, and Qatar helped ensure that the narrative was hijacked. Israel can destroy Hamas with tanks and drones. 

But until it learns to fight like Qatar on the battlefield of image, narrative, and perception, it will continue to lose a war that no Iron Dome can stop.

Soft power is not decoration; it is survival. And right now, Israel’s survival story is being told — brilliantly — by everyone but Israel itself.