PM's Hasbara Chief steps down after a decade

Herb Keinon, The Jerusalem Post

The job of the directorate is to coordinate messages between various government agencies, such as the Prime Minister’s Office, the IDF, the Foreign Ministry, the Justice Ministry and others.

Yarden Vatikay image from article

Yarden Vatikay, who for the last 10 years has headed the National Information Directorate meant to coordinate Israel’s public diplomacy [JB emphasis] message, announced on Wednesday he will be leaving his position.

Vatikay was appointed by then prime minister Ehud Olmert in 2008 after a comptroller’s report looking into the Second Lebanon War found deficiencies in Israel’s ability to articulate a unified message. The job of the directorate is to coordinate messages between various government agencies, such as the Prime Minister’s Office, the IDF, the Foreign Ministry, the Justice Ministry and others.

Prior to coming to the Prime Minister’s Office, Vatikay served for five years as the Jewish Agency’s spokesman, and before that was the spokesman for then defense minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Vatikay for his service and said he has assisted a great deal, including “during times of challenging security incidents.”

Vatikay said that Israel’s public diplomacy has undergone a “revolution,” and evolved from a situation where each agency acted independently, to a “well-oiled system that works in coordination and takes good advantage of the various public diplomacy tools that Israel has.”

Vatikay said there is not better place to learn “leadership, diplomacy and the use of public diplomacy to promote policy” than to work alongside Netanyahu.