If everyone won the war, who lost? Israel, Iran and the battle for a victory

In this episode of Politica, Sharon Offenberger and Yuval Regev unpack how the US, Israel and Iran each frame the war's outcome in their favour. The conversation explores how victory is no longer decided by military achievements, but in perception. As public opinion, political affiliation and media ecosystems shape entirely different understandings of the same war, this episode asks simple but uncomfortable questions about how Israeli and global narratives will affect Israel's future, especially if they do not align. 

Transcript

Ceasefire And Competing Victories

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to Politica, a new podcast from the Jewish Independent that explains Israeli politics at a diaspora volume. I'm Sharon Offenberger here in Australia, and joining from Israel is my co-host, Jival Regev. Today's episode is being recorded on day two of the ceasefire of the Iran War. And although the scope of that ceasefire is unclear, there is one thing that we know, which is that both Iran and the US have claimed victory. And so we come to the topic of today's episode, which is that information and perception can create a victory or a defeat just as much as military operations do. And there are two main reasons for that. Firstly, in order to get your people, the public, to pay the price of war, they really need to believe in its merits. In fact, they really need to believe that they're going to win. And secondly, in order to deter your enemies from attacking you again, they also have to believe that they're going to lose. So the perception of what happens in a war is not just a function of whatever military achievements were made. Weapons can be rebuilt, but perceptions can't always. And we always seem to think that our own story, the information we receive, what we understand, our media is telling us the truth, that's the right story, and what the other people are reading is wrong, false. And of course, there is a difference between media in democratic and autocratic societies. But at the same time, I think with internet and social media and disinformation, that distinction is not as clear as it used to be in terms of what information sources are creating people's perceptions. So in this completely curated, algorithmic, fractured information world we live in now, how simply can we know who has won this war? Yuval, welcome. In a previous episode, you made

Why Politics Shapes War Meaning

SPEAKER_01 2:05

a point that people's perception of the war will depend on their political affiliation. So let's talk about why that's the case.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

So shalom shalom. And uh very true, I mean, we're experiencing these very dramatic days here in Israel because we just endured five weeks of complete chaos, right? We just endured five weeks of running to the bomb shelter, five weeks with our children at home with us, five weeks of feeling this existential fear throughout the day. Yeah, people have paid a huge price for this work. And that's why perception here, and this is hard to understand for someone on the outside, right? Because if you live in a normal place, uh or in a somewhat normal place like Australia, right, your political views can affect your daily mood, you know, I think to a certain extent, right? And at the end of the day, there's reality and there's your normal life. But here, our reality in our normal life over the past five weeks has been completely flipped upside down, right? So if you are for this war, or if you are against this war, or if you perceive this war as victorious, or if you perceive this war as, you know, another dumb effort by Netanyahu to stay in his chair, that's a perception shift in how you feel, in your mood. So do people feel that it was worth it? What we're seeing in the recent polling uh is that the Israeli public is uh very much uh divided on that question of whether it was worth it. And those divides correlate uh with the with the classic political divides in the Israeli political field over the past few decades. If you're more left-leaning and more critical of Netanyahu and his government and his previous and his policies, you're probably less prone to view this war as a victory, and you're probably more, you know, concerned about the long-term implications, concerned about about what's happening. But if you're more right wing right wing and more supportive of Netanyahu and his government and his policies, uh you're probably happier these days. You probably think, oh, we got them and we got them

The Missing Victory Image Problem

SPEAKER_00 4:05

good and we did it with the Americans, and and it's probably easier for you to cope with all this sacrifice that we had to endure over the past few weeks.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Often military interventions end with some kind of victory photo, and I think that's sort of a classic, slightly old-fashioned way of looking at it. I still hear thrown around the idea is what's the you know, what's the victory image? The idea that people can coalesce around an image forevermore that's going to remind them that they were um successful in war is the absence of having that image, the differentiation between those that think it was successful and those that think that it wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

So I read an analysis lately that basically said that all the wars that Israel has fought thanks the 1970s, uh pretty much thanks to Yom Thippur war. Uh if it's the wars that we fought in Lebanon, it's the wars that we fought in Gaza, the Intifadas and the Now these wars with Iran, right? There's never been a really clear victory image. It's always a matter of perception, it's always a matter of political affiliation, it's always a matter of what you view the end goal as. Um and specifically with this war with Iran, this segment of the war with Iran, some could say, uh, we had such a big victory right over the first few days, right? We took out Khamina I, we took out so much of the militar military leadership. So that was very the feeling in the first few days was quite victorious. But within a week or two, we started again seeing these cracks, seeing cynicism form, seeing people, uh, and again, along the classic political left to right rift in Israel, uh having deeper questions.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

I think that is not just the case in Israel. If you review the media, and as you said, uh America was just as involved in this war, so their media is reporting, their public is just as invested, nearly just as invested as the Israeli public. They weren't running to bomb shelters. It was costing them in other ways. When I look at the way in which this war has been reported in Israel, in Australia, in the US, it all very much aligns with people's political beliefs. And the the more left-leaning media will write articles saying that the US and Israel have lost because now Iran will race to a nuclear weapon, but Iran was already really far down that track. Surely this has actually set them back. So that could be claimed as a victory. And then other people say, oh, we're gonna open up the Strait of Hormuz. But the Strait of Hormuz was open before the war. So how could that be a victory? How are Israeli media reporting on it?

SPEAKER_00 6:35

So Israeli media is again, it's reporting along that rift. It's reporting along along the left-right rift. And I think what's interesting though is how it started and how it's playing out now. Because in the first few days, and again, when we had this you know wonderful achievements of taking out Khamina E and taking out the military leadership and and partnering with the Americans, so the first few days, and this also correlates with the fact that Israelis were scared, so they wanted to look at the media, and the media knows this, right? And they know that they want to use this public attention to to give the viewer what they want to see or the listener what they want to hear. So we saw these first few days of relative, you know, some would say euphoria. Uh first few days were really the line was quite supportive of the war, specifically for the very dramatic military achievements that we achieved on the first few days. So within a week, two, three, definitely, you know, now with the ceasefire, definitely seeing now the Israeli public and the Israeli media channels and outbacks uh portraying differing stories. And those stories have implications for the upcoming election. Right? Netanyahu went to this war. He wanted to bring a nice, clear, big victory for his base and for the Israeli public to see him as this leader who is leading us towards a brighter, better future. Um, but not all Israelis are buying that, and some are you know thinking quite the opposite.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

It's interesting how you mentioned that the media wanted to give the public what they wanted, which is really not the media's role. I mean, it is literally not the media's role to pander to public um desires and wishes. It's there to report.

Israeli Media Freedom And Censorship

SPEAKER_01 8:20

It's a key part of democracy and a very key part of Israel's democracy. So I wanted to talk a little bit about media in general uh in Israel. And I think there have been changes to the media landscape in Israel over the last two decades, coinciding, but not just coinciding with Netanyahu's rule. Some of those media changes have happened across the world, obviously with the advent of social media and and the internet, this sort of 24-7 news cycle where people need to report something all the time, and this idea of citizen journalists, individuals who are not professional journalists becoming reporters and having followers and giving facts from the fields from their perspective. In Israel, free media is a very big part of Israel's democracy and tradition. There is community-based media, there's army media, there is commercial media, and then there's uh, of course, the um the public media outlet, Khan, which is also known in Hebrew as Atar Gid. And that can be compared to what we have here in Australia, which is the ABC, which is independent. So you've got quite a diverse media landscape, which is important for a democracy. We've said that it's free, but at the same time it has been subject to blurring of commercial and political interests. And also, and in particular in the case of the war, it operates with a military sensor, which means that the IDF needs to clear certain security-related information regarding military activities. So it's not able to report completely freely from the ground. So they censor information which they consider or deem to be harmful to national security. Which is usually sort of strategically useful information like troop movements or missile impact. Again, that's becoming a bit more complicated with citizen journalists and social media being able to report more directly or share information more directly. And the most glaring example of when this happened was actually on October the 7th, when I was watching Israeli media as it was happening and they were reporting basically nothing, but you could see on their faces that they knew what was going on.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

I think for Australian audience, for a Western audience, this is something important to understand. Here's a democracy with a very vibrant, rich uh media layout that is that is that is some some would say hyper-critical and has and has a and has a tradition of being hypercr hyper-critical towards government policies and towards politicians, right? Israeli media is tough. But here's a test of what how does Western democratic media uh interact and how does it work under such un you know uh unprecedented circumstances of an entire population having to run to the bomb shelter several times a day with excess uh with an existential threat above their head? I mentioned the Israeli media has such a has such a interesting role these days because when you think of the first days of the war where the public really is concerned where the public is really experiencing this trauma, and you're a journalist, and you want to on the one hand, you want to give the full picture, but on the other hand, you kind of you kind of also need to play in to this public narrative, otherwise Israelis may make a decision to just vote with their remote

Channel 14 And Choosing Echo Chambers

SPEAKER_00 11:50

uh and choose another channel. And that phrase, vote with your remote, has been the slogan for the new Israeli TV channel and news channel, channel 14, uh, which has rose and rose quite dramatically during the judicial reform, judicial overhaul, during that period of of political turbulence, um, where they offered the Israeli public uh a new outlet to consumer news uh that was much more government positive, that was much more right-wing leaning, that was much more positive.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

This government positive.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Right, correct. This government positive. And uh and what we're seeing in Israel, and I think we're this goes again, it's we're seeing it around the world, but here it's just so much more dramatic, is polarization. We're seeing how people are now choosing where to get their media and where to get their information according to their political affiliation.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

And like other parts of the world, um, there were swaths of the Israeli public that have called the Israeli media left-wing. So not even just haarets, which you could legitimately call left-wing, but some of the mainstream channels as well are considered left-wing basically because they report things that other people don't like to hear. Um but you mentioned uh Channel 14 and and you say it's pro this government, so not pro-any government. I'm sure that if there was a different government, they will report much more critically. People who are pro-institution tend to have better sources, better access. For example, I mean, and this goes across the channels, but if you're a military reporter, you have to have good contact at the IDF. If you start criticizing them too much, your sources there are going to probably dry up or go to lower levels. So and I wanted to just go back to Channel 14 because if I'm not mistaken, it's the only channel that uh the Prime Minister has interviewed or had any kind of interview with a journalist, at least in the last few years or since they've come into power this time. He doesn't actually hold press conferences with the mainstream media, doesn't interview for mainstream media, which is a massive difference because in Australia, every single day the Prime Minister is holding a press conference somewhere. They usually go on and it they only end when more or less when the journalists have finished asking their questions.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Yes, it's I mean it's very true. I mean, Everstang's uh this wave of Israeli viewers voting with a remote and switching to Channel 14 as an act of really of an act of distrust towards Israeli uh mainstream media that is viewed as left-wing, that is viewed as antanyahu, that is viewed as uh demoralizing sometimes, right? That is it's it's it's it's viewed as right, if you if you if you're in Israeli and you switch on channel 12, channel 11, channel 13 today, and you're seeing all these people with the you know with opinions like maybe saying that this war wasn't won and that this war, you know, and then that all we endured was for nothing, that's quite demotivating. That's not you know, it's not a fun reality to live in. Uh but then you flick on to you know channel 14 and they're saying all these incredible accomplishments, and look what we did, and Iran was thrown back, you know, decades and etc. etc. So it's it's it's it's an it's easier to consume your news from there. And many people um have adopted the phrase rak, only 14, which uh which correlates with the f with the very popular political phrase in Israel, Rak Debi, only Nitanyahu. Um and we have seen this massive move, and I think this is very much concerning uh mainstream Israeli media, uh uh both public and commercial, but even more so commercial, right? Because commercial media depends on the public, you know, for ratings. They need to sell commercials, they need to sell their now that the they have their news channels, but on the other, but when they're not doing news, they're doing reality TV, they're doing cooking shows, they need the public's attention. Uh and when they realize that so much of the public um might be moving to a place uh that um that is an echo chamber of their own opinions on the right, that's a that's a dramatic shift in Israeli media.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Frankly, everyone is sort of now living in those sort of echo chamber worlds, but this um motivation of wanting to feel good, wanting to feel positive, wanting to feel like we're achieving something, um, is quite an influential because as we know, people vote with their emotions. So they don't necessarily vote on policy, they vote on their emotions. And if one, you know, one team is going to give you the positive feeling regardless of the facts, then you know, you're gonna be able

Global Perception And US Aid Stakes

SPEAKER_01 16:25

to get some traction with them. That um when it comes to this going back to the um topic of you know, how do you know who's won the war, part of the perception is not only what we think has happened, but what our inverted commas enemies think has happened. So their um their information is very much gonna affect Israel's future. For example, if the Americans feel that this was a disaster for them, then the willingness of the US administration or the US public to back another military operation with Israel is probably close to zero. It's probably gonna have a influence on American politics more generally. And there's been a lot of skepticism in large parts of society, including in Australia, because most people experience the war through its economic impact, not its military achievements. So they have no opinion about the military success or military victory. Their perception will be created from the economic impact that it had on them, which was negative. So their perceptions, which are really going to affect Israel in the future, are actually just as important as the information that Israelis are consuming. Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign aid since its founding. Uh, it's received over $300 billion in total economic and military assistance. Now, since the 70s, that's only been military assistance, but as we know, what they call the military aid, which is really largely purchasing US hardware for people who think that it's handing out cash to Israelis, it's not. Um but this uh assistance that's given the military aid has been, you know, almost a kind of holy cow of US-Israel relations. This holy cow of military aid has never been more up for debate. Once upon a time, you would consider it anti-Israel if you even mentioned it. Now I think it is very much on the table. There is likely to be a reduction or a cessation in the coming years. And I, um, if I'm not mistaken, Netanyahu himself actually foresaw that by suggesting at some point that Israel needed to wean itself off um of this American aid and to be self-sufficient when it comes to uh its military needs. I'm not sure that that's completely realistic given these you've just had a joint military operation because Israel does not have the military hardware that the US has.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

And so I think what we're gonna see over the coming few months in Israel is that you know each one of these parties is gonna do their best within their echo chamber to try to either convince Israelis that this war was won, or on the other side, you

Elections And Netanyahu’s Gamble

SPEAKER_00 19:25

know, that this war was a catastrophe.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

So do you think this is really gonna pay such a central part in the upcoming elections? We'd started to talk about what those election dis issues might be, and October the seventh was one of them. Um, but now is the Iran war also gonna become part of the election?

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Absolutely. And I think uh uh what Netanyahu wanted uh with this war with Iran was uh was a decisive victory, was a decisive blow. Um something that could you know he could bring up to the ballot box in a few months and say, look what look what I did, uh look what we did under my leadership. And he specifically wanted that after the you know horrific, terrible, catastrophic failure of October 7th. And now two days into the ceasefire, which again we don't know how the ceasefire is gonna end, right? Uh two weeks down, we could be back in this war, or we could see uh Iran um uh agreeing to a deal that we can, you know, somehow perceive as a victory, right? Things things could still very much change. But one thing's for sure, there's no decisive victory. Uh it's a it's the the the fact that it's so debatable, and the fact that again the sense of victory is split across uh the traditional lines of left and right here in Israel mean that his endeavor was not achieved.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

So who you think won the war has as much to do with your expectations and your worldview and information sources as it does with the truth. And it's not only your perception that matters, but also the perceptions of your allies and your enemies around the world. This is going to have a huge impact on Iran's future government, but it's also gonna have a huge impact

Egypt’s Victory Narrative And Peace

SPEAKER_01 21:15

on Israel's as well. We all have a story to tell about our history, and I wanted to end with a a story of when I was in a taxi in Cairo many, many, many years ago, and we drove over a very long bridge, and I asked the driver what it was called. And in the very few words that we could communicate, I understood that it was the 6th of October Bridge. And I said, What's that for? And he proudly said, Victory. And slowly I started to piece together that he was talking about what we call the 1973 war. I was always under the impression that Israel won that war. But for the Egyptians who actually have a national holiday to commemorate the 6th of October. It was enough to attack on that day. That was a victory for them. And I think in the case of Iran, the fact that they're standing is a victory. Same for Hamas. So these victories in the eyes of the people who Israel will continue to have as enemies should also be considered in the political decision making, not just what Israelis want to think about it.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

And just to go off of your example, right, how the 1973 Yom Kippur war was perceived as a victory by Egypt, but also by Israel. What we saw was a few years later, we saw, you know, one of the most dramatic peace treaties made by Israel and neighboring country. And it was a game changer. The peace between Israel and Egypt was a complete regional game changer. Up until then, our most dramatic wars were fighting army to army, Israel-Egypt, and you know, and no end was in sight. And so maybe the fact that they perceived that as a victory was what allowed us to forge an agreement. And today, that strategic partnership and that peace between Israel and Egypt is such a stabilizing force in the region. Maybe it's not so bad when different narratives view uh a war differently, as long as the outcome is peace.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

I think that's a really good place for us to end our discussion. Thank you for joining Joval. This was Politica. Please subscribe and follow us on the platforms that you're listening to us on. And until next time, keep the volume down.