In Midtown this week, diplomats, staffers, and New Yorkers are rushing between motorcades and meetings for the United Nations General Assembly. Our government hopes to catch their eye with vans carrying barcodes that link to October 7 images and videos. October 7 was the darkest day in our modern history. The pain of the victims and their families must be remembered, not cheapened by tactics that fail to honor their memory with stunts that make noise but leave no mark.
Perhaps like the Prime Minister’s speech itself, the real audience wasn’t in Midtown. It was in Metula and Ma’aleh Adumim.
Americans and diplomats from around the world don’t form their worldviews from billboards. They don’t even form them primarily from media or culture. Decades of research show that people’s deepest beliefs come from lived experience and socialization, from family, school, peers, and the communities they trust. As the sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann wrote in their classic The Social Construction of Reality, our sense of what is true is built in everyday interactions, not absorbed from passing slogans. Who are we to think we can outthink thousands of years of sociology?
Recent scholarship reinforces this point. A panel study published in Human Communication Research found that news media can help people organize the beliefs they already hold, but it rarely creates entirely new convictions. And in a sweeping review of decades of research, communication scholar Adam Shehata concluded that media influence is usually “gradual, cumulative, and contingent,” not decisive in shifting identity or worldview. At most, media nudges or reinforces what lived experience has already taught.
That is one of the many reasons why sending vans around Midtown with barcodes linking to October 7 videos and images risks backfiring. It may comfort us to believe that “showing the world” is enough, but we should be asking a harder question: does this actually change anything? The tragedy of October 7 demands more dignity and respect than stunts that feel bold at home but fall flat abroad.
Our government and the dozens of organizations seeking to change public opinion against Israel keep chasing the elusive moving target of an endless general public. The real question is: which minds and hearts matter most for Israel’s future? Who are they? How do we engage them? And who is the right messenger, and what is the effective message? Spoiler: it is not a billboard.
The right messengers are not campaign trucks. They are Israelis who have already carried their stories into the world’s rooms of power since October 7: survivors of the Nova massacre who have stood before parliaments and campuses, families of hostages who have lifted up photos in Congress, reservists who stood their ground before jeering crowds on foreign campuses, doctors who treated our heroic soldiers, social workers who walked with families through unbearable pain, and freed hostages who now carry their stories from college campuses to the Oval Office. These voices command attention in a way no van circling Midtown ever could. We have an infinite reservoir of authentic Israeli stories of resilience, humanity, and character.
The effective message is not a fact sheet or a slogan. It is lived experience, cultural creativity, and the dignity of our resilience. It is stories of innovation, compassion, and struggle that connect on a human level and build trust. Honoring October 7 means ensuring its memory is carried by voices and messages that resonate, not gimmicks that vanish in Midtown traffic.
Even if our funds were unlimited, the billboard strategy still would not make sense. We must shift from reactive to proactive, from fact-based campaigns to relationship-based engagement, and from chasing the general public to precisely targeting the leaders who will matter most. If we don’t invest in them now, there is little chance they will stand with us when 2050 arrives.
We can not afford illusions
If October 7 taught us anything, it is that we cannot afford illusions. Honoring that day means choosing strategies that work, not stunts that look powerful at home but change nothing abroad. When internal politics set the tone, the world sees stunts, not strategy, and this government cannot keep creating messes at the expense of the taxpayer. After another year of Israel-bashing and walkouts inside New York’s most shameless building, the motorcades will leave Midtown, the diplomats will check out of their hotels, and the billboards will vanish. What will remain is the harder question, one that demands an answer not based in delusion or emotion but in long-term strategic thinking: how do we change the minds that matter, the ones we will need to stand with us in the halls of power when 2050 arrives?
Justin Hayet is a Tel Aviv based strategist who worked at Israel’s Mission to the United Nations from 2016 to 2019 and now advises Israeli organizations on strategy, communications, and global engagement.