New IDF spokesman has no media experience
Yoav Galant, who replaces Gabi Ashkenazi as IDF Chief of Staff next month, has raised some eyebrows by appointing Lior Lotan to be the IDF spokesman. Lotan, an attorney and a combat soldier in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, has no media experience.By appointing a decorated combat soldier to fill this post, which has gained great importance due to the intense media focus on the IDF in recent years, Galant is both sending a message and taking a calculated risk: The new spokesman will be a soldier's soldier, not a "spin doctor" like the incumbent, veteran journalist Avi Benayahu.Psychological warfare. There's a good way to describe how the IDF has to deal with the media here.
This is also Galant's first solo appointment. While he has already filled three other key posts, those appointments were made in consultation with Barak and current Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.
Lotan, 45, commanded the 1994 raid on the house in the West Bank town of Bir Naballah where Hamas held Wachsman. But Wachsman and Capt. Nir Poraz were both killed in the raid, while Lotan was seriously injured. The citation he later received noted that despite being wounded twice, he refused to abandon the fight until all the terrorists had been killed.
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After leaving Sayeret Matkal, Lotan, who is also a lawyer, spent almost a decade heading the General Staff's negotiations unit, and later, MI's unit for tracing MIAs. He played a major role in negotiating the 2004 deal under which Hezbollah returned businessman Elhanan Tennenbaum and the bodies of three kidnapped soldiers in exchange for Israel's release of more than 400 terrorists, and was later involved in negotiating with extremist settlers who barricaded themselves in their homes during the 2005 disengagement from Gaza.
But Lotan was not involved in the negotiations over kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, and later criticized how these talks were conducted in op-eds written for Haaretz.
Lotan has no media experience whatsoever. Nevertheless, the prevailing assessment among both journalists and the staff of the IDF Spokesman's Office was that his long experience in both negotiations and psychological warfare operations would stand him in good stead.
Labels: IDF spokesperson, Lior Lotan, psychological warfare, Yoav Galant
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:20 PM
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