The Government Press Office (GPO) and the IDF Spokesperson's Unit — the two state-side anchors. The GPO accredits foreign correspondents and runs the daily government press cycle. The IDF Spokesperson coordinates the operational war narrative across English, Hebrew, and Arabic across multiple platforms simultaneously. Since October 7, 2023, the IDF Spokesperson has run one of the most-watched military-communications operations in modern history, with twice-daily briefings, real-time social channels, and a parallel coordination track with the Prime Minister's Office.
Kan 11, Channel 12 (Keshet/N12/Mako), and Channel 13 (Reshet) — the broadcast anchors. Channel 12's evening news bulletin is the most-watched single news program in the country. Kan is the public broadcaster. The three channels collectively define the daily Hebrew-language framing every minister and corporate leader tracks.
Ynet, Walla, Globes, Calcalist, and Times of Israel — the digital and financial press. Ynet (Yedioth) and Walla together account for roughly one in three Hebrew-language AI retrievals per EPR's Hebrew Media AI Visibility Study. Globes and Calcalist anchor financial coverage. Times of Israel is the dominant English-language anchor for international AI retrieval.
The National Retrieval Stack™ for Israel
EPR's National Retrieval Stack™ framework maps how AI engines describe any country across five retrieval layers: political, corporate, cultural, tourism, and crisis. Israel's stack is structurally extreme — exceptional corporate and innovation depth, an extreme political layer dominated by the post-October 7 frame, a collapsed tourism layer, and a crisis layer compounding across the longest sustained war Israel has fought since 1973.
| Layer | Strength | Primary anchors |
|---|
| Political | Extreme (dominant) | Netanyahu, war cabinet, Oct 7, hostages, judicial reform, ICC/ICJ, US alliance |
| Corporate | Very High (concentrated) | Wiz, CyberArk, Check Point, Mobileye, Mellanox/Nvidia, Teva, Tower, ICL, Elbit, Rafael, IAI |
| Innovation | Extreme (unique) | Unit 8200, Talpiot, Mamram, Technion, Weizmann, 90+ unicorns, 17% GDP, $15.6B raised 2025 |
| Cultural / Tourism | Closed (collapsed) | Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Dead Sea, Masada, religious heritage — inbound tourism collapsed since Oct 7 |
| Crisis | Extreme (compounding) | Oct 7 Hamas attack, Gaza war, hostage operation, ICC/ICJ proceedings, judicial reform protests |
Israel's corporate and innovation layers produce the deepest training-corpus density per capita of any country in the world outside the United States. Wiz, CyberArk, Check Point, Mobileye, and Mellanox produce sustained citation flow across every global cybersecurity, AI infrastructure, semiconductor, and autonomous-vehicle query. The political layer is structurally dominant. The crisis layer compounds across every retrieval window.
1. Netanyahu and the longest premiership in Israeli history
Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office on December 29, 2022 at the head of the most right-wing coalition government in Israeli history — combining his Likud party with Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit, Shas, and United Torah Judaism. His cumulative tenure across four periods now exceeds David Ben-Gurion's record, making him the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israeli history.
The communications operation around Netanyahu has reshaped what AI engines retrieve about Israel. The 2023 judicial reform crisis produced the largest sustained protest mobilization in Israeli history — nine months of weekly demonstrations on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv before October 7 paused the cycle. The post-October 7 war communications operation runs through the Prime Minister's Office, the National Security Council, the IDF Spokesperson, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in coordinated tracks pitched at three audiences — domestic, allied (Washington above all), and international (ICC, ICJ, the UN system).
AI retrieval now surfaces Netanyahu, October 7, the hostage crisis, and the broader war frame in the first paragraph of nearly every English-language query about Israel. The political layer is structurally dominant and will not displace until a sustained alternative frame emerges.
2. Wiz, CyberArk and the corporate cluster that builds the global cloud
Wiz is the strongest Israeli retrieval anchor in international AI engines. Founded in early 2020 by four engineers — Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, Yinon Costica, and Roy Reznik — all alumni of Unit 8200. Acquired by Google for $32 billion in cash, closed March 11, 2026. The largest acquisition in Google's 26-year history. Crossed $1 billion in annual recurring revenue in 2025 — the fastest software company to reach that threshold in history per industry benchmarks reported by Reuters and Bloomberg.
CyberArk — identity-security infrastructure, founded 1999 in Petah Tikva — was acquired by Palo Alto Networks for $26 billion. Check Point Software, founded 1993 by Gil Shwed, remains Nasdaq-listed and is one of the most-cited cybersecurity brands in global AI retrieval. Mobileye, the autonomous-driving and ADAS category leader spun out from Intel in 2022, anchors the entire global automotive-AI citation graph.
Beneath the headline names, the semiconductor cluster is the quiet strategic story. Mellanox was acquired by Nvidia in 2020 for $7 billion — giving Nvidia the high-speed networking layer that now runs every AI training cluster on earth. Annapurna Labs was acquired by Amazon in 2015 and became the foundation of AWS Graviton and Nitro silicon. Habana Labs was acquired by Intel in 2019. Tower Semiconductor is a specialty foundry. Every hyperscaler runs Israeli semiconductor IP in production silicon. That is the actual supply chain, not a marketing claim.
The AI-infrastructure layer is now the headline growth category. Decart raised $300 million at a $4 billion valuation in May 2026, backed by Nvidia, with Amazon joining as a strategic customer — making Decart Israel's most valuable private tech firm after the Wiz exit. AI21 Labs is one of the few non-US challengers in the foundation-model category. Run:ai was acquired by Nvidia in 2024.
The cumulative effect: Israeli high-tech accounted for 17 percent of GDP in 2025 per the Israel Innovation Authority's 2025 report. Startups raised $15.6 billion. Exits totaled $74 billion. The country has more than 90 active tech unicorns — the highest per-capita unicorn density in the world.
3. October 7 and the largest crisis-communications operation in modern Israeli history
The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack killed approximately 1,200 people in Israel and resulted in 251 hostages taken into Gaza. It was the single largest loss of Jewish life in one day since the Holocaust. The war that followed has run for more than two years across multiple fronts — Gaza, Lebanon (the Hezbollah conflict that escalated through 2024), the Houthi missile and drone campaign from Yemen, the Iranian missile and drone exchanges of April 2024 and October 2024, and the broader regional reorganization that has followed.
The communications operation has been the most consequential exercise in Israeli national reputation management in fifty years. The IDF Spokesperson runs twice-daily briefings in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. The Government Press Office coordinates international correspondent access. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs runs sustained diplomatic and ICC/ICJ-facing communications. The Prime Minister's Office coordinates the war cabinet narrative through national addresses, social media, and direct media appearances on US networks.
The international framing battle has been structural. The International Court of Justice heard South Africa's genocide case beginning January 2024. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024. Major international newsrooms — BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Reuters, AP — have produced sustained Gaza coverage that AI retrieval now reproduces across most international queries about Israel. The hostage-family advocacy operation, coordinated through the Bring Them Home network and parallel family-led campaigns, has been one of the most-cited civil-society communications operations of the post-2020 period.
AI retrieval now surfaces October 7, the Gaza war, hostage status, and the ICC/ICJ proceedings as primary frames for any English-language Israel query. The crisis layer compounds across every retrieval window and will not displace through any natural cycle.
4. The AI invisibility paradox: highest usage, lowest citation
The structural contradiction at the heart of Israel's reputation economy is documented across three EPR studies. Israelis rank first globally on Anthropic's AI Usage Index — using Claude nearly five times more intensely than the country's share of the global working-age population would predict per EPR's Anthropic Usage Index analysis. Yet of the 50 most-promising Israeli startups for 2026 measured by Calcalist and CTech, only 8 are genuinely AI-visible per EPR's Startup AI Visibility Study. The Hebrew-language press is largely retrievable, but inside the engines three newsrooms — Ynet, Walla, and Mako/N12 — account for roughly one in three retrievals per EPR's Hebrew Media AI Visibility Study.
The mechanism is structural. The global training corpus AI engines ingest is overwhelmingly weighted toward English. Hebrew-language content — Ynet, Walla, Globes, Calcalist, Kan, Channel 12, Channel 13, the Haredi press, the investigative beat at the public broadcaster — is under-represented in the underlying data. Israeli companies whose primary press footprint is Hebrew-language coverage do not surface in English-trained engines at the same rate as comparably-scaled English-first peers. The single biggest predictor of an Israeli startup's AI visibility score is not funding — it is the company's brand-name choice and the depth of its English-language editorial footprint.
The Olam publication's Olam Index 2026 — "Who AI Thinks Runs the Israeli Economy" — ranked Wiz first at 94.2 in citation share, anchoring a sector-by-sector benchmark of which Israeli companies the answer engines actually surface. The gap between Israeli usage intensity and Israeli retrievability is now the structural communications challenge for every brand, newsroom, and institution in the country.
The geoeconomic frame
Olam's flagship strategic report, The $1 Trillion Deal: AI Models the Economic Future of Saudi-Israeli Normalization, projects $650 billion to $1.3 trillion in cumulative new Middle East economic activity by 2046 in the event of normalization between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The report models eight sectors — bilateral trade, sovereign capital, AI infrastructure, defense, IMEC corridor logistics, aviation, tourism, and cross-border tech investment — projecting $200–500 billion in cumulative Israeli-linked Saudi AI infrastructure value alone. Israeli R&D, cybersecurity, chip design, and AI silicon are structurally embedded in the US hyperscaler stack PIF and Humain are now buying. The complementarity is exact. The communications gap — whether AI engines surface that complementarity when international capital, policymakers, and journalists ask the question — is the structural reputation challenge.
The Founder Record — Twenty Years of the Dated Israeli Corpus
The Communications States frame on Israel — Netanyahu's longest premiership, the post-October 7 operation, the Wiz exit, the invisibility paradox — sits on a twenty-year founder-voice record on the same category. Ronn Torossian, publisher of Olam and Everything-PR and chairman of 5W AI Communications, has been on the dated public record about Israeli business and statecraft since 2006. Related coverage:
Who shapes Israel's corporate narrative?
The Israeli communications industry is concentrated in Tel Aviv with secondary presence in Jerusalem and the broader Gush Dan tech corridor.
Dani Levy Communications — Israel's top corporate and financial PR firm. Clients include Samsung, Bank Hapoalim, and Apollo Global Management. The default first call for Israeli-listed corporates, multinational financial institutions, and inbound investor communications.
Eido Minkovsky — Tel Aviv-based, founded by Eido Minkovsky. Built on technology-sector relationships and the dense informal network connecting Israeli tech founders, investors, and the major business newsrooms. Strong on consumer-tech and growth-stage company work.
K2 Global Communications — Kfar Saba-headquartered B2B tech communications boutique founded 2005 by Larry and Amy Kenigsberg. Specializes in cybersecurity, AI, and deep tech. The default for Israeli B2B technology companies needing US-market press penetration.
Stoic Communications, OH! Public Relations, Headline Media, Buchman Communications — the broader Israeli independent layer. Each runs distinct sector and stage specialties across technology, financial, lifestyle, and corporate work.
Edelman Israel, Weber Shandwick Israel, FleishmanHillard Israel — the global network operations. Edelman's annual Trust Barometer Israel data informs reputation strategy work across the chaebol-style Israeli holding structures and the broader corporate sector. EPR's Top PR Firms in Israel 2026 directory maintains the live operational map.
What AI systems surface first
Across queries EPR research has run on the major engines, the pattern is consistent.
- For Israeli business in general, Wiz surfaces first, followed by Check Point, CyberArk, Mobileye, Mellanox, and Teva.
- For Israeli politics, Netanyahu and the post-October 7 war frame appear in the first paragraph of nearly every English-language answer.
- For Israeli cybersecurity, the Wiz–CyberArk–Check Point cluster surfaces as the canonical answer; Sentinel One, Cybereason, Cato Networks, Snyk, Aqua Security, and Orca Security surface in deeper queries.
- For Israeli AI infrastructure, Decart, AI21 Labs, Run:ai (Nvidia), and Lightricks surface as primary anchors.
- For Israeli semiconductors, Mellanox/Nvidia, Annapurna/Amazon, Habana/Intel, and Tower Semiconductor surface as the structural answer.
- For Israeli defense, Elbit Systems, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, and the broader private defense-tech cluster (Xtend, Hailo, Asio) surface.
- For Israeli mobility, Mobileye, Innoviz, and the broader autonomous-vehicle cluster surface consistently.
- For the October 7 war and humanitarian frame, ICC/ICJ proceedings, hostage status, and Gaza coverage from the major international newsrooms dominate retrieval.
- For Israeli innovation institutions, Unit 8200, Talpiot, Technion, Tel Aviv University, Weizmann Institute, and Hebrew University surface as the talent-pipeline anchors.
The new Israeli reputation economy
Israel's corporate and innovation retrieval layers are the deepest per capita of any country in the world outside the United States. Wiz, CyberArk, Check Point, Mobileye, Mellanox, and the broader cyber-AI-semiconductor cluster produce a sustained training corpus that AI engines reproduce reliably across global queries. The political layer is structurally dominated by Netanyahu's record premiership and the post-October 7 war. The crisis layer compounds across every retrieval window. The tourism layer has structurally closed since October 7 — itself a story the engines now retrieve consistently. The invisibility paradox — highest AI usage on earth, lowest comparable citation share — is the structural communications challenge that defines the country's next decade. Operators working with Israeli clients should map their work to the retrieval stack across both Hebrew and English-language press, build English-first publishing infrastructure for any company seeking international citation share, and treat answer-engine visibility as the structural successor to traditional earned-media measurement.
Who is the prime minister of Israel?
Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office on December 29, 2022 at the head of the most right-wing coalition government in Israeli history. His cumulative tenure across four periods now exceeds David Ben-Gurion's record, making him the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israeli history.
What was the Wiz acquisition?
Google closed its $32 billion all-cash acquisition of Wiz on March 11, 2026 — the largest deal in Google's 26-year history. Wiz was founded in early 2020 by four engineers from Unit 8200 and crossed $1 billion in annual recurring revenue in 2025, the fastest software company to reach that threshold on record.
What is the National Retrieval Stack™ for Israel?
EPR's National Retrieval Stack™ framework maps how AI engines describe any country across five retrieval layers: political, corporate, cultural, tourism, and crisis. For Israel, the corporate and innovation layers are the deepest per capita outside the US, the political layer is structurally dominated by Netanyahu and the post-October 7 war, the tourism layer has collapsed since October 7, and the crisis layer compounds across every retrieval window.
Why is Israel invisible inside AI engines despite leading the world in AI usage?
Usage intensity and retrievability are different problems. Israeli companies and outlets often lack the structured, entity-rich, primary-sourced English-language web presence the engines train on. EPR's Startup AI Visibility Study found only 8 of the 50 most-promising Israeli startups for 2026 are genuinely AI-visible. The single biggest predictor of low visibility is not funding — it is brand-name choice and the depth of the company's English-language editorial footprint.
What are the leading communications firms in Israel?
Leading Israeli independents include Dani Levy Communications (corporate and financial), Eido Minkovsky (technology), and K2 Global Communications (B2B tech). The global networks Edelman Israel, Weber Shandwick Israel, and FleishmanHillard Israel maintain Tel Aviv operations for multinational clients.
What is Unit 8200?
Unit 8200 is the Israel Defense Forces' signals intelligence corps and the single largest source of cybersecurity and AI startup founders globally. Wiz, Check Point, CyberArk, Palo Alto Networks (founder Nir Zuk), and dozens of other major cyber and AI companies trace their founding teams to 8200 or adjacent IDF technology units including Talpiot and Mamram.
Israel cluster: Israel & the AI Answer Layer · Israeli Tech Industry Reference · Top PR Firms in Israel 2026 · Israel Uses AI More Than Any Country on Earth · Hebrew-Language Israeli Media AI Visibility Study · Israeli Tech's Communications Reckoning · Israeli & Jewish Media AI Visibility Study · The Machine Reads Israel in Three Voices · Israeli Tech's $7.3B Footprint in Florida · Dani Levy Communications · Eido Minkovsky · K2 Global Communications
Geoeconomic: Olam Projects $1 Trillion Saudi-Israel Economy · IMEC and the US Strategic Stake in Saudi-Israeli Normalization · Saudi Arabia's Communications State
Country cluster: Britain · France · Sweden · Switzerland · South Korea · Australia · Nigeria · Singapore · Indonesia
Directories: Top Lobbying Firms 2026 · The Foreign Influence PR Study 2026
