Words can be as powerful as weapons, and Israel’s current struggle is being waged as fiercely on television as it is on the battlefield. As a result, a new brand of leader is taking her place in the upper ranks of the Israel Defense Forces: Colonel Miri Eisen, 40, is one of Israel’s most effective weapons in the media war. Eisen was plucked last March from the ranks of the IDF Intelligence Corps after demonstrating a unique talent at explaining and persuading.

Officially, her current title is head of doctrine in the IDF’s Combat Intelligence Corps. She is thought of so highly as a spokeswoman that last spring, when a terrorist attack caused Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to cancel a briefing before the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in New York, Eisen was the choice to stand in for him. By all accounts, she dazzled those who attended.

With her attractive appearance, her charismatic presence and her ability to communicate effectively in both Hebrew and English, Eisen was immediately dubbed “a new star on the hasbara horizon” in The Jerusalem Post.

At the president’s conference, eisen allowed herself only one personal comment. “Yes, I was born here,” she told the American audience. “My parents made aliya 31 years ago. I know I sound very American but I’m a full colonel in Israeli intelligence.” She then proceeded, rapid-fire, to review the documents captured by Israeli troops during their West Bank incursions in March and April, including those showing Saudi Arabian money that went to the families of suicide bombers. She compared it to documents that some donors to Israeli causes might see that indicates where their contributions have gone.

She also took on one of the myths about terrorism that even some of those closest to Israel believe. “There’s one that President Bush [expressed] yesterday,” Eisen allowed. “There’s a myth that terrorism is something that poor people do because they are under occupation and they wake up in the morning and go out and miraculously find weapons in the backyard and then, just as miraculously they suddenly walk onto the third floor of a pool club in Rishon Lezion and explode.” She then examined the complex infrastructure of terrorism, which involves what she calls “four legs”—ideology, people, weapons and money.

If the atmosphere in New York was a combination of businesslike and heimish, Eisen’s main outreach—for which she tends to speak more slowly and deliberately—is with the media. Placing an intelligence officer in front of the cameras was clearly a sign that the Israeli government and military were worried enough to take an unconventional step, says Gerald Steinberg, a political studies professor at Bar-Ilan University and senior research associate at the BESA (Begin-Sadat) Center for Strategic Studies.

“It was an unusual move, and probably should have been done much earlier,” Steinberg comments. “Not to be cute, but people who serve in intelligence positions are usually quite intelligent.”

Steinberg gives eisen high marks. “She’s articulate, she has a depth of knowledge, and she knows how to pitch her responses in an intelligent way to suit different audiences,” he asserts. “Certainly in Jenin, she was able to calmly explain the Israeli position without becoming aggressive and hostile. She is very different in her approach than previous Israeli spokespeople, particularly in her facial expressions; she does not frown or reveal disregard or dislike for those questioning her. Also, you can’t deny that being a woman makes a difference. She’s the antithesis of the gruff male military officer.”

But this new star is uncomfortable in the spotlight. After all, for someone in military intelligence, public exposure, particularly on television, is a career drawback. “Colonel Eisen doesn’t consider herself the story,” was the message delivered by the IDF spokesman’s office when declining a request for an interview for this article. Eisen has, in fact, refused all requests for interviews outside the setting of military briefings or television interviews regarding a specific military action.

While Eisen dislikes talking about herself to the press, she is front and center when it comes to articulating Israel’s case to the world. Her biggest test took place when Israel was being sharply criticized for its incursions in the West Bank last spring during Operation Defensive Shield, particularly in Jenin, where the Palestinians were accusing the IDF of a massacre. Eisen stood in Jenin as CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour lobbed tough questions at her regarding the Jenin operation and why Israel bulldozed the homes in the refugee camps.

It’s difficult to appreciate Eisen’s talent without actually seeing it in action—her cool and her ability to change the agenda when responding to a loaded question. Calm in the face of pressure, Eisen told Amanpour that the houses had to be destroyed because some of them were booby trapped. “When I say booby traps, I am talking about explosives within the structures, surrounding the structures,” she said into the face of the camera. “We found them inside refrigerators, along the road. That’s the reason the structures were knocked down.”

And why did Israeli troops prevent ambulances from heading into Jenin to evacuate the wounded, Amanpour asked. Eisen replied, “We were stopping ambulances along the way, and checking them, not [barring] them into the camp…. It was because of this we found within those ambulances terrorists’ explosives, a very cynical use of ambulances.”

Her job was not easy, given the images of devastated homes being broadcast. Time after time, she emphasized that Israel had done what was logistically more difficult but more humane in raiding the densely populated areas in search of terrorists on the ground instead of from the air. “What would have been easier than to go in without any of the officers or infantry soldiers killed there and bomb with an F-16?” she asked. “We didn’t do so.”

Eisen continually reminded CNN viewers and the rest of the world press the West Bank operations did not take place in a vacuum, but to prevent more suicide attacks. “The more we find terrorists, arrest them, find the explosives and find the people, [the] less suicide bombers in our cities,” she told reporters.

She was equally adept when an Australian Broadcasting Corporation reporter grilled her about reports of abusive behavior by IDF soldiers at Israeli checkpoints in which Palestinians were forced to undress in a “humiliating” fashion.

“Have you ever seen a suicide belt?” replied Eisen. “I could wear [one] underneath this shirt. All you’d see was that I was wearing some type of a vest. Inside the vest—stitched in—are lines of explosives. When you put them on, all it looks like is it’s an overweight person. Sadly, there’s no other way to check…. [It’s] something that’s beyond my cultural grasp, but the fact is that it’s human beings who dress themselves in a suicide belt and they have to get through these checkpoints to be able to get to the center of Israel. That’s how they explode.”

In another instance after accusations of a massacre in Jenin, Eisen showed reporters a scene caught on video by an Israeli drone flying over the town. Palestinians were filming a staged funeral, she pointed out, to use in misleading researchers sent to investigate the alleged massacre. Pallbearers carried a body wrapped in a blanket, which was indeed a man pretending to be dead; the “corpse” kept jumping out of the blanket. Some of the press present at the demonstration had a hard time surpressing their giggles. The United Nations later found the massacre allegations to be false.
Says Steinberg, “Many spokespeople fall into the traps laid by the press. They create an agenda of Palestinian victimization and Israelis [are put] on the defensive. A good spokesperson like Eisen knows how to avoid this trap, putting the onus and the burden on the other side, but doing it sincerely and not artificially, in excellent English.”

Born in san francisco, eisen immigrated to Israel with her family in 1971 when she was 9 years old. She entered the army in 1980, serving in the intelligence unit that focused on the area she would come to specialize in: the Arab world. After she completed her service, she pursued a degree in political science and Middle Eastern studies at Tel-Aviv University. Then she rejoined the IDF as a career intelligence officer.

Eisen came to the attention of Ehud Barak on his first day as IDF commander-in-chief when terrorists struck a kibbutz on the country’s northern border. She was in charge of briefing Barak—and clearly she made an impression. Two weeks later Barak put her on his personal staff.

She returned to intelligence in 1994, and two years later she went to work for General Moshe Ya’alon, then head of military intelligence and today the IDF chief of staff. It was after serving in other senior intelligence positions that Eisen was placed in the media glare.

Eisen—who lives with her husband and two small children in Tel Aviv—is one of a group of women in the IDF, including newly appointed army spokeswoman Ruth Yaron, who are trying to change the image of the Israeli military. Given her collegial relationship with Ya’alon, those who know the army well say that Eisen herself is likely to enjoy further promotion, which will enhance the visibility and the status of women even more.

In her speeches and press appearances, Eisen describes the ideology and hatred that fuel the terrorist campaign against Israel. In an April military briefing to a large group of reporters, she described the schools in Jenin, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Kalkilya and Tulkarm in which the walls were “plastered with the posters of the glorification” of suicide bombers, and said that the contents of textbooks found there represented “an education deep in hatred, which has violence as an integral part.”

“As a civil person in Israel, aside from being a military person, all I can say is that to me the most horrific part of what we have seen is the depth of hatred and the education to violence, which has nothing to do with occupation,” she declared. “It has everything to do with what you say. If you don’t recognize the State of Israel [under any circumstances], the seeds of violence are very easy.” She also noted that in the office of one of Arafat’s bodyguards Israeli soldiers found books denying the Holocaust and “every possible anti-Semitic horrific thing that you can think of from the last 100 years.” She emphasizes that “It is a book that was printed [by] the PA, sent to their office and we found it on the shelves there.” She challenged the press to find equivalent hate on the Israeli side.

While she refuses to discuss her personal life for public consumption, Eisen does occasionally invoke it in order to make her case. When a reporter asked her whether, as an IDF officer, she was worried about the future, she didn’t hesitate. “I worry as a mother more than as a military person,” she said.