SDEROT, ISRAEL — Everyone filed off the tour bus outside the police station in Sderot, less than a mile from the Gaza Strip border.
More than 30 journalists gathered around as police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld began his practiced presentation, complete with charts, graphs and weapon fragments, emphasizing the increasing range of rockets launched from Gaza and the 1 million Israelis living within the threat zone.
Suddenly, an alarm sounded, indicating an incoming rocket: an awkward squawk followed by a recorded female voice saying "code red" in Hebrew.
Everyone hustled inside the police station; seconds later a thud shook the building. Rosenfeld listened to his radio and reported that a pair of rockets had landed harmlessly, one of them about 330 yards away.
Within 10 minutes, a member of the police bomb squad dramatically clunked two mangled rocket stumps onto the sidewalk. The journalists crowded around to take pictures and touch the metal, still as hot as the muffler of a running car.
Drawing on mistakes made during its 2006 conflict with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Israel has revamped its information operations, presenting a unified message, bottling up leaks from the field and working to drive a wedge in Arab public opinion.
Israel and its proponents have used set talking points: emphasizing the eight years that southern residents have endured Gazan rocket fire, highlighting Israel's 2005 withdrawal of its soldiers and settlers from Gaza, and declaring the Gazan people to be hostages of a Hamas regime that cynically sacrifices their lives.
There's also almost always some variation on the theme of, "What would America do if Mexico was launching rockets at Texas every day?" An Israeli reporter said he recently heard the Mexico analogy three times in one day from a military officer, a government official and a civilian analyst.
"As a reporter, that's a bit unnerving because you realize you're dealing with someone who has been fed responses," said the reporter, speaking on the condition that his name or publication not be printed. "It's very clear Israel has heavily invested in its [public relations] machine since the Lebanon war."
Hamas media efforts are primitive in comparison. With its leaders in hiding and without the technical sophistication of the Israeli operation, the militant group is often limited to videotaped statements and news releases to Gazan reporters.
