Sa’ar scolds Ukraine for doing Twitter diplomacy — but he does just the same, as does everyone else

Foreign minister regularly praises and lashes out against his counterparts on X, like other politicians. After a decade-plus of Trump tweets, it’s the new diplomatic normal

At a Foreign Ministry event in December, Gideon Sa’ar got into a public spat with Irish Ambassador Sonya McGuinness, accusing her country of faltering in its response to antisemitism and charging, “You cannot deceive the world.”

Later that day, he tweeted it out.

“Ireland is sick with the virus of antisemitism,” the foreign minister wrote. “Watch how I responded to the Irish Ambassador.”

Scroll through Sa’ar’s very active feed on X, and you’ll see post after post alternately condemning, praising or otherwise interacting with his fellow ministers and diplomats. Some posts are in Hebrew, many are in English. Some, like one from March where he accused Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of being biased against Israel, are in other languages.

Which is why Sa’ar raised eyebrows when he scolded his Ukrainian counterpart on Monday night, writing, “Diplomatic relations, especially between friendly nations, are not conducted on Twitter or in the media.”

Sa’ar conducts diplomacy on social media all the time. His admonition not to tweet was published on… Twitter. The next day, as of 8:30 p.m., he wrote or shared posts about Hezbollah, the International Criminal Court, and the Serbian foreign minister, who was visiting Israel.

He’s far from alone. Beginning in 2015, Donald Trump began campaigning for president with an active and seemingly unfiltered Twitter feed. Eleven years later, conducting affairs of state via tweet has become the norm.

And in a world where the lines between official diplomacy and public diplomacy are blurred, Israeli officials have, if anything, called on the country to invest more in its social media strategy.

The dispute between Jerusalem and Kyiv concerns Ukrainian allegations that Israel has let Russian ships carrying stolen Ukrainian grain dock at Israeli ports. Israel says it has no proof the grain was stolen, despite Ukraine saying it had offered evidence.

On Tuesday evening, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha posted, “Friendly Ukrainian-Israeli relations have the potential to benefit both countries, and Russia’s illegal trade with stolen Ukrainian grain should not undermine them.”

He said Ukraine had summoned Israel’s ambassador for a dressing down and added, “It is difficult to understand Israel’s lack of appropriate response to Ukraine’s legitimate request regarding the previous vessel that delivered stolen goods to Haifa. Now that another such vessel has arrived in Haifa, we once again warn Israel against accepting the stolen grain and harming our relations.”

Exactly one hour later, Sa’ar responded with his post telling Sybiha not to tweet at him, and questioning the accusations.

“Allegations are not evidence,” he wrote. “Evidence substantiating the allegations have yet to be provided. You did not even submit a request for legal assistance before turning to the media and social networks.”

Discussions may have since taken place offline — but they’ve also continued online. On Tuesday afternoon, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote a post of his own threatening sanctions “that will cover both those directly transporting this grain and the individuals and legal entities attempting to profit from this criminal scheme.”

He called on Europe to institute sanctions as well.

Nothing about this is out of the ordinary. Four weeks earlier, Sa’ar had shared another post by Sybiha, this time about an Iranian cluster bomb that had impacted close to the Ukrainian embassy in Israel.

The Ukrainian minister drew a link at the time between Israel’s war against Iran and Ukraine’s war against Russia, and wrote, “This incident once again proves that the Iranian regime poses a threat to everyone in the region.”

Sa’ar responded, “We condemn these attacks and send our solidarity to the people of Ukraine and to all staff of the Embassy in Israel.”

But Twitter diplomacy has evolved far beyond such expressions of goodwill. Now, wars are all but declared and ended on social platforms, thanks to the leader of the free world.

Trump has been tweeting out seemingly any and every pronouncement of his for many years now. He fires people. He approves or pooh-poohs negotiating positions. He threatens to destroy Iran — all on Truth Social.

Whether it’s caprice, or whether there’s a method to the madness, has long been up for debate. But either way, the way the world operates now is that everyone, from ordinary citizens to senior politicians, hangs on the latest Truth Social post to see which way the world is going.

A few hours after Zelensky’s post about sanctions, Trump published his own Truth post on the negotiations with Iran, complete with his trademark idiosyncratic capitalization.

The result of so much negotiation happening on social media is that the lines between public diplomacy and traditional diplomacy have become harder to make out. Sa’ar, of all people, seems to understand that.

In late 2024, shortly after he became foreign minister, Sa’ar porposed an ambitious overhaul of Israel’s famously clunky hasbara, or public diplomacy efforts. Among the areas of focus were meetings with influencers and an emphasis on improving Israel’s social media strategy.

“Israel’s hasbara efforts and consciousness warfare have for decades not received the critical and life-saving resources and tools they require,” Sa’ar told the Hebrew outlet Maariv at the time. “I am determined to make a change. Every shekel devoted to this cause is an investment, not an expense, and will strengthen Israel and its standing in the world.”

The ministry also opened up a “media war room” that tracked news and perspectives on Israel, including on social media. But months later, an official in the Prime Minister’s Office still expressed frustration.

“Where is the super-duper communication strategy, social media strategy? We’re light years away from that,” the official told The Times of Israel.

Sa’ar is still at it. On Tuesday, following his rebuke of Sybiha the previous evening, Sa’ar addressed the spat in the more traditional forum of a press conference, reiterating Israel’s position, and again chiding his Ukrainian counterpart.

“Clearly we reject this kind of Twitter diplomacy,” he said, standing alongside Serbia’s foreign minister. He then claimed, “Up until this point, the Ukrainian government has not submitted a request for legal assistance. It’s submitted tweets.”

Later Tuesday, he posted a clip of those remarks on X.

Nava Freiberg contributed to this report.