ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's communications chief, Ron Dermer, has admitted that Israel faces a serious public relations problem.

In his first interview since the Netanyahu Government took office in March, the Prime Minister's director of policy planning and communications has told The Age that it's time Israel switched its PR strategy from defence to offence.

"We have to break out of the straitjacket," Mr Dermer says. "We have to defend our own right to defend ourselves. It's not for other people to do it for us."

Despite launching a broadside at the way the foreign media and other organisations report events in Israel, Mr Dermer acknowledged that successive Israeli governments were also to blame for presenting a narrow argument.

"It is not enough for Israel to say that it wants peace. You must also say that you are not a thief. We did not steal another people's land. That is the core of this conflict," he says.