Horrible Hasbara: Israel’s Poor PR Efforts

There’s an old saying, often misattributed to Albert Einstein, that insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. In Israel, they don’t call this insanity. They call it hasbara.

Israeli public diplomacy efforts are characterised by disorganisation. The employment of multiple lines of argument and incoherent or overly complex narratives, together with the fact that Israel possesses no single body responsible for PR—these factors stymie the country’s attempts at effective messaging. As Gil Hoffman, Executive Director of the media watchdog HonestReporting, wrote in June 2024: 

When it comes to messaging, Israel has three separate audiences: domestic to make the public feel safe; its enemies to deter them; and the international community. The messaging that is effective for audiences one and two repels audience three, causing constant damage.

Historian Ron Schleifer traces the modern Israeli failure to effectively argue the country’s case to the Jewish diaspora experience: “One thousand and eight hundred years of submissive Jewish hasbara, which was not combined with any military operation or threat of one, has left its mark upon the Jews.” Zionist hasbara, Schleifer explains, was founded on the idea that collective Jewish self-determination must achieve international legitimacy. It has therefore adopted a moralistic narrative in which the Jewish right to statehood is justified on the basis of historical dispossession, diasporic suffering, and the monstrous evils perpetrated by Nazi Germany. The early Zionists, Schleifer writes, rather than showcase the everyday dangers they faced as a result of the intransigence of the Palestinian Arabs and the rejectionism of surrounding Arab nations, preferred to rely on what Schleifer calls the “underdog doctrine.”

But the idea of Israel as an underdog lost credibility in 1967, when the country acquired new territories in the Sinai, West Bank, and Golan Heights during the Six Day War. As Israeli historian Yoav Gelber has documented, Israel was transformed overnight from underdog to occupier in the eyes of global public opinion. As Gelber relates, within a week of Israel’s victory, Western media outlets were publishing sensationalised reports of Egyptian soldiers stranded in the Sinai desert, firebombings by the Israeli Air Force, and a growing Arab refugee crisis provoked by the war. This made it increasingly difficult for Israel to convince people that they were fighting a defensive war. Israel’s popularity among Western leftists declined significantly. In the US, leaders of the Black Power movement labelled the Israeli victory a genocide—in language foreshadowing that of many pro-Palestinian groups today. And yet, in a March 1970 Knesset speech, Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban proclaimed that “nothing fundamental had changed since the war” and there was therefore no need to alter Israel’s approach to public relations.  

This kind of stubborn denial that there is a problem at all continues to plague Israeli hasbara. The country’s public diplomacy efforts often employ outdated and counterproductive rhetoric. For example, many pro-Israel activists and politicians continue to proclaim to international audiences that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East”—an assertion that dates back at least to a conversation of December 1962 between John F. Kennedy and then-Foreign Minister Golda Meir. The same rhetoric appeared in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first speech to a Joint Session of [the US] Congress in July 1996, and in his July 2024 address to Congress, in which he described Israel as a “pro-American democracy” in the heart of the Middle East.

But this is an incredibly low bar when your immediate neighbours are jihadists and dictators. And Israel’s claim to be the sole local democracy also not only alienates some of those Middle Eastern nations with whom it wishes to establish friendly relations, but puts Israel under the microscope. It justifies holding Israel to higher standards than other countries in the region and scrutinising Israeli policy for any actions that could be interpreted as antidemocratic. It is the mission of organisations like Adalah (The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel) to prove that Israel is not a democratic country at all. Such groups enjoy some success precisely because they challenge Israel’s boast that it is the only free country in the region. 

Furthermore, the idea of Israel as the “only democracy” in the Middle East encourages critics to see it as an outpost of Western values in an Arab world. The remarks of Israel’s own leaders back up this perception. At a meeting of European leaders in Budapest in July 2017, Netanyahu remarked that “Israel is part of European culture... Europe ends in Israel. East of Israel, there is no more Europe.” Even opposition leader Yair Lapid has referred to Israel as a “Western country.” The considerable evidence proving that Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel is far more likely to go unnoticed when remarks like these unwittingly lend credibility to those who falsely depict Israel as an imperial Western settler-colony. 

Israel is short of effective spokespeople who can communicate with Western audiences. One reason for this is that it is a Hebrew-speaking Middle Eastern nation. Although approximately 85 percent of Israelis define themselves as English speakers, many are less than fluent in the language, even by their own accounts. Netanyahu has previously lamented that he is “surrounded by people who can’t put two words together [in English].” 

A far more significant problem, however, is the inability of Israeli officials to stick to one line of argument. For example, in a 19 June interview with Channel 13 News, IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari stated that, “Hamas is an idea. You can’t destroy an idea... It is not possible to rescue all the hostages in military operations.” In that one interview, Hagari effectively repudiated all the war aims set out by the Prime Minister’s Office: destroying Hamas, returning the hostages kidnapped on 7 October, and preventing Hamas from being able to threaten Israel. Hagari’s comments also contradict the IDF’s stated goal to “dismantle the Hamas terrorist organization’s military and administrative capabilities.” While the PM’s office rushed to put out the subsequent media fires, senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told Al Jazeera that Hagari’s comments were a “frank confession” of Israel’s failure in the war effort. One might think such catastrophic PR failures would have given Hagari the opportunity to reflect. Yet, in a 7 July interview with ABC’s Matt Gutman, Hagari reiterated his view that Hamas would maintain a significant presence in Gaza for years to come. 

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Israel’s hasbara efforts have also been undermined by unwise or idiotic statements uttered by Israeli ministers. For example, Naftali Bennett’s February 2017 interview with prominent British broadcaster Mehdi Hasan on UpFront, a debate programme operated by Al Jazeera English, contained numerous strategic errors. When Hasan claimed that, through its military occupation of the West Bank, Israel has denied Palestinians the right to civil and political liberties for forty years, Bennett’s rebuttal began, “You should do your homework. We’ve been there [for] 50 years, not 40 years.” In response to Hasan’s accusation that Israel had illegally annexed Palestinian lands, Bennett sarcastically invited Hasan to “go back and change the Bible... show me a new Bible that says that the Land of Israel doesn’t belong to Jews.” Instead of citing competent authorities who have debunked the apartheid myth in great detail or drawing attention to the hostile manner in which the interview was being conducted, Bennett’s weak replies only served to further delegitimise Israel’s position in the eyes of Hasan’s international audience.

To his credit, Bennett’s approach to public diplomacy has improved since the UpFront fiasco. However, the populist and militarist rhetoric voiced by some of the more radical elements within the Israeli government has been grist to the mill of those who wish to see Israel fail. Consider Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir’s inflammatory and racist comments in August 2023, in which he claimed that, “My right, my wife’s, my children’s, to roam the roads of Judea and Samaria are more important than the right of movement of the Arabs.... My right for life comes before their right to movement.” Ben Gvir blamed the backlash to this rhetoric on a conspiracy organised by the “Israeli radical left” designed to ignite animosity towards the government. Instead of focusing media attention on the more than 2,800 terror attacks committed against Israelis in the 12 months preceding his interview, Ben Gvir’s comments served only to reinforce pro-Palestinian caricatures of “apartheid Israel.”

Then, in November 2023, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu called on the government to drop “what amounts to some kind of nuclear bomb on all of Gaza.” One might ask why a cabinet minister tasked with “preserving content of national historical importance” considered it appropriate to comment on matters completely outside his remit. There was an international outcry at Eliyahu’s remarks. In response, Netanyahu merely suspended him from participating in further cabinet meetings instead of expelling him from the party—a leniency that further damaged Israeli public relations. When he was asked to justify his remarks, Eliyahu feebly claimed that they had been merely “metaphorical.” 

There is one component of successful PR that is often ignored by the Israeli hasbara machine: sensationalism. Sustaining the attention of a modern-day audience requires that information be presented in as engaging a manner as possible. Western media outlets covering the ongoing Israel–Gaza War constantly rush to publish unverified casualty figures issued by Hamas-run organisations in pursuit of sensationalist headlines, often accompanied by images of bloodshed and anguish—a strategy that drives engagement. Yet, despite the horrific atrocities committed by Hamas against countless Israeli civilians on 7 October, Israel has failed to keep global audiences laser-focused on the breaking point that led to the current war. The heartrending testimonies that have been collected from survivors and aid volunteers by activists like 23-year-old Alon Penzel have not been distributed widely enough to break through the psychological barriers to empathy created by 11 months of dishonest and malicious reporting by anti-Israel outlets.

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The extensive footage of Hamas’s 7 October war crimes, including the images available on Hamas-Massacre.net, should be far easier to locate. The re-sequenced footage taken from the Hamas terrorists who were captured on 7 October—increasingly known in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) as the “horror films”—should be publicly accessible, rather than limited to restricted screenings for journalists and diplomats. Admittedly, some steps are being taken in this direction. According to a May 2024 report by the Jewish Chronicle, the IDF has been working on a 43-minute Hamas atrocity film at Netanyahu’s behest. 

But in this respect, Israel has much to learn from the Palestinian propaganda machine. The decades-long psychological warfare waged by the Palestinian movement—perfected by Hamas during this current war—relies on photos of Palestinian suffering, especially that of children. (Some Palestinian groups have used images of murdered Syrian and even Israeli children for this purpose and in some cases the images have been AI-generated.) By linking these photographs of intolerable living conditions and massive casualties with the ideas of “Zionist occupation” and “Zionist genocide,” they have ensured that people who support Zionism are perceived as condoning the killing of children. It does not matter to the propagandists that Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh have argued that their cause relies on shedding Palestinian blood in Gaza, or that calling Zionists child-murderers reanimates an ancient blood libel myth. 

 Yet, it would appear that these strategies are working. Genocidal chants such as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” and “Globalise the Intifada” have become commonplace—even among people who may not be able to articulate what these slogans actually call for.  Such useful idiots fill our academic institutions, trade unions, media outlets, and even the halls of government. The UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy is a case in point. He suspended an array of arms export licences to Israel on 2 September 2024, citing the “clear risk” that the IDF might use British weapons to violate international humanitarian law. His announcement came the day after the IDF recovered the bodies of six Israeli hostages brutally executed by Hamas in Rafah, which Lammy himself described as an “appalling murder.” Yet the UK continues to sell arms to dozens of countries with horrific humanitarian records, including nations on the UK’s own list of “human rights priority countries.” Lammy has scored far more political points for making it more difficult for Israel to defend itself than he would do for punishing far more problematic countries for their serious crimes against human rights. 

Israeli officials have expressed concern about publicising the horrific acts committed by Hamas too widely for fear of damaging domestic morale. Such publicity also goes against a Jewish religious injunction—Kavod HaMet (Heb. “Respect for the Dead”). For these and similar reasons, Israeli propaganda has chosen to focus on living hostages rather than on the horrifying fate of murdered Israelis. However, this has allowed radical voices on the other side to drown out the stories of Israeli suffering in a flood of images of Palestinian suffering. In our media landscape, horror is a weapon. Israeli hasbara must use it if it wishes to succeed.

In the Knesset’s 2024 state budget, out of a total spending limit of NIS 513.74 billion, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs received a measly NIS 1.86 billion (just under $US500 million). This is the same amount that the Qatari-funded Al Jazeera Media Network reportedly spent when it acquired Al Gore’s Current TV in December 2012. The entire budget earmarked for Israeli diplomatic activity is equivalent to one Al Jazeera purchase.  

In November 2023, Ministry of Foreign Affairs official Emmanuel Nahshon complained to the Knesset that his ministry is forced to work with funds that represent only a tenth of what Israel invests in tourism. The Ynet news site later reported that, despite proven successes, the MFA would be discontinuing its Spanish, Farsi, and Russian-language digital activities because its budget had run out. Ruth Cohen-Dar, the director of the ministry’s Department for Combating Antisemitism, remarked in January 2024 that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “cannot assist diplomats around the world in their activities against antisemitism” due to budgetary constraints.

Israeli officials consistently refuse to invest taxpayer money and other resources in the body primarily responsible for representing Israel abroad. Funds are required for media research, opposition to misinformation and anti-Israel lawfare, pro-Israel correspondents to sway public opinion, educational programs on Israel and antisemitism, media training for Israeli officials, multilingual social media campaigns, diplomatic and interfaith conferences, and partnerships with the countless Jewish and pro-Israel organisations responding to the recent global rise in antisemitism.

Perhaps Israel’s strategists believe that 14 million Jews worldwide have little chance of successfully arguing their case to a global population of more than 8 billion, 25 percent of whom are Muslim, and that they should allocate resources elsewhere. Yet, it is astonishing that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs receives a mere 0.36 percent of the annual budget whereas the Israeli security establishment receives approximately 20 percent. Of course, Israel’s ongoing war effort and internal security requirements are paramount. Yet the refusal to invest more in basic messaging strategies and public diplomacy is concerning. As far as Knesset messaging is concerned, as Yaakov Katz, former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, has observed there are “too many cooks in the kitchen and no clarity of who is in charge.” For Israeli public diplomacy efforts to succeed, they must be coordinated by a well-funded central authority. 

The pro-Palestinian movement enjoys international success because it revolves around one simple (and simplistic) narrative: namely, that the Palestinian Arabs lived peacefully on their own land for millennia, until the 20th century, when imperialist Zionist Jews conspired to steal their land and established a decades-long tyrannical regime supported by the West, whose very existence deprives them of their liberty. The pro-Palestinian camp have spent more than 75 years perfecting their 30-second elevator pitch. It’s time for Israel to catch up.

To begin with, the PM’s office must consolidate all departments involved in public relations into one entity: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (Amichai Chikli’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry has been a dismal failure and should be the first to go.) Once this has been achieved, budget allocations should be revised and additional funds raised to give the MFA a budget of at least $US 1 billion. Armed with the necessary resources, the MFA can establish cross-ministry liaison channels and commission an in-house marketing team to create a public diplomacy strategy that effectively communicates the “Four Hs” of a new hasbara: Heritage, History, Horror, and Heroism.

The first stage, Heritage, requires a clear, concise, and concrete narrative describing how the Jewish people emerged in the same land upon which the modern State of Israel has been constructed. Jews must be universally understood as an indigenous population whose origins and millennia-long attachment to Israel are supported by a robust academic corpus of archaeological, historical, and genetic evidence. Instead of arguing that the land should belong to the Jews, Israel should be highlighting the indisputable fact that the Jews belong to this land. In this way, it can counter the erroneous colonisation narrative peddled by pro-Palestinian groups.

The second stage, History, requires more work. The way in which history is taught in the classroom must change. As a November 2023 report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) has demonstrated, those responsible for the Palestinian National Authority (PA) curriculum currently taught in UNRWA schools have for years used the classroom as a vehicle for perpetuating antisemitic and jihadist values. The miserable condition of Palestinian education presents a significant opportunity for Israeli public diplomacy. However, as long as history remains a neglected discipline in the Israeli curriculum, Israel will never empower ordinary citizens to represent its values abroad. While Palestinian schoolchildren are taught to idolise terrorists, Israeli students should receive a rigorous education on the origins of the Jewish people, their diasporic history, the nature of antisemitism, the rise of the Zionist movement and its key figures, and the virtually ignored plight of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. The ultimate goal should be to equip Israeli adolescents to defend the principles of Zionism and the existence of the State of Israel. 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should coordinate with educational centres, libraries, school districts, and universities internationally in order to promote understanding of Israeli history. The American K-12 education system, whose post-7 October stance has been increasingly pro-Hamas, should be a priority. The MFA should also work with groups like the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), Yad Vashem, Harif, HonestReporting, and the World Jewish Congress (WJC) to formulate educational initiatives that could gain traction among local communities and in international academia. Misconceptions that are common even within pro-Israel circles—such as the dangerous myth that the State of Israel was gifted to Jews by the West as a way of atoning for the sins of the Holocaust—must be dispelled. 

Israeli Muslims and Mizrahi Jews should be invited to appear at televised international conferences and community events to ensure that their stories do not remain untold. The government should also platform non-Jewish peace activists from the MENA region, such as Loay Alshareef and Rawan Osman. Instead of mindlessly repeating that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, Israeli hasbara should lay the groundwork for audiences to come to such a conclusion themselves.

The third stage, Horror, should involve declassifying visual images and testimonies from Israeli families affected by Palestinian terrorism, especially children and the elderly. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should also work with international antisemitism monitoring bodies such as the UK’s Community Security Trust (CST) and the USA’s Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to obtain footage of antisemitic violence. Launching accessible social media campaigns in English, French, Spanish, Levantine Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, and Farsi will allow Israel to globally communicate the everyday dangers of living next to Iran-backed terrorist groups and show how hatred of Israel is translated into antisemitic violence on the streets of London, Paris, New York, and elsewhere.

The final stage, Heroism, must fully demonstrate the global threat posed by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and all the other jihadist proxies of the Islamic regime in Iran. Israel must be shown to be a necessary force for stability in the Middle East, highlighting the positive reception of their military successes by various non-Jewish individuals and groups in the region. 

Some people believe that Israel’s public diplomacy efforts are always going to be futile: they believe that antisemitism is a phenomenon as old as the Jews themselves, and that its current reformulation as anti-Zionism will likely persist for decades to come. Nothing can be done, they feel, to convince the world of another path forward. The constant failure of every half-hearted attempt at hasbara seems to prove them right. But I think they’re wrong. The State of Israel will not be rejected and despised forever—not if we are able to rethink the way we do hasbara.