Benjamin Netanyahu lamented that Israel has PR people who “can’t put two words together” in English. That is not Israel’s biggest problem in the West.
Hasbara in Hebrew literally means explanation, though the word is generally applied to Israel’s public relations. Israel spends millions of dollars a year on various forms of hasbara across multiple languages and media. But nothing seems to help. Bibi’s complaint comes at the same time when his office fired Eylon Levy, an extremely well-spoken Englishman who had the chutzpah to answer a tweet from David Cameron, currently the UK’s foreign minister. Suspended, Levy was fired this week, though he was very popular as a tireless defender of Israel.
The technical problems with Israel’s spokespeople are not new. My late father asked me in the 1990s why all of Israel’s politicians speak English as if they have marbles in their mouths. And in fact, of the 120 Knesset members today, only a small percentage—including Bibi, who spent many years in the US—speak English really well. But ultimately this is not the problem, though Donald Trump stated recently that Israel is doing very badly on the PR front.
The real problem for Israel is that people who hate Israel and/or Jews simply do not care about facts or the truth. There is a large population out there that is not ripe for convincing. They come with preset opinions about Jews or Israel and all of the statistics about how many trucks entered northern Gaza yesterday, or this war having the lowest percentage ever of civilians killed in urban warfare, will change nothing. And Israel’s enemies know this. They know that college students are moved by fake TikTok videos or statements by their favorite leftwing politicians that Israel is committing genocide when it clearly is not. And this problem is not one that can be overcome by a well-spoken or funny or super-friendly Israeli spokesperson. Jew hatred is visceral, and it's not moved by facts or information. It is impervious to reality. Menachem Begin once said that Poles got their antisemitism from their mother’s milk.
The larger problem for Israel and the US is that this phenomenon is ingrained on the left. Evidence that the world is not heating up or that releasing prisoners drives higher rates of crime has no impact on ideologically-fixed politicians and their supporters. Those representing Officer Chauvin thought that they had hit gold when they found that George Floyd did not die because of the officer’s actions but mostly likely as a result of the fentanyl in his system. But the media and its acolytes do not care. There is a narrative to uphold and woe to the one who would dare challenge it with such things as facts or toxicology reports.
Republican candidates love to quote statistics and facts, as they tend to support their claims of Joe Biden’s lousy economy or the failure of the US on the world stage. But young voters, progressive voters, suburban women voters, and many others simply do not care. They have bought into an ideological program that accepts no alternative. Show them that there is no increase in hurricanes and tornadoes or that temperatures are not rising in a significant way and they will still demand that fossil fuels be phased out, even if such actions will destroy the economy and our way of life. Show that police-on-black killings are rare and not suggestive of racism and you will be met with calls of being a racist and further demands for no bail and defunding of the police. Heather MacDonald is a living encyclopedia on police crime statistics, but her studies and books have virtually no impact on the policies of Soros DAs or blue city politics.
So how does Israel deal with a post-truth world, where facts and “hasbara” make no difference? Same question for Republicans. The answer is to realize that people do not care about facts and stop making efforts “to prove” that we are in the right and doing the right thing. It will move nobody but those who are already on your side and the very small sliver of the population that may not have an opinion. Do the right thing, and as Admiral Farragut said, “Damn the torpedoes!” They are going to hate you, they are going to blame you, they are going to try to kneecap you, so just forget about them, stop trying to impress them and just do the right thing.
There was a time when I agreed with those who sought more Israeli funding for Instagram and TikTok hasbara. But I don’t think that it will move the needle. I have a good friend who absolutely detests the Dallas Cowboys. If he were told that they were donating part of their salary to charity or rebuilding houses in a poor neighborhood of Dallas, he would hate them no less. Hasabara is not going to make people like Israel. Look at the simple facts: Hamas committed a Holocaust-level pogrom on October 7th, yet very quickly the countries of the world turned the fight into a referendum on Israel. The most recent betrayal by Joe Biden—continuing Barack Obama’s anti-Israel vote via Samantha Power in the UN—is the latest “Israel is the problem” act. Chuck Schumer could have told Hamas to surrender; instead, he told Israelis to replace Bibi. The International Criminal Court could have looked into Hamas’ systematic sexual violence against Israeli women; instead, it tried to figure out if Israel is engaged in genocide, with less than 0.2 percent of the population (including terrorists) dead. Students at Harvard and elsewhere could have had massive rallies demanding that Palestinians consent to two states; instead, they screamed that all of the Jews in Israel be murdered ("intifada revolution”) and that Israel become Palestine (“from the river to the sea…”).
Hasbara works where you have an inquisitive population that may simply be lacking information. It does not work when people’s minds are made up, independent of mountains of evidence against their stance. Look at Democrats claiming that Joe Biden is pure as snow when evidence and testimony show that he ran a pay-to-play scheme with his family in order to capitalize on his being vice-president (“Biden was the brand”).
We live in a post-truth world. It is a time to act, to do the right thing. They will always blame you so at least do that which helps you and those who support you the most. Israel should clean out Rafah and set up a post-war security arrangement that gives maximum protection to Israeli citizens. Republicans should push forward with economic and international policies that make the US a stronger republic. Doing the right thing will, in the end, be enough hasbara.