Hasbara Has Failed Us

For decades, we’ve relied on the same approaches to explain Israel’s right to exist, believing that if we could just provide enough facts and figures, we’d win the argument. We’ve been playing by a tired script, hoping logic would prevail. But let’s be honest – traditional Hasbara has failed us. Why? Because we’re trying to reason with people who hate and therefore aren’t interested in hearing us.

We’re standing at the mean girls’ lunch table, hoping for a seat – hoping that their acceptance would somehow legitimize our story. But that table doesn’t serve us. It never has. We keep offering rational explanations and historical truths, while the world responds with prepackaged narratives that cast us as the villain. It’s not about facts for them; it’s about fitting us into a well-worn storyline, one that casts Jews as eternal outsiders, always suspect.

Our history is shockingly repetitive. The cycle of hatred doesn’t start with violence – it starts with antizionist libels. Lies about who we are. Accusations that isolate us, dehumanize us, and lay the groundwork for violence. And what’s worse, the Holocaust education model, the one we so often depend on, only focuses on the violence at the end of the cycle, but not on the buildup that led to it. We talk about gas chambers and atrocities, but we don’t talk enough about the years of slander, economic boycotts, and social exclusion that made those atrocities possible.

Here’s the truth: the IDF is there for the violence part – the moment when the cycle reaches its peak. Thank God for that. When the bombs start falling and the rockets are fired, we have the IDF to protect us, to defend the Jewish state. But what about everything that comes before? What about the libels and lies that build up over years, poisoning minds and isolating Israel from the world stage? What do we have to combat that?

We need something else for that part of the cycle. We need to fight back against the libels before they turn into violence. We need to tell our story – our full story. Not just the facts and figures of Israel’s existence, but the emotional, historical, and spiritual truth of the Jewish people. We need to make people understand the buildup: the demonization, the false accusations, the blood libels, and the scapegoating that has always preceded violence against Jews.

If we don’t start fighting that part of the battle, we’ll keep ending up at the same place in the cycle, over and over again. We cannot just rely on the IDF to protect us from rockets. We need to protect ourselves from the libels that lead to the rockets in the first place.

The time has come for something new – that doesn’t just defend against attacks, but proactively fights the spread of falsehoods. We need to build a force that works not only on the battlefield but in hearts and minds, tearing down the libels before they have the chance to take root. We can’t wait for the violence to come before we act. We need to start now, by rejecting the need for validation from those who will never give it, and instead, own our truth, unapologetically and fiercely.

We’re not waiting for a seat at their table anymore. We’re building our own.