What happens when hasbara fails to work?
JVL Introduction
Martin Francisco Saps, a Uruguayan-American, went to live in Israel as a young idealistic believer.
He quickly became disillusioned by the reality on the ground but was unwilling to criticise it publicly.
He knows well, and can repeat easily, the hasbara justifications for what is happening: “As I once reasoned, if the world is already against Israel, why should I further discredit it.”
But he has come to reject the official line.
And so, since the current war on Gaza, has most of the rest of the world.
Israeli hasbara has traditionally flaunted Israel’s liberal values. But we are now in a post-hasbara world, where those who support Israel are resigned to making excuses for why it, and Jews themselves, are exempt from liberal obligations: the world is and will always be antisemitic, and there is simply “no other choice” but to support it come what may.
Anything, but to look inward and to recognise and challenge what Israel has become.
The way forward, believes Saps, is “a true counter-Hasbara” one that articulates an alternative Jewish identity.
“We need to get to the root of the process whereby oppressed become oppressors; to rethink nationalism, historical memory, and the institutionalization of trauma.”
RK
This article was originally published by Vashtimedia on Mon 29 Jul 2024. Read the original here.
Hasbara is failing. What’s next for Israel’s desperate image war?
As the world increasingly sees through Israel’s propaganda, its steadfast supporters scramble to stick to the narrative.
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This article brings home really well the increasing fissure between Jews world wide and Jews within Israel.
Even without the Gaza genocide, this pulling apart is arguably an inexorable process given the increasing demographic weight and political power of ultra nationalist religious Jews inside Israel.
On a more pessimistic note, I think the author hits on an important and over-looked point when he says hasbara does not necessarily have to work to shore up Jewish support for Zionism.
This is because defending Israel from criticism has always been a fundamentally existential task since 1948, even if that means tolerating injustice and atrocities on an ever expanding scale.
I would go as far as betting there are very few reasonably informed Zionists inside or outside of Israel today who would not privately concede much of the Palestinian narrative in respect to the origin of the refugee problem and the ‘original sin’ of Israel’s birth.
The facts have certainly been widely disseminated in Israeli society and discussed in the Israeli media, which has popularised the findings of ‘revisionist’ historians like Benny Morris and Tom Segev.
Israelis are now no different to most Americans in that they can happily live with knowing their country is built on the dispossession of an indigenous people. The obvious difference is that in Israel’s case the natives have not been defeated.
Instructive here were the open, widespread calls in Israel for ‘another nakba’ after October 7.
These revealed the foundational myth of a ‘land without a people’ – if it was *ever* believed – certainly isn’t widely accepted today. And it certainly isn’t necessary to legitimate the state. As the essentials of this settler-colonial conflict are laid bare as never before, Israelis are living in a society with the mask torn off.
Given the absence of any meaningful resistance…
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Thank you so much – this is all valuable information. Filling the gaps in the puzzle makes the overall picture clearer and ever increasing numbers of people can sense of it.
Very interesting article, but can I urge readers to check out the article linked to above re October 7th dark tourism. It’s pretty long, but a real eye-opener in more ways than one:
The Rise of October 7th Tourism
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-rise-of-october-7th-tourism