A recent Haaretz article argues that Israel’s public diplomacy efforts—commonly known as “hasbara”—cannot overcome the reality of Israel’s actions. According to the piece, support for Israel is collapsing because Americans, particularly younger Americans and evangelicals, have finally seen the truth.
The argument is persuasive only if one ignores a critical fact: reality cuts both ways.
The article catalogues images that have damaged Israel’s reputation—war in Gaza, violence in the West Bank, tensions involving Christian communities, and the growing humanitarian crisis. These are real issues that deserve scrutiny. Democracies should be judged by their actions, and Israel is no exception.
But the article’s fatal flaw is that it treats only one side of reality as worthy of examination.
Reality also includes the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust on October 7, 2023. Reality includes Hamas deliberately embedding military infrastructure inside civilian areas. Reality includes Hezbollah’s arsenal of precision-guided missiles aimed at Israeli population centers. Reality includes Iran’s decades-long campaign to surround Israel with armed proxy forces committed to its destruction.
Reality includes a region in which numerous terrorist organizations openly state that their goal is not a two-state solution but the elimination of the Jewish state.
Any honest conversation about public opinion must begin there.
The article mocks efforts to explain Israel’s security concerns as “hasbara,” implying that attempts to provide context are merely propaganda. Yet every nation seeks to explain its actions to foreign audiences. When Ukraine explains its war effort, it is called public diplomacy. When Palestinians advocate for their cause, it is called activism. When Israel presents its case, it is often dismissed as propaganda before the argument is even heard.
This double standard reveals something important.
The debate surrounding Israel increasingly revolves not around whether facts are true but around which facts are permitted to matter.
The article suggests that no amount of public relations can overcome what people see on their smartphones. Fair enough. But smartphones also showed Israeli families slaughtered in their homes, young people murdered at a music festival, hostages dragged into Gaza, and months of rocket attacks targeting civilians.
If visual evidence is the standard, then all visual evidence must count.
The article further argues that Israel’s supporters portray criticism as antisemitism. Certainly, not every criticism of Israel is antisemitic. Democratic debate requires room for disagreement.
However, it is equally true that antisemitism has surged globally since October 7. Jewish students have been harassed on university campuses. Synagogues have increased security. Jewish institutions across the Western world report rising threats. Online discourse increasingly recycles conspiracies about Jewish power, dual loyalty, and collective guilt.
These developments are not inventions of a “hasbara industry.” They are documented realities.
One of the most revealing parts of the article is its acknowledgment that figures such as Nick Fuentes have become influential voices among segments of the anti-Israel right. Yet rather than seriously confronting that phenomenon, the article treats it almost as an unfortunate side effect of Israeli policies.
That reverses cause and effect.
Antisemitism is not a rational response to Israeli government decisions. It is a prejudice that predates the modern State of Israel by centuries. Those who blame Jews collectively for wars, politics, or global events are not responding to current headlines; they are recycling ancient hatreds in contemporary language.
Perhaps the greatest misconception in the article is the belief that Israel’s challenges can be reduced to a communications problem.
Israel’s challenge is not that it has failed to explain itself. Its challenge is that it faces genuine moral and strategic dilemmas for which there are no simple answers. Democracies confronting terrorism often make decisions that carry tragic consequences. Those decisions should be debated vigorously.
But criticism becomes less credible when it consistently ignores the threats that produced those decisions in the first place.
The future of American support for Israel will not be determined by advertising budgets, social media campaigns, or public relations consultants. It will be determined by whether people are willing to engage with the full reality of the conflict rather than a carefully curated portion of it.
Reality includes suffering Palestinians.
Reality also includes threatened Israelis.
Any analysis that acknowledges only one side of that equation is not challenging propaganda. It is creating a new form of it.