Hasbara
The public diplomacy of Israel, or hasbara, includes mass communication and individual interaction with foreign nationals through social and traditional media, as well as cultural diplomacy. Organizations involved include the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, Prime Minister's Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and pro-Israel civil society organizations. Historically, these efforts have evolved from being called "propaganda" by early Zionists, with Theodor Herzl advocating such activities in 1899, to the more contemporary Hebrew term hasbara introduced by Nahum Sokolow, which roughly means "explaining". This communicative strategy seeks to justify actions and is considered reactive and event-driven.
Characteristics
Different terms have been used to describe Israel's and other actors' efforts to reach audiences abroad. Hasbara was formally introduced to the Zionist vocabulary by Nahum Sokolow. Hasbara has no direct English translation, but roughly means "explaining". It is a communicative strategy that "seeks to explain actions, whether or not they are justified". As it focuses on providing explanations about one's actions, hasbara has been called a "reactive and event-driven approach". Most early practitioners of what became known as hasbara were Arabic-speaking Jews who published papers in Arabic to explain Zionism's goals to Arabs. These efforts were led by Arabic-speaking Jews like Nissim Malul, Shimon Moyal, Esther Moyal, Avraham Elmalih, and Yehuda Burla. In 2003, Ron Schleifer called hasbara "a positive-sounding synonym for 'propaganda'".Israeli practitioners tend to label their communicative efforts public diplomacy, not hasbara. They consider a focus on "explaining" too defensive and prefer to actively determine the agenda by being less reactive and more proactive, moving to a more comprehensive, long-term strategic approach. Israeli public diplomacy encompasses different forms of communication and other forms of interaction with the public abroad. For instance, Israel engages in open and fully attributable, unidirectional mass communication that targets so far unaffiliated civil populations in other countries, both via social media and traditional mass media. The Israeli government uses this type of communication especially to depict Israel positively. The Israeli government and pro-Israeli groups also use interventive communication to counter what they see as attempts at delegitimisation of Israel, e.g., in the context of BDS. The Israeli government also engages in activities beyond communicative efforts in social media and the traditional mass media, e.g., in the form of cultural diplomacy. The communicative efforts of pro-Israeli civil society groups are partially also called "advocacy".
Edward Said wrote in 2001 that hasbara methods used during the Second Intifada included lunches and free trips for influential journalists; seminars for Jewish university students; invitations to members of Congress; pamphlets and money for election campaigns; telling photographers and writers what to photograph or write about; lecture and concert tours by prominent Israelis; frequent references to the Holocaust; and newspaper advertisements attacking Arabs and praising Israel. In 2012, the Israeli Foreign Ministry published new guidelines on the appropriate use of social media methods by its diplomatic staff. There have been multiple embarrassing and inappropriate tweets and posts by Israeli embassies, such as one in Ireland criticizing a Knesset member.
In the United States
According to The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, major American Jewish organizations have played a significant role in advancing an Israeli state narrative to the American public. They quote Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, former chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, saying: "The Presidents' Conference and its members have been instruments of official governmental Israeli policy. It was seen as our task to receive directions from government circles and to do our best no matter what to affect the Jewish community." Similarly, they quote Hyman Bookbinder, a high-ranking official of the American Jewish Committee, as saying: "Unless something is terribly pressing, really critical or fundamental, you parrot Israel's line in order to retain American support. As American Jews, we don't go around saying Israel is wrong about its policies."According to Shivi Greenfield and Nachman Shai, the Israeli government has worked with various Israeli and international non-government organizations to promote Israeli public diplomacy within the global Jewish diaspora and international community. Notable Israeli NGOs involved in public diplomacy have included the Jewish Agency for Israel, Israel Project, HonestReporting, the Middle East Media Research Institute, and Palestinian Media Watch. The Israeli government has also partnered with several Jewish and Christian Zionist NGOs in the U.S. and abroad, including the Anti-Defamation League, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Christians United for Israel, the Jewish Federations of North America, and the Zionist Organization of America.
According to Greenfield and Shai, the Israeli government and sympathetic NGOs, including Hillel International, B'nai B'rith, Israel at Heart, and StandWithUs, have sought to promote sympathy for Israel among university students through study tours, talks, meetings, distributing educational materials, distributing educational materials, gift packages, fundraising, and blood donations. These campus outreaches seek to strengthen ties between Israel and the Jewish diaspora and support Jewish students' efforts to combat so-called "anti-Israel" activism on campus such as Israeli Apartheid Week. Shai identifies the "Israel on Campus Coalition" as the umbrella organization for most pro-Israel American campus organizations. It is funded by the Schusterman Foundation and Hillel.
Israeli officials have emphasized the importance of molding American public opinion to influence U.S. foreign policy favorably toward Israel. For example, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said, "In the last 30 years, I appeared innumerable times in the American media and met thousands of American leaders. I developed a certain ability to influence public opinion." Netanyahu said this in the context of the Israeli government's decade-long effort to pressure for military action against Iran. He added that this "is the most important thing: the ability to sway public opinion in the United States against the regime in Iran."
In Australia
According to Shahar Burla, the Israeli Foreign and Public Diplomacy ministries worked with local Australian Jewish community and Zionist organizations such as the local chapter of the United Israel Appeal, the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, the Zionist Council of New South Wales, and the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies to mobilize Australian Jews into supporting Israeli hasbara efforts during the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid. The Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs established a "Communications Room" to circulate pro-Israel information to the global Jewish diaspora via email, websites, traditional media, meetings, and demonstrations. Pro-Israel sympathizers were encouraged to share pro-Israel videos and articles on social media platforms, respond to blogs and TV shows, and write editorial letters.History
19th century – 1948
Among early Zionists it was common to label communicative efforts propaganda. Theodor Herzl used the term at the 3rd Zionist Congress in 1899, where he asked fellow Zionists in the audience "to engage in propaganda". At the time the term "propaganda" was considered neutral. The term is now pejorative. "Propaganda" is now typically used for official government statements or by critics of pro-Israeli advocacy groups to portray the communication as misleading and manipulative. The propaganda wing of the Irgun was a substantial proportion of the organization.1970–1999
Early mentions of the term hasbara in English mainstream print media date from the late 1970s and describe it as "overseas image-building". According to The Washington Post, this work "is called hasbara when the purpose is to reshape public opinion abroad". In the early 1980s, hasbara was defined as a "public relations campaign". In Newsweek it was described as "explaining". In 1986, The New York Times reported that a program for "communicating defense goals" was started in the late 1970s, and a 1984 implementation of a "Hasbara Project" to "train foreign-service officers in communications by placing them with American companies". Carl Spielvogel, chairman of Backer & Spielvogel, traveled to Israel to advise the government on communicating its defense goals. The trip led to the Hasbara Project, an internship program established to train foreign-service officers in communications by placing them with American companies.Shmuel Katz's book Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, published in 1973, was described as "an encyclopedic source-book for those involved in Israel's hasbara effort" by Moshe Phillips, a national director of Herut North America's U.S. section. In 1977, Prime Minister Menachem Begin named Katz "Adviser to the Prime Minister of Information Abroad".
In May 1992, The Jerusalem Post reported that American Jewish leaders hardly reacted to news that the Foreign Ministry's hasbara department would be eliminated as part of a sweeping reorganization of the ministry. Malcolm Hoenlein noted there had been talk of streamlining the ministry's hasbara functions for some time. He said that merging the hasbara department's functions with those of the press department did not portend any downgrading in the priority the Likud government gives to hasbara abroad. Abe Foxman reacted similarly, saying he was "not distressed or disturbed", and noted that disseminating hasbara has always been the responsibility of every Foreign Ministry staff officer, especially those working abroad; if eliminating one department means everyone will assume greater responsibility for his or her own efforts in distributing hasbara, then he is all in favor. It also reported that personnel in foreign hasbara departments would be shifted to press departments, which is where much of the work currently done by hasbara officials properly belongs. He explained that Israel's efforts to provide hasbara abroad would focus on media communications.