Learn to be immune to Hasbara

Hasbara is pro-Israel propaganda. The term is Hebrew and means something like “explaining” — I’ve seen it defined as an attempt to explain away actions whether or not they’re justified. It’s important to note that Hasbara refers to a specific propagandist technique used to defend Israel, and once you see it, it will be obvious. It’s a collection of empty slogans that a bot could repeat.

My own encounters with Hasbara have made my skin crawl. The technique is highly manipulative and those who use it don’t care whether you’re truly convinced — they’re happy to take the win if you’re just cowed into silence. My recommendation is:

1. Learn how to identify Hasbara

2. Either do not engage or engage only to identify Hasbara and accompanying logical fallacies in order to help the audience avoid them too

3. Tell the propagandists “Hasbara does not work on me, it only solidifies my position against Israel.”

Identifying Hasbara

Say you were criticizing Israel for its latest war crime:

Israel killed seven food aid workers in multiple drone strikes despite being given their coordinates ahead of time and then responded, basically, “Oops.” That’s bad.

What do Hasbara responses look like? They fall into a few categories, but you will know them by the fact that they either do not address the specific claim you raised, or they attempt to excuse or downplay the specific action you brought up (often using blatant lies). The goal is to either get you to stop talking entirely, or derail the conversation into philosophy, generalities or defense against accusations of antisemitism.

Here are some response categories and examples:

• Whataboutism

“What about when [insert other country] did [insert action]?”
“October 7! Rape! Babies in ovens! Kidnapping!”

• Guilt by association

“Why are you defending terrorists?”
“You’re a Hamas lover!”
“You just hate Jews!”

• Appeal to authority (or, emphasis on your lack of authority)

“Your understanding is shallow, stick to topics you know.”
“What is your military expertise?”

• Nerdsnipe / scope creep

“What would you have Israel do instead?”
“What is a proportionate response?”

• Arguing against a point other than the one you made

“Israel has the right to defend itself!”
“Israel has the right to exist!”

• Downplaying or excusing atrocities

“It’s war, people die!”
“So what if people are starving to death, it’s a siege — totally legitimate warfare.”
“There are no innocent civilians, they’re all terrorists”
“Where do those numbers come from? They can’t be trusted!”
“Those aren’t doctors/aid workers/children/etc, they’re all Hamas!”

• Shifting blame and responsibility

“Blame Hamas: human shields, they attacked first, there was Hamas in that mosque!”
“It’s their own fault, they voted for Hamas”
“They didn’t rise up to overthrow Hamas”
“Why don’t [insert Muslim country] take them all as refugees, then no one would die!”
“Want a ceasefire? Tell Hamas to return hostages / stop existing!”

Bassem Youssef gives a fantastic summary on Hasbara — highly recommended.

Here’s another good example of this style of rhetoric in defense of Israel. It’s a vivid illustration of how regurgitated the defenses are — this was published 10 years ago:

Responses to Hasbara

Should you choose to continue the conversation at all, the most important thing to remember is do not let them change the topic or scope. Don’t try to formulate your battle plan as if you are the commander of the IDF. Don’t tell them about all your Jewish friends in an effort to push back against vacuous cries of antisemitism. Do not show them screenshots of all the times you did condemn similar actions in Sudan, Syria, Ukraine.

If you do any of that, they win. Because then you are no longer talking about the very specific point you made about Israel bombing an aid group despite knowing their coordinates and movements ahead of time. That’s all they want. They want to get you off topic, on defense, talking about anything — anything — other than the latest atrocity committed by Israel.

You can neutralize their attempts at Hasbara by identifying what they’re doing and refusing to engage with it: “That’s whataboutism. It’s a logical fallacy and it won’t work here. Please address the point.”

Or even more simply: “Hasbara doesn’t work on me, address the point.”

Note

I actually have great respect for the Jewish tradition of debate and their outsize contributions in all important fields of human advancement. That 0.2% of the human population has won over 20% of Nobel Prizes is astounding and they deserve our respect and gratitude.

The above makes Hasbara even less excusable. It’s one thing to repeat empty talking points and attempt to derail conversations because you don’t have the brainpower to have an intellectually honest conversation. Like the saying about playing chess with a pigeon: they just knock over all the pieces, shit on the board and strut around like they won.

But Jews are not pigeons. Ashkenazi Jews have the highest IQs on average. You deserve contempt if you conduct yourself this way when you know exactly what you’re doing, are capable of doing better, but simply want your opponent to shut up at any cost. It’s cheap. It’s beneath you.

I will not accept this from you, and you shouldn’t accept it either. You’re capable of better.