Israeli Hasbara is Dead, Long Live American Hasbara for Israel!

by Boaz Lieberman, Strategic Crisis Management Advisor, translated by Hillel Fendel.

Over the past years we have grown accustomed to analyze American politics via "sides:" Trump or Biden? Republicans or Democrats? Israel supporters or opponents?

But behind the daily headlines hides a much more complex reality than that, and whoever doesn't understand this is liable to wake up in a few years and find that Israeli-American relations stand upon weaker foundations than they thought – and dangerously so.

The biggest mistake that Israel can make today is to believe that our strategic relationship with the U.S. is guaranteed forever, simply because of inertia. This is not at all certain; the relationship requires maintenance, investment, and deep understanding of the changes that American politics is undergoing.

For years, the Democratic party has been in a clear process of distancing itself from some of its traditional policies towards Israel. A new generation of activists, Congressmen, and media personalities is now adopting positions that view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the glasses of balance of power, colonialism, and ethnic identities. For them, Israel is no longer a small country fighting for its survival, but a strong state that they see as part of the network of Western powers.

On the other hand, there is certainly no need to eulogize Democratic support for Israel. Many parts of the Democratic establishment still see Israel as a vital American ally. They may be using different terminology and even tones, but they are not all enemies of Israel.

At the same time, within the Republican Party too, a deep change is taking place. The conservative right of Ronald Reagan was an international, activist right that was very willing to activate American force around the world when necessary. The movement that Donald Trump is leading is not the same thing; though not necessarily isolationist, it does make sure to constantly ask before every decision: Does this directly serve American interests?

This is where two names come into the picture – the two most significant figures in the post-Trump era: Marco Rubio and JD Vance.

Secretary of State Rubio represents the more traditional conservative viewpoint. He sees Israel as a strategic asset of the first degree in the struggle against Iran, China, Islamic terrorism, and anti-Western axes.

Vice President Vance, on the other hand – 13 years younger than Rubio – is a man of the new generation of Republicans. He is not anti-Israel, but views the world from the vantage point of the typical middle-class American, and primarily wants to know what he or she would like.

Israel cannot afford to take sides in this succession struggle.

With Rubio, we must speak the language of national security, technology, intelligence, and the struggle against Iran. With Vance, we must speak an entirely different language, and present the position that Israel is not a burden on the United States, but rather an asset that saves it from fighting wars, losing soldiers, and spending money. Israel does not ask for American troops, but rather fights on its own against forces that threaten, inter alia, American interests.

Yet alongside the political challenge, Israel also faces an even greater trial: the loss of influence in the arena of public opinion. And this brings us to the part that Israel still refuses to understand: The old-style Israeli Hasbara (PR and image-building) is dead.

For years, we thought the way to convince the world was to send a spokesperson to a studio, present a map, show a video, and explain why we are right. This method worked in the era of institutionalized media, when the public received information through a limited number of television channels and newspapers. The world of 2026 looks completely different. America's Gen Z does not learn about Israel via CNN or Fox news, but rather through TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts. They don't listen to official spokesmen, but rather to people they trust from social media.

Israel must therefore shift away from traditional Hasbara, to "diplomacy of influence."

Instead of sending Israelis with perfect English to talk on TV, we must invest in forming a broad coalition of Americans who will speak for Israel, in American. No longer must there be Israeli hasbarah; there must be American hasbarah for Israel!

The voices that should lead this campaign need not necessarily be Israeli ambassadors or politicians. They must rather be former American combat soldiers or officers, influential conservatives, Evangelical leaders, hi-tech personalities, parents who are concerned about campus anti-Semitism, professors, conservative Hispanics, and moderate Democrats.

When an American explains to another American why Israel is important for U.S. security, the message is heard ten times louder than when an Israeli explains this.

And our second mistake is this: focusing on Washington, D.C. exclusively.

The real battle for the future of Israeli-U.S. relations is taking place today on university campuses: at Harvard, Columbia, Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, and the like. It is there, and not in "traditional American support for Israel," that the consciousness of the coming decade's journalists, judges, members of Congress, and governors is being shaped.

If Israel does not invest its efforts there now, this year, it will discover in ten years that the problem is not who sits in the White House, but what the American public itself thinks.

For this reason, a new pro-Israel strategy is required, based on three principles: strengthening bipartisan support for Israel, among both Democrats and Republicans; building a deep "network of influence" within American society in its entirety and not just in the political system; and replacing traditional Hasbara sources with authentic American voices.

Israel need not choose between Vance and Rubio, or between Republicans and Democrats. It must simply choose America – all of it. Maintaining that broad alliance with America in general was historically one of Israel’s greatest strategic successes ever since its establishment. In the current polarized, raucous, and rapidly changing world, our strategy for the decades to come must be the return to that comprehensive approach.

Waking Up from a Scary 30-Year-Old Dream

by Boaz Lieberman, Strategic Crisis Management Advisor, translated by Hillel Fendel.

There are singular occasions in history when a particular reality is totally, and abruptly, replaced by another. This is precisely what happened to Israel during the current war with Iran and its underlings such as Hizbullah. Not only has there been a military change, but also a 30-year-old deception has collapsed before our very eyes.

For decades the Israeli public has been inculcated with the fear of regional war. Every time the possibility of war with Iran was even raised, the TV studios were immediately inundated with the same commentators and experts who explained why we simply could not even entertain such a scenario. They warned us that it would bring destruction upon us, including financial collapse and thousands of rockets that would wipe out entire cities. Nothing short of an apocalypse.

This conception of fear became an axiom of our beliefs. The message was drilled in repeatedly for three decades: Israel can fight only limited wars, whereas a full-scale regional war was a red line we could simply not cross, because its price would be, literally, unbearable.

And then reality arrived:

Israel strikes deep inside Iran. Hizbullah joins the campaign. Iran launches missiles. And the Israeli home front, with all the difficulties and tensions, continues to function! The economy does not collapse. Israeli society does not fall apart. The public does not panic – and actually shows strong resilience.

Businesses continue to operate. People go out to work. Children laugh and play in the streets between sirens. And it's not because of apathy. It is rather a deep Israeli trait of standing firm under pressure.

The gap between reality and that which we were so dramatically warned of is tremendous. We were taught that if Israel dared to confront Iran directly, a regional catastrophe would erupt. But the current reality teaches us something quite different. Israel is far from a fragile state. It is a regional power with a strong army and advanced defense systems, as well as a society with exceptional resilience.

Of course, war is always difficult. There are casualties, fear, and disruptions. But that is truly a far cry from the scenes of calamity that were sold to the public for years.

This is precisely where the great lie of the past thirty years is revealed. It is not necessarily a deliberate lie. It could be simply a worldview that hardened and became an accepted truth. An entire system of security, media, and academia began to believe in it itself. And this is how "conception" - or more precisely, "misconception" – is created.

It did not influence only our public opinion. It affected policy as well. It encouraged overcautiousness, putting off conflicts, and unending attempts to "contain" threats instead of definitively neutralizing them.

And another thing that this war has revealed is something no less disconcerting. It revealed the failure of the security-commentating industry in Israel. For years, the same analysts, many of whom are retired generals and the like, have been appearing almost every night on our TV screens. They dissected every movement made by the IDF and our enemies – and it turns out that they are wrong almost every step of the way in their main prognoses.

They warned of hundreds of missiles a day; the reality is much lower. They warned of economic collapse; actually, the economy continues to function. They spoke of panic on the home front; in practice, public resilience is the name of the game.

It's not that we can gloat. Mistakes happen. But when the same mistakes repeat themselves again and again, over the course of many years, we are obliged to ask: Who determines the security discourse in Israel? Is it the army? The Mossad? The Shabak?

Sadly, no. In recent decades, the Israeli media has become an almost exclusive platform for a small group of commentators – and they set the tone. Most of them come from the same social networks and the same worldview. Instead of representing and inviting intellectual diversity, they formed a closed club. Predictably, with everyone thinking the same way, the mistakes that they invariably make in direction and conception find no one left to correct them.

The result, then, is a public that has been fed extreme and chilling forecasts. The "pre-conceptions" had become set too deeply. Only when actual reality happens differently than had been predicted, do we wake up to see that we were wrong all along. Inner Israeli strength is greater than we were told, our military prowess is better than we thought, and even the Iranian threat, as grave as it was, turned out not to be the end of the world.

This also provides an important lesson for the future: Israel cannot afford to continue to wage its security policies based on fear. A country surrounded by enemies cannot base its strategies on reticence to fight when necessary. Our history actually teaches the exact opposite: True deterrence happens not when we try to "contain" the enemy, but when he understands, on his own flesh, that we are not afraid to wage even the largest-scale conflicts.

The current war is far from over, and we can't yet give out grades. But one thing we do know already, and that is that a long-standing myth has been broken. We are no longer afraid of a regional war – not because war is easy, but because both our military and our society are much stronger than we have been told for too many years.

And perhaps the most important lesson is simply an intellectual one: A country must be wary of its own "conceptions." These are liable to take over the public discourse, our national security thinking, and then our actual decisions. Doing so through warped glasses is very dangerous indeed.

Thirty years of media defense commentary have taught the Israeli public to fear a regional war. But we are now learning something completely different. Sometimes the greatest threat is not the enemy before you, but the stories they tell you on television.

Israel's Enemies Leverage Our Internal Turmoil

by Boaz Lieberman, Strategic Consultant, translated by Hillel Fendel.

Among the many tasks we face, we must remember the ultimate, nefarious goals of our enemies, and not let our internal discord serve their interests.

Israel is presently at one of its most stormy and complex junctions in its history. The international geopolitical reality is marked by instability, rapid regional changes, and both new and old-style threats upon us. It is therefore most vital that we strengthen our sovereignty and national clout, both militarily and economically, to ensure the country's security and its future.

Ever since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, it has encountered many challenges – but the current internal strife of today is that which is liable to become our most dangerous threat. When Israel was first formed, its leaders did not fail to understand that the national interest must always take precedence over internal disputes. They had plenty of deep ideological differences among themselves, but they were able to unite around a clear national vision of the importance of a strong, independent, Jewish state in the Land of Israel.

What is needed today is precisely the same thing: a leadership that can place the national interest at the absolute top of the agenda, and concentrate on reinforcing our sovereignty and the uncompromising defense of our security and territorial integrity.

Ever since Oct. 7^th – Simchat Torah of 2023 – Israelis, and parts of the world, have become more acutely aware of the true dreams and goals of the Palestinians. The popular, laundered phrase "Two States for Two Peoples" has all but camouflaged what they really want and are working towards: not two states, but one state – and that it must not be Jewish. This understanding must stand at the basis of any and every future strategic decision of Israel, and it must strengthen our resolve to protect our existence at all costs.

The controversy surrounding legislation passed by a democratically elected government is an example of how the internal debate has reached a new, dangerous peak. It also underlines the danger that enemy states and others will exploit the protests against the government to deepen the social divide in Israel.

It is incumbent upon the protestors – popularly called the Kaplanistim because most of their demonstrations take place at the Kaplan Junction in Tel Aviv – to prepare for this eventuality. They must realize that their actions, albeit legitimate in a democracy, can serve as a tool in our enemies' hands to harm us in a far more sinister and dangerous manner than the actions that they are protesting against. Yes, their aspiration to strengthen governance and stabilize our democracy is necessary, but the intense public disputes surrounding this issue create national vulnerability. Israel's enemies utilize this strident discord to seek to weaken us, whether through psychological tactics, cyber-attacks and the like.

As Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman wrote in his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow," emotionally-influenced decisions are liable to endanger strategic considerations in the long run. Israeli politics require, today more than ever, calm, cool, and collected decision-making, based on a clear strategic view and an accurate perception of reality that is ready to deal directly with the threats the country faces.

The concept of singularity promoted by Ray Kurzweil emphasizes the great potential of technological advancement alongside the danger that its rapid acceleration will lead to unforeseen and irreversible changes in human life. Israel must become a national leader in advanced technology, not only in order to protect itself from future threats, but also to leverage its economic advantages and guarantee long-term financial growth. It must adopt an economic model based on entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic freedom – again, not only to strengthen Israel's economy, but also to enable Israel to better cope with global and regional pressures.

In his book "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind," Yuval Noah Harari notes that societies that succeeded in maintaining a common, robust narrative were able to survive and thrive throughout history. A clear national narrative, based on our Jewish and Zionist identity, can be the central factor that will enable Israel to get through this internal divide. Our State requires a renewed vision of its national identity, and a stronger unity around certain basic values: Judaism, love of the homeland, respect for our national legacy and culture, and an understanding of the importance of our independence and sovereignty.

Historically, it is clear that peoples succeed in meeting external challenges when they are united around clear national values. A valiant and focused leadership that understands the necessity of national resilience and ability to withstand threats is what is necessary at this time. It is incumbent upon this leadership to realize its responsibility to find the way to bridge over the gaps and create a mutual basis of agreement regarding the State's long-term objectives.

Today, more than ever, Israel must reconnect with its roots, strengthen its Zionist and national values, and guarantee a stable and thriving economy that will enable us not only to survive but also to thrive and grow in a turbulent and intricate Middle East.