Who’s Talking? Who’s Listening

I write this as a political journalist, an Irishman born in Dublin, now an Israeli living in Tel Aviv. Perhaps most of all, I write this as a father of two young Jewish Israeli children. I also write this with good intentions, though I suspect Irish friends may view it as a dark act in itself, and some journalists may not see it as journalism at all but as advocacy.

Many, I imagine, will be annoyed by much of what is written. It comes with the territory.

So, first, a definition.

Hasbara (הַסְבָּרָה), literally “explanation,” refers to efforts by the Israeli state and its advocates to explain or justify Israel’s policies to international audiences.

Every state has the right to explain itself and communicate its interests. But let’s be honest: the word “Hasbara” today is, at best, extremely loaded, if not badly tainted. Perhaps the biggest problem with Israeli Hasbara is that much of it is neither very good nor, presumably, very effective.

Maybe because of this, Haaretz recently reported that agents working on behalf of the Israeli state are apparently flooding social media with hasbara talking points from “websites designed to look like institutes and think tanks” in the belief that they can meaningfully outsmart the output of AI chatbots.

It begs the question, is it working?

I recently asked ChatGPT to list the best and worst Hasbara talking points. To me, at least, the answers were unconvincing. Perhaps Hasbara agents are deluded about the veracity of their own arguments.

Those arguments, of course, have diverse target audiences. A biblically knowledgeable but geographically unfamiliar Middle America is not receptive to the same talking points of a multicultural, secular European left.

So here goes. As an adopted Israeli – and bypassing ChatGPT – from the worst to the potentially effective.

“There is no Occupation.” It’s “Disputed Territory”. Delusional. You cannot erase political geography with rhetoric and semantic dodge.

“The IDF is the most moral army in the world.” In the face of allegations of genocide in Gaza, and the horrific images beamed into homes for two years, this reads as tone deaf at best, self-parody at worst. The lack of accountability for........

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