Like so many other words, it has suddenly become a part of people's vocabulary without any understanding of what it means, its history, not any thought into why the word has suddenly appeared everywhere.
Like so many other words, it has suddenly become a part of people's vocabulary without any understanding of what it means, its history, not any thought into why the word has suddenly appeared everywhere.
Hasbarah is a waste of time. All it does is undermine IsraelтАЩs legitimacy. Because real countries donтАЩt have to argue they are legitimate, HasbarahтАЩs one function is to deny Israel is a real country with real problems that need dealing with. . . . Next week, when we justly celebrate Israel completing its 71st year of existence, letтАЩs do it the real justice it deserves and stop trying to justify it."
But, of course, other real countries do not have still other real countries, let alone millions of private individuals all over the world, insisting that they are illegitimate. The war for public opinion is as real as any war Israel has had to fight on the battlefield, and not one that it would be well-advised to run away from. As long as hasbarah relies on argument and reason, as it traditionally has done, rather than on threat and imprecation, it has its rightful place.
Like so many other words, it has suddenly become a part of people's vocabulary without any understanding of what it means, its history, not any thought into why the word has suddenly appeared everywhere.
Columnist Anshel Pfeffer wrote in Haaretz:
Hasbarah is a waste of time. All it does is undermine IsraelтАЩs legitimacy. Because real countries donтАЩt have to argue they are legitimate, HasbarahтАЩs one function is to deny Israel is a real country with real problems that need dealing with. . . . Next week, when we justly celebrate Israel completing its 71st year of existence, letтАЩs do it the real justice it deserves and stop trying to justify it."
But, of course, other real countries do not have still other real countries, let alone millions of private individuals all over the world, insisting that they are illegitimate. The war for public opinion is as real as any war Israel has had to fight on the battlefield, and not one that it would be well-advised to run away from. As long as hasbarah relies on argument and reason, as it traditionally has done, rather than on threat and imprecation, it has its rightful place.
https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/israel-zionism/2019/05/the-real-meaning-of-hasbarah-and-hasbarah/