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You are missing the point, people don’t use it because it’s the Hebrew word. Hasbara is a crucial part of Israeli strategy to expand its borders and maintain it
by DSingularity 5y ago
You are missing the point, people don’t use it because it’s the Hebrew word. Hasbara is a crucial part of Israeli strategy to expand its borders and maintain its dominance of the Palestinian people. Hasbara is all about (1) obfuscating the settler-colonial nature of Israel and (2) white-washing Israeli military war crimes in Gaza and occupied territories. It’s telling that the achievement which launched the political career of the current prime-minister was astroturfing Wikipedia to promote Zionism and Israel. This stuff is important to Israel it’s not just propaganda to promote is hasbara to enable.
The nature of hasbara has features which warrant distinguishing it from propaganda. For example it seemingly exclusively relies on astroturfing. That’s useful to know that there are organizations giving students fellowships [1] to promote these efforts. Another feature is in the objective. Unlike generic propaganda, the objective isn’t to promote domestic nationalism, counter competing ideologies, or to demotivate foreign adversaries. The objective is obfuscating the settler colonial nature of Israel and white-washing Israeli military war crimes.
To me, this warrants calling these efforts by what the Israelis call it.
1. https://hasbarafellowships.org/ https://hasbarafellowships.org/
- joelbluminator 5y agoYeah ok man ...was nice talking to you.