This article is not from Israel’s current assault on Gaza but from the one in 2021. Hasbara is an important topic, though, because it is creeping into Lemmy more and more.

Hasbara can be defined as

Israel’s efforts to communicate directly with citizens of other nations to inform and influence their perceptions, with the aim of garnering support or tolerance for the Israeli government’s strategic objectives.

and this takes the form of people trying to manipulate the public discourse to suit a political agenda, often done on social media.

In the current western political climate, hasbara is used to minimize and / or justify Israel’s occupation and genocide in Palestine, and to excuse or ignore Israel’s blatant and egregious violations of human rights and international law.

Some examples from social media platforms:

Twitter notes

Hasbara App

Facebook

Facebook again

Massive (and distasteful) ad campaign on X and YouTube

Hasbara is used not only on the platform level, but also in person-to-person online communication. Hasbara is a form of propaganda, so logical consistency is not required, as you can see in this recent example of someone arguing in the style of hasbara right here on Lemmy:

I would personally reject this deal.

The Palestinian people do not deserve to live under the rule of Hamas. In 19 years of living under Hamas, after all the money given to them by the US, France, the UK, Qatar, Iran, and even Israel, the only thing they built for the Palestinian people has been tunnels to commit terrorism from.

then when people pointed out the complete inaccuracy of the statement, the commenter pivoted to

Building tunnels as the sole piece of infrastructure for your people is the sole response to a 30 year genocide?

I don’t think that is true, and I don’t believe you think that is true either. It sounded good when you said it though, and I’m sure it felt even better.

Here we can see several hasbara strategies- the commenter feigns concern for Palestine (deception), uses bad faith arguments which are completely made up, moves the goalposts, projects, contradicts themselves, and then tries to gaslight the other person when they get called out.

A hasbara agent tries to keep the other commenter(s) busy defending themselves or correcting the hasbara agent’s ridiculous statements and accusations, so that the original point is forgotten and the hasbara agent’s own dishonest (and often narcissistic) behviour is never addressed.

Some manipulation tactics that are characteristic of hasbara are

• bad faith arguments

• false accusations

• straw man fallacy

• moving goal posts

• deceptive distraction (answering an honest question with a loaded question)

• hypocrisy (especially accusing people of putting words in their mouth, being dishonest, or using any of these listed manipulation tactics while accusing the other party of doing so)

• victimization

• gaslighting

• aggression

• projecting

Hasbara in it’s current form is a method of psychological manipulation ranging from propaganda to historical denialism to calls to violence against obstacles to the Israeli government’s strategic objectives (e.g. “there are no innocents in Gaza”).

Fortunately Lemmy users are usually smart enough to downvote hasbara posts and comments to signal their falsehood, but since hasbara comments spread misinformation, aid human rights violations, and attempt to radicalize people, they should be treated as the abuse they are and reported, blocked, downvoted etc.

Although hasbara actors are a very small, yet very aggressive, minority here, let’s keep Lemmy a safe, fact-based place to exchange knowledge, culture, and opinions.