“Israel doesn’t need a better image. It needs to win.”

This is the best argued piece I have seen on the false premise – the foundational premise – that the Jewish people cling to, “the national obsession with explaining and justifying ourselves to the world.” It’s pathetic.

It best articulates what I and a handful of others have vocalized and fought for for years – dignity and the right to live free as proud Jews, unapologetically. Defending yourself against annihilationist savages is not “far right” – it is the only moral and rational response.

What follows is a superb essay. Read the whole thing (link continues, scroll down.)  Thanks to Paul Schnee for bringing it to my attention.

As one commenter pointed out:

Superb piece of writing, and whilst it points out what’s gone wrong, there is one paragraph that summaries what should be done.

‘What we should be saying is, “You kidnapped our civilians. You slaughtered our children. You refused to return the living or the dead. This is war. And in war, there are consequences. You do not get to butcher thousands, hold our people underground, and then demand food. If you want to eat, surrender. If you wish to drink, release the hostages. You brought this on yourselves. And you will pay until it ends. That is justice.”

Israel doesn’t need a better image. It needs to win.

By: Yonatan Daon, May 30, 2025:

In the aftermath of last week’s senseless murder of two Americans outside of a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C., some public voices have once again turned to Israel’s perceived failure in the realm of “Hasbara” — a Hebrew term loosely translated as “public diplomacy” but better understood as the national obsession with explaining and justifying ourselves to the world.

The suggestion, whether directly or simply implied, is that we are not doing enough to explain ourselves, that part of what enables these atrocities is the erosion of Israel’s global standing and image.

This essay challenges that entire framework.

Not because there’s no value in speaking clearly or countering lies, but because “Hasbara” has become a substitute for moral clarity and decisive action. We are fighting a war not only on the battlefield but within ourselves: a battle of hesitation, of trying to justify every move before making it, of shaping perception while abandoning purpose.

“Hasbara” is not failing because we’re not creative enough. It’s failing because the very things we are trying to “explain” our self-restraint, our drawn-out campaigns, and our moral confusion should not be happening in the first place.

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In times of war, the battlefield is not just a military arena; it is the stage upon which moral judgment is formed. The world doesn’t shape its opinion based on what Israel says, but on what Israel does. And if what we do is uncertain, hesitant, or self-contradictory, then no amount of “Hasbara” can rescue the perception that follows.

When Israel acts with moral clarity and military decisiveness, it does’t need to “explain” itself. The 1967 Six-Day War, Operation Entebbe, and Operation Opera — these actions, among others, carried their own logic and justice. There was no need to plaster social media with carefully worded talking points. The world understood.

But when a war drags on for months, when there is visible hesitation, when footage shows restraint that seems absurd in the face of ongoing barbarism, then we lose the moral high ground, not because we are right yet misunderstood, but because our actions no longer reflect that we believe in our own rightness.

And the enemy sees it. Gaza, Hezbollah, Iran: They understand that Israel is obsessed with global perception. They exploit it ruthlessly. They stage humanitarian crises, they weaponise civilian suffering, and they produce content for Western consumption. They don’t care about world opinion, they manipulate it. Because they know we care. And we’ve trained them to know it.

“Hasbara,” in this context, becomes an act of narrative management. But the reality is that you cannot manage a story which contradicts the facts on the ground. People are not stupid. They can sense confusion. They can smell fear. They can tell when a state is not sure of itself. And if we’re not sure of ourselves, why should they take our side?

The battlefield always comes first. If our actions reflect justice, strength, and moral confidence, the world might not like it, but it will understand it. But if we fight with one hand tied behind our back while the other is tweeting apologetically, we lose twice: once on the field and once in the mind.

We keep trying to explain ourselves as if we’re in a rational conversation. But we’re not. The West today is not engaged in a truth-seeking dialogue. It is trapped in a postmodern fog where truth is no longer a standard, and morality has been flipped upside down.

In this world, it doesn’t matter what happens. What matters is who appears to suffer. Who cries louder? Who posts to social media first?

Israel tries to argue that we are defending ourselves, our civilians, and our right to exist. But these arguments fall on deaf ears — not because they’re false, but because the audience has lost the tools to process truth.

Concepts have been reversed. “Genocide” is now defined by casualty counts without context. “Resistance” means the right to butcher civilians. “Ceasefire” doesn’t mean peace; it means saving the enemy from defeat.

The West no longer asks: “Is this true?” It asks: “Does this fit my narrative?” And if it doesn’t, it is rejected, censored, or “deconstructed.”

“Hasbara,” in this climate, is hopeless. It’s like bringing a legal brief to a witch trial.

And that’s exactly what we did. We stood before the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, grovelling in fake tribunals that masquerade as courts of justice. We treated moral inversion as if it could be reasoned with and gave legitimacy to the absurd idea that we must defend ourselves for defending ourselves.

You cannot reason with people who reject the very concept of reason. You cannot explain justice to those who believe justice is a colonial construct. You cannot win a moral debate in a culture that denies moral objectivity.

Every second we spend explaining ourselves to this worldview is not only a waste of time; it’s a strategic error. We validate their premises simply by engaging.

And, while we craft careful statements, our enemies post a single image. They understand the game. They know there’s no logic, proportion, or context; just accusation. And they play it better than we do because they are unburdened by truth.

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The erosion of reason might explain the confusion. But confusion alone does not explain celebration. What we are witnessing is not mere ignorance or bias; it is an open alignment with barbarism. It is a culture that has not simply lost its way but now cheers for evil.

On October 7th, before Israel responded significantly or a single tank had crossed into Gaza, Western voices were already justifying, and in some cases celebrating, the murder, rape, and kidnapping of Jews.

At elite universities, student groups put out statements praising the Gazan atrocities as “resistance.” Professors rationalised the killings. Posters of kidnapped Israeli children were torn down. Palestinian flags were raised. Jewish students were attacked, threatened, harassed, spat on, and told they deserved it.

And what did the university presidents do? They mumbled about “free speech” and “complexity.” When pressed under oath in Congress, they refused to say whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their codes of conduct. The institutions supposedly tasked with educating the next generation had become morally illiterate.

But it’s not just the radical Left. The collapse cuts across the spectrum. On the reactionary Right, populist influencers have either platformed open antisemites or played footsie with conspiracy theorists who treat October 7th as a false flag or Jewish provocation. English media personality Piers Morgan, masquerading as a centrist, has spent countless hours interrogating Israelis for defending themselves while giving soft interviews to the very people who justify Gaza’s war.

X has become a sewer of ideological filth from all directions, where antisemitism cloaks itself in the language of “anti-colonialism” on the Left and “anti-globalism” on the Right. Everyone thinks they’re fighting the establishment, and somehow, they all land on the same conclusion: The Jews are the problem.

This is what happens when a civilisation abandons moral clarity. When justice is rebranded as oppression, when identity is everything and values are nothing, victimhood becomes a blank cheque for violence.

And in this environment, “Hasbara” is not just ineffective; it is laughable. We are not in a debate. We are in a civilisational breakdown. You cannot explain anything to people who have already chosen sides against you.

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There is something even worse than “Hasbara’s” failure to persuade. It is the way “Hasbara” is now weaponised against Israel itself, not by our enemies, but by our own so-called defenders.

Well-meaning and talented figures are quick to tell the world how Israel is the only liberal democracy in the region, how we allow aid into Gaza, how we do everything by the book. But they are just as quick to scold Israeli ministers when they speak with clarity.

When Israel Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that Gaza must be destroyed, something morally obvious in the wake of October 7th, it was not just foreign journalists who panicked. It was the Israeli “Hasbara” class. They demanded we walk it back, apologise, and clarify. Why? Because his statement might “be used against us.”

This is what “Hasbara” has become: a tool for censorship and self-policing. Not to protect the country, but to preserve the image of the country as imagined by people who want us to be nice, restrained, and perpetually sorry.

It teaches the enemy something significant: that we will not stand by our own leaders. We will disown our own moral clarity if it makes us uncomfortable with the BBC. That our spokespeople will run ahead of our soldiers, not to support them, but to apologise on their behalf.

What does this say about our posture as a nation? Why should the world respect us if we don’t respect our own convictions? Why should our enemies fear us if we publicly shame anyone who speaks the truth about what must be done?

This is not diplomacy. It is weakness masquerading as communication: a narcissistic obsession with appearing good, rather than a moral commitment to being good and doing what is right.

There is something deeply tragic in this dynamic. It evokes not equivalence, but an echo of a much older pattern: the Jew who is faced with overwhelming hatred believes that, if he just explains himself well enough, he might be spared. Not out of malice but out of fear, pride, or habit, he takes on the burden of defending the indefensible, of sanitising horror into something “understandable.” In darker times, this instinct took the form of the Judenrat: Jewish councils under Nazi rule, trying to negotiate with evil.

Today, thankfully, we are not under Nazi occupation. We are a sovereign nation with a powerful army. And yet, some of us still behave as if we are pleading for our lives. As if the right turn of phrase could win mercy. As if the world is a tribunal, we must constantly persuade.

This is not survival. This is surrender in a suit and tie.

Continue reading here. Do it……