[benja123]

Israeli here. I don’t want to get into an argument here about the six NGOs, Israel and NSO group. I personally don’t have enough information to make an informed decision on it.

There is one thing I want to clarify though. Hasbara is Hebrew for “explaining” - so when Israelis or any Hebrew speaker say hasbara it literally means “explaining” their point of view. Now more often or not, Israelis and Hebrew speakers actually complain that “our governments Hasbara/explanation was garbage” or “wow, we did a really poor job explaining ourselves there”.

When you put it into that context, you need to understand from an Israeli/Hebrew speaker point of view “hasbara” is not a bad thing at all - it’s a necessity regardless of if you are pro or anti Israel.

Unfortunately people who don’t understand Hebrew have turned a common Hebrew term into a derogatory attack against any Israeli or pro Israeli individual and this extremely problematic for so many reasons I won’t get into now.

Regardless, every time you accuse someone of “hasbara” you are actually just accusing them of explaining themselves or their point of view and since it is everyone’s right to be allowed to explain their point of view - you really aren’t accusing them of anything bad at all.

[sudosysgen]

Hasbara refers to simply explaining the same way that Islam refers to mere submission. When people are talking about Hasbara with an uppercase H they are referring to government PR programs - ie, propaganda.

[joelbluminator]

It's yet another tool in the "destroy Israel" toolbox; prevent Zionists from speaking up or defending themselves. If someone says anything remotely positive about Israel (even if it's real) it's "Hasbara", some kind of black magic. Already it's increasingly difficult to identify as pro Israel in American colleges, slowly but surely it's happening.