Hasbara Needs a Mossad Mindset

Every time Israel is under attack, the panic—and the commentary—come fast: Why is our marketing so bad? How can the Start-Up nation that developed Waze and Iron Dome still fail at Hasbara? This isn’t a new critique, and lately even voices far outside the geopolitical sphere are calling it out. Caitlyn Jenner, in Israel last week for Tel Aviv Pride, put it bluntly in an interview, “To be honest, I think you have a marketing problem.” This wasn’t deep political analysis, but when public figures with no stake in the conflict point out the crisis, something is clearly broken.

The word Hasbara gets blamed a lot. If I had a shekel for every time I heard, “If you have to explain yourself, you’ve already lost…” But the real failure isn’t linguistic—it’s strategic. Our adversaries have spent decades preparing audiences to receive their message. We show up in the 90th minute, shouting only to one another and calling it advocacy.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Israel’s national story, we’re seeing what real strategy looks like. Mossad’s long-term operations in Iran—years of deliberate, incremental groundwork—led to tangible outcomes. Real strategy is slow, intentional, and built for impact—not attention. That’s the mindset Hasbara needs. Because what we’re up against isn’t just misinformation—it’s a decades-long strategic audience development. And we’ve barely started.

The pro-Israel world still operates in an echo chamber, investing energy into persuading those who already agree. That’s like collecting information from your own agents and calling it field intel. We double down on messaging crafted for accuracy, not impact—messaging that rarely leaves the room. Worse, while we’ve been talking to ourselves, the rest of the world has been primed to listen elsewhere.

As disinformation expert Warren Kinsella put it bluntly, “The surprise is not that they’ve done it. The surprise has been how receptive the audience has been.” Effective communication holds the audience at its core. And in that regard, our adversaries—global in reach, with Iran at the head—have been strategic and relentlessly patient, acting more like intelligence agencies than activists.

Before pushing their narratives, they’ve spent years building a receptive environment. They reshaped institutions, especially academia—the lifeblood of identity and knowledge. There, they laid ideological foundations, slowly molding spaces where young minds were primed for their messaging. Iran’s Supreme Leader addressed American students directly on X: “Dear university students in the United States of America, you are standing on the right side of history.” This was a direct acknowledgment of the years of embedding an ideological framework in US universities.

Our enemies understand something we resist: persuasion isn’t about truth. It’s about emotional access. But while they had to construct influence in cultures whose values they fundamentally reject, Israel already lives the values it can connect through—democracy, pluralism, human rights. Can manufactured credibility withstand the test of time as the truth inevitably emerges?

Audience development requires long-term commitment and a visionary approach to relationship-building across communities, cultures, and coalitions. We like to believe we have an outreach strategy—but what we actually have is a messaging strategy. Hasbara does not suffer from a content problem, but rather an issue of deployment and audience. We scramble to explain ourselves when a crisis erupts, and neglect the slow, unglamorous work of trust-building—the very kind of groundwork intelligence operatives know is essential. 

That kind of trust is earned through presence, consistency, and care. While some individuals and organizations have made real efforts across communities, that work is often underfunded, deprioritized, or dropped when it doesn’t yield quick results. This is the work of real influence. Mossad doesn’t release mid-op results—they understand patience is a form of power. Hasbara should embrace the same discipline.

To be clear, some grassroots leaders have poured energy into cross-community relationships. Their work deserves acknowledgement and study. We need a clear-eyed autopsy: What worked? What didn’t? Why did so many relationships collapse on October 8? What cracks were already there? Where did we fail to show up before asking others to stand with us?

Just as urgently, we need to understand why some allies stayed—and how those relationships endured. Because communication isn’t just about what’s said. It’s about whether there’s anyone prepared to hear it. We have the right to be heard—and we need to invest more into relational energy to ensure there’s an audience ready and willing to listen. In crisis, we don’t lean in—we retreat into isolation. 

We don’t need better slogans—we need better relationships. That means embracing the slower work of showing up—consistently, relationally, and as people who live their values out loud. The path forward demands deep investment in cross-community engagement at every level: in business, in civic life, in government, and in the everyday places where trust is built and tested. Most of all, it means preparing advocates not to explain, but to connect—people who carry their identity with confidence and are already woven into the fabric of their communities. Because real understanding doesn’t come from explanation. It comes from connection.

If we’re serious about ending the endless kvetching about Hasbara, we need to shift from critique to strategy—by taking audience-building seriously. Through truth, trust, and time. And we need to abandon the resentment-laced refrain: “We were there for them—now they aren’t there for us.” Yes, Heschel marched with Dr. King. But guilt is not a growth strategy. Enduring solidarity cannot be transactional. What we need now is not grievance, but grounded connection—coalitions built on authenticity, integrity, and shared purpose.

Mossad didn’t wait for a crisis—they laid the groundwork to withstand one. That’s the model Hasbara must follow: deliberate, long-term, built to last. If we want Israel’s story to matter beyond the moment, we must stop acting like spokespersons and start thinking like strategists. Fewer flashcards, more fieldwork.