Please Stop Explaining Israel. It Isn’t Working

There is a sentence repeated around the world with quiet resignation:

“Israel has lost the narrative.”

It is usually followed by a shrug. A sense that the world has made up its mind. That the game is rigged. That nothing can be done.

This is not analysis. It is surrender. I am here to tell the world: Israel has not lost the narrative.

Israel has abandoned it.

Hasbara Is Dead

Let’s say it clearly: the traditional model of Hasbara is over.

It assumes that if Israel just explains itself better, if it produces more facts, more context, more historical timelines, the world will understand.

But we are no longer living in a world where facts lead to conclusions.

We are living in a world where identities determine which facts are even allowed to matter. You cannot fact-check your way out of an identity problem.

And today, Israel has an identity problem.

Israel Has Been Turned Into “Them”

Across large parts of the world, especially among younger audiences, Israel is no longer perceived as a country. It is perceived as a category. A symbol of power. Of colonialism. Of otherness. It has been placed, neatly and efficiently, into the global narrative of “them.”

And once you are “them,” nothing you say is heard on its own terms.

Every action Israel makes confirms the story. Every defensive posture sounds like justification. Every complexity is flattened. This is not a messaging failure. This is a branding failure.

Branding Is Not Spin. It Is Strategy

Branding is often dismissed as cosmetic. As marketing, as PR, as something superficial. That is a profound misunderstanding.

Branding is how a society is felt before it is understood.

It is why the United States is still associated with freedom despite its contradictions. Why France is still seen as the guardian of culture despite its political turmoil. Why Ukraine transformed itself, almost overnight, into a global symbol of defiance.

None of this happened by accident. It happened because narrative was treated as strategy.

Israel, by contrast, has treated narrative as a reaction.

The Bible Understood This First

Long before modern branding, the Jewish story understood the power of narrative.  Take a look at the Old Testament. It’s right there.

The Bible does not argue for the legitimacy of a people. It tells a story that makes that legitimacy felt.

It creates a shared identity out of memory, struggle, and purpose. Though I am sure the authors of the Bible did not mean to do so, that is branding at its most powerful.

Not selling an idea but embedding it.

And yet today, the modern State of Israel, arguably the most extraordinary continuation of that ancient story, has reduced itself to bullet points and press briefings.

The Middle Is Slipping Away

This is where the real danger lies. Not in the activists who already oppose Israel. Not in the ideologues who will never be persuaded. The nuance is found in the middle.

It’s found in millions of people who do not wake up thinking about Israel, but are forming impressions, nonetheless. They, unlike me, are not reading policy papers.

They are absorbing narratives. And right now, the narrative they are absorbing does not include Israelis as human beings. It includes symbols. Headlines. Accusations.

But not people.

Reclaiming the Story

This is where I come in with a new way of looking at Israel. Through the eyes of the Kerem Alliance. Kerem, the Hebrew word for “Orchard,” is not yet another Hasbara initiative.

Not another voice in the same broken conversation.

Kerem Alliance is a strategic pivot. Taking us from explanation to narrative. From defense to identity. Most importantly, from “them” back to “us.”

Kerem Alliance does not believe Israel needs better talking points. We believe Israel needs a coherent story.

What That Means in Practice

It means replacing government-centric messaging with human-centered storytelling. It means elevating voices that reflect the real Israel: diverse, complicated, imperfect, and deeply alive.

It means speaking in values, not just in policies. It means understanding that people do not connect to countries. People connect to people who remind them of themselves.

This Is Not Optional

There was a time when Israel’s legitimacy was anchored in memory. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, in shared democratic values, in geopolitical alignment.

That time is over.

We are now in a global marketplace of narratives. And in this marketplace, silence is not neutral. It is defeat. Branding Israel is not a luxury. It is not vanity. It is not distraction from “real” policy. It is a form of national resilience.

The Choice

Israel can continue on its current path: Explaining itself to audiences that have already decided who and what Israel is.

Or, we can do something far more difficult. We can decide how to tell the Israel story with clarity, consistency, and conviction.

And this is not about winning an argument at an Oxford University debate.

It is about being understood.

In the world we are living in now that may be the difference between isolation and belonging.