Inside Hasbara - Part 2: Empathy as a trojan horse
An investigative series on two elusive hasbara handbooks and the candid strategies they contain, part 2
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A few months ago, I found two rare hasbara handbooks distributed around the early and late 2000s to pro-“Israel” groups in the United States; one meant for college campuses (The WUJS Hasbara), and the other authored by Frank Luntz, a famous polling consultant for the Republican party (the Global Language Dictionary).
In part 1 of this series, we went through the institutional structure of hasbara, how it was disseminated from the literal Hasbara office in “Israel” down to local cells who receive their instructions from them.
I highly recommend you read part 1 first (also contains the PDF downloads):
Today, for part 2, we will be delving deeper into the contents of said books. While the books themselves are now nearing their second decade, the tactics contained inside are eerily similar to what hasbara trolls still profess today — showing that the instructions have not needed to change all that much in some aspects, while breaking completely from the older narratives in others.
While reading through the books to write this part 2 (and hopefully many more parts to come), a specific topic caught my attention: all the references to empathy, and showing empathy. The Global Language Dictionary is not exactly subtle with it; after the introductions and prefaces, chapter 1 literally starts with this wording:
Persuadables won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Show Empathy for BOTH sides!
They even underline and bold it to show how important it will be to the rest of the handbook.
The die is cast straight away. Effective hasbara, we are told, is to show empathy for both sides while one side (the side of hasbara) is dropping tons of bombs on Gaza and indiscriminately killing children, doctors, women — and Palestinians.
Rather, we are faced with fake empathy on both fronts. Fake empathy for Palestine, which is afforded to “Israel” on virtue of being the occupier and in a position of power currently, and fake empathy towards the “persuadable”, because the point is not to rectify the record, but to convince them to become pro-“Israel”. The book is so candid about this that it doesn’t even try to remind the reader about why they support “Israel” in the first place; its goal is simply to create more supporters among the population. It admits as much at the end of that same #1 bullet point, saying:
Indeed, if the heart of your communications is a chorus of finger pointing of “Israel is right, they are wrong” then you will lose more support for Israel than you will gain. Some people who ALREADY support Israel may nod their heads and say “way to go,” but people who are not already supportive of Israel will be turned off.
Admitting in bold letters that the entire point is not to remain in their pro-colony bubble but to create more hasbara soldiers.
One other thing that’s interesting about this short paragraph is that in the current context of the post-October 7 world, we see that hasbara has changed course… on the surface, at least. Today, hasbara influencer accounts on social media do not even pretend to have empathy for Palestinians anymore. To them — and this echoes official statements from “Israel” — all Palestinians are Hamas, and Hamas is bad because it is. Therefore, all Palestinians are bad.
In a two-for-one, here is noted hasbara (and Scottish) troll Eve Barlow retweeting Brianna Wu, another hasbara propagandist who did not even know what a pogrom was before 2023:
The tweet, posted on March 18, is very blatant in its intentions: it compares Hamas (by which she means Palestinians) to make a bigoted point about another marginalized group: people with substance addictions. Who are still people mind you, but Brianna Wu doesn’t see them as people. She sees them as Hamas - deserving of death.
Everything and everyone is Hamas.
Wu goes on to say that “some people [Palestinians] are so captured by a hateful ideology that they do not value their lives or their children’s lives” and that “the responsibility for death today is on Hamas and only Hamas”.
Contrast to the Global Language Dictionary’s wording, quoted verbatim as something one is encouraged to say to “persuadables”:
“Israel is committed to a better future for everyone – Israelis and Palestinians alike. Israel wants the pain and suffering to end, and is committed to working with the Palestinians toward a peaceful, diplomatic solution where both sides can have a better future. Let this be a time of hope and opportunity for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people.”
I’ve written extensively about the genius of the October 7 operation (technically the ongoing Storm of Al-Aqsa Operation), and this is one of its genius outcomes. It has forced the colonial entity’s back against the wall in more ways than one: militarily, diplomatically, and reputationally. Hasbara has now shifted away from feigning empathy for both sides and is now devolving into the most abject and basest fascist string of words. October 7 has opened the belly of the Trojan horse to reveal the soldiers inside.
Mind you, there is still a kernel of continuity between hasbara pre-October 7 and hasbara post-October 7. In both cases, “Israel” pretends that it wants a “peaceful, diplomatic solution”. “Israel” has, since October 7, called for Hamas to unconditionally release the POWs and lay down their weapons. In a twisted way, this is “Israel’s” diplomatic solution.
But what would happen if Hamas — which now encompasses all Palestinians, and not just those in Gaza — laid down their weapons? There would be no resistance left against the occupier, and the IOF would finish the job — that of total annihilation of the Gaza Strip — in just weeks. Armed resistance is precisely what is stopping this scenario, and this is why “Israel” is pushing arguments for the disarmament of Gaza on the grounds of “humanitarian” reasons.
The hasbara continues, it’s just taken on a different form to respond to current developments.
Empathy and sympathy
While the Global Language Dictionary focuses on empathy — the word appears 15 times in the handbook — the WUSJ Hasbara handbook prefers the word sympathy instead.
In some ways, the WUSJ Hasbara handbook appears much more innocent in how it’s written. It was published in the year 2000 for college students, and mostly presents debate tactics to promote “Israel” in a favorable light. They illustrate that sympathy is a double-edged sword, because it can be used to promote sympathy towards Palestinians (by making the extravagant comparison to Holocaust survivors, which has completely fallen flat after 2023).
However, they claim, sympathy also works in “Israel’s” favor. Taking its audience for idiots, the Hasbara handbook lays out quite clearly that one should use simple pictures with only one perspective, because they create sympathy at the base level. Therefore, they will try to use pictures that show IOF soldiers under fire or being… pelted with rocks. Yes, back in the year 2000, this was apparently considered the height of savagery and barbarism: throwing rocks at armed and armored soldiers that have shoot-to-kill permissions.
This correlates with the Global Language Dictionary. On page 15, Luntz puts a pause in the various hasbara tactics he teaches the reader to remind them:
Have I written often enough yet that you need to start with empathy for both sides,
Like the WUSJ book, he also reminds people to KISS, or Keep It Simple, Stupid:
KISS has its applications. In UI design for example, when designers go down a path of trying to overcomplicate their UI in a way only they will understand instead of taking a step back to look at the broad picture.
It doesn’t really have a place in explaining history or current events. This is exactly where you should not be keeping it simple. Unless you believe that people are idiots who cannot think for themselves.
Where is the empathy and sympathy for the targets of these tactics? These books were not written for the unconvinced audience, they were written for the pro-“Israel” audience to use these tactics on the unconvinced. The only reason we know of their existence and can read them is because they were thankfully leaked back in their day.
Pro-“Israel” hasbara trolls see others as a means to an end. What is the goal of creating more pro-“Israel” persuadables? Well, to answer this we can ask: instead of trying to make something happen, what are they trying to prevent?
The answer is dauntingly simple. Hasbara aims to drown out pro-Palestine voices, so as to make the Holocaust easier. If you pretend you don’t see the trains, if nobody says anything about it, then your work gets that much easier and faster.
This is another genius of October 7. There has never been as much vocal support for Palestine as there is now. Even after all of this is over — and it will have to end eventually — things can’t rightly go back to how they were before, with the Luntzes and college students repeating “Israel just wants to live peacefullyyyyyyy why are you not believing meeeeeee”. It won’t work. Nobody will buy it. Nobody buys it right now.
Instead, empathy is now demanded by the pro-“Israel” side, with people like Brianna Wu or VividProwess (neither of whom have any connections to “Israel” except that they might be paid by the hasbara office for their support — notably, Vivid is Indian pretending to be “Israeli” on Twitter) crying every time they get called out for supporting genocide.
While settlers living in the “Israel” colony have a very material reason for supporting genocide and demanding that everything be handed to them (Read: Settler Psychology), one has to wonder why those who choose to support “Israel” when they have no connection to it continue to keep doing so. I could not venture to make a hypothesis at this time.
Because one thing these two books show clearly when they talk about empathy and sympathy is that they don’t believe any of it. For them, everything is about winning debates, gaining points, convincing others in the easiest way possible. It’s not about the truth or actually empathizing with others, it’s about just presenting it. And that is something that has not changed between the time these books were written and October 7 2023.
But with that said, we have not finished our exploration of these two handbooks. Stay tuned for part 3!
Stands to reason about the “both sides”. This creates parity between a genocidal occupier and its victims.