🇮🇱 Israel just quadrupled its PR budget to $730M. Experts say it won’t work.

Spending on image should be “like investing in jets, bombs and missile interceptors,” Israel’s foreign minister says

Lawmakers in Jerusalem approved a 2026 national budget last month that includes roughly $730 million for public diplomacy — the broad category known in Hebrew as hasbara — more than four times the $150 million they allocated the year before. That earlier sum was itself about 20 times what Israel had spent on such efforts before the war in Gaza broke out in 2023.

The unprecedented expenditure comes as survey after survey show declining support for Israel in the United States, its most important ally. A Pew Research Center poll released earlier this month found 60% of Americans now view Israel unfavorably, up seven points in a single year, with only 37% viewing it favorably.

Most striking for a country long accustomed to bipartisan American support: 57% of Republicans under 50 hold negative views of Israel. Support has cratered among the religiously unaffiliated, Black Protestants and Catholics. Among American Jews, support has slipped below two-thirds.

On social media, the Hebrew word “hasbara” has become a dismissive shorthand for pro-Israel advocacy, indicating how widely known Israel’s uphill efforts to shape its image have become.

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, says the country is engaged in a global war for hearts and minds and it must spend accordingly.

“We had a major breakthrough this year, but we must as a country invest much much more,” Sa’ar said in December as the government entered budget deliberations. “It should be like investing in jets, bombs and missile interceptors. In the face of what’s arrayed against us and what’s invested against us, it’s far from enough. This is an existential issue.”

A $50 million international social-media ad buy was split across Google, YouTube, X and Outbrain. Roughly $40 million went to hosting 400 foreign delegations — lawmakers, pastors, influencers, university presidents. A “media war room” was erected to monitor 250 outlets and 10,000 daily Israel-related items.

The Foreign Ministry also signed a $1.5-million-a-month contract with former Trump campaign strategist Brad Parscale’s firm to deploy AI tools against antisemitism online, a $4.1 million campaign aimed at evangelical churches, and the “Esther Project,” a paid influencer network running up to $900,000 through a PR firm called Bridges Partners.

🔗 https://forward.com/fast-forward/821680/israel-just-quadrupled-its-pr-budget-to-730m-experts-say-it-wont-work/