 Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel Daniel Rosalier if it's if it's your first time Welcome to the channel if it's not your first time welcome back if it's not your first time you will notice that I have mixed up the production instead of you looking at my Bookshelf on my books. You're looking at my delightful face on a white background. I'm just kidding of course My friend actually did recently say I need to up the production value on my vlog So I've actually gone ahead and done exactly the opposite. I am using this time a Reporters microphone. I know it looks a little bit ridiculous and using something like a lav mic is Much more common, but I personally really like this microphone. So I'm gonna use it for this vlog Anyway, you didn't come here to hear about Microphone stuff if you clicked on this title. So let me get into it. What I want to talk about in this video blog is why I personally do not support has brought or Really is real advocacy. I would almost say now This is definitely a minority opinion and I guess it's actually partially for that reason. I'm putting it on YouTube because Everyone has a couple of things that they see differently from the consensus I don't have that many but this is definitely one of them and what I mean by that really is that I Would consider myself broadly in the pro-Israel camp. I did move here from Ireland To live in Israel and that already is enough for probably 95% of the world to say that guy's pro-Israel, right? If you move to live here From the Jewish diaspora or from anywhere over that matter you kind of endorse to a certain extent Israel now I've talked about before that my decision to make aliyah To move to Israel was because I think that it's the place to be for Jews, I think it was amazing thing to happen in modern Jewish history But I've tried to articulate this belief of mine that I don't necessarily Think and I think it's a pity that it's perceived this way that by making aliyah you sort of become That has brought has become sort of such an ingrained part of the Jewish identity that it's almost like It's it's it's so normative now that if you do if you're Jewish and especially if you make aliyah You must be into has brought you must be You know sort of an unquestioning advocate for Israel and I find those that sort of Chain really strange My politics I mean so what do I think about Israel just to sort of clear this aid before I go further? I'm probably on the left of the Israeli political spectrum or at least as it's defined now as it's defined nowadays Which has shifted to the right in in recent years. I'm personally Support the two-state solution Think that what Israel's doing currently in the West Bank is not sustainable justifiable moral And that's really my hope and it's not really sort of even really a I'd say benign hope for the Palestinians that they have their own state I just need I think that we and they need the best and most hermetic separation Possible and that that's best achieved in the form of some kind of statehood for the Palestinians and anything that undermines that on Israel's part is deconstructive of course the Palestinian the terrorism we're seeing at the moment is completely Completely unacceptable etc I'm not a spokesperson for Israel not a spokesperson for the UN I'm just a guy with an opinion speaking into a microphone. So anyway, that's my take on the on the conflict basically Why don't like has brought though? So this is sort of the the dissonance that I would say I see in that I think that most people who define themselves as pro-israel Don't feel this way. So again, that's why I'm sort of putting this out there I did a video blog about this by the way a year ago and I got tired of all the comments both from the pro-israel and pro-Palestine side actually which is sort of Ironic and how we feel about this conflict after living in Israel for seven years the more I live here the less The more tired I'm getting of seeing black and white narratives of seeing extremism From both camps. So I think just seeing all these long live Israel and then free Palestine Comments back-to-back just got a bit exhausting for what it's worth my comments policy going forward I'd I think I've matured a little bit since then I just let people have their spaced event and You know, just put out what they want about their side of the conflict, but When it gets to add hominem attacks I think that's how it's pronounced at hominem at hominem at hominem Attacks on the the person anyway, whether that's me or other commenters. That's where I think the line should be drawn I think that's YouTube's common policy anyway, but that will be what I the one that I sort of try to Enforce on this channel now regarding Hasbra. So firstly, I actually did Hasbra back in the day There's an pro-israel organization in Ireland called the Irish Israel Alliance But before that was founded and I know never had any involvement was that organization There was one called Irish for Israel now. I actually technically very technically started Irish for Israel I bought the domain both of his website and then left the project Pretty early on and handed it over to a guy called Barry Williams who really did all the work for it. So I'm not trying to take credit I'm just saying that back in the day. I'm really talking here back in like, you know When I was in college gosh 2008 so really a long time ago I put up the first iteration that website, you know, did the usual Hasbra stuff I went on a few radio interviews I had a sort of relationship with the Irish embassy the sorry the Israeli embassy in Ireland They sent me on a couple of events And that was it basically that was my involvement in Hasbra, but I did enough of it that I you know wrote the Fact sheets about Israel separation wall isn't really a wall and it's actually mostly fence all that kind of stuff and So I've kind of seen a little bit of that world rubbed shoulders with people in the world of Hasbra Why I've sort of come to believe after living here in Israel that it's not helpful That's another story and that's the one I want to sort of talk about here. I have a list of grievance. I actually have A printout for this vlog and I'm going to just try hit on some of these points So immediate impetus actually it was these Emily Shradder, Yosef and dad these two guys recently who are sort of what what I would put down as classic Hasbra people went on a trip to Ireland to my uncle Send me a link to one of their radio interviews and said, oh, what do you think about this? And I said well really honestly Hasbra is not my scene at all and he was surprised by that Am I I was like, oh, this is this should be an interview. This should be a video I was actually going to do an animation. So I'm doing this instead um Let me just sort of outline my my grievances here. So I think the main problem I see with Hasbra is that it is basically propaganda now People who engage in Hasbra and it's a very very big community and it's a It's a heterogeneous community as well. So you have, you know, Israel the official Hasbra that the state of Israel publicized publicizes through Its ministry strategic strategic affairs and that's another thing that I have personally an issue is I don't think That the Israeli taxpayer should be funding Hasbra. I think it should be absolutely funding Israeli professional diplomacy And I think that the work of bb during the bb government To undermine the work of the diplomatic court was very harmful to Israel's interest Nevertheless, I don't think that we the Israeli taxpayers should be picking up the tab for this kind of more Propaganda type messaging and that's where I see the line being being drawn So people who do Hasbra will tell you, you know, Hasbra literally means it comes from the word in Hebrew the verb in Hebrew Le Hasbir Le Hasbir means to explain and Hasbra is the noun that comes out of that verb and it means sort of an explanation. So Uh, it's used in you know in a day-to-day modern Hebrew people will say what that's a Hasbra Mashu to mean that's a sort of an explanation outlined the topic So but that to me is a semantic point because the way that Hasbra is done Really doesn't give an explanation an explanation to me implies some degree of objectivity or neutrality and the lens through Which Hasbra is done is almost always Extremely one-sided and pro-israel. It's not objective. It doesn't even pretend to be objective So when people in the Hasbra world will tell you well, you know, it's uh, you know, Hasbra is not propaganda It actually means comes from Le Hasbir in Hebrew, which is why I explained that my reaction as well Yeah, that's that's lovely and that's correct. You can open a dictionary and and see that fact But what you're doing is not an objective explanation Um, and that's kind of the first point that I'm trying to articulate here that Any narrative about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the broader Israel-Arab conflict That just presents one side as the endless hero or the endless villain Is in my experience living here and observing this conflict not accurate And that's where and by the way when I attack Hasbra or what I'm trying to do in this in this video blog Um, I think that the opposite of Hasbra Uh, Palestine solidarity campaigns are often as bad if not worse So I'm just engaged more with Hasbra because I'm Jewish So I'm on this side of the of the fence if you will and this is what I see all around me And I feel like it's my issue to discuss about whereas Palestine advocacy is really something that you know And other people do basically, but um, I think they're both one is as bad as the other um And I think that you know, when you're looking at a conflict as complicated as this There's going to be things that Israel does that are wrong and Israel things Things Israel does that are right and the problem I see with Hasbra as it's commonly practiced Is that it always feels to me as the people who become hasbaris and that's a word that we're seeing catching on on the twitter sphere. Um, I believe it was a uh, journalist who wrote an article for Tablet magazine on the curse of bbism Yaakov Hirsch, I believe is his name. I think he coined the term hasbaris. There's no there's no real good word for it in English So I'm I'm pretty happy with that term um, but the way that, uh Hasbaris seemed to operate is that they It's like they've taken an oath that they will defend everything Israel does and they will they will say occasionally Well, you know, Israel is not perfect and no country is perfect And there are these kind of token concessions, but they're really just token concessions they're ultimately going to argue that Israel's right whether it's regarding the proportionality of response to rocket firing gaza or whether it's in response to Uh, the construction of the security wall and that almost becomes uninteresting from the perspective of a debate likewise, the palestinian side in this will say the same thing so That to me already is a reason that as someone my first love if you will was journalism I was originally planning to go into journalism then I got sort of Segwayed into corporate communications, but as some as that's my mindset is I'm interested in discovering the truth I'm interested in debate and anyone that signs up For a worldview that says either israel's always right or israel's always wrong or flip that around The palestinians are always right the palestinians are always wrong is not someone i'm really interested in listening to Or engaging with their debating because I don't think that they're Uh, it's it's it's not a rational actor. It's not a rational person to discuss with so Um, that's the first reason that I think and I think this is another point that I've always felt that hasbara Was kind of at odds with the jewish tradition of debate now if you open the talmud Which is the oral Torah that accompanies the written Torah? You'll see it's full of endless debates and there's very much an open culture of openness Um in Judaism around questioning the prevailing, uh, you know worldviews and challenging and that And that's why the hasbara echo chamber really almost feels a little bit cultish to me because It's kind of like we've shut down or we've closed the door on that whole tradition and said that we're we're going to replace that with Zionism almost as an ideology that supersedes Judaism as You know something that this is our whole identity is based around defending israel and I think that a lot of jews in the diaspora Whose jewish identity is perhaps not so strong By into the Hasbara world to an extent that far exceeds what your average is really Feels about if you ask your average israeli and you take them out for falafel or gold Gold star which is our local beer here. I think you can find a lot of people are pretty moderate and say yeah, israel does some good does some bad Uh, they're definitely, you know, pretty nationalistic and pro-israel patriotic I guess is a better word for that But people aren't necessarily bought into this whole sort of idea that well everything israel does is perfect Because it's very difficult to live in a country And see it from one centimeter and come to see it's pros and it's cons and maintain that kind of a dream that everything israel does is perfect So it's my observation is that hasbara tends to be more popular amongst diaspora jews and even Non- jewish pro-israel fans and I always really question Is this doing any good whatsoever for those of us who do live in israel and are affected by the outcomes Physically of of what goes on and how israel is perceived in the world um So yeah, that's my first point about hasbara It's not grounded in reality because no country is perfect including israel and in its domestic policies and its foreign policies And the hasbara world seems to have sort of adopted this position that everything israel does is perfect and must be defended And a couple of friends in that it where it's sort of tangentially connected to the hasbara world Would actually agree with me and say well that is a form of hasbara We're trying to do something else. So, you know, perhaps there are ways that hasbara can be more tactfully done um, but I see a lot of it falling into this category um The taxpayer investment. I think I mentioned I'm actually on take three of this video So I may mention it if forgive me if I'm repeating myself here The ministry of strategic affairs. I don't think that israel israel's taxpayers should be funding I think that israel's taxpayers should be funding professional diplomacy And I guess one other, you know, I talked earlier about the the translation of hasbara Whether you view it as meaning a propaganda or whether you view it as meaning Explanation and public diplomacy would be another synonym that comes up and public diplomacy I would again argue that public to hasbara As large chunks of the jewish world. I'm talking about organizations like apac um And organizations who really just uh, their mission statement says stand with us. Um, who says we're here to advocate for israel um And I would argue that's not even really public diplomacy public diplomacy is an interesting concept that you know in the Traditional way in which diplomacy was practiced between statesmen and embassies and governments And nowadays we have tools like twitter that allow governments to talk directly to people I think that's very commendable and very important But does that necessarily mean that that communication has to be in the form of Uh, sort of propagandistic Messaging and that's that I would I would I would question that basically so Uh, people will probably argue that hasbara's public diplomacy. Therefore the israeli taxpayers should be funding the professional diplomatic core Whose work again has was shamefully underfunded during the bb era Um, and therefore it should also be funding public diplomacy But I think that that argument Uh, really hinges on whether you think hasbara equates with public diplomacy and I would argue that that's not necessarily the case Um, here's a bigger point about hasbara that bugs me. This comes back to um, this is why I mentioned these two Emily Schrader and yosef adad. Yosef adad is a uh, christian arab from nazareth and I happen to be involved in a Palestinian israeli dialogue group a coexistence group we meet Uh, every couple of months and hang out and have a couple of beers and just get uh, to know one another and these guys really hate yosef adad and I guess Their arguments are pretty much why I don't like it when israel wheels out these uh, these, you know, um, israeli arabs who love israel and say everything israel Does it does is wrong? I'm not saying that these people don't exist. I'm just What I find distasteful about the whole thing Is that it's very very selective it's kind of tokenism and You know israel will be the first person to argue that You can't judge israel by the actions of all its people especially when those are people on the right wing And you can't generalize and then it does the it does exactly that it cherry picks um, a few very integrated israeli arabs who've sort of And it almost feels it almost feels like they're the good arabs, you know, like these guys are palatable And we're gonna rush to do photo ops with them But the story that isn't told is the fact that there is significant discrimination against israeli arabs and significant underfunding in israeli arab communities and they have their own set of issues as well especially violence recently so I've put down in my my notes for this vlog or whatever you want to call it that isn't this kind of just tokenism Basically when we have when we take The good arab or the good bedouin and we bring them out on speaking tours and kind of float them around the world And I guess what my palestinian coexistent group what they take issue is as well Okay, this guy is uh, this the guy feels that way, but this is not necessarily the predominant belief amongst israeli arabs my experience and I I don't really have that much experience as a treat. I don't know if there's polls about this I think there are You know, I hear arabs in their own discourse talk about arabs of 48 and arabs of 67 araba tamania arabain araba saba satin In other words that there's palestinians in the west bank of palestinian israel. So that's always been my understanding of the normative um World view, but then again, I hate when people talk for other groups. So as I'm not in israeli araba I'll just leave it at that. Um, that's what I believe or have heard is there is their internal worldview So, uh, there are of course muslims who voluntarily enlist in the idf, but the um attention that they guess in in, uh, in the world of hasbara Creates this false picture of a perfectly integrated israel. It's almost it's it's really disney land stuff It's kind of you know, I've been living in jewsland for seven years. How much integration Do I see between jews and arabs honestly very little? Um, do you are there a jewish and our friends? Yeah, you'll find some in the city You'll find if you search for it long enough. There's jews and arabs who work together, but meaningful Jews and arabs sitting down with one another having coffee, you know, uh, women in hijabs outside of the kind of small Echo chambers of coexistence groups, which I'm admittedly involved in. I don't really see that There's separate hospital networks separate bus networks separate languages separate nationalistic identities I don't see much integration and again the world of hasbara will cherry pick a few isolated groups people or facts to create this narrative of Israel that I don't think exists. It's kind of to me israel is really a jewish state conservative middle eastern religious jewish states and it kind of wants to Through hasbara create this narrative that it's a perfect bastion of equality Of lgbt rights, etc. And again, it's not that any of these things don't exist Uh, there is a lgbt parade in talafi. No one's denying that fact But it it takes small pockets of the population or minority views And tries to really blow them up to kind of I guess it's I guess it's uh, it's the strategy here Is that it's going to win israel as many friends as possible. But if we hit all those bases, let's talk about lgbt Let's talk about a minority integration. Let's talk about israel's tech prowess. So Israel is is I find it all a bit dishonest finally a lot of Shit, excuse my language, but you know israel receives a lot of crap In the international community a lot of the criticism is an israel in my view is justified with some of it Is at least and then there's a lot that just people flat out hate israel or they don't like jews And you know, it's very far from the case that all criticism of israel is anti-semitic. Absolutely not but some of it is and you know, I've been monitoring the irish conversation around israel for many many years And when israel gets discussed on in ireland and it gets now You don't extrapolate too far I believe always from the internet discourse to real world discourse because a certain type of person That gets on twitter or gets on the journal dot ie and starts posting with israel That's not necessarily representative Of the everyday man. That's someone who feels very wind up about it and is drawn to posting on the internet Um, nevertheless when I do see those discourses about israel in ire in ireland Uh, I see tons of anti-semitism flat out anti-semitism. Sorry, but israel being worse in the nazis jews controlling the world I see kind of crazy stuff just written there on black and white lettering. So I'm very much aware the fact that there is a lot of The anti-israel movement is tinged with anti-semitism. I think anyone who Disagrees is uh, has their eyes closed basically so The whole premise of hasbra rests on this very Jewish logic in a sense that while we can argue with people We can argue our way to success. We can change minds And I think the problem is here that when you're dealing with a rational hatred no amount of rational Argument is going to change the minds of those people A couple of sort of tangential points are firstly people don't like when people try to change their minds Whatever whatever it is is when someone tries to shove some world of your ideology down your throat That generally turns people away rather than draws them closer So I think that the more israel screams kicks and screams that it's the good guy and the Arabs are the bad guy It's just kind of off-putting and there's another point here that I think that It's very hard to say you're the good guy And the other guy is the bad guy endlessly endlessly endlessly without two things happening firstly you come across as kind of self-righteous and smug and I think that turns people off frankly. I think israel's endless narrative, you know, it just it just spent so much time talking about how backward the Arabs are and how advanced israel is and even if it's enlarged and largely Are at least certain elements that that argument to true that israel is more technologically advanced than its neighboring countries Um, I don't actually think it really wins us any friends by constantly saying this um So I think that the more israel and has borris Get themselves worked up, you know telling the world that israel is so good and the palestinians are so bad I'm not convinced that it actually wins us friends. In fact, I'm Suspected actually turns an awful lot of people away because you get the impression that well, you know, israelis are always One always complaining about the way they're perceived in the world And two always telling the world that they're perfect and the palestinians are endlessly bad And uh, yeah, I don't think those are very endearing qualities for third parties who probably the silent majority just sort of Doesn't really feel strongly either way about these really palestinian conflict And yeah, I would turn those criticisms on their head and say the same thing about the pro-palestinian movement um That kind of black and white reasoning from either side. I think probably actually does it does turn people off also from the palestinian side um So I wanted to end this vlog on a constructive note because I don't need to say here's why I think has borra is Stupid and bad and flawed for these various reasons and I've done all that at this point. So I don't my thinking is I want to just give you my worldview about has borra and the question I have jotted down here, which is what do I think we should do instead? So I think israel is a great country. I think israel despite my sort of misgivings about it politically in some respects I think the best answer to has borra Is to let israel's success speak for itself It's like being bullied in in you know in school and to an extent israel is being bullied at the un and on the world stage and you can either fight with the bully or Uh, you can try if the bully is not, you know threatening you or physically harming you And I guess the equivalent of that on the world stage would probably be stuff like uh military You know miss some kind of military lines against israel god forbid or the bds movement Which no government to the best of my knowledge is really Adopting or pushing for though that would be threatening to israel and israeli's live livelihoods I think so long as those lines aren't being crossed And if those lines are being crossed, maybe the best way to deal with it is just through professional diplomatic work on the On the state level and through public diplomacy So I think that it's it's really a pity that so To such a large extent the modern jewish identity has become Israel advocacy go to israel and learn how to argue for israel on Foreign campuses and wage the fight on twitter. I see it as a huge suck Time suck and it gets people embroiled in this really really negative world of online Trolling against israel and hatred and I firstly don't think that's mentally healthy Secondly, I don't think it's it's really a appropriate jewish identity or a great way to inculcate A strong jewish identity. I think of all that time we're spent instead of people seeing it as The way they are going to express their Judaism is through pro-israel advocacy come to israel Make living here Make israel contribute to israel by living here making the best country can possibly be and I think that's a much stronger contribution than Becoming a sort of keyboard warrior for israel in the jewish diaspora Um There are problems in israel and you know, we have poverty problems. We have the cost of living is a huge problem I've talked about on this youtube channel Um, we have enormous challenges here in israel besides all the security stuff And I really feel that israel needs everyone it can get I think that the jewish diaspora is such an incredible Reservoir of talent that the best thing people can do to support israel is moving here by making alaya And I think that that's much more worthy and I think that the more israel succeeds and continues to succeed through that effort That's the loudest answer that one can give to the unjustified hatred that israel gets Continues to receive and will always continue to receive because if we know one thing about anti-Semitism And other forms of bigotry is that they really persist Through the economic through the ages of history. So there's no reason to think this is going to change I think that we can change our approach. I think that we can um If not eradicate haspera entirely then massively massively curtail the amount of time and energy we the jewish people Invest financial resources mental resources emotional resources because all of those resources are finite And I think that they can be directed to much better ends than uh than haspera Uh demands of us and I think that for all the other reasons I outlined as well I just don't think it's constructive I don't think it really probably wins that many friends for israel And I suspect that it pushes a lot of people away actually So, uh, that's my uh, that's my vlog. I think I did write an article about this years ago I'll put the link in the description. Um, if I can find it, um Any respectful comments thoughtful comments, uh, happy to engage with them. Thank you for watching until the next video