The Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry will invest NIS 10 million in a global hasbara campaign, the ministry announced during a Foreign and Hasbara Sub-Committee that discussed the essential nature of Hasbara in a meeting on Wednesday.
The program is aimed at encouraging organizations and companies worldwide to engage in advocacy for Israel, and will be expanded in the near future to allow the companies and organizations to be paid for having volunteers who work in hasbara on their behalf.
The strong need for civilian hasbara was discussed in the meeting which was chaired by National Unity MK Ze'ev Elkin.
Relying on the hasbara mechanism
"The diplomatic mechanism relies on the hasbara mechanism," he said. "Success in the war is reliant on this component. There's no alternative to the civilian abilities here and on social media. It's one of the most critical fronts right now."
The attendees also discussed the difficulty that stems from Hamas investing vast amounts of money in its content creation and Israel's need to keep up and get ahead.
Gitam Media Group CEO Ido Har-Tov told the meeting that his company had set up a 200-person situation room that was focused on creating hasbara content.
"We've begun to create between 40 and 50 videos a day," he said. "We have tens of millions of views. We can be the country's most significant tool in hasbara."
Ella Keinan has also been busy with hasbara since the beginning of the war. Since October 7, her content has gotten more than 80 million views.
"Our goal is to explain to people how they can do [hasbara] themselves and explain how they help us become viral," she said. "The country, with all its complexity, doesn't have the tools to manage this fight. It needs to be done on the civilian level."
"These days, there will be a response on the subject from the Jewish Diaspora because they feel the damage themselves and see Europe and the US today," concluded Elkin. "We can easily recognize people who will want to invest in this immediately."