Clearly, the mass media’s Massive Israeli Beat-Down is irresponsible and inflammatory. Journalists parrot propagandists, treating Hamas’s perjurious Ministry of Health as the Ministry of Truth. These shameless liars count 8,000 natural deaths and 23,000-plus terrorist deaths as innocent civilian casualties.

Panicking, terrorists shoot hungry Gazans to undermine long-overdue Israeli efforts to stop Hamas from hijacking aid, yet the media claims Israel massacred Palestinians. Then reporters romanticize illegal assaults on Israel’s legal naval blockade. The Washington Post hails Greta Thunberg’s “humanitarian boat.” There are row-boats, motor-boats – who knew boats had souls?

Meanwhile, despite obsessive saturation coverage, the media neglects major stories. Even most Israel supporters don’t know that Israelis have scrambled for shelter 38,441 times since October 7. Or that Palestinians subsequently launched 9,096 “significant” terrorist attacks outside Gaza.

Few noticed that Eli Sharabi, Hamas’s hostage for 491 days – and a Netanyahu critic – reported that his tormentors “cried almost every day. They cried into their mattresses and their pillows. They’re frustrated, they’re in despair. They can’t believe their worst nightmare – that this war should go on for such a long time.”

Hmm. I thought Hamas is winning and Israel is stuck.

Former hostage Eli Sharabi attends a press conference at the United Nations headquartes in New York City, March 20, 2025 (credit: Liri Agami/Flash90)
Former hostage Eli Sharabi attends a press conference at the United Nations headquartes in New York City, March 20, 2025 (credit: Liri Agami/Flash90)
BY VIOLATING their professional standards, reporters helped inspire “Free Palestine” Jew-hunting from Washington, DC to Boulder, from Melbourne to Marseilles.

A vacuum of Israeli public diplomacy

Still, there’s a public diplomacy vacuum here. Israel’s government needs an intervention from those of us who have celebrated Israel and Zionism for years. We understand what works, and what doesn’t, with reporters, students, and voters worldwide.

For starters, note the word “celebrate.” “Israel advocacy” assumes Israel needs defense attorneys. Pilates teaches “strengthen your core!” Celebrating Israel and Zionism cultivates the resilience that Jews and liberal democrats need so they can refute the lies that Hamas fabricates faster than it produces Kassam rockets.

We need facts and narratives. The statistics cited above come from the invaluable, but largely unknown, Institute for National Security Studies war “tracker.” The Jewish People Policy Institute has distributed tens of thousands of my Essential Guide to October 7 in English, French, and now in Hebrew, because many supporters and undecideds seek balance and context.

Admittedly, anyone concerned about Israel’s image faces the Jew-hater’s paradox. Antisemites make the job feel hopeless – but if we lose hope, they win.

No argument will eliminate Jew-hatred. This super-virus resists facts while poisoning minds. But we can’t stop spreading the truth and fighting the thought-pollution.

Hamas’s October 7 mega-atrocities in Israel proved that millions – billions! – hate Jews even when the enemy rampages. No public diplomacy campaign will sway them. Their pigheadedness, however, doesn’t justify saying, “They hate us, so let’s not bother defending ourselves.” And it certainly doesn’t justify leaders ranting about “erasing” Gaza in ways that undermine Israel’s moral standing.

Also, beware the Israel Indignation Industry, which overreacts any time Israel is criticized.

Israel’s justified war remains complicated. In a three-dimensional urban battlefield, Israel’s military occasionally kills civilians unintentionally. Don’t claim Israel is perfect, given these perfectly awful conditions.

Admit mistakes when made, while explaining the broader war aims, articulating “Just War Theory,” which justifies Israel’s war after a massive attack, and detailing Israel’s unprecedented attempts to minimize civilian casualties.

Law professor Thane Rosenbaum, in his book, Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza, explains: In international law, “proportionality” doesn’t mean matching your casualties to the enemy’s. Proportionality asks: Are your military’s targets legitimate military targets?

So I conclude: When Hamas still hides command centers under hospitals – including the European Hospital in Khan Yunis – they’ve made civilian sites proper targets.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, pivot. Hearts and minds aren’t won on defense. Israel – and everyone else – should make four essential, positive, arguments.

Four Israeli arguments to win hearts and minds

First, Israel is defending America and the West, too. Future historians will place this war at the intersection of three global conflicts. October 7 was another searing date in the century-long Arab war to remove Jews from Palestine. Their “historicide” – denying our history – rationalizes waves of attacks, now led by Palestinian movements rejecting Israel’s legitimacy.

Palestinians’ war against Israel also advances an anti-Western global jihad to expand Muslim influence. A French think-tank, Fondapol, cataloged 66,872 Islamist terrorist attacks between 1979 and April 2024 – including 9/11 – murdering 249,941 people. Finally, the Iranian mullahs bankroll these terrorists as part of Iran’s broader alliance of evil with Russia, China, and North Korea, opposing democracy.

This long, messy war tests and teaches America and the West. Condemning Israel’s self-defense efforts exposes the West’s weakened defense posture. Growing Western intolerance for war’s bloodiness and chaos reveals that few have served in the military, while many prefer deluding themselves.

Defending democracy, and your life, occasionally requires toughness. We collectively must be willing to risk killing by mistake to eliminate those trying to kill us on purpose.

Fortunately, America’s investment in Israel keeps paying dividends. While degrading Hamas, crushing Hezbollah, weakening Iran, and thus triggering Bashar Assad’s collapse in Syria, Israel has pioneered medical advances, technological breakthroughs, and tactical innovations on the battlefield. Israel’s improvisations, from bullet-removing robots to pineapple-protein burn gels, to humanoid prosthetics, will protect thousands of soldiers and save millions of civilians in hospitals worldwide, for decades to come.

Finally, by vindicating Zionism, this war advertises Jewish nationalism as a model form of liberal-democratic nationalism. In an age filled with books about “How Democracies Die,” Israel’s young generation of everyday superheroes demonstrates how to defend democracy – and build yourself up by being rooted in tradition, embraced by community, and committed to your country.

This is the song we should be singing, led by the government if possible, but crooned by the people always, because it’s necessary – and true.

The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest books, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7 and Its Aftermath were just published.