Recently, my teacher and friend Professor Shaul Magid published a Substack essay titled “Deflection Hasbara: Internalizing Blame to Justify the State” (you can read it here: https://shaulmagid.substack.com/p/deflection-hasbara-internalizing). It’s a piece that deserves to be read carefully, not skimmed, because it raises a genuinely important and uncomfortable question:

What happens when a community internalizes its own public-facing narratives to the point that they shape how it understands reality itself?

Magid suggests that “hasbara”—often understood as outward-facing advocacy—can become inward-facing as well. It can function not just as messaging, but as a kind of reflex: a way of framing events that preempts critique, softens moral tension, and keeps certain questions from fully surfacing.

There is something incisive here.

Communities do this. All communities do this. We develop narratives that protect coherence, identity, and survival. We learn what can be said easily, what must be qualified, and what cannot be said at all. Over time, those habits don’t just guide how we speak to others—they shape how we think.

And in moments of crisis, those habits can harden.

So yes: there are times when Jewish discourse about Israel can function defensively. There are moments when language becomes a buffer rather than a bridge, when........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)