Who Is Starving for the Truth?

That’s Israel’s dilemma. It half-heartedly denies accusations from a coordinated international campaign that Israel is starving Gazans instead of forcefully refuting these claims, many of which are based on staged scenes, AI-generated images, or unrelated file photos. Then, Israel rewards Hamas’s intransigence by declaring a unilateral ceasefire for ten hours a day to allow in humanitarian aid. Meanwhile, the terrorist group still holds 20 Jewish hostages, who are subject to deprivation far worse than what any Gazan is experiencing.

The Israeli government was also slow on the uptake in responding to false narratives that accused Jewish residents, whom the media call “settlers,” of setting a nonexistent fire at a West Bank church, or that exaggerated claims of deliberate destruction at a Catholic church in Gaza. In both cases, Israel’s failure to provide real-time crisis communication and its weeklong delay in releasing the results of police and IDF investigations caused even loyal American supporters like US ambassador Mike Huckabee and Senator Lindsey Graham (R–SC) to lose their cool, threatening Israel with repercussions unless it swiftly charged the perpetrators.

Huckabee and Graham should have known better than to jump the gun and accuse Israel without evidence, relying solely on Arab media propaganda, which many left-wing Israeli outlets eagerly endorse because it fits their agenda too. That said, Israel must take the initiative and urgently establish a professional, experienced, well-staffed, and well-funded crisis management team to strengthen its PR efforts and legitimize its fight against enemies sworn to our destruction, who have no justification for their cause, lack morality, and for whom the truth is of no importance.

Israel’s government allocated about NIS 545 million ($163 million) in 2025 to expand its hasbarah efforts. Many media outlets touted this expenditure as 20 times the usual amount Israel spends on PR. Pathetic as the previous budgets were, even NIS 545 million shekels constitutes less than one-tenth of one percent of the state’s NIS 547 billion budget ($164 billion). And more than halfway into 2025, much of that extra funding remains only a budget line item and hasn’t been put to use.