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PORTSIDE CULTURE

NEW BOOK UNPACKS HOW ZIONISM IS MYTHOLOGIZED IN HASBARA  
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Eleanor J Bader
November 7, 2025
The Indypendent
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_ Malinowitz’s "Selling Israel" provides both the hard facts and
historical background necessary to contest Zionism as the best and
only way to combat hatred of Jews. _

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_Selling Israel: Zionism, Propaganda, and the Uses of Hasbara_Harriet
Malinowitz,Olive Branch Press/Interlink Publishing GroupISBN:
9781623715809

Retired English professor Harriet Malinowitz
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spent 20 years writing and researching _Selling Israel_, and the
exhaustively detailed result probes the ways Zionist mythology has
been packaged to prop up support for the Jewish state. 

She starts by introducing the concept of hasbara, which, she writes,
can be “bluntly described as propaganda, but in fact comprises a
huge network of government ministries, nongovernmental organizations,
nonprofit agencies and charities, campus organizations, volunteer
groups, watchdog bodies, professional associations, media networks,
fundraising operations, and educational programs that aim to fortify a
Zionist-defined notion of Jewishness in persons within Israel, the
United States, and other countries.”

Malinowitz’s text deconstructs the ways these entities have been
used to support Israel as a place essential to Jewish safety and
security. But in addition, she includes the country’s foundational
reliance on Biblical history, horrific 19th-century Eastern European
pogroms, and the Nazi Holocaust to buttress its claims that Israel is
a necessary xxxxxx against anti-semitism.

Let’s start with the Bible. Malinowitz writes that David Ben-Gurion,
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prime minister, frequently said that “the bible is our mandate.”
Similarly, in 1947 Chaim Weitzman
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first president, told the United Nations that, “God made a promise:
Palestine to the Jews.” Seventy-two years later, in 2019, Danny
Danon, Israel’s then-ambassador to the UN, reiterated this message,
holding up a Bible and telling his audience that the book is
Israel’s “deed” to the land, evidence of an “everlasting
covenant” with God. 

Logic assumes that this claim has been questioned, but for the most
part, it has not been. 

For years, most Zionists denied Palestinian’s existence and
repeatedly stated that the land was both empty of people and
nonarable.

And those pesky Palestinians who’d been living on that land?  For
years, most Zionists denied their existence and repeatedly stated that
the land was both empty of people and nonarable, claims that were
easily refuted since European nations that had long imported
Palestinian barley, sesame, wheat, and Jaffa oranges. As Lebanese
historian Marwan R. Buheiry
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wrote, “Palestine had always been an important producer of key
agricultural commodities and was experiencing a significant expansion
of agriculture and allied manufactures at least two generations before
the arrival of the first colons from East Europe.”

Malinowitz argues that Zionists knew this, but consciously chose to
tell a tall tale about “a land without people for a people without
land.” This idea was supported by two additional, if contradictory,
notions: That the indigenous population of Palestine could be
“transferred” to a host of Arab nations and/or that those who
remained in Palestine would benefit from  “Zionist
accomplishments.” 

The fact that many Palestinians saw the situation differently was
unsurprising. Indeed, several Jewish writers and theorists had
foreseen Palestinian resistance, but they were ignored or condemned as
wrongheaded. 

Instead, the Jewish National Fund, a group created in 1901 when
Zionism was little more than the fledgling dream of a small percentage
of world Jewry, began to raise funds to “transfer Palestinian Arabs
to Iraq, Syria, and even Transjordan.” Their mission has never
wavered, although it has expanded. Among its many efforts, the JNF has
solicited donations for community development, with projects to
“green the desert” and “drain festering swamps” to make more
of the country suitable for farming. 

Malinowitz reports that neither effort has panned out as planned. The
1950 draining of Hula Lake, she writes, is just one example. Although
drainage was meant to redeem the land for agriculture and turn
“water that had been a menace to health into a blessing,” it has
instead caused environmental calamity. “Among the casualties in the
Hula Valley,” she explains, “were the disappearance of 119 animal
species, the extinction of numerous fresh water plant species, the
rerouting of migratory birds flying between Europe and Africa, and the
unanticipated population explosion of the vole, which rampantly
destroyed crops and led many to cease farming there – in turn
accelerating soil deterioration.”  And the greening of the desert?
The desire to create a “garden oasis” led Israelis to plant Aleppo
pine and cypress trees, rather than trees native to the area. These
trees have obliterated grasslands. Moreover, since the natural habitat
of the Aleppo pine is wetter, “when planted in arid areas they
require intense irrigation to facilitate sapling growth and suffer
major, irreparable losses during droughts. Yet neither blunder has
dissuaded the Jewish National Fund from working to garner support for
these projects. What’s more, they continue to raise money to
“strengthen Israel’s peripheral regions.” 

Educational efforts are, of course, key to these initiatives, both
within and outside of Israel. The use and misuse of the Holocaust come
into play here. For several decades after World War II, Malinowitz
writes that Nazi death camps were rarely invoked because Israeli
leaders felt that the annihilation of six million Jews could be read
as a sign of weakness, as if the victims had somehow allowed
themselves to be led to their deaths, like “lambs to the
slaughter.” This began to change during the 1961 trial of
high-ranking Nazi, Adolf Eichmann.  As world revulsion to Nazi
ideology mounted, Israel’s leaders began an ideological pivot, now
arguing that “an armed Jewish state was both essential for
preventing an ever-looming second Holocaust and would have mitigated
the first one.” Images of gun-toting Israeli soldiers became a
source of national – and international – pride that dovetailed
with constant rhetoric to dehumanize Palestinians as an unprovoked,
menacing threat. 

This is where hasbara has been most effective.

Since the 1970s, hasbara has presented Israel as a rugged, innovative,
and pioneering nation where queer identity is respected, environmental
sustainability is championed, and Jews are able to live in safety,
security, and prosperity. That these claims are specious has not
mattered to Israel’s supporters, Malinowitz writes. As Gaza is
pummeled into oblivion and the West Bank is increasingly occupied by
people eager to eliminate every Palestinian person, peace seems less
and less possible. It’s both sad and appalling.

Gaza is pummeled into oblivion and the West Bank is increasingly
occupied by people eager to eliminate every Palestinian person, peace
seems less and less possible.

Worse, in the more than two years since October 7th, the conflation
between Judaism and Zionism has ramped up. Efforts to decouple them
remain ongoing, but _Selling Israel _provides both the hard facts and
historical background necessary to contest Zionism as the best and
only way to combat hatred of Jews. In parsing Zionism’s 19th-century
roots and the heinous pogroms the movement was responding to,
Malinowitz has given readers ammunition for fighting anti-Semitic
bigotry. It’s a vitally important book.

 

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* zionism
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* Israel
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* Palestine
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* Propaganda
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* Antisemitism
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