The Jews – and by extension, Israel – have a public relations problem. We are losing a war we never intended to fight. In the digital arena, perception is power, and today’s battleground is defined by outrage, misinformation, and optics. We are not just losing the PR war – most of the time, it feels like we are not even on the field.
Truth over trend
Why? Because we do not play by the same rules. Jewish tradition has never centered on image or performance. It is built instead on inquiry, debate, and the relentless pursuit of justice. Tikkun olam – the mandate to repair the world – is not a slogan; it is a foundational ethos. Our faith values truth over trend, questions over certainties. That is not how you win viral arguments or algorithmic battles.
On social media, the loudest, angriest voices rise to the top, while careful, ethical thinking sinks to the bottom. That puts a people trained in nuance into a world that rewards absolutes.
When nuance looks like guilt
In today’s climate, silence is mistaken for guilt, nuance for weakness, and self-reflection for failure. When Jews do respond, especially online, we are drowned out by waves of trolling and vitriol. The noise overwhelms the signal. We are shouted down by those who do not seek understanding but victory – often in a “suffering Olympics” where victimhood is weaponized.
But Jews do not claim victimhood. We claim survival.
The antisemitic paradox
That very survival enrages our enemies. Our continued existence – as individuals, as a people, as a state – somehow provokes hatred. We are expelled from communities, shamed for wearing a Magen David necklace. Targeted in airports, silenced in universities. We are accused of both invisibility and omnipotence, of controlling everything and belonging nowhere.
The antisemitic paradox endures: if Jews truly ran the world, would we still be fighting to be seen, heard, and protected?
History versus hashtags
The lies against us are not new. But the platforms on which they spread are. In this new world of public opinion warfare, Jews often appear outmatched – not because we are weaker, but because we are playing a different game. One rooted in history, ethics, and survival, not hashtags and viral narratives.
Antisemitic tropes, conspiracy theories, and blood libels have found a new home in feeds and comment sections, where repetition is mistaken for truth and emotion is confused with evidence. The hatred is old; the reach and speed are new.
Scars of resilience
Our ability to rebuild after loss, to hold onto faith, to carry memory are not qualities that make for good PR. They do not fit into a 10-second clip or a catchy slogan. These are qualities that make people resilient, and they come with scars as well.
Those scars tell stories of exile, pogroms, gas chambers, and terror attacks. They tell stories of Jewish communities forced to start again and again, often in the same places that once drove them out. These are not the stories that trend – but they are the stories that explain why we are still here.
Must we enter the arena?
So we return to the essential question: must we enter the arena? Must we play this PR game, knowing it is not of our design – and often not of our values? Must we compress a people whose strength lies in complexity into simplified posts and reactive soundbites?
There is a real fear that, by stepping into this fight, we will be forced to flatten our history, our ethics, our pain. But there is also a danger in staying silent while others rewrite our story in real time.
Choosing how we show up
Perhaps we must enter – but on our own terms. Not to win a game of likes and shares, but to remind the world that we are still here. That even in exile, scattered across generations and continents, we remain one people. We are still forming our identity from the fragments of diaspora, from the diverse faces and voices of Judaism. And yet somehow, in our disunity, we remain united.
We cannot afford to sit out a war waged on perception. We may not choose our enemies, but we can choose how we show up. Not to mimic those who shout, but to assert our truth with courage. Not to claim superiority, but to insist on humanity – ours and everyone else’s.
And we can choose to fight differently: with facts and empathy, with counterspeech instead of abuse, with communities that show up online for one another when antisemitism goes viral. Not to become what we oppose, but to make sure that those who come looking for Jews on the internet do not find only hatred, lies, and erasure