The other day, I was scrolling on TikTok. An unfortunate late-night habit. I went down a rabbit hole about a specific beauty brand. I saw a video by a Korean beauty creator that publicized a dispute with the brand. She began the video by saying, “I was sexually assaulted in college.” She explained that truth always matters to her above brand collaboration.
My mouth immediately dropped open. Suddenly, the video wasn’t about skincare to me. It was about integrity.
It was about a girl whose authenticity will never come at the cost of her integrity. It was about how a skincare influencer was grappling with the same challenges in the Korean beauty industry as I was in the hasbara (public diplomacy) world.
Becoming involved in public diplomacy
I’ve accidentally become a hasbara content creator. It was never my goal.
I was an engineering student at Columbia University. I was raised in the Bais Yaakov system and never learned evolution. Yet, I was suddenly sitting in a classroom with students from Istanbul that were arguing with my professor about theoretical mathematics. For the first time in my life, I felt alone and stupid. So, I turned to TikTok. I wasn’t trying to make money. I didn’t want to be a spokesperson. I just wanted to feel understood.
My following grew to 30,000 people that wanted to build community with me. A community built on Orthodoxy, sexual trauma, and my Israeli identity on an increasingly antisemitic campus.
Then I made aliyah a week before October 7. I continued using my account like I always had – as a personal diary. But this time, I felt more alone than ever. So did thousands of Jews around the world. They, too, didn’t want a spokesperson. They wanted to feel understood. They wanted a voice on the ground. They wanted a story like mine. My account blew up. And just like that, I became part of the hasbara space.
It’s been three years since October 7. Three years since I made aliyah. Three years since I no longer was just a girl making TikToks because she felt alone. I’ve become increasingly disillusioned and agitated. What once was a platform built on community, activism, and authenticity has become an echo chamber driven by profit, hysteria, and “brand safety.”
A platform that gave me community when I felt most alone has also stripped me of it at the time of greatest tragedy.
Hasbara and donor approval
The first time I noticed this disintegration was when Clavicular was brought to Israel. I was in a group chat with fellow “hasbarists” expressing their excitement for his visit. I sent an article about his alleged assault. A content creator sent a voice note laughing off the sexual abuse allegations.
I thought the apparent moral quandary was obvious. “If you make a platform by speaking against the sexual abuse on October 7 and then platform alleged rapists, you also exploit the bodies of victims.”
Apparently my statement and subsequent videos were enough to boot me from every group chat. I was ostracized and received a deluge of texts about my “behavior” and how I “should” respond. Suddenly, hasbara had a hierarchy. I had people to answer to if I wanted to be included.
This was when I understood hasbara was not about advocacy or community. It was about donor approval in the Diaspora.
When I returned to the Diaspora and visited New York, I was shocked. I had just returned from three years of constant war and missile fire. Three years where my nervous system couldn’t calm down. I was sipping Starbucks in the sun as tourists streamed around me. I could finally breathe.
Where was the Mayor Zohran Mamdani “reign of terror” I saw all over my feed? Yes, the antisemitism was real. A passerby shouted “free Palestine” as my sister and I posed under a sticker of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. But a war zone? The reality of being a Jew in New York City felt far more subtle than the hysteria being sold for an appearance at a gala.
I posted a video saying, “If you give a mayor more attention than he deserves, you make him more important.” Immediately, I was shut down again. How dare I? I was gaslighting antisemitism. Suddenly, I was told I wasn’t a “real soldier” or a New Yorker. I introduced nuance into a conversation – a conversation that fuels an industry paid by the click. So, I failed a litmus test for a course I never planned to take.
A trend began to emerge for me. You can’t talk about feminism. You can’t talk about your dating history. You can’t share any experience that deviates from the hasbara echo chamber. If you do, you won’t be “brand safe.” And if you are not brand safe, you won’t get paid.
For the past three years, the hasbara space – a space meant for community, a space of communal responsibility and boots-on-the-ground authenticity – has become a profession built on monetized integrity.
A message driven by monetary benefit
When I was scrolling TikTok late at night, I wanted to find solutions for my skin. I fell down that rabbit hole searching for genuine feedback and authenticity. Which skincare brands actually worked? Companies need to market their products and skincare influencers need to get paid, but what happens when the skincare influencers are driven by financial incentives?
Jewish nonprofits need to publicize their messaging. Antisemitic statistics need to be circulated. Those who facilitate that mission deserve compensation. But what happens to a message driven by monetary benefit?
What happens to someone like me – someone who only ever wanted community and authenticity and didn’t want to feel alone?
What if I’m just like the Korean beauty influencer? What if I told my university I was sexually assaulted? What if they tried to silence me? What if – at the risk of my own degree, happiness, future, and safety – I told the world?
Can money ever buy my silence? Can professional pressure from people I don’t respect dictate what I am allowed to say? What happens when the hierarchy I answer to is one I don’t believe in? One that repeatedly platforms a man charged with assaulting and drugging a minor.
The pro-Israel space increasingly talks about how “the world doesn’t believe us.” Nonprofit organizations then invite creators who repeat their talking points.
But what kind of representatives do we attract if we only platform those who regurgitate what is profitable? Is the message we want to deliver one without nuance? And if someone is only willing to say what is deemed “safe,” why should we expect the world to trust them with the truth?
Social media was created to connect people. The world began empathizing with the Gazan plight through Bisan. She was just “a girl.” A storyteller. She wasn’t introduced to the world as a spokesperson. She wasn’t flown in to deliver talking points. She documented what she saw, and people felt that they were witnessing the truth rather than being sold it.
The hasbara space and the Jewish nonprofits that fund them are trying to manufacture integrity. But true integrity comes at the cost of everything. True integrity is a girl documenting a war zone. True integrity comes at the price of safety and comfort. That is why people believe it.
How can anyone believe women were sexually abused on October 7 if the people who advocated against it platform a known predator? How can anyone stand against the dangerous rhetoric of Jew hatred if the same people decrying it apply it to Muslims? How can anyone believe campus antisemitism is real if those who became its mascots never graduated those universities?
How can we expect the world to trust hasbara when it barely trusts itself?
And what does it mean when New Yorkers who made aliyah after graduating Columbia and served in the IDF are no longer deemed “brand safe” to talk about their experience?
What does it mean when every one of those experiences are only profitable when they are narrated by those who never lived them? Who do you believe?
The writer is an accidental hasbara content creator. Originally from New York, she graduated from Columbia with a degree in biomedical engineering before making aliyah and enlisting in the IDF after October 7. She now hopes to follow in the footsteps of her great-grandfather, Ben-Gurion’s private doctor, and practice medicine in the hospitals he helped create.