Israel’s New Global Strategy
The Jewish state’s image won’t be saved by facts, but by people like Deni Avdija.
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On a winter night less than three weeks ago, when the NBA announced its All-Star selections and Deni Avdija’s name appeared among them, something subtle but profound shifted.
It was not just that an Israeli had reached a milestone no Israeli basketball player had reached before. It was not just that a kid from Beit Zera and Tel Aviv had risen through European leagues and into the highest tier of the most culturally influential sports league in the world. It was that, for a brief moment, millions of people around the globe heard an Israeli name and reacted not with politics, not with debate, not with explanation — but with excitement.
Phones lit up across Israel. Group chats buzzed in Hebrew and English. Young basketball players in Tel Aviv and Haifa stayed up late to watch highlights. Jewish communities in Los Angeles, Toronto, London, and Paris felt a quiet jolt of pride. The moment traveled quickly, not through official statements or government channels, but through social media, sports broadcasts, and the organic circuitry of fandom. An Israeli had not just made the NBA. An Israeli had become an NBA All-Star — a distinction that, in global cultural terms, means far more than athletic excellence. It signals arrival, recognition, respect.
For decades, Israel has invested enormous energy in what has come to be known as hasbara — the efforts to explain itself to the world. This project emerged from necessity. Israel has lived under constant scrutiny, often judged not only for its policies but for its very existence. As a result, it developed an entire ecosystem devoted to messaging: government briefings, campus advocacy, media appearances, fact sheets, infographics, talking points. The underlying assumption was clear: If people simply understood the facts — the history, the security dilemmas, the context — they would view Israel more fairly.
But explanation has limits. Facts and figures rarely move people on their own. They inform, but they do not necessarily persuade. They clarify, but they do not always humanize. And in an era of social media, where narratives travel faster than nuance and emotional imagery often outweighs reality, the model of persuasion based primarily on argument has become increasingly strained. Israel, for understandable reasons, has spent years speaking in a defensive register, constantly responding, correcting, and contextualizing. It has often found itself in the position of a country narrating its own legitimacy in real time.
Deni Avdija’s rise represents something different — not a rejection of hasbara, but an evolution beyond its traditional form. He does not deliver speeches about geopolitics. He does not engage in online debates about Middle Eastern history. He does not function as an official representative of the state.
Yet every time he steps onto an NBA court, he performs a kind of influence that is arguably more powerful than any press briefing. Millions of viewers see an Israeli competing at the highest level of global sport. They hear his name from commentators. They watch his interviews. They follow his highlights. They buy his jersey. They cheer when he makes a crucial play.
This form of visibility operates beneath the level of argument. It works through familiarity rather than persuasion. It humanizes without announcing itself as a humanization effort. You do not argue with someone you already feel connected to. You do not easily reduce to abstraction a place associated with someone you admire. Cultural presence creates a different kind of understanding, one rooted not in agreement on every issue, but in recognition of shared humanity and shared experience.
Sports has long functioned as a vehicle for this kind of soft power. Michael Jordan did more to globalize the cultural appeal of the United States than any diplomatic campaign of his era. Yao Ming transformed how millions of people around the world perceived China, not through political messaging but through the simple act of becoming a beloved figure in the NBA. Athletes from Eastern Europe helped normalize post-Soviet societies by becoming integrated into global leagues and popular culture. In each case, the most powerful influence came not from official narratives but from individual presence.
Avdija’s emergence as an All-Star places Israel within that same dynamic. For much of its history, Israel has been seen internationally through a narrow set of lenses: conflict, diplomacy, security. These dimensions are real and consequential, but they do not encompass the totality of Israeli life or identity. When an Israeli athlete becomes a global star, he introduces a different point of reference. He represents normalcy, competitiveness, talent, ambition. He becomes part of the everyday cultural fabric that billions of people consume through sports and entertainment. He is not framed primarily as a symbol of conflict but as a participant in a shared global arena.
This shift is particularly striking in the post–October 7th environment. In the months following the Hamas-led attacks and the subsequent war, Israel has been intensely politicized in global discourse. Protests, boycotts, and online campaigns have amplified polarization. In many spaces, Israel is discussed almost exclusively through the prism of conflict.
Against this backdrop, the image of an Israeli athlete excelling on one of the world’s most visible stages introduces a kind of cognitive dissonance. It complicates simplified narratives. It reminds audiences, without stating it explicitly, that Israelis exist not only as subjects of political debate but as individuals pursuing careers, passions, and excellence in global fields.
Every highlight Avdija produces, every game in which he plays a decisive role, functions as a subtle counterweight to abstraction. Fans who cheer for him are not engaging in geopolitical analysis. They are engaging in fandom. They are forming emotional associations. They are incorporating an Israeli figure into their mental landscape of admired athletes. This process does not resolve political disagreements, nor should it be expected to. But it does create a layer of familiarity that makes one-dimensional perceptions harder to sustain.
The future of Israeli hasbara will likely reflect this shift from argument to presence. Traditional advocacy will not disappear; states will always communicate their policies and defend their positions. Yet the most durable form of influence increasingly operates on a person-to-person level. It emerges when Israelis are embedded across global industries — sports, technology, entertainment, business, science, culture — not as spokespersons but as participants. It emerges when the world encounters Israelis as colleagues, teammates, creators, and innovators rather than solely as subjects of news coverage.
This people-to-people dynamic is inherently more powerful than any compilation of facts and figures. Statistics can be disputed. Historical narratives can be contested. But personal familiarity creates a different kind of connection. When individuals around the world feel they “know” Israelis through shared cultural spaces, the relationship shifts from abstract to tangible. Influence becomes less about persuading audiences of specific points and more about expanding the range of experiences through which Israel is understood.
For Israelis and Jews globally, moments like Avdija’s All-Star selection carry an internal significance as well. They provide a sense of belonging within the broader currents of global culture. They affirm that Israelis can succeed not only within their own national context but on the most visible international stages. After periods of trauma and isolation, such representation restores a measure of confidence — the confidence that Israeli identity is not confined to the realm of politics, but is fully compatible with global participation and recognition.
None of this eliminates complexity. As Israeli figures become more prominent internationally, they may face pressures to comment on political issues or to serve as symbolic representatives of their country. When interviewed last month by The Athletic, Avdija said:
“I’m an athlete. I don’t really get into politics, because it’s not my job. I obviously stand for my country, because that’s where I’m from. … I’m a proud Israeli, because that’s where I grew up. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for Israel and the support the people and fans gave me. … This is my country, where I was born, where I grew up. I love my country.”1
Visibility can attract scrutiny as well as admiration, yet the broader trajectory is clear. The more Israelis are integrated into global cultural and professional networks, the harder it becomes to reduce Israel to a single narrative. Presence generates nuance. Familiarity complicates caricature.
Israel must use Avdija as a prototype for more personalities across a variety of fields, cultivating globally recognized Israelis in sports, technology, entertainment, science, food, fashion, and other types of culture whose excellence and visibility create familiarity and connection that no amount of official messaging or statistical argument ever could.
The same logic applies to Diaspora Jews as well, especially younger ones. The era in which young Jews formed an automatic emotional connection to Israel has largely passed. Today, connection is built through people — through content creators, athletes, founders, artists, and public personalities who make Israel visible in the flow of everyday digital life. The more Israelis appear not as abstractions in a distant news cycle but as relatable human beings to follow, watch, and engage with, the more Israel will be experienced through genuine relationships rather than mediated through headlines, conflict, and statistics.
When Deni Avdija stepped onto the NBA All-Star court on Sunday, he did not do so as a diplomat or spokesperson. He did so as an athlete who had earned his place among the best in the world. In that moment, he embodied a transformation that extends beyond basketball. For decades, Israel sought to influence global perception primarily through explanation — through carefully constructed arguments and meticulously presented facts. The coming era will be shaped more by connection than by explanation, more by people than by talking points.
Influence, in the end, rarely flows from being understood in theory. It flows from being experienced in practice. From being seen, heard, and recognized as part of the shared human landscape. When millions of fans cheer for an Israeli without thinking twice about it, something deeper has already changed. And that quiet shift — from argument to familiarity, from distance to connection — may prove to be the most effective form of hasbara Israel has ever had.
“Deni Avdija’s unexpected rise to NBA’s new breakout star.” The Athletic.
Israel's new "global strategy" must be in accordance with Moshe Dayan's quote "Israel must be like a mad dog; too crazy to threaten".
Israel will never be loved. It must be feared. It must make clear - either publicly or through back channels - that she will use her nuclear arsenal to take the world down with it if destroyed.
Nothing else will ultimately work, and even that may not, as millions of people, and not just Palestinians, hate Jews more than they love life.
He’s playing for and in Portland? That’s a miracle in itself! I hope he has good security.